Kitchen Chalkboard Wall

I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I just want to get a project started, and tell myself "I'll come back and touch that up later".  That was the case with this U.G.L.Y. you ain't got no alibi ugly telephone jack that is disrupting my chalkboard wall.  The initial thought was that we could put a phone there, however our home is a 60's ranch and has no electric to plug a modern phone into {we don't even have a land line}. Instead I decided for some unknown reason to "disguise" it... um, not so much!

I wish I had know how easy this would be to remove YEARS ago!  Apparently telephone wires can be cut and shoved into the wall.   

Yikes, this was honestly the scariest part for me, I have always been told never under any circumstance cut wire without turning off the electric.  I left the plastic housing in the wall because honestly it looked like it had become one with the wall.

 

Then a little patch work with the help of a mesh and metal wall repair kit and some spackle.  The tricky part was sanding it to the same texture as the rest of the wall.  A couple coats of chalkboard paint and your done.  With the confidence I have gained doing this little project, I am thinking I can tackle taking out the outdated intercom system.  I mean really in a ranch style home do you really need those monstrosities? 

 

DIY Play Kitchen

Remember this guy?   

Over the past two weeks I have been diligently working to make this tv cabinet that I purchased at a furniture resale store into the {this is my bias coming out folks} cutest play kitchen of all time!  We had been planning on purchasing a play kitchen all finished, but my discriminating taste kicked in.  The plastic kitchens are fine, but lets be honest they aren't the prettiest things ever.  This is going to be in our kitchen for a few years, and I want it to look good.  So on to the wood kitchens.  Ugh, most are pink and for girls.  REALLY?!  I'm sorry, but boys like to get into cabinets and bang the pots and pans around too!

After being inspired by the wood kitchens my exact statement to hubby was "oh, I could make one of those.  It would be cuter too!".  So off to Goodwill, Salvation Army, Antique Square, and finally a furniture resale store with that little guy for $15.  Done and Done!

Step 1:  This piece of furniture was a laminate tv cabinet.  I knew in order to make it last with a destructive little guy I was going to have to do some good prep work.  Before painting, the cabinet was transported over to a good friends home where I conned the hole for the sink was cut out.  The cabinet was sanded all over, primed, sanded, painted, sanded, painted two more times and two good coats of polyurethane were added {do NOT skip this step, it really makes everything so much more durable for persons who aren't careful i.e. children}.  I already had all of the paint in the garage, which determined the color scheme.

Step 2:  Anything that was going to have a silver base coat got spray painted {sorry for the pictures, most were done at night in the garage}.

Step 3:  Two coats of chalkboard paint were directly applied to the laminate side.  Using a tip from the brilliant Janell over at  Isabella & Max Rooms, chalk was applied to the entire side after it had dried and then erased.   It really does help not getting a lasting image of previous drawings on it.  

Step 4:  Using some scrap wood we had in the garage a frame was made to go around the chalkboard wall.  I put it together and painted it prior to attaching it to the cabinet so that I wouldn't have to trim it out at all.  Then I just touched up the areas where the nails were covered.

Step 5:  After searching for a faucet to use, I decided to not invest the $30+ price tag of an actual faucet and become inventive.  I found this little "J-trap" in the plumbing isle.  It came with that base/washer.  After spraying it with a good coat of silver paint, a metal washer was dropped into the base and screwed into the cabinet.  The actual "J-trap" was then screwed onto the base.  Not only does this allow for durability, but the "faucet head" is able to turn like a real faucet would.

Step 6:  Actually this came after the base coats of paint, but prior to the polyurethane.  Black paint was applied to create the "stove top".  

Step 7:  Holes were drilled for the knobs being used as faucet handles as well as stove knobs. 

Step 8:  I found some scrap fabric at Hobby Lobby that coordinated with the colors of paint I was using {I didn't purchase any new paint, but used what I already had in the garage}.  Using stitch witchery I made a no sew curtain to the opening size.

Step 9:  The only type of curtain rod that I could find to fit this opening was a tension rod.  I know my son, and this would become a fun game to tear that curtain off.  Instead I cut down a dowel rod to slightly smaller than the opening.  I drilled small holes into the center of each end on the dowel rod.  Holes were then drilled through the cabinet so that a screw could attach the dowel rod to the side of the cabinet {fabric was already on rod before being hung}.

Step 10:  I drew an outline on the cabinet doors of what I wanted it to look like {this came in handy, because I didn't like how the oven and microwave were and repainted them}.  Then the appropriate paint colors were added.  Finally, a few stickers were attached for the fridge "big chill" logo and the microwaves buttons.

Step 11:  Pretty it up - All of the accessories that made his kitchen extra unique were added including {to hubby's dismay} all 95 pieces of food.  I really liked that "F" hood, but if I had it to do again I would get a shorter hook.

Adding up the Cost:

cabinet - $15

supplies - $9.65

knobs - $12.36

replacement of broken knob - $3.99

fabric - $3.67

storage - $7.99

accessories - $22.98

Total - Priceless $75.74

and drum roll please...

Alright, before I let you all get back to your lives here are some pictures of the little man playing in his kitchen all.day.long!

