Showing posts with label House Photos. Show all posts

I love it, a lot. It's the FÖRHÖJA kitchen cart from none other than IKEA. It was kind of a pain in the butt to put together, but I really like the look of it.

 Since it's against the wall instead of serving as an island, I might put some drawer stops on the back. Besides that though it's perfect. I can finally get my cook books out of the cabinets too! I often forget I have them when they're sight unseen. 

PS: I still love the new tiny fridge! I haven't had any issues with food fitting or the fridge being too small. It's just laid out really perfectly. I cannot recommend it enough! 

I know I just did a post on the bathroom, but I've already made one major change. 

As you can tell from the picture above, it's a pretty small bathroom.  Our sink, while pretty, was way too deep for this space. So much so that if one person was brushing their teeth, another person couldn't fit behind them. Since this is our only bathroom it can be an issue. 

So when I got my tax return I decided to splurge a bit and buy a new sink. 

Enter IKEA. 

I purchased the Lillagen Sink for about 180 including faucet. The nice IKEA lady assured me I could do it without any prior plumbing experience. I liked this model, because it's small, and actually gives me a bit of under sink storage, which I really needed.

 

First step was to remove the sink. Here's something the IKEA directions won't tell you. This part is going to be gross. Make sure you have a bunch of old towels to sop up water from the P-Trap, and make sure you've got some paper towels to shove into the P-trap so that your whole house doesn't fill with really disgusting methane. Also cut the caulk around the sink really thoroughly  I didn't cut deep enough on one side and tore through a couple layers of paint. It's just a pain in the butt to fix, save yourself the time. 

Bonus Photo! This is how small were talking. Also, look at me, the lazy homeowner who still hasn't put a flooring transition in for the bathroom flooring. Probably because I just want to tear out the bathroom flooring anyways. 

Now you'll want to build your sink. For the smallest Lilliagen sink, I ended up with double the hardware I actually needed. I think it just saves time packaging to have the same hardware pouch for all the sizes. Still, it made me feel like I did something horribly wrong, but in the end it turned out fine. Don't stress! 

Remember not to let your cat judge you too much during the building process. He gets excited about IKEA boxes, so his judgement should be taken lightly. 

If you have larger moldings  you're gonna have to chisel them out a bit to get the sink to sit flush. I just used a flat head and a hammer. There's probably a more exact and elegant solution to get this done, but we keep it real here at  Lux Per Diem. 

Anchor your sink cabinet into the wall. Fun fact, you probably want to measure and make sure this sink will fit over your water line knobs thingys (technical I know). Mine, probably by sheer will alone, just barely fit. You can see how close I'm cutting it by the right knob. 

Lay some caulk down around the top of your sink cabinet and place the sink on top. You really only have like less than a minute to get that bad boy straight, so do your best. Mine's not perfect, but damn good anyways. 

Follow the IKEA instructions as far as the plumbing goes. This is one of the few times I wish there were written instructions along with the pictograms. Making the IKEA PVC fit onto the PVC in my house involved lots of waterproof thread tape, and brute force. Also since the Faucet is off centered to the left, I need an extension piece (the piece with the tag still attached) to make it actually reach my supply line. After about three trips to Lowes, I actually ended up just bringing the whole faucet and finding the piece that fit the coupling. It might help had I actually asked a sales associate, but this is me when it comes to Lowes.

Learn from my mistakes dear readers. 

This is what I ended up with two days later. 

See the shelf for the cabinet leaning again the toilet? Yeah that bad boy didn't fit at all around my P-trap. I probably did it wrong, but honestly I was so sick of plumbing I wasn't going to take it off. I ended up just tossing it. 

I still need to repaint the walls where the old sink was. 

I need a new litter box because this one doesn't fit with the new sink. 

Just more to add to my to do list I suppose. 

I like this sink much better! It's less deep, and two people can actually fit in the bathroom. I'll get a full room shot once I repaint, but given my track record with timely painting, it might take awhile.

Did you guys have a good weekend? 

Yuck dude. Check out this post if you wanted to know the plan I had back then. 

I removed all the crazy mismatched hardware on the walls. Painted, a lot. Got rid of the grody swan curtain (the windows are privacy frosted) and added some new shelving and art! 

Overall I'm pretty content with the current state. I'd like to change out the sink and light once my sweet tax return comes in. I'm a big nervous about the sink, since I've never even dabbled in plumbing. Something tells me I can handle it though. 

