If you know us at all, you know that we spend many many hours & weekends updating our little house. We love it here, but we can always find something that needs improving. We have decided that our goal is to have everything (mostly) completed by the time the second baby gets here...HOLD ON before you start thinking I am preggo, because I am not currently, nor are we officially "trying." I feel sure though, that we will be sooner rather than later, and we would like to be able to enjoy the two kiddos in this house without always having a new project on the weekends.
Two of our fans are really outdated & are covered in brass (one with white blades & one with wooded ones), so I decided that was an easy fix. Fans are what, $50 a piece? So...I bought one at Walmart, but once I got it home, I realized there was an even easier solution to this problem...PAINT! This is usually my solution to most home-related problems (more specifically BLACK paint is), but I never thought to paint my fans. But I did. And now they look completely different, and I think the total cost for updating two fans cost me $7, because I just needed one can of spray paint (I have a large collection in my garage already). I painted the one in the living room to look like it is brown iron & I painted the blades black. I painted the one in our bedroom black and the blades "latte" which is the color of my walls. Brilliant, right? Before you try this at home, I urge you to spray-prime at least the brass part of your fan with Kilz spray paint primer, so it will stick better. Check out the photos of my new fans (above)! I included some close-ups and some that are not so you can tell which fan goes in which room (phew, I knew you were worried).
I also broke down & finally bought door knobs. Our door knobs are also brass, and even though most people don't notice it when they walk into my house, it has been driving me insane after living here for 3 years! The trend I am seeing in the newer homes is to do everything in "venetian bronze" which is basically a heavy iron look. HOWEVER, my genius sis-in-law, who happens to be in the know of the plumbing/fixtures business, says that the bronze will be out just like brass was...in a few years. So, in her opinion, the safest & most timeless route to go is a silver hue. That leaves us with the following choices: satin nickel or satin chrome. Because all of my bathroom & kitchen fixtures are already chrome, I chose satin chrome for all of my interior knobs. I did go with the venetian bronze for the exterior of my front door, but I only did that because I have a lot of brown iron on my front patio. Anyway, it has taken me a really long time to gather up the nerve to spend a couple hundred bucks on freaking door knobs! Who does that? I sat looking at my cart filled with 15 items on knobsets.com for at least 3 days trying to come up with a more practical, cheaper alternative. No such luck, peeps, and you know what? When I finally clicked "submit order," I felt a huge rush of excitement to finally do something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I never knew I could be so pumped about door knobs, but I am. They are supposed to arrive on Monday, and I can hardly wait! Sad what is exciting to you when you get old.
As we speak, my precious hubby is outside working on his garage/man room. That's right...we're semi-converting the garage to a functional space in our home. We never park there, so it really is just wasted space. Blake managed to hang, tape & float all of the sheetrock completely by himself, and it looks amazing. He is sanding it all down now, so that we can paint the walls, the ceiling and the floor tomorrow & have it complete by the end of this weekend. It's going to be a great game-space for adults/guys to hang out with a couch, a TV, a firepit & of course, Blake has already managed to figure out how to run our in-ceiling speaker system to the garage, so we can have music in there. I'll of course post some photos of the final product when we are finished. The goal is to be done by this weekend (we'll see).
I will keep y'all posted on all of our improvements in the coming months. Some biggies that will be coming up are the master bath, the kitchen appliances, and building an arbor over our patio in the backyard. For now, enjoy the pictures of my beautiful fans. Can you tell I'm just a little smug? I felt like I won, when I returned the $65 fan I bought to Walmart. Good times.
Note: Thank you Katie for inspiring me to return to blogging with subject matter I can truly be passionate about.
