Fixing Up My Dining Room

With the upcoming wedding, I wanted to make a few changes around my house-- mainly, in the dining room.  I never did take "before" shots of the room because I hated it that much.  It needed some major changes in my eyes.  And I wanted to spruce it up with some new furniture since I'm having about 100 or so guests coming to my house for our wedding.

That being said, I need to be clear: I am on a very strict budget.  I wanted to improve my dining room, but we couldn't afford to go out and buy new, fancy furniture.  That was about the time I became obsessed with Craigslist.  Seriously, I love it.  I can't get enough of it. 

My hunt began with finding a dining room buffet.  Even on Craigslist, buffets run anywhere between $150 to $400!  Not in my price range.  So, I ended up searching "dressers" and I came across one that had potential.  Here is the before shot out in my yard, right before I sanded it.  Please forgive the fact that it was on its side!

It's blond...

And it's ugly!

Yes, yes, call me crazy.  Steve definitely did.  But I saw potential in this piece when I found it on Craigslist!  I loved its little legs and clean lines.  It reminded me of one of my favorite shows, Mad Men.  And at $15, I couldn't beat it!  This dress/buffet is SOLID.  It was made by the Dixie Furniture Company back in the '50s (well, no kidding with the decor!).  I decided to sand it and paint it a solid color.

Here it is sanded and primed, looking better already!

And here it is now, sitting all pretty in my dining room. :)

I'm loving it!  And the best part is that it all cost me under $50 to purchase the piece and give it a make over.  Steve even likes it now!  A little creativity and elbow grease goes a long way.

I'll be sure to share the office section make over soon.  It's still in a state of disaster, so no pictures of that yet!

In terms of the wedding, things are moving right along.  Steve and I finally got our marriage license this morning (talk about waiting last minute! HA!).  It's nerve wracking stuff to organize everything from the ceremony to the pictures to the dinner... in order to keep under our $10,000 wedding day budget, a lot of responsibilities fall on us.  I still have a lot of crafty things I need to do for decorations and my house needs to be cleaned badly! :)  But, I have all week and all next week to do it with the help of Steve, my mom, and his parents.  I'll be sure to post a few blogs and let you all know how its moving along!

Peacing out,
Nikki

Happy Independence Day!

Acrylic painting by Betty J Roberts

This weekend has been an interesting experience for both Steve and I.  It is our first 4th of July in a new, country neighborhood, and the holiday is celebrated very differently out in the stix. :)

On Saturday we were invited to our neighbor's picnic.  Steve had already met all of our neighbors before, but this was my first time.  Everyone was really nice and comfortable to be around.  We ate some great cookout food and sat around and talked.  There were tons of kids running around, young married couples, older married couples... straight out of a hip version of a Norman Rockwell painting.  You could tell everyone was very much involved in their families and overall community.  It was really nice (and foreign for me) to see!

The fireworks have been going off around our home everynight since Thursday.  These fireworks are NOT just your little dinky bottle rockets and firecrackers.  Oh no, that is not the country way!  These are serious, massive-ass fireworks our neighbors are setting off nightly.  And it is hell on our dogs.  The past two nights we've had to drug them just to get them to calm down.  Poor Camper and Pilot... it's been rough on them.


"No more fireworks, pleeeeeeease!"

  On an extremely happy note, we got our windows in!  These windows are an early wedding gift from Steve's parents.  (Thank you Sue and Charlie!)  Check out the pictures!


Our new windows showed up this past Friday.  I was happy just seeing them in our house like this!



Charlie (Steve's stepdad) came over to help on Saturday.



Picture of window in our living room before.



Picture of living room window after! :)  SO MUCH BETTER!



Window in bathroom as Steve was working on it.



Window in bathroom after!



Living room all finished!



Lovely new window in our kitchen.

  I know buying and putting in windows is no small venture, but I honestly didn't realize how big of an impact new windows in our house was going to be.  It has made ALL the difference in the world!  We have all of our windows open and fresh air is coming in daily.  It has been heaven!  And what's even better is the number of stink bugs coming into our house has decreased significantly.  It is definitely a win-win situation. :)

I hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July!
Peacing out,
Nikki

Visit my new official website at www.grandirstudio.com.

The Never Ending To-Do List

Hi all!  Sorry I've been MIA for a while.  I've been busy playing catch up with all of my house chores and work ever since my art show from last weekend.  It's really no excuse... but I'm using it!