Resources:

Frames, shelves, toilet paper holder, and towel hooks - IKEA

Shower Curtain - Target

This is what the bedroom looked like when we first were shown our house. It was in really rough shape. I hated it mostly for the huge AC unit (that doesn't make sense because we have central air) is permanent unless we get someone to come out and patch the siding and huge interior hole it would leave. It kind of became our junk room, while we slept upstairs in the "finished" attic. 

Which is kind of embarrassing really, but isn't that what most spare rooms end up being? Warehouses for things you don't need or have any use for? 

So this past month I decided something needed to be done, and painted the wood floors white. I decided to be extra awesome and protect them with a poly coat. 

BIG MISTAKE. They turned pee yellow.

So at this point, I was back to square one. I had to resand everything, buy the correct kind of paint (valspars no VOC floor and porch paint) and redo everything.  So something that should have been accomplished in a weekend actually took a month. 

Finally the floors were white and wonderful though! 

I patched all the weird spots in my hundred year old plaster walls and was ready for paint. 

I chose Valspar's Belle Grove Aloe Green.

The overly helpful lowes paint guy drew a heart on the can and gave me some good advice. With older walls like mine, which are far from perfect, you should use a flat paint with a 1/2 nap roller. Not only will the roller carry more paint, but it way lay it thicker with more texture to cover imperfections. The flat paint also helps hide anything. Once you've painted the whole room you then go over everything lighting "feathering" it. It made a huge difference and looks awesome. 

So over the weekend I cut in, and started painting. 

I just got everything moved in and set up. I am SO PLEASED.  There's still a fair amount of work that needs to be done, but this feels like the most completed room in the house so far. 

My DIY drop cloth curtains, that need to be hemmed. They also cover the gross AC unit until we can get it fixed. A framed seed sack, in the largest Ribba frame (My Favorite!) available at ikea! The window is a straight view into my neighbor's less than picturesque backyard and side deck. I'm thinking about just frosting the windows instead of always keeping the curtain shut. Good idea or bad idea? 

I also need to tackle the closet from hell that's in this room. It's huge, but poorly organized, which sucks. 

We did our best with what we had, and used chalkboard paint to spruce up the old girl. The inside, which I never took a picture of was worse. The lights didn't work, and there were some serious mystery stains. 

We decided to get a new fridge, and settled upon one of the Summit Appliances FFBF series.

I literally could not be happier. 

It holds the perfect amount of food for us, and has really awesome energy ratings! It's made in the USA too, which as someone who tries to buy as locally as possible is awesome! 

I also stopped by Ikea to get some of the BYGEL rails to play with all this new wall space! I'm thinking about putting a long shelf along the top of the wall to hold all my cookbooks as well! I'm trying to get the kitchen sorted out before I have to make Christmas dinner for everyone. 

I also repainted the floor in the future bedroom. The poly I used ruined everything and turned it a bright pee yellow. 

Luckily it's nothing a little sanding, and floor paint can't fix. If you're painting your floors, please use floor paint, it makes all the difference! This weekend I hope to paint the vents and walls! 

Look at that stout little shelf. It's at the same height as the TV. It gives us this huge dead space on that wall, and makes the room feel shorter. Raising the TV higher is a no go, my boyfriend is a major cinema-file and has last say on everything that is related to his viewing experience. So I turned to the shelf. It's the Ikea Hyllis   shelf. It's simple and cheap, coming in at just fifteen dollars. I use them a lot in my basement, and needed something to hold a few vinyls and my ever growing magazine collection. I just grabbed one I already owned from the basement and have been using it there for the past few months. 

I wanted a taller shelf though, but new more new furniture isn't really in my budget at the moment. Time to get a little bit crafty. I thought I could probably double up the shelving and create a taller unit. Buying another hyllis would only set me back 15 bucks, and if it didn't work I could just use it in the basement for storage. 

So I set to work. 

I assembled the second shelf as the instructions said. The I removed on shelf from each unit. 

One one the top, and on one the bottom. You won't need these shelves, so set them aside. 

You will also need to remove the screws from the shelves where the support pieces need to overlap. 

Stack them on top of one another and match the holes as best you can. I had a small issue with the hole not being perfectly round when I matched everything up. It wasn't a big deal, using a drill/screw gun to screw in the screws made it easy. 

It only took a few minutes really, and I think makes a big difference. 

In fact, a wall of these double tall hyllis might look very cool as a library. 

Now I just need to figure out what to do above the tv, maybe some art? 

Any Ideas?  

PS Sorry for the crappy iphone photos, they were kind of an after thought. 

I should probably have a PHD in browsing craigslist. I manage to find awesome stuff for little to no money. Take for example our little Karlstad sofa, originally from IKEA. When I saw the posting in the free section for him, I was pretty skeptical to say the least. 

