Backsplash DIY for under $30

So we have been in the house a few weeks now.  And we are moving right ahead with some inside projects.  This is because it is still quite the winter here in Rochester, New York.  And the second it feels like spring, we want to be outside exploring our new city!  In addition to this, I have some exciting upcoming clients!  Yes, hopefully some fun BEFORE AND AFTERS for y'all soon on the blog!

This project can be classified as a $50 Friday!  Yay!  And a DIY.  

Below is our kitchen prior to moving in.  

BEFORE:

BEFORE:

Again, what is wrong with us?  Perfectly good "Before" photos right?

Well here is the deal.  I felt that the kitchen was a bit too masculine.  We are pregnant with girl #2 and my darling husband doesn't even mind soft colors and neutral touches.  The BACKSPLASH MY LOVES THE BACKSPLASH.  Yes.  All this is over a backsplash.  

Y'ALL!  A backsplash determines the ENTIRE feel of your kitchen.  I feel like backsplashes really determine your style.  Perfectly gorgeous granite can be out-played by some outdated backsplash tile.  The market has some fairly gorgeous upscale-looking laminate these days.  You can even take it to the next level with your backsplash!  I'm loving all these basket weaves and penny tiles.  They're gorgeous.  But we can't rip-out tile right now.  And it's not on the agenda or in the budget.

Well all that to be said, our backsplash was already installed when we moved in.  And it is black and grey.  And we have dark brown-grey cabinets.  It is too masculine for me.  I wanted something that felt fresh and "coffee shop".  Side note, all cute cuddly snuggly coffee shops have white tile.  And it feels so cozy and makes you want to drink lattes and wear sweaters and maybe even buy herbs.  My sisters and I would just say: "That is Esque".

Enter in this amazing little product.  Can we just take a moment to honor whoever Mr. or Mrs. Rustoleum is?    I mean this inventor has some GENIUS products for the savvy homeowner.  I mean genius.

BEFORE:

The product was pretty self-explanatory.  It's a two-part process where you mix the two canisters of product to activate the tile-adhesive paint.   Prep is fairly important.  I scrubbed my backsplash with a fairly abrasive cleaner.  Really scrubbing hard.  I then taped off my countertop, cabinetry and walls.  

Well.  As soon as I mixed and activated these products I realized that they smelled like Hades.  I mean if there was a toxic smell on this planet, this was it.  Strait toxic.  And I'm almost 7 months pregnant.  Oops.  I guess hubby has to do this DIY too.  No big loss for me.  I made sure the area was highly ventilated (because I really want to keep him around for a long time).  I also used essential oil diffusers and fans to cut down on the horrendous smell.  He used a regular paint brush.  It's sorta runny.  But it wipes up immediately and goes on fairly easily.

Our backsplash had black and grey tile, as well as dark grey grout, so it took 3 good coats for our kitchen.   

P.S. This product is cheaper on Amazon then at Home Depot.  Win!  Win!!

Once painting the tile, we realized we will be re-caulking the line between the backsplash and the quartz countertop.  

Otherwise I'm feeling very tickled with the turn-out!  Pretty "coffee-shop", don't you think??

AFTER:

AFTER:

AFTER:

AFTER:

AFTER:

Please share your stories or experiences in the comment section!  Happy Painting!!!!!

XOXO 

Love Y'all

Ashley

DIY vintage toy kitchen

HAPPY $50 FRIDAY MY LOVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So my baby girl turned one in September.  Oh it was horrible.  I am like any typical mama.  I am completely in depression that she is growing up sooooo fast.  Why does God make that first year go so so quickly?  It's absolutely heart wrenching to watch them get so grown.

First, there is that perfect newborn stage where they just sleep on your chest and grunt and act squishy.  Then that amazing three-six month stage when they learn to smile and coo.  The stage where they crawl around and laugh and say mama and dada.  And then they're one.  My daughter is now 18 months going on 18 years old.  It's awful.  She runs everywhere and talks non-stop.  I'm a mess.  Why does she have to grow up?  I've decided I fancy arranged marriages now.  It's perfectly logical that I elect her future husband.  Oh I've never prayed for anyone like I pray for that sweet baby girl.

