Scraplog

A Shed And A Cold Frame

Now that fall is here I thought I would post a couple of photos of what we were up to outside this past summer. I actually worked outside a lot this year and although it still feels like we have a long way to go, I’m happy with my progress.

Not only did I work outside, but I also put Jason to work :) My favorite project we tackled was our shed. Since we don’t have a garage at the Club House (one of the things we miss the most from our previous house), we needed some storage space for lawn and garden items.  We decided a shed was the best way to go and there was even a cement slab on the property from where a shed previously resided but was removed before we bought the house. That made things a lot easier!

Our cement slab was odd dimensions and rather than have a custom shed built to fit it exactly, we just bought a shed kit from Lowe’s that was a bit smaller than the slab and it worked great. The main criteria I had is that I wanted a wood shed and we didn’t want to spend a fortune. This one fit the bill perfectly :)

Isn’t it cute? Jason and I spent one day putting it together and another was spent doing the roof. After that came the painting and we were done. And of course I painted it white! We actually had a lot of fun building it and it was a pretty simple project. It’s only an 8’x8′ shed and we don’t even have it full yet. I thought for sure it would be stuffed to the brim but not yet :) That will come with time, I’m sure!

Since the slab is bigger than the shed, I also had just enough extra room to put my potting bench on the side. It’s still kind of messy on that side but eventually, it will be cute! Just to help you get your bearings, the shed is to the left of the house (if you are facing the house from the street) and the doors open towards the house. So, from the street, you actually see the side of the shed if you are looking head on.

Another project Jason worked on for me was a cold frame. I have been wanting one for a while and so I’m really excited to use it this winter!

We found this glass door on the side of the road for free. I originally had other plans for it but this ended up being the perfect thing. Then my Dad had some nice thick wood that he wasn’t going to use and so it hardly cost us anything to build.

Jason painted the frame for me but I still need to paint the door. We are also going to patch the holes where the handle was and add a door pull.

There it is, right next to my little shed :)

This week we moved some of our plants to it. It finally got cold enough! For those of you who don’t know, a cold frame acts like a mini green house. You can keep things in it over the winter (like my succulents) and also grow lettuces and spinach. I am definitely going to try to grow some spinach and lettuce this winter. It will be an experiment!

Last photo… I love it now that it’s full of green stuff. I can see it from my kitchen window and it makes me smile :)

If you are interested in your own cold frame, there are lots of DIY tutorials out there. There are also lots of different ways and materials to build them with. I’ll give you an update with how my mini winter garden works and maybe you will want one for yourself!

Add your comment »

Tagged: Club House, DIY, Outdoors

Club House Dining Room

As I was giving a tour of the living room a couple of weeks ago, you probably caught a glimpse of the dining room as well. It would be hard not to since they are connected. The dining room is open to the kitchen and living room and I am very thankful for this space. We like to entertain and if it weren’t open to the other rooms, it would make it very hard to have people over in a space this small. Just a reminder, here is the floor plan again so you can see how the dining room fits in.

When we redid the kitchen floors, we noticed that the wall between the kitchen and dining room used to extend all the way across and only left space for a door. I’m so glad that this wall was taken out at some point because it left us with open space that makes it feel roomier than it actually is! Here is the dining room before:

The only changes this little room got was paint, furniture, a new fixture, and curtains! Easy peasy.

During all of our remodeling work, the dining room looked like this! A disaster! We set up some storage units that held pretty much all of our kitchen stuff while we worked on the kitchen cabinets. Once the kitchen was done, I was so glad to see this thing go. It always felt really cluttered and messy.

And now, this is what it looks like today:

Light and bright! Just the way I like it!

It was terribly sad though… we had to cut down my table. It was just too big for this space and so our only choices were to get rid of it or to cut it. I chose to cut it since I wasn’t ready to part with it yet. It still makes me sad to see it now when I still remember how cool it was when it was much longer. But at least I still have it!

Since the dining room is a pass through, we keep the table next to the window which is awesome because I can see what’s happening in my neighborhood while I eat :) When we have company over, we just pull the table into the center of the room and add another chair, which normally resides at a desk in the guest room.

The great thing is, when we have more people over, we just add our card table to the end and some more chairs and we can seat 10 people. We have already put this to the test and it worked great!!

The curtains are the same as the ones in the living room. I wanted them to match since they are so close to one another.

