Renovation Update

Hi everyone! We've been slowly but surely making progress on our new floor installation. So far we've finished the kitchen, laundry, pantry and half bath…and made it into the dining room! There is so much furniture displaced into our office we can barely stand going in there for anything. We just keep reminding ourselves that all the mess & shuffling are temporary and we'll be happy with the results.

One of the challenges we ran into in the dining room was the subfloor. For some weird reason, we discovered it is about 1/4 inch shorter than the kitchen. To fix this we were able to buy a roll of underlayment to help match the difference, but for a while we were freaking out! So now we have Pergo in the dining room. We moved my empty china hutch on top of it so we have room to lay more floor. Because of the way the floor boards run, we're now at a standstill until we remove the tile in the foyer. Once that is gone we can continue with the floor, running it across the foyer and on into the office. Andrew is pretty sure he's going to rent a machine to help chop the tile and cement board up this weekend.

I've also been painting the trim here and there. My goal is to have the woodwork throughout the whole house end up white {eventually}. I would say I roughly have 50% of the downstairs painted, and 10% done upstairs. Slow and steady wins the race.

Here are a few photos of our continued progress:

 

Thanks for checking on us!

DIY Ironing Board Rack

Hello out there - long time, no post! Since you last checked in, we finished laying the flooring in the kitchen and I've been busy painting all the trim white. I also repainted the walls & cabinetry in the little bathroom across from the pantry. Pretty soon the kitchen zone will be finished, and we'll move on to the dining room…which will hopefully be a snap since it's a square room. Time will tell!

Today I'm going to share a quick little project I did to help keep organized in the laundry room.

IRONING BOARD RACK

Supplies:

• 2 hooks
• 1 chunk of wood
• paint
• screws
• stud finder
• power drill
• right angle/level

STEPS

I completed this project in 1 afternoon using a remnant piece of wood from a previous project & hooks from Lowe's that were $4/ea.

Pre-measure for hook placement. Use a right angle to make sure your marks are level.

Find the middle of your wood backing and mark holes top center and bottom center. These will screw into a stud in your wall. Drill your holes. Use a bit that is slightly smaller than the size of your screws.

Paint {and prime if necessary} your wood and let dry.

After locating a stud with the stud finder, draw a pencil line on the wall & line up your pre-drilled screw holes. Power drill into the stud, then screw the hooks into their pre-drilled holes.

Check to make sure it's level, then hang your ironing board. Tad-da! All done and under $10!

Thanks for stopping by Old Elm today.

Keep creating, DIYers!

Switching It Up

Happy Sunday, readers! This morning we tried out a new church and had a really nice time. Now we're home and back at DIYing! Andrew's dad came over to help him work on the Pergo. It's coming along so great! They work well together & I've been staying out of the way. I have some priming left to do in the half bathroom {but I don't want to kill them with fumes}. The paint I got is definitely not low-VOC. Whoops.

So what did I do?

I walked around our house and made a list of the types of electrical outlets & switch plates in each room. Yep. I realize this sounds incredibly lame - but hear me out!

Outlets are often an overlooked detail along the reno process.
In my opinion, if you spend time & money re-doing a space, you shouldn't forget to update your switch plates. Ours are sort of a creamy almond color, and they are looking pretty dingy. Some are even cracked, so it's time to replace them….no rush. Just room-by-room, over time. I made a list in Notes on my iPhone & organized it by room. Now the next time we're out an about and see some we like, we can knock one out!

How do you guys keep yourselves organized during a renovation? 
Andrew is usually our details man & I have a better idea of "the big picture." Feel free to share your tips with us!

Keep creating, DIYers!

Floral Pallet Art

Hi everyone! Last month's contest ended - thanks to everyone who participated!
The "Mystery Project" was revealed to be pallet art, so our winner received a mini pallet of her own:

I'm here today to teach you how to make it! You'll need:

• wood planks
• floral paper napkins
• modpodge & brushes
• sand paper or a power hand-sander

{First} Take your napkin. Carefully pull the back 2 layers off, leaving a thin sheet with the floral design on it. The middle layer might be tricky to get off, but I swear it does - so be patient.

