Sunday, July 24, 2011

Window Decision!

Well we made a decision with the back door! Thank you for your ideas! We ended up getting roman shades. I looked at all the different was to make my own and went to price them out at Lowes and we ended up just buying them at Lowes. What can I say, sometimes we are suckers for the easy way out! :) Tim just put them up and it's kind of amazing how cool it already seems to be! I'm sad that we ended up having to cover the wonderful light...but we can always pull them up and leave them up when it isn't 105 outside!




Here's Tim making sure that the latches are level.


Ahhh, Much Better!!

These roman shades are the "classic thermal" shades from allen & roth and are just classic white. We didn't want another pattern going on up there so white it was. We really like them, and seriously hope they help with the warmth!

I'll be back soon with what's been going on in our room!

jo

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Window Help!!

So before I update all the amaziness from our room, we need some help!

In the afternoon hours, our upstairs gets really freaking hot! And not to mention our electric bill is getting out of control!! First order of business is I'm going to line our curtains with a thermal liner. Now why we are needing your help. Our back door has been curtainless/blindless since we moved in and we have always liked it like that. And with the weather being so hot we are now faced with needing to put something up. I want curtains (probably plain ol'white) because personally I'm over blinds and I'm nervous that this sweet face will ruin them like he usually does.



But Tim wants pull down blinds something like these..



He thinks that with all the curtains upstairs being closed the wall will look like one big curtain and he doesn't want to cover up the molding. Just to refresh your memory's, here's the back door and the other wall this the curtains closed..





Ok..please help us!! Thanks!!

jo

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Outdoor Furniture-Part 2!!

I'm back to show you the end results of the outdoor furniture!

So we built 4 of the chairs from ana-white.com and then we got a little crazy and built somethings on our own. We made a love seat, coffee table and a little end table. We basically took the same concept of the chair but made it bigger. And the tables...Tim just whipped those together one day when I was at work. I guess you can say we are really into building our own furniture now! Our next big build will be our bed!! Woo-Hoo!! I'm beyond excited for that day! More on that on a later date!!

Our next step was picking out the stain color. We wanted something on the dark side but we still wanted to see the wood. I can't remember the name of the stain...hold on..Oxford Brown from I believe Lowe's. And to be honest...there's a good chance that that isn't the real color. The paint guy, let me re-phrase that, The paint KID had no idea what he was doing! We stood back there and watched him guess what he was doing for about 20 minutes, but whatever he did we love!









All we did with the stain was, coat a piece of wood and then wipe it down. Note to self: Don't listen to your sweet husband and wear gloves. :) I was COVERED in stain!! Ok I'll stop rambling and get to the goods!


So here's the deck before...


AND AFTER!! The cushions we got at Target for $10 a piece and those pillows are just pillows from around the house. I'm waiting until outdoor fabric goes on sale.



So we also bought little planter holder things from Lowe's to hold citronella candles and some cute lantern's Tim made. You can kind of see them in the first "after" picture. All he did was, took a mason jar and some small wire and wrapped that around a few times and then made a loop. Filled it with sand from our sand bow (yea, we have a sand box..) and then we put a candle in it. Also we hung some old christmas lights up until we buy some lights that are a little bigger. Some time soon we will get a picture of all this at night so you can see what "Twinkle Time" looks like. Yup we named it.

We love the end results and how beyond easy it was. And all in all I bet it took us 2 full days start to finish. We did it in about week all spread out. I hope this inspires you guys to build something!! And I promise to post a picture of how looks at night! :)

jo

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Outdoor Furniture-Part 1!

Well we've been busy this past month! I've been meaning to update but just having really had the time!

So it all starts back a few months. When the weather started getting nice, we decided to go outdoor furniture hunting and lord it was all so expensive! It's kind of ridiculous how expensive some of the stuff is out there. That got me thinking, why can't we just make our own? Some friends from church told us about a website called ana-white.com, so I went and checked it out. This girl builds everything, including outdoor furniture! After searching through the different options we decided we wanted to do a sectional. We liked that it was a little different than the usual stuff out there and the chairs were moveable so if you didn't want to sit close to someone you could move your chair. We went to Lowe's and priced it all out and figured out it was going to cost maybe $200 to build it all and get/make cushions. Um yes please! We decided to build one and make sure that we could actually do it.


Here's Tim picking out wood.


I learned that warped wood is bad and that more than half the pile is full of warped wood.


This is what I do at Lowe's...that thing spins...it's awesome!


Tim measuring the wood.


And cutting it. (Now with our first chair we really used a hand saw. After some uneven cuts we borrowed our Pastors table saw thing, it went a lot faster and smoother after that)


I'm a little OCD and had to put the cuts from largest to smallest, weird I know. Oh yea..wear shoes when working with nails and wood and power tools.

And here would be all the pictures of us building this bad boy but I didn't take any pictures during the build...or during any of the builds. Whoops. You can see the step by step process on ana-white.com :)


And here he is in all his glory. We actually built this!!

We ended up building the rest but I'll save that for later this week!!