On the other side of the room we have our new-to-us china hutch. I found it at a thrift shop for $75 and it was so perfect for this room. I needed some more storage but couldn’t have anything that stuck out very far. It’s still in the plans to paint it but I will save that for a winter project when I can no longer work on outside stuff. I’m excited to freshen it up.

Another very sneaky thing is this plant. Not only is it nice to add a bit of green, but it also hides our wireless router and modem. You can see the light if you look closely.

On top of the hutch I keep my KitchenAid mixer. We use it quite often and usually Jason gets it down for me when I need it but I also stand on a chair to reach it if he’s not around. Since it takes up so much space, it really is the best place to keep it and I don’t mind it up there. It’s better than taking up my precious counter space :)

And lastly, our chandelier. I am completely in love with this vintage brass chandelier that I found at Scott’s. I had really, really wanted a vintage brass lotus fixture (like this one) and could not find one. Believe me, I spent a ton of time internet searching! Besides, I probably couldn’t have afforded one even if I did find one! So, when I spotted this one, it was love at first sight since it was sort of the chandelier version of what I had been looking for. It’s a bit quirky and just what I needed. Plus, it was only $120. Definitely a steal (I think!) but it was the most expensive fixture we ended up buying for this house.

When I bought it, Jason quickly hung it up to provide us some much needed light, just temporarily, until I could give it a little bit of attention and we have yet to take it down and give it the attention it needs. Really I just need to clean it and bend it a bit but I haven’t gotten around to it. And maybe add a few more light bulbs :) I will show you better photos of it when I actually take the time to work on it!

And that completes our dining room tour! We are closing in now on the tour of our little house. Just a couple of rooms left!

Add your comment »

Tagged: Before & After, Club House, Our House

Before and After: Loveseat

Today I thought I would show you a little before and after of our loveseat. When I was searching for a loveseat I really only had a few requirements. 1. I wanted white. 2. I wanted it to be a slipcover so I could wash it (see #1). 3. It couldn’t cost an arm and a leg. I didn’t think it would be terribly hard to find something I liked, I mean, the internet is a vast place! I was super close to buying the Karlstad from Ikea but for whatever reason, something was holding me back. I’m not sure what because it’s super similar to what I ended up with :)

And then I found a crazy little mid century modern sofa on Craigslist for $30 and I was sold. But it desperately needed a cover which was perfect because that’s what I wanted anyway. For several months, we just did this:

Not pretty.

Another thing the loveseat lacked was the bottom cushions. But for $60 I got some custom cut online. Sorry, I can’t remember the source but it was great because it told you how to measure for the right fit. So, here is the loveseat in all its before glory…

I originally planned to have the slipcover made by a local upholsterer but they were really busy and it wouldn’t be done for several months. They were able to make the cushions quickly but for the body of the loveseat, I decided to tackle it myself. I took the loveseat to my Mom’s house so I could have another opinion when needed and I spent a couple of days working on it.

Here is a little in progress shot:

One thing the Ikea sofa lacked was piping on all the seams. I really wanted piping but I had never done it before. A little bit of trial and error and some google searching helped me in this area and before you knew it, it was done.

Here is a photo from when we first brought it home:

And here it is today:

And if anyone is interested to know, I spent about $200 and that includes the cost of the loveseat, fabric, cushions, and paying to have the cushions made. And the finished product fits all of my criteria!

Some of you may also be wondering if I like having a white couch. The answer is mostly yes. It’s fine for the two of us but we do have a gray cat. And let’s just say you can always see where she has been sleeping and she has pretty much claimed the left side as her territory. But it’s just fur and it is easily removed. My husband might not agree but I would do it all over again.

For my first experience making a slipcover for a loveseat I’m pretty happy with it. There are a few little errors here and there but I’m probably the only one who would notice them unless you knew where to look. Next time I make one, I think I will tackle the cushions too. Sounds like a fun challenge :)

Add your comment »

Tagged: Before & After, DIY, Sewing

Club House Living Room Part 2

Are you eager to see the reveal of the living room? Looking at these photos makes me happy because I realize how far we have come. And I remember how long we were living in chaos and I’m so glad to be done with that part! But I also realize how much more I want to do and that’s fun too. Because if I didn’t have projects, I would get bored. So as I show you around, I will mention some of my ideas for improvements.

Man, I love this room. It feels happy to me. It has always been a dream of mine to have an all white house. This is the first time I have had one and I love it even more than I thought I would. I know that it’s not for everyone but it is for me :)

Much of the furniture is new to us because we needed smaller scale furniture. Because I like change, I tried to keep the furniture neutral so I can switch things up easily. A few new pillows and rug and the room would look so different. How fun is that?!