{Second} Brush modpodge on the wood plank, and lay your napkin on top. Gently pat and smooth it with the pads of your fingers to remove air bubbles and wrinkles. It can tear really easily here so don't get crazy. This step takes the longest because now you need to let it dry completely. At this step, this is how your wood should appear:

{Third} Now that things are all dried up, you will be sanding to distress your wood to perfection! This makes the floral design sort of "melt" into the grain of the wood and produces the look we want. After sanding, the floral images will be dulled with softer edges, and some of the wood may peek through. Here are some side-by-side comparisons of the same napkins before & after sanding:

And that's it! The possibilities with this are endless. Picture frames, furniture, recipe boxes, wall art… you name it. I'm on the hunt for a bunch of old picture frames {without the glass} so I can cut a series of my planks to size & frame them. What would you do with yours?

Thanks for tuning in, and have a great Tuesday!

Mystery Project Teaser

Today my mom came over & we had a great time working on our special project. Mom deserves the credit for discovering this one, and we've been planning on making it for quite some time. We spontaneously decided to tackle it today because we both had free time. She got our supplies last night at JoAnns and I provided the pallet wood {leftover from the bookcase I made a few weeks back}. Our first day of work at it was totally successful. We're so excited about this one that I couldn't resist posting a little teaser. You'll have to keep your eyes peeled to see the finished product, mystery revealed! Here are some photos of what we worked on... Can you guess? 

Contest // CLICK HERE to reach our Facebook page and comment with your guess. Winner will be chosen at random Friday March 6th and be awarded a {free prize} made by yours truly!!!

Faux Mudroom How-To

Today was a really productive day! Using the beadboard we had leftover from refacing the sides of our kitchen cabinets, we created a "mudroom" across from our garage entry door. The space isn't big enough for a full on mudroom {i.e. no bench for extra storage} but I came up with this idea and we achieved a similar look. We'll still use the space the same way, but now it flows into the kitchen & matches really nicely. Here's how it came to be:

First we removed the old coat rack, cut the bead board to fit the space and nailed it into place. 

This took a little extra work - Andrew used a Dremel with a sanding bit to get the fit just right.

Next we devised a three piece shelf, cut our wood to size, and nailed it into place. 

{We used pine from Lowe's} I wanted the shelf to be deep enough to withstand light-weight decorations.

Last, I primed/caulked/painted and reinstalled the hooks from the old rack. Ta-da! You can see the little transformation in the photos above. Notice the flooring {or lack thereof} in the righthand photo…We are so close to installing our new Pergo & can't wait to see how that unifies all of the rooms it flows throughout. Stay tuned!

Keep creating, DIYers!

Daydreaming

The kitchen renovation is coming along slowly but surely. Since I last posted, we've hung a new light and continued to remove big amounts of the linoleum. We are really anxious to get that part of the project out of the way!

It's been very cold & very snowy around these parts, and I pulled a muscle in my back trying {without success} to start our snow blower. So today I'm taking it easy & researching DIY ideas. Here are a few that I really want to try:

Stripes in the Half Bath

When we first moved in, we painted our half bathroom with some leftover coral paint that Andrew's parents gave us. Lately I have had the itch to tackle this sort of thing in there:

A softer gray and white done by Suburbs Mama.

Really bold and bright by hannahlowman.com

Young House Love has a good tutorial, which I will probably end up following.

Concrete Sink Makeover

I've been wondering what to do in our half bath. It's going to get new flooring since it's connected to the kitchen, and I found these - never would have come up with this on my own!

Great tutorial by Little Green Notebook.

 Seriously contemplating this now! Here is another step-by-step. 

Plank Wall

I want to do a plank accent wall in our guest bedroom behind the bed. Just one wall, floor to ceiling. And I would likely use pine, then seal & paint the wall white. Here are some ideas I like:

A cool bedroom featured on Apartment Therapy.

This room by Owen's Olivia is for a child, but has similar colors & a very similar bed to ours.

And the excellent how-to by Home Stories A to Z.

Well, that's it for now. I hope everyone is having a good Monday & staying warm this winter! As for me... it's time to turn on my heating pad, put it on my sore shoulder and take a nap!

Keep creating, DIYers!