{I know his outfit doesn't match, it was early on Christmas morning and we had to grab a sweater to keep the little guy warm!}

 

Gettin' Crafty with Recipe Boxes

Do you still have Christmas gifts you need to give to the babysitter, teacher or for a gift exchange?  These are super easy and REALLY cute diy recipe boxes.  I had a $5 gift exchange at church this weekend and made one of these.  It was so cute I made another, and am going to indulge myself and make one for my kitchen.

I found these little recipe boxes for $1 at Michael's.  They weren't the cutest things ever!

After seperating the lid from the box I took a piece of scrap paper and set the box on top.  I then used an Exacto knife to cut a 45 degree line from each corner.

Using Mod Podge I secured the bottom and long sides.

The excess was trimmed and secured to the shorter sides, and then the ends cut straight and secured up as well.

Using a stencil and some sticker letters cute little labels were made.

...and voila you have a cute, inexpensive recipe box!

Cabinet Refinishing {learning from your mistakes!}

 WOW!  What a busy weekend, and it doesn't seem like this week will let up at all either.  Even when I feel like I am prepared, something always seems to set me back!  At least I got my goal of finishing my cabinets checked off my to-do list {the original goal was birthday party, then Thanksgiving}.

Most projects give me much gratification, even the process of tedious work.  I push through projects with the motivation that once done I will have a beautiful end product.  However, when you are just re-doing something because you did it wrong the first time the process just becomes a pain in your behind.  This is such the case with my kitchen cabinets.  So let me tell you a story of doing it RIGHT the first time!

So this is the only photo I could find of my kitchen when we moved into our house four years ago.  That is my awesome brother working really hard to sand all of the texture off that wall so I could put up a chalk board wall.  Isn't he fab?!  The existing cabinets are actually really nice cabinets, better than what you can find in a lot of prefab cabinets today.  They are solid wood frame-less with dovetailed solid wood drawers.  Although you can see the knife hinges, I kinda adore that character it provides. The problem would be, although it is hard to tell, the color of the cabinets were butter cream and disgusting. 

 

My mom and brother helped me take down all of the 80's wallpaper and we painted the kitchen this Behr color Georgia Mudpie.  Then they went home and I starred at how ugly the cabinets were.  This is our first home, and therefore didn't know much about home improvement {and at 24 my patience wasn't as great but don't tell my mom I admitted that}.  So without sanding, priming or much else I whipped out my Ultra Pure White paint and went to town on the cabinets.  They looked great for awhile, until you bumped something against them and the paint peeled off down to the butter cream color.  Turns out when I went to the garage the original paint was oil based, and I just painted everything with latex... OOPS!  If you haven't heard, you can't paint over oil based paint with latex based paint.  IT WON'T STICK!!!!!

Fast forward to this August, and I had finally been fed up with the paint coming off near the cabinet knobs.  I decided I would test one door to see if I could scrape off the old paint and sand the oil based paint down to where latex primer would stick to it.  This time I was going to do it properly, and I could take all of the time I needed because I was going to do one door at a time in the same Ultra Pure White.

The.hardest.part was scraping ALL of the white latex paint off of the doors.  I have amazing arm muscles now!  Then I sanded the door down with a medium grit sandpaper, touched up any nicks with wood filler, sanded it down with fine grit sandpaper and washed the door.

 

After priming the door with Kilz latex primer, the door was sanded again with fine grit sandpaper.  A coat of latex what was suppose to be white paint, sanded, and painted.  On top of that went two coats of polyurethane.  The door went back up to its proper place, WHAT?!  I grabbed the wrong white paint!  This was a unknown, color matched gray-white.  Take a close look at this picture below.  The upper cabinets and tall pantry cabinet are Ultra Pure White.  The base cabinets and oven cabinet are unknown gray-white.  You probably can't tell the difference {hence the frustration having to paint all the cabinets at once before big first birthday party, lots of out of town guests coming in, why do I get myself into messes like this when I'm already stressed?!}.  The difference is enough that you can't have cabinets that butt up to each other different, but that if whole sections are different only I can tell they aren't the same.  Look at the base molding where the tall pantry meets up with the brown walls base molding, yeah their different!

Moral of the story, do it right the first time and you will save yourself three months of fixing your mistake.  Since I was already investing so much time into these cabinets, I thought I would fix something that I hate about them.  Only the upper cabinets hardware, and only some of that, is  aligned in the middle of the frame.  Before painting the cabinets their new gray-white paint, the existing hardware hole was filled in with wood filler.  After the filler had dried it was sanded smooth along with the rest of the door {see I am learning from my mistakes}.  I measured the same spot on every door to be drilled and marked it with pencil.  Then I freaked out that I was going to mess up and have holes in my cabinets, bit my lip and drilled the holes.

 ...and after this novel of a blog post I have cabinet hardware on the doors where they can actually be functional and pretty!

 I'll say it again, projects around our house are a process not done all at once.  But, here is the inspiration board for the kitchen of my dreams.  The paint color and window treatments are on my immediate want list with that Ikea runner coming in at a close second.