White Subway Tile and Black Grout

Y'all! Is there not something about white and black that just screams clean! I can't help it, I love love white, black and gray.  I know these colors are and have been so popular for forever but I haven't been able to get around to posting any of my other pictures.  I have had a lot

of family and friends to come to the house and ask questions or the main thing they ask is, "Do you like your white subway tile and black grout?"  Well, I have to say Yes!

There is always gonna be pros and cons to everything.  But I must admit that out of all the different color tiles and grouts that I have tried over the years, (and I don't think there isn't a color I haven't had at some point) this has to be my favorite.  

In our house currently, I have a light gray grout in a half bath, and black in all the other areas that I have placed tile.  Let me just tell you. I will never go back to using white, or a light gray again.  Especially as long as I have children or pets.  We are on well water.  When you have well water no matter where you live you will have different types of stone or minerals based on where you live to be in that water.  Unless you are going to install a very expensive filter, some of those minerals will come through your water and stain things.  Here on this farm, my grandmother would deal with a hard water issue.  So sometimes the water has a red dark color to it.  This can stain your grout, especially on the shower floors.  I wanted to have subway tile in our master and in the kids showers, but I didn't want them to look identical. Silly me. So I used gray grout in the kid's bathroom.  Big mistake.  First of all, they are little pigs and not always the cleanest.  So, of course, they are gonna leave soap or shampoo that oozes out of the container all over the soapbox that we had installed in the wall.  This will cause you to have to scrub nonstop to keep it out.  And believe me, because the old spice body wash my boys lather in is bright teal! Y'all I ain't kidding either.  

The water has this reddish tint so can you imagine what that did to light gray grout?  It looked like someone had used the shower as a toilet and just never cleaned it.  It drove me INSANE! I have gone through my pictures a dozen times, I don't know why I can't find it cause I knew once I covered it I wanted to do a review. But I was a least able to find this picture where I had started regrouting and you can see the gray at the top of the picture. 

Please excuse the mess in their bathroom but regrouting is no joke! Also one helpful hint! For the walls adding the black grout over the grey worked just fine.  But on the floor after about two months the water started washing some of the black off.  So I had to take a tool from Lowes and go back and remove some of the grout and then re-grout again.  This time since I went deeper into the existing grout the new grout had something to adhere to.  So now their floor looks great.  Taking the old grout out took hours to do because the grout lines were small and I couldn't use a large tool. (whew)

You can see how light the grey is if you look at the top of the picture.  The black gives it much more defined lines, (which I Love!)

This is the kid's bathroom floor once it was finished. 

No More Ugly stained grout!

The white and black are very forgiving with stains and dirt, but now for the one only Con to having the Black grout... Its the soap and shampoo residue.  If you have a soapbox built into the wall of the shower or a seat like we have, then there is a chance that other people (of course not ourselves) will not wash all the soap or shampoo out of the shower once it suds up.  This will cause the soap to sit in those black grout lines and it will form a white dried area.  See below

Now, looking at these little pictures it doesn't look all that bad.  But when you have it all the way down the wall of the shower it doesn't look the hottest.  So I purchased this cleaner called Lime Away and it works pretty dandy to get the soap scum out.  I will say that I tried to take a picture to show you how it looked but because the white and black lines hide it so well it wouldn't show up on the camera without zooming in really really close.  This is the ONLY complaint I have about the black grout.  I have been living here for 3 years now and I still feel the same way.  I also used black in the floor of my bathroom with long gray tile planks. 

  This was taken before the bathroom was finished.  

So I hope this gives a little insight to using different color grouts and hopefully help if you are looking to use black grout in the future! 

Less Steps Pulley Clothesline

I have always had a clothesline.  Whether growing up at home or since I have been on my own.  There is nothing like fresh, wind-blown sheets! Growing up, my mom and my grandmother's used a clothesline. Most people either love them or hate them. 