Because the room is small, I decided not to have a coffee table. I didn’t want it to feel cluttered. I was already trying to squeeze in a loveseat, 2 chairs, and a desk! Because there is no coffee table, I knew I wanted a sofa table for drinks and such. I found this vintage brass sofa table, just the right size, at a consignment shop. After having my eye on it for several months at the price of $75 I finally asked if they would take less and they gave it to me for $40! I’m so happy with it!

The globe was a garage sale find and it also came with us from the old house. There isn’t very many places to put knick knacks which is good, less dusting :) Jason just brought that African Violet home for me the other day and I still need to plant it in a more permanent container and I have just the perfect one!

Now you can see our light fixture from the old house. I love it in this room, even better than the last place it hung!

Our loveseat… it was a vintage find and I think another post will have to be written about it. We realized when we were moving that a sofa really is too big for this room so we sold our previous vintage couch and bought a loveseat. It was a good move, a longer couch would have cramped the room.

I made the pillows using a tea towel (orange one) from Target and the other was a napkin from World Market. I really love the fabrics and was able to make all 4 pillows in the living room for about $10 because I already had the inserts and I got the zippers from Goodwill. Not too shabby!

I spent major time searching for chairs for this room. I really just couldn’t decide. I was vacillating between leather and linen and after finding my dream leather chairs which were waaaaay out of budget, I decided to go the cheaper route and I got these chairs from World Market on a killer sale for $150 each. I’m really glad this is the direction I chose though (although sometimes I still dream of the leather chairs!) and I think they fit in the living room really well. The pillow on the right is the same fabric from a napkin as on the couch and the pillow on the left was also a napkin from World Market.

The fireplace is fine for now but I envision a chunkier mantel, maybe made of wood to warm it up a bit. And I really want to do something with the hearth. I have some ideas but so far, I haven’t implemented any yet :)

The buttons were the selling point for me :) I wasn’t too crazy about the legs of the chair though, one of these days I might change them to something like this.

When we lived in our other (larger) house, I always felt like I could use more plants. But when we moved to a smaller house, the plants that I brought with me ended up everywhere! I didn’t have enough places to put them. So, for a long time, they all crowded together on the mantel. Now, they are a bit more spread out but those that are still on the mantel love it there. I have never seen them so happy! The diy shiny tiny rhiny came with us and he makes his home here, looking out over the living room.

This is my chair. The place where I routinely find myself in the evenings. I got the curtains from Ikea and the magazine basket from TJ Maxx. After looking obsessively for at least a month for a floor lamp and not liking how much they cost, I found this one at an antique store for $15 and I love it. The little brass and marble side table was also from an antique store. It’s kind of hiding in this photo but it’s really cute and the perfect size for this room.

My gallery walls are always a work in progress. While I have added a few new things to it, most of the artwork came straight from the old house or there is no artwork, just an empty frame :) This is a project that is on my to do list and I actually started seriously thinking about it the other day. I really need to get on it!

The console table used to be in our previous bedroom, my dad made it for us. The boxes also were there. Currently, the boxes are great because they provide storage but they aren’t sturdy enough to sit on which is what I ultimately would like. So, we are discussing our options and trying to decide if we should (could?) reinforce them or buy something new. Everything in a small house needs to pull double duty so they really should provide storage, extra seating, and be able to be used as a footstool if it were a perfect world!

This is one of those things that make me smile. I brought these horse bookends with us and, in the midst of unpacking, my husband put it here to use as a stand for my wireless headphones as they recharge. So cute :)

The lamp was a Target clearance find and the lampshade I already had. The faux fern came with us and I often get asked if it is real.

Another shot of the light fixture. I really wanted ceiling medallions for each room and I wanted to keep them small but for this particular one, since the shade is so large, I wish I would have gone a bit larger. Oh well :)

One last overhead shot. My happy little living room.

