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!

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?

DISTRESSED SHIPLAP LOOKING WALL

You know what I really love about Pinterest?  Well besides that fact that your brain can go into this place where you dream you have all this really awesome stuff!

Its the fact that everything is good, no seriously each and every person can have their on taste and you are not judged. You have your own boards and your own styles and its ok to like what "you" want to like.  I have had this really neat thing to happen to me in the last 6 to 8mths.  I have found myself.  Like when I say found myself, I mean that I have never really had a specific taste.  My mom is a great homemaker, my mother-in-law has good taste too.  Lots of people in my family do also.  But it always seems like I have just been lost in the middle.  I would like things that one would do and mix it with something else that I would see at one of the other houses.  I never really said, "Oh this is the style I like and I"m going with it!"  Part of it is because I haven't really focused on it because I have been tending to 4 growing children for 13 years and the focus has for sure been 100 percent on them and not on the mama.

So anyways, I feel like after taking much time and looking though my boards and also watching the show "Fixer Upper" I have finally found a style and taste that I love! So one room at a time I have been changing it to make it match how I would like it look.  The only downer to this process is that I'm not rich like they are on the show so I have to do it with hammy down stuff or look on pinterest to try and find a cheaper way of doing things. A couple of weeks back I had a blog entry on my distressed wall with old boards that my dad had from a box that come off the farm.  Today the wall that I'm writing about I didn't have any old boards so I went  to Lowes hardware and had them to cut me some boards out of some white plywood.  It was around 35.00 for a 4X8 sheet.  I had to have 2 boards. This was my only expense in this project because I was gonna use all the other stuff I had from previous projects to complete it.  

I wish I had taken a picture of all the boards I had gotten at Lowes.  The 4X8 sheet made a lot of boards because I told the guy that run the saw at Lowes that I wanted them cut 4" wide.  The first 3 cuts where free then the rest of the cuts are .25 each. It wasn't very much and the boards are straight and even.  My wall was just a little under 4 feet wide so I only had to cut off a couple inches off each board.

Tools I used:

circular saw

nail gun with air compressor

Vaseline

small Dremel tool (round sander on the end)

grey stain

white flat paint
level

First board, use a stud finder to make sure you have the nails with the nail gun in the right place. Once I found them I drew straight lines up the wall so I would know where they are every time. 

Next Use a Level to make sure your boards are level before laying the rest of the boards.  I only had to do this once. 

I checked both ends, and the middle.

Of course I always have helpers when I'm working.  

This is to show how I used a jig saw and cut out the squares for the electric sockets. 

This was the hard part for me because I'm not a carpenter by any stretch.  It was getting around the steps. I cut out a small square with the circular saw, then used a Dremel tool with a round sander on the end to make it smooth.  This took me awhile because I had never done it before. 

Another thing I didn't figure for was the fancy crown molding at the top. Oh my Word, Can you say pain in the neck!!!! It took for ever using that small sanding tool to make it all go together.  But I was very proud of how it finished.  ***Key Point I didn't think about that at the top when I started my project.  So make sure you look at your wall before you start something like this to make sure you can maneuver around what ever you have on that wall.

Once I finished the wall, I did the same method I did here. (that tells about the stain, Vaseline method for the distressed look to come through. Once you do that, you paint over with flat white paint.  I used 2 coats. 

You lightly sand in the areas you want the distressed look to appear. 

So this is the finished project! I had a old lantern that I took the oil part out of a used a battery light to put on the inside.  I purchased the large metal K at "of course" Hobby Lobby.

This is a up close because the long picture you really loose how pretty the distressed part is.  Its hard to tell from the bottom pictures.

This is with little light on in the lantern.

This is with the light on.