No-Sew Drapes

alternately titled: "Things you can do with your Straight Iron"

Our house has an 8'x5' picture window at the stair landing. For Christmas, I knew it needed to be dressed, so on Black Friday, this crazy lady (pointing finger at self) went to JoAnn and waited in too many long lines for the perfect fabric. (Hey, no judging: 8 yards of quality fabric = $$$).

I should also mention that J's Birthday was soon after my mini-shopping spree and he received a Little Giant. Needless to say he was excited, and my drapes got hung that night....

...before I'd had the chance to hem and press them. Oh well, at least they got hung! There is no way those things are getting pressed now, but I had to figure out how to hem them (the edges were badly frayed). I was NOT going to hand sew them and my machine was out of the question.

Have you all met Sherry? Well, she keeps making curtains and bed skirts that are no-sew. I kept reading her posts and thinking "pshaw! I have a machine, I'll hem the 'right' way." Boy, was I ever wrong! Here's to you Sherry, for showing me the error of my ways!

Gather up your supplies:

You'll need iron-on hem tape, scissors, and an iron. Because my drape was already hung, a standard iron wouldn't work, so I got creative. 

Place hem tape along the edge of your project and fold the fabric and tape up into a hem. Iron with medium heat and NO steam. DO NOT touch the hem tape directly to your iron. The glue will melt onto your iron and ruin it. If you're like me and using a straight iron, be sure to wipe off the plates (once cool) before using in your hair. My iron took on a bit of the red dye in the fabric. 

My finished, clean-line hem!

The final product shown from the top of the stairs.

Laundry Room Mini Makeover

The boxes are all unpacked and the dust has settled (mostly). And I have a blank canvas for a house. What to do? What to do! So far, the only rooms I have a clear vision for are the master bedroom and the laundry room. The master is going to wait til after Christmas as I'm hoping to receive some particular linens as gifts... (cough! cough! hint hint!)

The laundry room was easy. Just needed a quick little painterooo to make it pretty.

Before:

The two white bars are where the existing shelves were hung.

The wall color is actually really pretty: it's Valspar's "Boston Cream"

J helped me remove the existing wooden shelves, I then took them into the garage and prepped them for painting. When painting/refinishing wood, you can't scrimp on the prep work. It's a lot like painting your nails: remove old polish, wash polish remover off, base coat, color, top coat, Voila! 

The shelves got sanded with 150 grit sandpaper to get off the old sealer and sand out any imperfections in the wood. I then followed up with 220 grit sandpaper to really prep the surface for paint. After sanding, I used our ShopVac to vacuum away major dust and followed up with a damp cloth (tack-cloth also works well). If you don't get the dust completely off, the paint will stick to that and flake off over time.

The shelf on the left is sanded, the one on the right is still shiny with varnish.

Time to prime! I used Rust-Oleum "Painter's Touch" Primer in gray. The trick to spray painting is to do many light, even coats. At first, it will look awful, but after about 3 coats your project will be amazing and there will be no paint runs. You can apply each new coat after 15-30 minutes of dry time for the previous coat.

Once your primed coats are dry, you can paint your desired color on. I chose Rust-Oleum's Painters "Touch" Gloss in Purple. Once again, many light even coats, always keep your spray can moving.

The color turned out so pretty!

I opted to not use a clear varnish/lacquer type top-coat because my paint is very glossy and these shelves are fairly light-duty use and don't get wet. 

I also had this bathroom shelf from IKEA that I painted the same purple and Hubs installed. It now holds our keys, my purse, J's wallet, and our cell phones. It's SO NICE to have all that stuff in one place.

The finished product! The lighting was poor, but you get the idea. My next additions will be a purple valence for the window and hopefully a fun little chandelier!

House Hunters: Mission Complete!

We did it! The house is officially ours. We received our keys on Tuesday evening and since then we've been having a grand time imagining, measuring, discussing, and generally agreeing about all the stuff we get to do.

Tuesday night I cleaned the kitchen and all the bathrooms. J checked out his garage and learned how to program the thermostat. I ran some laundry and then we played a game of cribbage in the dining room (I won). You know the things you normally do when in an empty, new-to-you-home. :-)

We have to buy a microwave so I measured and am researching. I think I've selected the model I want, it's a GE, so hopefully it'll last us a good long while.

Today, J took the afternoon off so we're going to move over the most fragile items: the TV and wine glasses. (Yes, we have priorities!) and then I think J will mow the lawn if it's dry enough.

Oh you want pictures? OK!

It's all ours!

Dining room looking into kitchen

Living room

Kitchen

Shiny!

Office

Stairs, landing, and entry

Master bath

The move is officially Saturday. My Mom and I are going to try to get all our food and kitchen stuff moved over on Friday. Hopefully it doesn't rain and everything goes smoothly!

House Hunters: Update

I can't believe that I didn't update you all on what's been going on with our house.

The landscape bid came in within the budget that we had set, so we put a second offer on the house. After some negotiations, we arrived at a fair selling price.

To give you an idea, the house is to the left (see the corner of the deck?), the trees on the right are planted down the hill into the gully.