As a little girl, in the winter, Mama would be using the dryer and I would get out of the tub or the shower and she would wrap me in a warm one, and there was nothing like it! But in the summer, the towels Wouldn't feel like those soft blankets of warmth.  It was like a little thin sheet of sandpaper concrete. Lol  Never in a million years would I want to have that in my home I would say.  To this day I can hear myself saying those words. Especially when I hear my children say them to me on a regular basis.  And yes, it's more work.  It takes longer to work them up than to just throw them into the dryer.  But now I understand.  I understand all the little things that people say about how we put mother's love into the little things we do.  I hope that one day my children will want to have a clothesline in their yards.  

I wanted it to be a little different than most clotheslines, since I have 4 children I have to do a lot of laundry.  I looked around on Pinterest and found how some people are using the old Amish or old style of clotheslines with pulleys.   So, after doing some research this is what we came up with.  Some of our stuff came from Lowes and some came from Amazon.  I will have to say the pulleys are super nice that came from Amazon because the ones from Lowes were plastic.  So now instead of picking up my pins and basket a million times to hang clothes I stand in one spot and hang them all!  

I did purchase two separators to put into the line of clothes so that it wouldn't allow the bottom string to get too low when I have heavy blankets, jeans, or a lot of towels.  One thing I want to note is that all clothesline string gets saggy after a while.  When you use the kind that has metal or wire inside of the plastic line you are always having to unwind it and pull as tight as you can to tighten it back up cause over time it starts to sag.  This will do the same thing! But with the string tightener, all you do is just pull the string and it tightens it right back up! You will also want to install the tighter on the top strand because that way you will be able to hang more clothes before the tighter taps the pully.  It has been a little adjusting since I have always used the other kind, but I don't have to take nearly half the steps I took before, and taking them off the line is sooo much faster. 

This is the separator.  

As you are adding clothes to the line, you can slide the separator on and it keeps the lines close to regular height.  They will roll as you roll the clothes back to you and I just keep them in my basket with my pins.  I will say setting up this line is a little more costly because of purchasing the pulleys and the separators, but in the end, the money you save not running your dryer and not working yourself to death with the basket and clothes is well worth the little extra to me.  I also only purchased two separators, one for each line, which totally works.  But I hope after a little time I can purchase two more to have two for each line.  I will include a list of the items I purchased at the bottom.  What do you think?  Do you like the line or dryer!  Have a great one!

Click on any of the items below and it will open to the page they are located.

Metal Pulley

Metal Separator

Line Tightener

Screw Hook

Cotton Clothesline Cord

You can purchase all of the items on Amazon or most of all of them at Lowes Hardware, but I liked how my pulleys were metal from Amazon, where the wheel on the pulleys from Lowes was plastic.  I also purchased my line at Lowes, but couldn't find the exact link for that so I included a link to Amazon for the exact thing I used.  

One other thing!  If you purchase the pulleys from Amazon, make sure to wash them BEFORE you install them with the cotton line.  There will be metal dust that is on them that will put a black or silver metal look on your line.  I read this in a few amazon reviews and it was very true.  I had to wash mine a few times to get all the residue off them! 

Farmhouse Mantels and Signs

Hey Y'all!

Hoping everyone out there is enjoying this beautiful day and sunshine that the Lord has blessed us with today.  I love the sunshine, it makes your skin feel warm and it so boosts my spirits! Today I just wanted to share about Mantels.  I love the fireplace.  Mine never looks the same very long.  

I love to change out the decor and have a different look, especially during the different seasons.  

I love love eucalyptus!  This wreath was so cheap and easy to make.  

Hobby Lobby will put its dried eucalyptus on one of their many sales and I purchased two bags and weaved it into this vine wreath I already had at home.  And the big plus is it smells soo good!  My Mema had

a bush here and she always kept it sitting out in rooms to make the house smell welcoming.  I plan to plant another one here this year because you really can use it for so many things.  