I mean he left a lot to be desired. The previous owners dogs had torn up the back cushions. The slipcover was sun-damaged, and it had smelled better days. The owners were basically looking for someone ambitious enough to use it for a project, and to avoid the furniture pick up fee by the garbage collectors. 

Lucky for them, I am that person. So I set up a meeting and made sure to run through my usual craigslist checklist. 

-Check like a madwoman for bedbugs. If you have any doubt, leave it. 

There were no signs, and I even had them break the sofa down so I could check all the nooks and crannies.

-Could I buy it new for less than a hundred of their asking price? If so, will it kill me to wait and save up the extra money? 

Since Karl was free, this question didn't apply.

-Will it fit in my house and design scheme?

The clean lines seemed versatile enough, and I didn't actually own a sofa at the time. 

-Can it serve more than on purpose? 

Since I had such a tiny apartment, it would also serve as a guest bed.

-Do I need to rent a truck to get it home?

Luckily, once it was all unscrewed, it fit very snugly into my Honda Civic. Mind you I was sitting two inches away from the steering wheel, but it fit! 

I took Karl home. 

Now I'm sure there might be those of you who are wondering why I would want a smelly sofa without back cushions. Here's the thing, I love a good project, and knew this would be easy to fix.

Making sofa cushions is one of the easiest things ever. Buy some foam and batting from Joann's (using your coupon of course). Cut the foam to the size you need, and wrap that bad boy in batting. 

But what about covers you ask? Since Karl is from my favorite Swedish superstore, I knew I could get a cover for about fifty bucks, making the sofa look brand new. 

As for the smell, it wasn't super bad. While the sofa was still disassembled I did a few things to help. I vacuumed every surface, dusted with baking soda, and vacuumed again. I opened every window in our small apartment and gave it lots of fresh air. I sprayed it with 50/50 vinegar and water mix, waited 24 hours, and then fabreezed it to hell and back. By the time I was done, it was two days later and it smelled like a couch instead of a frat house. 

Here it is currently. 

In fact I loved it so much I brought the ottoman (from Ikea) and loveseat (from Craigslist). 

But I wanted a change in the room, and have been saving my pennies to buy this add on chaise to add to my original Karl. The way the room is set up now makes it feel very small, but I need the extra seating. I'm hoping having one long sofa along the back wall of the living room will open it up much more! 

As luck would have it my stalking of the as-is section of Ikea has paid off. Last weekend there was an uncovered, missing a back pillow, chaise. 

For 130 dollars, which is more than half off the regular price. 

Count me in. 

So for about 240 dollars, including new slipcovers, I own a 700 dollar sofa. 

I've just about rebounded from my cold! Unfortunately I didn't get much rest while actually being sick. I'm that person in my office no matter how much I'm hacking. To be quite fair though, there's normally no more than a few people on my entire floor. I can get away with being sick at work and not spreading it around. 

I had some time this morning to myself. I got up early only to have our one bathroom already occupied. So I took out the camera, took a few snaps, and though I would share. 

I think I'd like to take this blog on a more personal route than it's been heading. Lifestyle blogs have always interested me more so than most, but I don't know if I really have a lifestyle on which others would want to read? 

That aside I feel like as long as what I'm blogging about is true to myself I can't go too wrong. I'm going to try and keep posting four to five times a week, but it just might not be what you're used to seeing. 

Somethings are changing around these parts.

I felt best in writing about personal experience and sharing parts of my life. (See these posts 1,2,3) 

I'm also going to be focusing more on my photography in the coming months. The photography blog is it's own creature entirely. Check it out here. 

I'd love more posts on my own city as well. Since moving to Cincinnati it's really grown a special place in my heart. It's really been moving forward into the right direction lately. I want to just shout from the rooftops and get the word out. 

Finally I'd just like to keep up on my everyday life here. Most of my friends and family live a good eight hours away or more. It's nice to think that some of them will be reading and able to keep up on what I'm doing. Plus I always love reading blogs that are closer to journals. 

Some things will be leaving this blog.

Unless it's pertinent to something I'm planning in my life, Mood boards will no longer be a weekly feature. 

I'm also going to nix sponsorship for awhile, maybe forever. So far it's been nice seeing other people interested in this blog, but overall more hassle than it's worth in the long run. This will also give me more freedom to blog about what I want, whenever I want to! 

But don't think that I won't be posting about my sewing and home improvements! I'm teetering on obsession in both those categories, and have a big organizing session planned for this weekend. These topics will more than likely always be a big part of this blog.

So now that I've gotten everything out there, and if you actually are reading, I'd love to know what everyone thinks! Did I just lose my readership?