In terms of my work, I haven't painted in a few days.  I'm starting to get a little cranky, too.  I plan on starting some of my less expensive pieces tomorrow.  Today I have to run out and purchase some art supplies and food.  I did manage, however, to hang up my massive painting in my dining room to keep it off the floor.  That's progress!

This past week I've been focusing on our house.  Our wedding day is rapidly approaching, and Steve and I are slowly letting the reality of the situation settle in.  We have about 100 days until our wedding and there is SO MUCH TO DO around our house.  We made the list last night and it was not pretty.  Money was adding up quickly and all of the items on the list were necessary and not extravagant AT ALL.

On a positive side note, I completed my wedding registry!  It's up online on our wedding website!

That being said, I'd like to welcome you to my world for a moment and take you on a pictorial tour of our house and share alllllllllllllllll of the thing$ we $till need to complete.  And just a warning: as my friend Julie would always say to me when we stopped over at her house on a whim-- DON'T JUDGE ME!  Our house still needs quite a bit of work done.

Let's start outside.

Here is what our house/deck/porch looks like today.  As you can see, it is ready for it$ roof.  That will run u$ a few grand I'm sure.  We also need a little more exterior paint to finish up the back of the house.

Steve started putting the railing up, and I love it!  And what makes it even better is that it i$ extremely affordable.

We finally have some deck board$ at the front of our door.  It really makes a huge difference from the unstable platform we had situated there for the longest time.  I was always afraid I was going to trip and fall over it.  We plan on finishing the entire deck for our wedding... the board$ will run us at least $1,000.

 Let's step inside, shall we?  Here is our living room.

Notice the black board in place of the window to the right in the picture above?  That was where there used to be glass, until on a very windy day the window decided to blow in and shatter all over our hardwood floor.  Scared Camper to death.  The windows on this house are awful.  There are no screens so you can't open them for fresh air, and even if you did open them the chances of you closing them back up are slim to none.  We finally ordered window$ (thank GOD!) and they will be coming 4th of July weekend.  That is one expensive item we can check off our list.

This is our dining room/office area.  This is my least favorite room in the house (aside from the basement).  As you can see in the picture, we have a cat bed that the cat doesn't even sleep in, a computer desk area that is ugly and not functioning very well for us (I plan on fixing that this coming week), and two oversized antique trunks that are just holding our crap.  My dining room needs a makeover.  I did paint this very cute bookshelf in our dining room that I got on Craigslist for $5.  I love it!

Oh, and here is a quick peak of our half bathroom that is off the dining room.

I really didn't mean to get the toilet in like that.  I was trying to show the tile work Steve did in the bathroom.  Isn't it lovely!?  And yes, we still need a $ink and faucet.  We've added that to our list.

Our kitchen is looking much better ever since I finally finished painting it!  The empty space between the cabinets is waiting for this to go in there:

But at $549 at Ikea, it is going to have to wait.  We also plan on putting a nice tile back $plash on the back of the wall along the countertop, but that is going to wait, too. :)  So, for now, the kitchen is relatively good to go. 

Let's move on to the second floor.

This is the first bedroom at the top of the stairs.  The boarded up window marks the first time a window blew in and shattered on the floor.  Aside from the furniture and paint this room needs, it is in decent shape.  Not too bad here!

Moving on...

Here is our master bedroom and master closet.  This is my favorite room in the house.  We only need to hang up a mirror in here.  Easy enough, right!?  Second floor isn't bad at all.

Now, I wasn't going to show you this, but in order to get my point across I felt it was necessary.  Brace yourself... here is our basement.

Our basement looks like it was used to film Silence of the Lambs.  I mean, straight from a horror flick.  If we had a moth problem in this house, I would seriously freak out.  I go down there from time to time scoop Moo Moo's litter box, and I'm afraid I am going to find Buffalo Bill hanging out in his weird flesh lady suit.  Hate it!  So, as you can see, the floor is dirt.  Just plain Earth.  We need to cement this baby up.  The moisture problem in our house is out of this world because of the basement.  The cement for our ba$ement is on our to-do list.

That's about it for the pictorial tour of our house.  I can't forget to mention the $oil and gra$$ seed we need for some of the balding areas in our yard.  Add that to the list, too. 

Wasn't I right when I said our to-do list didn't have any extravagant items!?  All very necessary, and all add up to about $7,100 (our guesstimate).  My head is ready to explode... is yours?  It is times like this I wish I was a dog.

Yeah, she has so much to worry about, huh?

I'll catch up with you all later.  Time to get to work and attack this to-do list. 