This picture is the bottom of the gully, the large rocks between the "tea house" and the bamboo are the "creek bed" that the sellers created for the storm drain to run down to look pretty. This will all disappear in the spring, no more tea house, bamboo, or storm drain. Hello fence and semi-terraced grassy yard!

The yard truly is peaceful and beautiful, but it just won't work for us long-term. We want our kids to be able to run and kick a ball, not trip on rocks and play in storm water run-off. We're hoping to retain most of the privacy and greenery of the existing peripheral landscaping, this will be a huge project but hopefully a fun one. We have plenty of time to git 'er done...30 years to be exact! ;-)

The inspection went fantastic. There was a small amount of water in the crawl space and 2 non-structural support beams weren't "footed" with concrete and were starting to rot.  But the seller was so upset that something was wrong that he had everything fixed within a week to the specifications of our home inspector and his recommended contractor. (The water ended up being from a spot in the foundation that a pipe runs through that hadn't been properly sealed--a very minor problem to fix).

All the paperwork is now complete, we are awaiting an official signing appointment and we close on Wednesday, October 19th! Two weeks! Ahhhhh..... So much to get done!

House Hunters

We have found a house that we love! Yay!

The neighborhood is perfect, all the houses are nicely maintained (except one...of course!), the road is quiet. The houses is in a cul-de-sac and on a large corner lot.

Isn't she purrrrty?! 

The current homeowner has been in it since construction and he had extra windows put into the house so it is extremely naturally well-lit. Which is perfect for my night-shift habit.

It has 3 beds, 3 baths, and an office. The kitchen and baths were all upgraded 2 years ago. And it's within our price range.

Why don't we own it yet??? Great question:

The back yard is a gulley. With water running through the middle of it from a storm drain. The "creek" is actually supposed to be within the back 15 feet of the property instead of the middle. 

We put in an offer with the contingency that the owner moves the run-off to where it's supposed to be. He declined, so today we had a landscape company come and bid out the work for us to have it moved. Depending on what the bid is, we may put in another offer on the house. We can work with the sloped yard, that doesn't bother us too much. Running water is a whole 'nother story.

Cross your fingers for us!

Houseward Bound

Things are happening around here! J and I have decided that it's time to buy a house. Exciting. Scary. Expensive. Fun. Nerve-wracking. Wheeee!

UP house source

We've been pre-approved for a loan, secured a realtor to guide us, narrowed down the location to 2, possibly 3 areas in our locale, and now we're just waiting for our perfect home to pop up!

Visiting houses is an interesting experience. Sometimes the empty houses are a bit creepy, sometimes the owners are cluttered and it's hard to look past all the nick-nacks and wallpaper, sometimes there is a room that I'm just dying to replicate, sometimes there's a deal-breaker, sometimes it's "just fine." But it is always totally amazing to peek into people's lives and see how they live.

We are feeling blessed to be in a position to buy right now and are wanting to take advantage of the low interest rates.

For fun, here's our wish list:
~3 bedrooms with den/office/loft/bonus area or 4 bedrooms
~lots of storage and closets
~large, well-laid out kitchen with good counter space
~3 car garage or 2 car garage with space to park our snowmobiles next to the house
~large yard (10,000+ square feet) with some privacy from neighbors
~laundry room with a utility sink
~Lots of natural light. It's gray enough 6 months of the year here without living in a dark house too.

We're pretty flexible about the rest of it: house age, eh. turn key vs. needs some love, eh. formal dining and living room, eh. total number of bathrooms, eh. (It's pretty standard for a 3-4 bed house to have at least 2 full baths). In a neighborhood or on a residential street, eh. Type of flooring, eh (easily changed!). color of appliances, eh. (so long as they work).

For all you home owners and house hunters out there, have any tips? anything to beware of? anything to look for in particular? secrets of success? Also, J wants to know if anyone has had success in negotiating your interest rate down with your lender?

Spring Cleaning

It's a rainy Saturday here in the lush & green Pacific North West. While the rain doesn't slow us down (much), we decided to postpone our mountain biking trip to another day. Which means that today is Spring Cleaning!

We've lived in out apartment just shy of a year, so the dust has accumulated. Here is my to do list:

Vacuum, scrub & Pine-Sol all 800 square feet of my "hardwood" floors

Clean underneath the couch, bookcases, behind the TV, and under the bed

Scrub the blinds (YUK!)

409 the heck out of the bathroom! Maybe get hubby to re-caulk where the shower wall meets the tub.

Clean the mold off the baseboard in the bedroom (very poorly insulated window--ah the joys of renting!)

Scrub & polish the stainless microwave, dishwasher, fridge, and stove (they get streaky)

Change out our winter wardrobe for our summer clothes

J is going to attempt to clean and organize our basement storage closet

Measure the bedroom window for a new "blackout" curtain for summer day-sleeping

Hope I didn't forget anything. If so, oh well!

Our cleaning "reward" is going out with friends to a dueling piano bar tonight. So excited!
I hate scrubbing floors, so let's hope they're not too bad and that it gets done quickly!

What's your least favorite cleaning chore?