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After 4 days of hard work on the stereo cabinet, it is finally complete, put back together, set up, and plugged in. Rich loves it, and so do I. Here is what it looks like:

And here is what we did:

1. Removed the lid, speaker panels, and all of the hardware.

2. Sanded down the shiny finish with 120 grit sandpaper and my Ryobi electric sander (by hand in tight spaces).

3. Painted (I didn’t use primer because I was using Behr’s paint + primer) 3 coats of “Ivory Palace” on the whole thing, sanding lightly with 320 grit sandpaper between each coat.

4. Re-covered the speaker panels with Ikea’s Elisabet fabric – I actually covered both of them so the speaker openings were exactly the same, and had to completely redo that one!

5. Painted the lid’s underside with Behr’s Brilliant Sea, again sanding lightly between each coat.

6. Attached the new speaker cover panels with velcro – I plan to make at least one more set of speaker panels, for other seasons of when I’m tired of the stripes.

7. Spray painted the hardware satin black – the brass was scratched, nicked, and pretty badly damaged.

8. Re-attached the lid and hardware.

Et voila! Done.

I’m almost done with it, but here are a couple sneak peeks at the goings-on!

When we moved in to a fifty-year-old home last winter, we really didn’t know what we were getting into. The house needed updating, but PSHH! We can do that! BRING IT ON.

But when the main pipe out to the street crushed, simply as a result of being old and made of tar (TAR!) and the house flooded, a whopping three weeks after moving in, we started to realize what a huge job we had signed up for. All that to say, we have a huge list of projects constantly looming. As I am a list person, it is super-helpful for me to write them all out and be able to cross things off.

So what are we working on now?

-My record player! It is almost finished, and I can’t wait to post the pictures!

-Wood panelling in the family room: we still can’t figure out whether to 1. paint, 2. spackle the cracks then paint, 3. spackle the cracks then cover with drywall mud then paint, or 4. rip out the whole shebang and start from scratch. ($, $$, $$ + many hours, $$$$).

-Repaint all the trim in the house: none of it matches. Most is damaged.

-Install cabinets along the back wall of the family room: these will hold our books, games, and miscellaneous stuff.

-Build 2 covers for our little hollow brick wall: this one is a surprise! So you’ll just have to wait.

These are the big ones for right now. The Great Wood Panelling Nightmare will commence once we are back from vacation towards the end of July, and once that is done, we will be………………………………

starting our kitchen remodel!

Ohhhhhh boy…

SO today I started work on refinishing my record player. I ended up having to do all of the sanding inside the house – in my studio – because it was pouring rain outside. Seriously. Look:

So far, I have sanded (with my trusty Ryobi), wiped down, and filled the deep gouges in the wood. I’m tired, so I’ll just leave you with some pictures.

While I was at work today, Rich painted the hallway, and it looks awesome. We hung the new mirror back on the wall, and set up a few things (possibly to stay, possibly to be changed). So here is what it looked like when we moved in:

And then it was this – while less gross, it is painfully boring.

And now, a change of curtain (aka closet doors), a coat of paint, a different mirror, and some “stuff” later, it looks like this (and I love it!):

And features this:

And these:

We still are going to paint all of the trim throughout the house (but that is a tale for another day) and change out the hall lights, and hopefully the drop ceiling as well – so keep checking back for more hallway!

I made dinner tonight. (This sounds mundane, but in my house, Rich does almost all the cooking. Baking, though, is another story.)

My mom’s friend Darby made this fantastic dish for my family many years ago, and I’ve been making it ever since. It doesn’t have a name (that I know) or a written recipe (that I have or use), so it’s a little different each time.

Generally, I chop a yellow (or red) onion and throw it into olive oil in a pan, and sautee over medium-low heat until the onions are getting transparent. (While you’re sauteeing, start cooking your pasta – penne or rotini are good choices.) Then, throw in a yellow pepper, a red pepper, and a package of sausage, all sliced. Cook over medium heat until the sausage is cooked through. Toss with the pasta, and top with grated cheese (pecorino romano, parmiggiano). DONE!

You can also add a green pepper in, but my husband hates them, so I leave them out. I also love making this with chicken sausage from Land and Sea Market here in town. Yum!

Rich and I picked out the fabric for the speaker covers on the record player – the Elisabet in multicolor/black from Ikea, for $8.99 a yard. Here it is:

I wanted the Stockholm Blad in pink… but I lost that battle. Rich hates pink. A daughter is my only hope for one day being able to introduce pink into our house (how did Nicole of Making It Lovely do it?).

Regardless, I really like the fabric we chose, and I can’t wait to see how it will look!

We hung this picture rail on Saturday- it’s from Ikea, but I can’t find a link on their website anymore. It’s part of their Ribba series, and is about 6′ long.

This allowed us to revisit my gross inability to measure where my sweet and very patient husband should drill the holes for the plaster anchors. (Another example: when we hung the shelves over the dining table, my inaccurate measurements made the top shelf slant. So we took it down, spackled, waited, sanded, re-measured, and rehung.) The picture rail was fine with holes number 1, 2, and 4. It was hole #3 that just barely worked. Rich had to make the screw go all slanty. This inability to properly measure is not the fault of my dear mother, who tried my whole life to get me to measure carefully and accurately, to my loud protests. It is a result of my hatred of measuring. This is why I can draw such straight lines freehand- no ruler is involved.

HOWEVER. The rail is up, and it is now covered with artwork, photographs, and assorted trinkets. My favorite part? I can take everything off or rearrange whenever I feel like it. Which is often, so we save money on spackle. I go through a lot of spackle, people.

And because it’s the pictures that really matter:

And the whole thing – beneath will go the new record player.

So Rich helped me work on my blog today (because sometimes, when I see code, my brain shuts off), and I changed or updated several things:

-The sidebar text is now larger (and hopefully, more legible!). Oh yeah, and not purple.

-The “Photography” page has a brand-spankin’-new image gallery.

-I added a few things to the sidebar: my Etsy shop, my Twitter, a few Wists, and my Flickr photostream.

-I updated the “About” and “Design” pages with new images.

-I updated my blogroll.

-And ran some much needed updates.

PHEW. Hopefully there are no more bugs to work out…

Enjoy!

Bonnie

I’ve been an awful slacker about actually updating this blog for the past few months, so our dining room has gone through a couple permutations with no documentation. I know, right? Horrors.

So I thought I would give you a few pictures of its recent changes. Here you go!

This is my yawn-inducing dining room a few months ago:

And here is what it looked like with our new table and chairs, plus an old sketch of mine:

And because nothing is ever really finished and we just had to change it up, we moved the artwork into the living room and added a pair of shelves to hold my growing collection of white pottery. Amusingly (to me, at least) all of my favorite pieces ended up on one shelf, and everything I want to replace eventually is on the other. I added in a couple of antique toys because it just looked so white.

I’m not content with the proportions of the current set-up. The shelves are higher than I wanted them to be, but our dining table sits too close to the wall to hang them lower. You would’ve been able to lean back and rest your head during dinner on the bottom shelf otherwise!

And here is one last shot. I just couldn’t resist putting out my new Orla Kiely tablecloth, because 1. it is awesome and 2. it was on clearance. For $5. No, really.