A lot of my decor comes from Hobby Lobby, but most of the wooden items you see were cooking things that my Mema used to make many meals for all us "heathens". So I have placed them up to remind me of her.  But the biggest shout out goes to the maker of my cute Agape sign.  If you need a custom sign I urge you to check out her mom's facebook page at Leah's Signs!

She does an amazing job AND I placed the order and had it in less than a week!  I love the word Agape. It means so much about the Amazing love that God has for us, which was in another blog post you can read about Here

I hope you have enjoyed this little post on mantels and please give Leah your support!

Cozy Bathrooms

I'm a sucker for an old fashion bathtub! I have wanted and pined after one of these for years. So, as part of the remodel plan, we decided that we would add one to our Master Bathroom.  I love how it sets such a great accent to the room.  The only negative drawback I have about the tub is that it's a little small on the inside. Say you're wanting more than one person in the tub, then you might want to rethink the shape you purchase. Also, when you have a cast iron tub the material holds the temperature around it which means it's EXTREMELY cold!!  You know how when you first fill a tub up with water and lean your back against it and you forget your tub is cold? Well, with this tub it's worse.

It is such a relief to be coming out of cold weather.  I'm not big on winter, the only thing I like about it is that it makes my coffee soooo much better, and that's about it. So with springtime coming, and the flowers are blooming; I have been taking pictures and can't wait to share them.  I just love pretty things, they make me happy!

I mean, how can you not like spring? Well, there is Pollen of course, but still! Look at these Peonies! They look fake, they so dang Pretty! My Mema planted them and I absolutely love to pick them and put them in jelly jars like she would. 

I have included a few extra pictures.

What I've been Up To! Whew! Stuck in the kitchen!

Well World I must say its been a long time!  So much has happened since my last post that I don't even know where to start.  So instead of trying to list all the many many things I'm just gonna make a lot of post over the next few days to try and catch the blog up to date.  I have spent the end of the summer trying to finish my kitchen.  I had started showing different things on here that reflected a lot of my work in progress, but then once the cabinets, counter tops and painting took over it was so much work that I didn't get a chance to write.  Ughh... talking about a exhausting job.  But I can finally say that I'm finished and now on to different projects.  lol (my kids say no more projects till the first of the year, we will see :)

So basically I had already posted pictures of how I redid my island, that was in a previous post. I took off the counter top, added ambrosia maple planks and added ship lap to the bottom.

Then I knocked off all my tile on my back splash, replaced the sheet rock and continued the demolition on the other side.
Here are a little before photos:

 This will kind of give you a idea of what the kitchen looked like previously.  I didn't realize just how dark it looked until after I finished.  I had so many windows previously that I thought it "seemed" light.  Please excuse all the construction, dirty dishes and just crazy mess that you see in these pictures!

So now I can start to show you the steps.
I first knocked all the tile off the walls, this may or may not have been the nicest way to handle tile.  I kinda did it when my husband was gone to the fire dept. and lets just say he wasn't the happiest when he came home and saw the Gigantic holes in sheet rock! But no fear, I just grabbed some left over from the attic and cut and used sheet rock screws and replaced it once I cleaned up my mess.

So I was in a rush to get done that day, and this picture is horrible, but you get the gist.  

Ok so here you can see, I have taken away the tired old red, and the wonderful Pot Rack(which is for sale by the way if anyone is interested).  I have added old fashioned lantern lights and started to work on sanding the cabinets and whitewashing them to match my island.  

So once I finished my cabinets I decided to jump over to the pantry.  I loved how I had a huge amount of storage.  I didn't want to loose any of that, but hated how my fridge was stuck in the corner and every time I would open the door it would smack the wall!  Ugh... I hated it!!! So I decided to try and move the fridge over into my pantry and make it look like a built in.  But I wanted it to have a old barn look.  So once the hammering and ripping out starts, little helpers will appear. You can see here that Emma Grace decided that she wanted to help bust out some sheet rock. 

