Nakita Grinie

I had one of those rare, amazing runs the other day when I felt like I could just keep on going forever. That never happens but when it does I try to relish it for a bit. This time the endless energy came from daydreaming about house projects while on my run. We haven't done anything major to our home aside from landscaping this summer, and I guess recovering those dining room chairs. But we still have a long list of 'someday projects' that remain untouched. Probably burnt ourselves out a bit with the projects when we bought the house in February 2012 because we were maniacs up until Cecelia was born in May 2012. Maniacs who plowed through a ridiculous number of house projects and they were all worth it, but now we've hit a lull while juggling two kids and jobs and life, etc. Go figure.

So anyway. I'm getting the itch to do some updates on the house again. I'll list out what's on my mind.

1. The fireplace.

I really, REALLY dislike the gold fireplace doors we have right now. We think this is relatively new, as if the previous owners might have put it in right before they listed the house. We only think that  because there was some blue plastic left on a few corners, and MAN I wish they would have just left whatever was there before! Or maybe it would have been even worse, but these are just not our style. At all.

(Do you like the toys literally exploding out all over the place here? How about that playroom that is supposed to house all of the kids stuff? WHERE IS ALL OF YOUR STORAGE NOW, PLAYROOM?)


So we want to buy a wrought-iron-looking set of doors, something that is black and much more modern. We don't need a full 'insert' because it's a working fireplace but we do need some doors for safety.

Also, we aren't loving the blondish brick for our fireplace. But I don't really want to paint the brick because I'm not a huge fan of the monochromatic, flat effect of painted bricks. Enter Pinterest with the amazing idea of staining brick with concrete stain! YES! That way we could keep the slight variations of color within the bricks, leave the grout alone, but we could change the hue of the fireplace to be a little darker/contrasting with our floors. I'd really love it to be a charcoal gray but we will have to toy with the stain options. But a darker gray brick plus a black door for the fireplace? Much more our style. Especially when paired with the white woodwork and our lighter wood floors.

This project shouldn't be too time consuming, or too expensive---just the time it takes to stain the bricks, buy the doors, and install them. Hoping to have this done by the winter and am excited to see how it turns out. The fireplace is such a focal point in our main room, it could really spruce the place up a bit!

2. The back stairway.

One of the things we could have never predicted before we moved into this house is how frequently our guests enter through our side/back door. In fact, it's rare that anyone comes in through our front door at this point, which is sad because it's a much prettier way to enter the home;) Our back door goes in through the driveway so our family uses it 99.99% of the time, too, I suppose. So aside from having our primary entrance to the house look nicer for our guests, I want this entrance to be a breath of fresh air for us on the everyday. Instead of, 'Ugh, the back hall is so old and ugly and someone else's style.' I guess it's not that awful but to me it's getting to be my most despised area of the house. It's also one of the only areas in our home that we haven't touched since moving in, so that's saying something about how much I want to re-vamp it.

(I have no idea who would 'gently toss' the laundry basket down the stairs like that. Sheer laziness on my part, I admit. But this is the view when you enter into our side door. Blech.)


(Note this closed door for the next paragraph. This is looking up into the kitchen when you enter our house.)


(Looking down from the kitchen)


Old homes have character and slightly odd things scattered throughout, right? One very interesting thing about our house is that the previous owners turned a storage closet into our half bath on the main level. Meaning, there wasn't a bathroom at all on the main floor, so that GOD they did that before us. When they converted the closet they actually had to take up two closets and there has always been this mysterious door on our back stairs.

When we bought the house, there was a railing installed over this doorway so we had no idea what was inside. Ooooh, could it be a broom closet? A hidden passage way? Nope. It's a door that literally leads nowhere, as we found when we pulled off the extra railing. Literally, it opens up into the back of the bathroom wall now.


Very odd, no? But kind of cool, I suppose. I've had lots of ideas about what I want to do with this mysterious door. Turn it into a giant spice rack since there is literally about 2 inches from the back of the door to the wall when the door is closed? Tear the whole thing out and add dry wall (weird since we have plaster walls, though)? And then! I came up with my newest/best idea: remove the actual door, keeping the door frame. Paint it, along with all of the other orangey-varnishy woodwork white. Then on the inside of the door frame make it one big chalkboard with pegs drilled in for added key and leash storage, too. I could write on the chalkboard to say things like 'Hello' or 'Welcome' or 'Happy Birthday' or 'Turn back around and get four bottles of wine, Nate.' Things that are festive like that. And we could have more pegs for storage there, too. I really hope the chalkboard wall thing isn't a TOTAL fad but if it is, and if I get sick of that in a year we could always cover it with regular paint and just make it peg storage or something.

