two new places to hide things away

tonight dad finished up the shelving in my two main closets! now i just need some doors to hide all my junk ;)

and as you can see, dad's already moved in!

the pink room surprise

i've had a small quart-sized sample of "pink salmon" from glidden laying around for a while now. i'd been planning on painting at least one (if not more) walls of my dining room a pinky color, but wasn't completely sure what i wanted to do.

then today i came home...and bam. there it was. a pink wall. i guess dad got antsy and decided it was now or never.

any ideas for what i should do with the other walls?

mirror, mirror on the wall

i went on a little shopping spree this weekend, and this mirror is one of the things i picked up along the way.

inside the plastic fort

whenever my dad sets off to do work -- whether around the house, at crappy house (our other extreme makeover house), or my place -- he simply says with a smile "well, i'm off to play!" and heads out. i'm so glad he loves it.

anyways, tonight he was over working on my two main closets. first we hung plastic from the ceiling to protect the rest of my place from suffocating beneath a layer of dust. then he started sanding and puttying away behind the plastic sheets...

hey, at least he got to play in a fort ;)

walk with me, talk with me

here's a little walkthrough of my condo so far...

let there be light

the other day i picked out some pendant lights from ikea. but apparently they only sell plug-in pendant lighting (see above). what?!

but it didn't matter, because my amazing boyfriend turned to me and said he would hook it all up. so i bought two simple looking pendants and then went over to the home depot for two canopy kits.

finally chad had time to come over and do a little free labor :)

and after about an hour or so of work...VOILA! my bar lights are up and shining bright!

sink + vanity = happy girl

most of you probably know that there was a crazy cat lady living here before me...which meant that the place had a somewhat distinct odor, if you know what i mean. luckily we've already replaced nearly everything reminiscent of her (floors, walls, ceilings, closets...) but there is just one thing left. my bathroom vanity.

so tonight me and dad drove over to building materials outlet and picked out a 48" vanity and a 43" sink top. wait. 48" and 43"? that doesn't sound right. well, that's because i have only 42" to work with between the wall and the shower. and apparently 42" is not standard (unless you want a really short vanity...) it's either 36" or 48". im sure i just lost everyone there.

anyways, after exhausting all ideas of what we could possibly do (like buying a 36" and a 12" tall cabinet and putting them side-by-side) we finally decided on buying the bigger one. now dad will have to cut it down, make two new -- slightly larger -- doors, and reassemble the whole piece.

have faith, it will all come together somehow. my dad is nothing less than amazing. and plus, then i can actually use my vanity for storage. what a novel idea!

birds on a wire

i found this cute birdies coat rack today at marshalls and just HAD to get it. plus, it matches the wrought-iron wicker magazine rack i bought a while ago!

if only i had "clap on" lights

today dad came over and worked on my lights by my main door. we put on two switches: one controls the top outlet (that i have my lamp plugged into) and the other turns on and off the outdoor motion-sensor light 

i'm so happy to have actual light switches to flip on when i get home in the dark :)

bye bye open closets

say goodbye to all the open inlets in the unfinished walls...because we are starting to sheetrock all three closets! so of course I had to take one final picture through the wall.

first dad put up the exterior walls...

then we measured inside the closets, fastened the sheetrock, and called it a night!

the real thing

my chandelier arrived early, all in one piece, on the front steps. i was so excited that the next week seemed to take forever. but finally thursday came -- the day chad offered to come over and install it in my dining room.

during the week chad had picked up a converter because the chandelier is shipped from the UK. crazy right? i also bought some circular globe lights (i think the candelabra candle bulbs look creepy) and these spherical ones remind me of giant bubbles. plus, they make the light sparkle.

so after a few minor setbacks -- like the fact that appliances from overseas are opposite from ours, white is hot, instead of black -- chad successfully installed the light.

i love it! and it's even on a dimmer switch, how perfect is that! now i just need a dining room table...

gypsy chandelier

i splurged.

i found this incredible, one-of-a-kind, gypsy chandelier at Urban Outfitters and i just couldn't get it out of my head. so after about two days of going back and forth whether or not i should buy it (and looking online for anything similar or diy), i was unsuccessful. so i bought it, and it's currently traveling through the US (SC, NC, OH and IN) and should get here by friday!

im planning on making my dining room somewhat eclectic. i already have a small bucket of this pinkish/salmony color for one of my walls, which i am thinking of texturing somehow. plus this colorful chandelier. any other ideas of how to make this room more funky?

like christmas morning

 i woke up way too early and was too excited to go back to sleep. it felt like christmas morning. i guess i'm just really excited to finally be moving in! i thought the day would never come.

anyways, mom had found some cute chairs in the jc penney catalog, with some special discounts that expire today. i was trying to buy them online, but the shipping would be insane (since i want six chairs), so me and dad just decided to drive on over to southdale and see what they had in stock.


