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.

slowly but surely

everytime i go to the condo lately i've been bringing a box or two of my belongings with me. i am slowly but surely moving in...and i finally get to use my dish set that mom bought me for my college graduation. they hadn't even been out of their original packaging yet! i didn't want to risk breaking or losing them with all my crazy roommates i've had over the years.

anyways, our main goal tonight was to get the bed put together — since this was one of the last "big" things that i would need help with. everything else i can pretty much work on at my own pace, without needing any boys or muscles.

garden state in my garden level

i had bought a giant roll of vinyl laminate flooring from menards a while ago. it looks like a cobblestone path, and it's dark shades of gray. i can't imagine many people would use it in their dining room or kitchen area, but i have never wanted to do what everyone else does.

we went over to the condo for what was supposed to be "just an hour" according to dad. four hours later, we made our way home, feeling accomplished. we finished fitting the last strip of flooring in my dining room/kitchen area and used the seamer and double-sided tape on the four seams.

along the way matthew thought it would be funny if i made a shirt out of my flooring, and then take a picture of me standing there awkwardly, as seen in "garden state." this was my make-shift dress:

and this was matthew's version of the photo...looks more like a happy chalk line to me.

a fourth of july surprise

while i was out relaxing in the sunshine— jet skiing, tubing, three-wheeling, playing lawn games, cheating at cards, and just enjoying a nice break from everything — at chad's cabin in darwin minnesota, home of the world's largest twine ball, guess where the rest of the fam was? 

at my condo. working. 

 

i had no idea they were planning on working until mom texted me with a picture of dad and matthew (i apologize for the low-quality photo) starting on my roll-out vinyl flooring (covering the entire kitchen and dining room). what a big project, and on a holiday?! thanks family, you're the best!

a calm cement lake shore

by 10am we were already bringing the rest of our supplies into the living room. dad had already gotten everything set up for us: living room floor tarped over, cement mixing buckets ready, squeegee cut into slotted sections, etc.

a quick read-through of the directions, a final vacuum and we were ready to pour our 15 minutes self-leveling cement to cover the kitchen and dining room areas.

we had a whole system going: matthew would pour the cement into the pre-measured water bucket then stir it with a 1/2" power mixer for two minutes. then dad would pour a section of the floor, while i stirred it around with a custom squeegee dad made. it worked great!

it's looking so much better. and actually, it's a lot more reflective than i thought it would be. like a calm lake at the cabin.

all done! and it only took 45 minutes! wow. too bad we forgot to turn off those two lights...and the back door isn't even attached. hopefully we won't get any uninvited guests for a 4th of july party!