Back to the DIY story.  She is growing up.  And I need to grow up too. 

And what do grown-up baby girls receive for their first birthday?  A play kitchen, of course.

Well I wanted something that wasn't expensive.  And I had a small desire for something that was cute.  My friend Kayla says all my baby's toys are so "aesthetically appealing".  Oh, hashtag blogger probs.  Ugly toys really do mess up my photo shoots for y'all.  What does one do with ugly toys in the background of pictures?  

Well we can just come up with our own version of a kitchen.  How about that?!  Hashtag I'm not a control freak at all, am I? 

Before I knew it, MiMi was offering to buy the grand-baby toy kitchen.  So I told her to hold off until I found us a good project.  MiMi knows a good fixer-upper and it would be a fun project to do together.

I finally found the one.  My beloved girlfriend was having a yard sale to raise funds for her international adoption.  And what was donated?  A shabby toy play kitchen!  I didn't snap this 'before' picture until after I had scrubbed the kitchen down with a good cleaning rag.  So it actually looked worse then this.

It clearly has adorable bones.  But could it be MORE adorable?  Of course!  

So this little DIY is how to doll-up a little garage sale toy kitchen.

This particular kitchen had some obvious flaws.  Maybe you are in the market for a toy kitchen for your toddler.  And the yard sale variety isn't cutting it.  Think again!  With a little help, any garage sale kitchen can be a vintage-glam kitchen!

Our kitchen had some minor flaws.  It had no sink basin.  All the shelves were missing from within the toy-oven and under the sink.  The handles on the fridge were too small and some were missing.   Other various handles and knobs were also missing.

We decided it needed:

A fresh coat of paint

A fun little sink skirt, which we would sew

New stove knobs

New handles on the fridge

A fresh coat of paint on the faucet

New hot/cold knobs

Wrought Iron hooks for little vintage enamelware pots and pans

A wooden crate to replace the missing basin

Accessories

So where did we go?  Our neighborhood Hobby Lobby of course! 

First we decided to finish removing the 'mostly-missing' oven and under-sink cabinet.  We removed all hardware and my darling hubby cut a fresh board for the bottom of the cabinet.  We then sewed a little gingham sink skirt out of 1/2 yard of fabric.  I just hemmed all the ends.   I then bunched the top of the skirt and used a utility staple gun to attach the skirt up under the wooden sink.

Next, we gave the entire piece a coat of white paint to freshen it up.  I just used semi-gloss white Behr paint from Home Depot. 

I also spray painted the old grey faucet an antique-red color to match the gingham sink-skirt.  Valspar $3 spray paint did the trick.  I threw away the old knobs and the old wooden hot/cold knobs. 

We found some cute little drawer pulls in ceramic-red at Hobby Lobby and used those as the new stove knobs.  Gosh, did they turn out cute!  We also found hot/cold vintage ceramic knobs for either side of the red faucet.  Drew screwed the new wooden crate into the bottom of the counter top as the new sink basin.

We decided upon cute glass handles to make the new fridge pulls.  They were larger and easier for babygirl to use when she opened her fridge.

We then discovered a few rusty Hobby Lobby wrought-iron red hooks to attach to the side of the kitchen for utensils and pots.  I had found some vintage red and white enamelware pots and pans at an antique store that just had to hang on those cute little red hooks.

It was sort of like the book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".   We just kept going with all the cuteness.

I'm pretty sure the kitchen turned out perfect.  MiMi accessorized with wooden toy food and a baby-kitchen-aid from Pottery Barn Kids as part of the Birthday gift.

I think the after photos don't even do her justice!

AFTER

AFTER

Love Y'all!

Ashley

Painting Pumpkins: $5 Thursday

I really needed one last $50 FRIDAY for October.  The problem is, my cash was more like coins.  Oh and it's Thursday.  