Have a nice rest-of-the-weekend!
Nikki

Slowly but surely...

The front porch/deck is coming along.  Here is what it looks like today:



Front of our house (note Camper running away from the sound of thunder)




To the right of the house



Right side of house

With the combination of rainy weather and lack of funds, the project is progressing very slowly...but surely! 

Peacing out,
Nikki

All Work, No Play

The work never really seems to end, and it doesn't look like it is going to for quite some time. 



Steve and Charlie working on our front porch/deck

 When I say "work" I'm referring to just about everything in my life right now.  My artwork, the work on our home, the work on our wedding, the work at the pet resort... the list just continues!

The easiest thing to feature on my Blog in terms of work is our front porch/deck.  Makes a nice visual, huh? :)  The wood Steve ordered for the framing is extremely heavy.  Thank God Charlie has the heavy equipment to move it around.

This deck is going to be MASSIVE.  And I love it!  It will be nice to have the extra square footage outside.

And did you happen to notice the new color of our house!?  You can definitely see it on this shot (left side of the house).  It's mostly painted.  The paint sprayer broke on Steve, so that is a big reason why finishing it up is on hold now.

For some reason Camper loves going under the trailer.  Maybe he's hiding from the work?  I wish I had the life of a dog sometimes. :) 

Oh vell... it's back to work time.  I've finished two more paintings today.  I would ideally like to get 4 done.  We'll see!

Peacing out,
Nikki

Updates Galore

Good morning!  Sorry it's been awhile since I've posted.  I've been pretty busy all week so far.  This month is just flying by!  There are some updates to fill you in on, so here we go.

1. Exterior home makeover in progress.

This week has been Steve's "off" week, so he has been working on our house (weather pending!).  He managed to transplant siding from one area of the house to another, cut down some nasty trees in our yard, and started painting our house. 




Our house today, bright and early this morning




Steve up on the ladder, painting away



Siding from the back of the house was used to fill in this whole section

Where the siding came from (we are building a master bathroom addition here, so the siding wasn't going to stay anyways)



Our backyard mess... the tractor from Charlie (Steve's stepdad)



What used to be the front of the house is now the left side of the house.  We will be removing all the shutters (I hate faux shutters).

I plan on doing some yard work tomorrow while I'm home.  Why not today, you ask?  Well, that is because....

2. I got work!

I'm officially working part-time at Paws Here Awhile Pet Resort on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30 to 8:30pm.  My first full day was this past Tuesday.  It is some tough work!  I have so much to learn with the business.  I've been shadowing Sue's employees there, and they are all really nice.  I love being around all of those animals.  They are nice to work with! :)

I'm also working on my mom's house.  Yes, I am painting her living room/hallway/powder room.  She's nice enough to pay me for my work and time, so it's a good gig.  I'll be taking some before and after shots of her powder room since it is getting a major overhaul (with the help of Steve).

3. We adopted a cat.

When I went to the animal shelter last week with Sue, we came across this very interesting cat.  We had to bring a dog we were considering into the "cat room" to make sure she wasn't cat aggressive.  Well, the poor dog was freaking out (turns out she's afraid of cats) but in the process this very sweet cat came out and was all over this dog with hugs!  We ended up using this cat as our "tester kitty" for other dogs we were considering, and she was totally calm, cool, collected.  She was like a dog in a cat form!
You can ask anyone who knows me... I'm NOT a cat person.  But this cat was pretty friggin' cool.  I told Steve about her, and this past Sunday night we brought her home with us!  Her name is Moo Moo and she is a cow (fat cat!).  She's about 3 years old, which I love.  Kittens tend to annoy me.



She's solid when you pick her up




Moo Cow with Steve (can you tell she doesn't want to be held?)

4. I've finally started getting stuff together for my wedding.

This has been a task I've been procrastinating.  Well, not anymore!  I've finally ordered my "Save the Dates" and I will be mailing those out as soon as I get them.  My mom and I went out to Ambassador Tent Rentals in Midland on Monday and reserved our party tent.  Steve and I are marrying on October 8th this year, and we have decided to get married at our house.  It will be all outdoors (hopefully the weather will cooperate) and very laid back.  Tomorrow Steve and I are meeting with the caterer.  I hope it goes well, because I will have my two major "to dos" checked off if it does! 

So there you have it.  All of that since I've last posted.  Like I said, never a dull moment here. 

I gotta get going with the rest of my day.  I'll be sure to post soon!

Peacing out,
Nikki