Bundle of Lime

I haven't posted in a while but that doesn't mean I haven't been working on any projects. On the contrary, I have been working on several different projects and finally have one to share. When I first moved into my house, I needed bookcases but having just bought a house, I also needed to be thrifty when it came to my furniture. I ended up purchasing 3 of the cheap laminate bookcases made of pressed wood with the thick cardboard backing that's made to look like wood. Here's a before picture: I have wanted to replace these bookcases for almost as long as I have owned them but every time I thought of doing so, I couldn't just stomach the price tag. Finally, with the cardboard backing falling off AGAIN and the entire structure swaying back and forth if you touched one side or another, I decided to take action. I purchased some trim pieces and some  Rust-Oleum Chalked Spray Paint in Tidal Pond  from the hardware store, went home, and broke out the tools to ...

I finally have more kitchen pictures to share and it feels like things are finally starting to come together with this renovation. A couple of weeks ago, a local company, Granite Transformations , came in to reface the existing cabinets and counter top. They also faced the new cabinets that I built around the stove so that everything looks cohesive. Before they arrived, I had to clear out everything from the existing cabinets. And then on Day 1, the excitement began! I was SOOOO happy to see my old sink go. It wasn't bad but it was small, shallow, and had seen better days. By the end of Day 1, the counters were refinished with granite and the new (more functional) sink was installed. The refacing was started on the two small cabinets but just barely. By the end of Day 2, the new faucet was installed and the refacing was well underway. At this point, I was seriously questioning my choice of white for the cabinets. When I selected it, I was thinking it w...

In my previous blog post , I shared a picture of my kitchen wall where my oven sits. Today I am posting some updated pictures that include the new cabinet boxes I created to fit in this space. I have always been pretty crafty and not afraid to learn new techniques with new materials. And while I have done a moderate share of woodworking, I have never done cabinetry...until now.  My dilemma was that I am keeping and refacing the original kitchen cabinets. They have their own unique depth, height, drawer size, etc, that can't be found in prefabricated cabinet boxes. This particular area of my kitchen is also only 16" deep which is pretty shallow for your average cabinet. In exploring my options, I knew that I couldn't buy stock cabinets, and even though I could get the correct width and depth via online stores that made semi-custom cabinet boxes, the final product would not have matched the other dimensions of the existing cabinetry. It seemed that I had two choices.....

Two (or was it three?) years ago, I started on a kitchen renovation journey that has yet to see its end. Since the beginning when I removed the cabinet doors and began stripping decades of paint from the cabinet boxes, I have had a lot of stops and starts, toyed with different design approaches, and occasionally looked into hiring someone else to do the work. Slowly but surely, I landed on an master plan and my efforts are starting to come together. And since I haven't posted in ages, I thought I would do a quick in-progress update. To preface this, my kitchen is the size of the average bathroom. It's a galley-style that is small enough to be annoying if you get more than one person in it at a time (and doubly annoying if you get two people and a dog in it simultaneously). My house was built in 1940 and while it doesn't qualify as a tiny home, it's pretty darn close in my opinion. And this isn't a complaint because I actually love my house, small spaces and all....