sidenote: we were there by 9am, walked up to the doors, and were completely disappointed that the store didn't open until 10am. bummer. so we turn around and get back in the truck, and then i notice that other people are going in and out? me and dad look at each other, and then simultaneously get back out of the truck and head back in. long story short, it turns out since they have saturday 'door busters' they open early, but don't make any note of this on their signage.

i ended up buying six chairs, which are super cool because they have 360 degree swivel, and are adjustable height! now i can have matching chairs on both sides of my bar (the high top side, and the standard counter height side). perfect.
 

here they are [almost] all set up. thanks to matthew for assembling them so quickly!

bottle cap coffee table

another great find at savers. this little coffee table has a great black base that should go with my living room decor. i wasn't impressed with the light wooden top (not in the picture), but that's ok since i plan to completely make it over anyways.

here's my vision: a bottle cap coffee table (see my progress here). and there's tons of inspiration on the web. for example:

i've begun collecting bottle caps, but it might take a while to get enough variety. so if anyone drinks a beverage with a fun bottle cap, send it my way!

and on the down side, if i mess it up, im only out a $7.99. man do i love savers.

dilly dally painting

it had to be done. but i didn't want to do it. i finally forced myself to lay out the tarp, get out the paint and brushes, and get it done. no more cat-odored cabinets! hooray!

aussie fest reunion

some pix from aussie fest reunion, held at my place. the festivities began with a Japan slideshow, narrated by mom. we took a break, played some games, ate some grub, and crowded into the living room for the second show of the day: the Australia slideshow, narrated by matthew.

some of the gang: rachael, ryan, kristina, matthew and adam.

the group of us 'kids' who survived the second slideshow. whew, what a long day, but it was a fun one!

the beginnings of the island bar

today dad and matthew started my island bar that will straddle the living room and dining room step. the reason i wanted this was so that the island would be two-leveled depending on which side you sit on. the dining room side will be standing bar height, while the living room side of the island will sit at standard counter height. i ended up going to ikea and buying a table top and extendable legs.

so tonight they got started. first they had to draw out a template because the table will actually need a corner piece cut out of it so it will hug the beam.

on another note: don't ever buy contact paper from the dollar store. it was the worst $1 i have ever spent.

THAT took you three hours?

since the parents are on vaca, me and matthew decided we could put up my bedroom fan (that chad scored me an awesome deal on from the HD). anyways, it looked pretty simple. but like everything that me and matthew attempt to do, it takes an insane amount longer than it should.

case in point: three hours later and this is as far as we got.

and we had to re-do most of it since the electrical wasn't hooked up right. bummer.

a few things

i scored a few things this weekend...here's two of them (both from target).

painting with mickey mouse gloves

matthew was nice enough to pick up a few bundles of trim for me, so tonight i decided to paint it. im planning on using the same trim for the entire place, and painting it all white for consistency.

so we set up the saw horses in the garage, and got started. we even used this cute mini-roller that worked perfectly. it was all going SO smoothly. too smoothly in fact. we had a system of moving the freshly painted pieces to the back and sliding the unfinished ones up. before we knew it, we had finished the entire bundle.

i brought all our supplies downstairs to the big sink to clean them up and that's where i noticed something slightly odd. when i took apart the mini roller, my hands immediately became covered in slimy paint...and it wasn't coming off as i washed the roller pad. i rubbed my hands in the water, and instead of rinsing them, the water turned them into what looked like mickey mouse gloved hands!

ooops! we must have used the oil-based primer instead of regular wall paint!

here's what happened: the paint can had already been opened, and was covered in paint so we couldnt read the label that said "oil-based primer." from now on we will double check what's in the can!

color ideas?

im thinking of having some type of pinkish tropical coral or salmony color on my dining room and kitchen?) walls. since it will probably be a pretty dynamic bold color, i'm not sure if i want just one wall to be accented? or if i should do some type of other painting technique (like texture, stripes, etc)? or just be brave and paint all walls pink? i need help deciding!

ps: i photoshopped this picture...the walls are still white, but this is the general color family i am thinking of using. thoughts? love it? hate it?

just call us tom & huck

around noon or so me and matthew headed over to the condo. we had finished taping down the flooring on friday, so our next project was to prime the walls. we had a little putty work to do, so matthew worked on that while i finished taping around the edges of the cabinets, etc. we also had to get the fridge and oven out of the way, which led to a little scare. matthew kind of dropped it, hard, and it stopped making noise. we were pretty worried, but i think it's working again. i hope.

we started painting — me with the lil brush and matthew with the roller — and we finished. phew. two rooms took longer than we expected, but i guess we were doing about half the condo! anyways, at least we're done...and i must say it looks 100% better than it did just a few hours ago.