Once I decided on that as the fate for our door, now I'm really into this project. The ceiling is a dingy flat white and I will need to repair a few cracks there before painting it. I almost want to do something kind of 'fun' with the ceiling since it's a little different and sloped and kind of rounded. Maybe a darker shade than the walls? Because all of the walls will also need to be patched and painted and I think I might stick with my favorite Dolphin Fin gray by Behr. But maybe I would do darker walls and lighter ceiling. The woodwork all needs to be sanded, then caulked, then painted. I do not miss this part from when I did the entire first floor and all of the stairs but I'm a sucker for bright white woodwork. This stairway needs some light, man! After the ceiling, walls, and woodwork are done I think we will spring for our hardwood flooring guys to come back and rip out the disgusting linoleum to refinish the wood stairs underneath. It's just so darn expensive...$25 for each stair step, not including the rise, PLUS the cost to pull up all of the linoleum and possible asbestos glue. Worth it, though, and we should have just asked them to do these stairs when they did the whole house but we were hemorrhaging money back then and didn't think those stairs really mattered much. They do, and will look 100x better with wood and painted white rises, just like our main stairs.

This one is a lot of freaking work, even if we do hire out for the stairs. Eesh. Now I'm remembering why I haven't touched this hallway.

3. The BIG Dreams of expansion (aka probably never going to happen but we still love to talk about it all)

Speaking of the basement, Nate and I have been talking a lot about finishing off a part of ours. Mostly so that we have a 'guest room' and my out-of-town family doesn't have to stay on a blow up mattress in our sunroom (or at my in-laws' duplex). Also, it would be nice to add another play/living space down there. We are dreaming about finishing about 2/3 of our basement, leaving the rest for laundry and storage. Nate pictures a projector screen television. I just want a bedroom with some sweet built ins like this. Apparently Nate and his dad think they can do most of this on their own but in reality, I have a feeling that this will be on the 5 year plan but maybe the guys will surprise me on this one!

Another HUGE dream of ours is to make a master bedroom and bathroom in our attic. We would have to dormer out the back of the roof but it can definitely be done. When we win the lottery. ;) But having a fourth bedroom and a master bath? OMG.

If we actually pulled the trigger on this giant project, we would probably finish off our 'airing porch' on the second level because that is where we'd have to dormer out the attic. So that would allow for extra space that could remain an enclosed porch, or we could add to our existing bathroom or to Cecelia's room. Or Nate's idea? Make that long and narrow space into a bedroom-level laundry room. Meh. We have laundry shoots on each level now so it's not that awful to have laundry in the basement. And what is Nate talking about? I'm the laundry master in this house anyway!

Also, while we are on the subject of winning the lottery, if we are blowing out the back of our roof we might as well replace the whole freaking thing. Because we will need a new roof in 5-10 years anyway and it's a 'tear off' update since there are three layers of shingles on there now. Praying for a hail storm on that one;)

When we do the roof, we might as well do something with our siding. Either strip ALL of the old paint off and repaint it (preferably with a new color, like grayish blue) or replace it with vinyl/cement board. Unsure which would be more cost effective in the long run here. And if we are doing the siding, we've talked about new windows.

If we do all of that, I'd choose a dark gray roof, steely blue siding with a similar color for our 'cedar shakes' on the upper level, and white windows. Totally different than what we have now.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Sorry, I blacked out for a second. There is no freaking way we are doing the basement, an addition in the attic, the airing porch, the roof, and siding, AND windows. Honestly, we might not do a single one of those projects EVER. But it's fun to dream and document those dreams;) Nobody hold your breath to see these changes before our kids go off to college, alright?

We really do think this can be our 'forever home' if we did some major updates to give us more room as needed, though. We are content with the size of our home right now and we are in love with the location, so might as well put money into the house we already love and plan to own for good. We'd do that before we sold this baby and moved to another house, so we will see what the future holds for major renovations in this home.

Until then, I suppose I should get my painting gear out from the cobwebs. Back hallway is calling my name.

I FINALLY finished the daily calendar project that I started almost 2 months ago. Geesh. Remind me never to take on DIY projects that last more than one week, okay?

I didn't really think it would take me this long, and it probably wouldn't have----but I kept getting distracted, doing other projects instead of this one. Nate is really really happy I finished this beast so that we can have the top of our built-in buffet back now;)

Ta Da!



So I was just going to buy a felt calendar that I saw on Pinterest, but then I realized that it had features I didn't really want or need (ie 'feelings', activities, etc). And I wanted this to be mostly focused on the idea of a time concept: something to help Truman with figuring out which days he will go to Lori's, and what day of the week it is. Hoping this helps him understand when mommy and daddy are working and when we get to be home together as a family, but we will see.