Let's face it, we're all gearing up for the trick-or-treaters this weekend, and the holidays are right around the corner.  Needless to say,  most of us don't really have money to spend on decor right now.  

So before we get ready to say goodbye to pumpkins and hello to turkeys, let's do one last happy Friday-Eve project that costs less then $5.  Yep.  Take the '0' off the end of that number $50.

I scored some ugly damaged Styrofoam pumpkins at Walmart last year for $2  a piece.  They were pretty beat up, but hey, they live forever because they're Styrofoam!  All of last season, I sort of hid them to cover up their obvious flaws.  You know, nestled them in a pile of leaf-garlands in a front porch urn,  prayed no one saw the chipping paint.  You can get seriously judged for faux pumpkins.  Let alone the kind that have white Styrofoam sticking out.

This year, with some acrylic paint I already had on hand, they got a face lift.  I'll share the make-over with y'all!  Especially if you buy clearance pumpkins now at the end of the season!

You'll need for this project:

ugly Styrofoam pumpkins you regret purchasing

white acrylic paint

green acrylic paint

paint brushes

Here are my pumpkins BEFORE:

To start, I hand painted the pumpkins white.  I just brushed it on to avoid having to tape the stems and spray paint.  Plus, white spray paint usually takes about 4-6 coats to really cover something this bright in color (orange).

Then with a small brush, mix some white paint with your green paint.  Giving it a pale hue.  Use the small brush to follow the natural grooves of the pumpkin.  Go back over the lines with a wider brush, gently smearing some of the green stripes into the white.

Easy peasy!  Look how fun these look?

I nestled them right into my front porch decor with a small pile of real pumpkins, faux pumpkins, and deer antlers.  A big shout-out to my sweet gorgeous friend Kim for donating these beautiful harvested antlers to the blog!  They are so gorgeous!

Love Y'all!  Goodbye October and hello Turkey Month!

Ashley

$50 FRIDAY! An AMAZING kitchen addition (you're gonna love it!)

So y'all.

I was really feeling like our kitchen needed some va-va-voom factor.  Don't get me wrong, I love our kitchen.  It's the biggest kitchen I've ever had the privilege of living with.  We were finally able to pull out our vintage china at this house!  Prior to Taylor's Wood, our vintage china had sat in a rubbermaid tub for 8 years.   The kitchen has lots of great features like solid surface counter tops and hard wood floors.  I should be shot just for complaining.

But it's not a complaint, it's just a teensy tiny desire to make the kitchen more snuggly.  Who doesn't want their kitchen to be forever smelling like piping hot brewed coffee?  Or freshly baked chocolate chip cookies?  Kitchens need to be completely cozy.

Maybe you envision a fresh gleaming glass pitcher full of strawberry lemonade?  I want my daughter to sit in the middle of the kitchen wrapped in a quilt tasting a blueberry muffin.  In our family,  many memories are tied to foods.  Use your kitchen as the true heart of your home and your children will never forget it.  My own mom always had batter to taste on cold Pennsylvania saturdays.  Or dad would be on his knees churning the fall batch of sauerkraut in the old crock.  The sweet and sour familiar smell, wafting in the air.  Us three girls will never forget our long family discussions in the kitchen.   Family talk would be held on the vintage wood church pew that resided in the kitchen.  Our fat tabby cats laying on the floor, their yellow bellies full of milk.

My loves.  A kitchen memory is a forever memory.

The problem is, this particular kitchen is a bit plain.  Tan walls, cream cupboards, white doors, white trim.  A bit sterile maybe.  And I like warmth.  Besides all this, Drew and I cook dinner together every night in our home.  The only exception are the nights I am at work.  And even then, we usually make a snack together at the island and talk and decompress about our day.  We truly use our kitchen as the heart.

So I set my brain to a-thinking about what I could do to make her a bit more cozy.  More textured.  More....something.  We thought about Drew adding beams.  He wants to try his hand at installing some ceiling accessories anyway.  However, we already have crown molding in the kitchen and so we nixed that idea.  We thought about painting the cupboards.  I've painted many a cupboard in my life and though it's a monstrous task, I was open to the thought.  However, I did want something with a bit more "immediate gratification".  Y'all know my thoughts on that.

