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.

indoors outdoors

so i was at kohl's the other day shopping for fun decor — like accent rugs and scented candles — when i stumbled upon some vintage-inspired patio chairs. i thought to myself: "it's green. it's vintage-y. it has a giant button. i like it!" so i bought two.

and it helped that they were on sale too.