So I figured I would use felt for something fun and different, since I've never worked with it before. I found a big poster board at Michaels, a bunch of felt, a fabric pen, and some ribbon with a dowel rod. I already had pipe cleaners, so I chose to use those instead of popsicle sticks (but maybe someday I will have to upgrade). I do not sew but if I did I'm sure this would look a lot more professional. But my hot glue gun worked just fine for what I wanted to accomplish.

The hardest part was covering my poster board with felt. I wanted it to be two colors and not just plain white, so I did it in blue and gray, with a ribbon dividing the two. Then I added the dowel rod on the top using ribbon, so I could hang it up.

I made my days of the week into little pockets, wrote the names with my fabric pen, and then created my 'sticks' for Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow....plus three 'Lori days' in there, too. It's been fun having T move the days around and he already kind of understood that 'today isn't a Lori day' but was able to point to Monday as the day we go back to work. It's hard to figure out sometimes, buddy--my days blend together, too.





Then after my days of the week, I didn't really care which topics we covered. I found some really cute cheap wooden shapes at Michaels and decided to do weather, seasons, and the date. Truman has been into telling me if it's nice outside, or cold, or sunny so I figured he would like the weather and seasons.

For the date I wrote on a wooden shape and hot glued that to a pocket I created, where I will keep all of the months, dates, and years. I wanted to just stick those felt pieces directly onto the yellow felt square but they didn't stick as well as I'd hoped. So I just used a little bit of velcro on the square to hold the tiny guys on there. Did NOT go through the trouble of adding the velcro backing to each of the dates. No way, man.




For the weather pocket, I found cute shapes at Michaels again--a snowflake for when it's (always) snowing that I had to paint, then an umbrella that was painted already for rainy days, a painted cloud for overcast days, and a painted sun for sunshiny days. Come on sun, let's see you again!


I added velcro to the square and also to the backs of each wooden piece for this one.




Then came the seasons---just four wooden circles that I painted and wrote the names on with my fabric pen. These are also velcro'd on to the felt square.




Seems simple enough, I suppose. All of the cutting of the felt was tedious, as was the enormous amount of hot glueing. I didn't mind the painting and using the fabric pen but when you put it all together, it was a lot of work! I hope it holds up for us and I hope Truman enjoys using it each morning with me. I made years '2014' and '2015' for our dates---hope we need to use them someday! ;)


Since I couldn't get enough of that awesome feeling felt gives when it sticks to my horribly dry hands (gag), I decided to do another felt project. This one is for a blogger busy bag swap, which maybe will get it's own blog post in the future.

If you haven't heard of a 'busy bag' project, the basic concept is that you have a ziplock bag that contains an activity for your child to do on their own. You will have to show them how to do the project the first time but then after that, they should be able to play independently with the activity to keep them busy. Genius. Pinterest has about a billion ideas for busy bags and I feel like it's almost overwhelming to even look at all of the busy bag boards!

After pinning tons of ideas for this project, I settled for this Butterfly Symmetry busy bag activity because I knew I wanted to use up the rest of my felt and it seemed pretty fun.



There are a few ways to do this project with your preschooler, and I wrote out instructions in each ziplock bag that contains the butterfly activity. The original link says to build the right half of the felt butterfly to mirror the left half 'template' on a sheet of paper. But that seemed pretty advanced to me, so I just made the whole butterfly with a whole template. I thought that the first 'level' could be the child creating the butterfly right on top of the printout template, like a puzzle. The second level, once the first gets too easy, would be to move the template off to the side and build the butterfly on top of the large piece of felt by glancing at the template but not putting the pieces directly on top of it. Still kind of like a puzzle but maybe a little bit harder? Then once that is too easy, the third level would be cutting the butterfly in half, and cutting the template in half. Then the child can build a symmetrical butterfly using that half of a template. The link said a 4 years old could do the half of a butterfly, and a 2 year old can just build the whole thing without worrying about symmetry.




Here is how I made these babies:

1. I made my own butterfly template out of paper, after looking around online for inspiration.


2. Then I cut out each piece using different colors of felt.










3. I added a little face on the body with my fabric paint after Truman requested that the butterfly have a smile;)


4. Then I scanned each completed butterfly on our scanner and printed out that image onto photo paper. I know this part isn't really necessary and I think the original link even has a template to use and print. But for some reason I thought this would be easier in the long run.


And ta da! 8 little butterflies ready to go to their homes.


I'm excited to get different busy bag projects back in the mail, too---and Truman already enjoyed playing with the butterfly in his own way (ie creating his own butterfly that was anything but symmetrical).

And that is how I spent the last 2 months working with felt. Whew.