So below is the beautiful ladder pot rack we constructed.  And guess what, it's classified as a $50 Friday!!!!

You will need for this project:

Two 2x4x8's

Three 1 inch diameter by 5 ft long dowel rods

1 quart grey pain

1 quart Minwax Early American Stain

Rope

Pack of S hooks (be sure they fit over your dowel rods)

8 Eye Screws

First step.  We cut the dowels to the desired width of our ladder.  We also cut the 2x4's the desired length of our ladder.  Our pot rack is very long because it was going over our island and we wanted some symmetry.  Our 2x4's we cut to 6.5ft.  Each dowel rod was cut to 18 inches. 

We then assembled the ladder.

Drew measured, so as to perfectly screw each dowel rod into both sides of the 2x4's.  Be sure your measurements are EXACT or your pot rack will be very crooked.

Here is a shot of us checking to make sure we were happy with the ladder's length up against our island's length.  Please excuse our construction mess.

NOW for paint.  My favorite!  We sanded the whole piece and then I started by very haphazardly smearing the grey paint all over the piece.  I didn't cover the ladder, I just smeared randomly.

Please forgive me as I forgot to take a picture of staining the piece.  All you do is take a cloth and then stain the ladder as you would stain anything.  Wipe stain on, then wipe off.  And the stain will adhere to everything.  This gives it a very old look and I absolutely love the finish.  Again, just stain over the wood and the grey paint, staining the entire piece.

Drew and I then found beams in the kitchen ceiling with our stud censor and set 4 eye screws in place into the ceiling.  Directly over our island.

A lot of pot racks use chain but I really didn't care for that look.  I loved the idea of rope!  So some fun old rope worked perfectly!

Screw the remaining four eye screws into the top of the ladder and then run your rope through.  We hung our ladder 10.5 inches from the ceiling because my copper pots hang pretty low.  Remember, you don't want to bump your head on the pots while you're working at your island.

Use your "S" hooks to hang all of your pots, pans, baskets, herbs, and cutting boards from your new pot rack.

That's it my loves!  $50 Fridays are the BEST! 

Love Y'all!!!

$50 Friday!!! Change the look of your house in 30 minutes

I'm all about a $50 Friday!  

Today my loves, we are changing the look of your entire home, upgrading your curb appeal, logging sweat equity hours, all for $50.  Yup.  You heard me!

So when we bought Taylor's Wood, the front door was a pretty 'old-school' shade of blue.  

Not navy blue, not royal blue.  Not a pale blue either.  Not even Robin's egg blue.  Nothing epic.   The same shade of blue had been repeated on plastic shudders surrounding the windows on the front of the home as well.  During a rather daring renovation, Drew was able to pop the shutters off of the home with a garden rake, while standing on the tippy-top of a 14 foot ladder.  We then trashed them.  Boom.  It felt rather good.  But the door...

The door was still blue.  And I really dreaded paint-day for awhile because painting a door seemed pretty annoying.  And my door had 24 tiny windows.  Ummm... that sounds horrible.

But now that I've painted the front door, I'm fairly proud of myself.  And the difference is quite shocking.

What you will Need:

1 quart of paint: I used Sherwin Williams 'Keystone Grey'

1 really Amazing paint brush (I love Purdy brand)

1 paint roller

It only took about a quart of paint.  Though I had originally bought a gallon and used the additional paint on other outdoor projects (bloggy days ahead).  I also used my Purdy brush for the cutting-in around the windows.   The roller worked for an air-brushed look on the flat spots.  

I'm a pretty good cutter-inner, so I opted not to tape 24 windows.  It just seemed like a nightmare.  2 Coats covered the door perfectly.  What a difference!

Here's my blue door BEFORE:

Here is my door after!

That's it y'all!  $50 Friday and your whole house will look BEAUTIFUL!  Tag us in your @instagram posts so we can see all y'alls hard work!

Love Y'all!

Ashley