 Before you start thinking, she has lost her mind!!  I measured, measured again, and again to make sure all this would work.  I did all this work my myself and I didn't want the hubs to totally freak out, so I wait till he is gone to the station and then I begin to work! That way he doesn't freak! LOL which if he does, he is so awesome, cause I've only seen it once or twice and he does so much better than me.  Mine shows all over my face!!

 So then for 2 days I slide the fridge back and forth, yes, back and forth trying to just eat around it and work around it just to make sure I'm gonna like it and which side I actually want it to be on.  I end up deciding that I like it best on the right side.  And guess what? Both doors open and will stay open!!!

 So then its time to frame back up again.  So I go to Lowes, those people I think know me by name now.  Help me to make sure I get the right stuff and I frame it back up before he can see the mess!

Alrighty! You ain't gonna believe this, but once I did all this work, I measured for the door on the other side, cause I really wanted one of those nifty barn doors that slide that you see all over pinterest that people make look so easy.  Well, guess what?  You need a perfect wall for that.  No counter top coming down the side, enough wall space to allot for the door to slide back on.  It was a Mess!!! I'm so ill thinking I had this all planned out.  Well, I kept thinking.  I got back on the other side of the kitchen. I ordered my plank tops for the counters.  I then pulled my wonderful Ikea Farmhouse Sink out of its box! Yes, I could hear songs singing!

We work all afternoon, cause dang this thang is heavy.  I leave for VBS at church tell my hubby not to worry or work on it while I'm gone cause it is heavy.  But what does that sweet husband of mine do? He works on it.  Trying to have it in and ready when I get home.  (and score some brownie points at it!) Well, needless to say I get the dreaded call at church that this has happened!

 I can't even begin to explain the words!  Do you realize that Ikea is 2 hours away? Do you know how hard I've worked? These and many other thoughts are running through my mind.  (Madea, enough said)

 Ok, so since I'm at VBS and needing to teach kids, how Christ loved us and how we shouldn't want to murder our husbands in their sleep, I just prayed and said Lord, I'm not sure how this is supposed to turn out, but please help me.  The night went ok, I didn't loose it,  once I got home I had the sweetest guy, he was just in all honesty trying to help me.  But I didn't know what I would do.  I had bought this sink back 6mths ago..... This is how awesome our God is.  The next day I called the store and guess what? The week before this happened they changed the return policy from 90 days to 1 year?????? Can you believe this???? So me and my mom hop, that weekend, down to Charlotte and pick up and new sink! So I get it back and finally get it installed. Whew!! 

Now as you can see in this post, I have got the counter tops in, walls and cabinets finished.  The sheet rock has been replaced, but I did hire a neighbor who does remolding to insert the new windows that you see here.  They were longer, I ordered those from a building supply company out of Danville Va. that has awesome prices. I didn't want to try that, cause if a bad storm come up and the windows were laying in the kitchen sink, my husband would probably draw the line (hehehe, he loves me!) 

But as you can see its all coming together! So next was the tile.  I picked out white subway from Lowes.

Didn't really know much about laying tile other than I wanted to try it.  So I ask again my neighbor who knows how to do everything.  He came by, dropped off his wet saw, showed me by laying 2 or 3 pieces of tile and said call if I got in a pickle.  So that night I tried it.  It's not no where near as hard as I expected!  So the next day, I got it all up!

I was extremely happy with how it turned out!!!

So now to get my pantry fixed, light covers on, do my open shelves and decorate! 

To be continued !

See the next post to see how the Pantry turned out!

But this is the kitchen so far!

Ship lap style Island with Butcher Plank Top

Everyone has went Ship Lap Crazy.  At least a lot of the people I talk to cause of the farmhouse style that has been sweeping across Pinterest and other areas of design.  I absolutely love this style of decorating because it reminds me of my Mema's house.  She has always had the white walls and old furniture.  I am slowly but surly trying to change a lot of the old things I have into more of this style because I love the colors and this style of decorating.  