Wow! Who knew it would take so many photos for such a small space?! I hope you enjoyed the little tour. Up next I have plans for posts about the couch and the dining room. So don’t give up on me yet :)

Add your comment »

Tagged: Before & After, Club House, Our House

Club House Living Room Part 1

Hey everybody, remember me? This has been my longest blog break yet! And recently I have had some very loyal fans asking me to blog again so I figured I could at least continue working on the tour of our tiny house :)

After having lived here for almost a year now, we can both say that we love living small. Will we live in a house this small for the rest of our lives? Probably not, but at this point it’s exactly what we needed and wanted and we are so happy to be here. So without further ado, here is the progress we have made on one of our favorite rooms, the living room…

As you can see, the living room is situated at the front of the house and it also functions as a hallway and entryway and it is open to the dining room. It is the largest room in the house but still small by any US standard. But this room is awesome because it is flooded with light! A definite win in my book.

We didn’t really change much in this room. A bit of paint and a good cleaning and it was ready to go. But because you can’t have a good after without the before, here is a photo of the house before we even bought it:

Now that I’m looking at these photos a year later, I’m so happy with the way it turned out. I’m really glad we chose to paint everything white because it feels so fresh and bright. Plus, it was pretty dirty, a bit of paint makes everything better.

Before we moved in, we wanted to work on the kitchen and bathroom but we didn’t want to live there while we were doing the work and we had to move out of our old house. So we packed up and shoved all of our stuff into the bedrooms and stayed at my parent’s house while we got busy. Because there were so many things going on at once, Jason kept saying we lived in the projects :)

Here is the living room in the midst of all the fun. It was basically a set up and storage area. We kept most of our tools in here, and an oven :) There is also a dishwasher in there somewhere. Needless to say, it was a disaster! And it was around all of this stuff that I painted the room. Not the most fun painting experience but it worked out okay.

Once we had made enough progress with the other rooms and we were able to live in the Club house, we put the basic amount of furniture in the living room and then continued to use it for other purposes… like a space for painting the interior doors. And that box that is functioning as a coffee table? That’s our kitchen sink :)

The living room also posed as a makeshift kitchen. That is all we needed to survive, a toaster oven and a microwave :) I think our coffee maker was somewhere on the floor at this point as well which is definitely necessary for survival. This room also served as a makeshift craft room while I did some sewing projects. I used two sawhorses and an old door for a sewing table. We were very creative! This space got shuffled around so many times in this remodel process. It functioned as many different spaces, sometimes at the same time.

This room originally had a ceiling fan. It was ugly and I knew it wouldn’t be staying so I brought the light fixture from our old dining room with us. I still really loved it and so we took it down before we put our house on the market and saved it for this room. Because it is a large drum shade, Jason hung it pretty quickly so we wouldn’t damage it. What a good sport!

We also did a little bit of work to the fireplace. First, I painted the brick white. What a difference! We also got a gas log insert. We could tell that there had been one previously and so when the plumber put in the new gas line to the range, we had him put in a gas line and insert in the fireplace as well. We had so many things going on that this wasn’t a top priority for us but now that we have it, we are so glad we went ahead and did it. We used it all winter and I’m super excited for some cool weather so I can turn it on again this fall!

While I was very excited about the insert, I wasn’t excited about the yellow pipe. Really, yellow? Don’t they make black pipes?!

So I did what any girl would do and I carefully taped everything off, and sprainted it! I used high heat spray paint and I asked the nice man from the gas company if it was okay first :) And no worries, the pilot light was not on at this point and the gas was turned off. Safety first :)

Whew! Much better! Now it’s not even really noticeable.

And our fireplace gets the job done and it surprisingly puts out a lot of heat! A funny little story, when the man from the gas company was there, he told us that if we would replace the light fixture with a ceiling fan, it would really move the air around and heat the whole house. We had just switched out the old ceiling fan to the new light fixture the day before. Oh the irony!

When we moved, we decided to get rid of all of our televisions. Since we have been married, we have never had cable anyway and the only t.v. we ever watch at home is on the internet. The only thing we really used them for is for movies. So, in an effort at downsizing, we ditched the t.v.’s. Instead, we have a large iMac in the living room and if we want to watch a movie, it’s plenty big for that.

While I love having the computer in the living room, it makes hanging artwork on that wall difficult. And it’s the only wall that there is room for artwork. It really was a no-brainer. The gallery wall had to come back.

At this point, I started hanging pictures in an effort to empty boxes. I emptied 4 boxes by the time I got all of my frames hung (this photo is mid progress). And since then I have added more. The goal is to cover the wall and I am getting close!

So that about wraps it up for today! Either tomorrow or Wednesday I will show the reveal of the living room. You won’t want to miss it! Okay, maybe it’s not that exciting but, you know, you can check back if you want to :)

Add your comment »

Tagged: Before & After, Club House, Our House