This kitchen project has been going through my mind for over a year.  I have sketched, used kitchen apps, and talked with people from all over trying to decide just how I wanted to make my kitchen look different but not spend a lot of cash. Especially since I stay home with the kiddos.  Which means that I must do most of the labor myself if I want to make the changes.  The kitchen is such a important room in the house so I have really tried to take my time in making decisions, which I'm still not done yet. So yes, some of the things on the walls dont' match, I have ripped the tile off the back splash ( wow, can you just say huge holes!) and its nowhere near done.  So for today I'm only talking about the island cause that's all that's finished right now.  

Let me show you how I tore the tile off of the bottom of the island.  

We had regular tile under the front side of the island and laminate on top.

 I started with using a flat head screw driver and hammer to loosen the tile which I was able to reuse these tile in a area outside that was always muddy and now we have tile to step on at the dog lot. (double use, score!)

 Of course I always have helpers when we do a job.  Isaiah working hard at removing the grout.

Once I removed it I was able to lightly sand it and then start adding the plywood that I had cut in 5 in planks.  These were a little wider than the original wall because I wanted a wide plank. I also wasn't going to do the distressed look on this.  I used pennies to place in between each plank so it would look like original ship lap was there.

I used a nail gun and a regular circular saw to cut and measure all the boards and attach them to the island except the front.

The front was a little different.  I have hickory cabinets and wanted to have a white wash finish but I also wanted the hickory to show through.  You typically don't see hickory cabinets whitewashed but I said hey, I will give it a try.  So I took all the doors off the hinges.

Please ignore all the pots and pans, I am trying to take the pots off my pot rack that hangs to keep the dust off while I work so they were all crammed in these cabinets. (yuck) 

Next I took the doors outside and lightly sanded them so that the stain would adhere.  Once I had them sanded I used some tacky cloth from Lowes to remove all the dust.  Once they were clean, I started staining them with White Wash pickling stain from Lowes.  I lightly covered them with a 2 dollar brush.  Once they were dry (after a few hours) I lightly sanded them again to give them a finished look.  This picture will be in the end with the top attached.  

Next I went to a awesome lumber yard in Mayodan, NC called Wall Lumber

There they spent a gracious amount of time talking with me and helping me to pick out the exact wood that I wanted for my top! I was so grateful because I knew once I bought this huge heavy piece of wood there was no going back.  So I ordered it and Bam in like 30 days it was ready for pick up.

I decided to go with Ambrosia Maple.  I thought it was beautiful.  I also had 2 legs cut from regular maple to help the top be very secure.

We centered the top on the bar. This was probably the hardest part, because if your floor is not level in all aspects you have to scoot the top around until you make sure all the edges are equal.  You shouldn't try to do this by yourself.  It helps to have a second eye.  

 We purchased a rotary dremel tool at Lowes to help cut the top.  We used my gas range top as a template and then attacked painters tape to the top because the man at Wall Lumber said this will help with top not splintering.  We both took turns cutting because this wood was almost 2"s thick and the tool does get hot.  Once we made pretty good size starting points we went with saws all to finish cutting.  (I don't suggest this) But after I had cut one side and he had cut the other we could get in with the saw and move much faster.  He is a really steady hand with it cause he uses it daily in his taxidermy shop, but typically you would just use a jigsaw and make the straight cuts.  

Once the whole was finished, we cleaned up.  I added the trim from Lowe's to the edges with the nail gun to give it a finished look.  You can get as wide with the trim as you like but I chose a inch wide trim and put it on each corner on both sides to make it looked more finished. I took a soft cloth and wiped over the front with Boiled Linseed Oil to Seal the cabinets.  I let that dry overnight.  I also used Boos Block Butcher block cream on my top and let that sit over night.  Once you get up and wipe it down it's read to use.  

We were very tickled with how it turned out!  Now what are we gonna jump on next?