Painting Kitchen Cabinets: Part 1 Prepping

Yes you read the title of the blog right, our kitchen cabinets are in the process of being painted! THEY ARE FINALLY GETTTING PAINTED WHITE!! I can’t say that or read that enough. If fact, while sanding the cabinets while my neighbors glanced in curiosity of what I was doing, I wanted to shout and tell them all. Literally, I thought this day was never going to come so it’s surreal that it’s finally here and I’m doing it. It’s happening and there’s no going back now!!

Some of you might be confused because I’ve gone back and forth on this project many times on the blog and you might be thinking,  ‘wait, I swear you wrote a blog post the other month about you keeping the orange maple cabinets!’. To spare you all from my own marital DIY home improvement project drama,  (If you have ever worked on a project around the house with your spouse, you know this is real thing), simply put my husband changed his mind like 10 times of whether he was ok with it and after much begging and reiterating how much better it will look with the rest of our house and the added value it will bring(since he is numbers person) he finally was okay with it. Right when he approval I jumped on it so he wouldn’t have time to change it.  Also, a huge reason why he didn’t want to do the project was because how time consuming it is and he didn’t want to have to do it, so I have signed up to tackle this project on my own! 

OK now that you have the background story let’s start talking getting into the fun project details! I’m going to break this kitchen project up into multiple posts, so today I’m sharing the prepping steps. 

First let me take you on a walk down memory lane of the progress of our kitchen so far. He is what we started with...

Ottoman Coffee Table Ideas

Dining Room Design Board & Dining Table Must-Haves

The other weekend I was over at my parents house to celebrate my father’s birthday. If any of you know me personally or have been following me on Instagram for a long time, then you might know that my parents were living in OR for the past couple of years. This May, however, they made the decision to move back to Michigan and only be 1 hour away from me. This change has been pretty exciting for me, to say the least. 

Anyways, in my parents new home they have a formal dining room, so when they had everyone over for dinner my mom realized she had no table settings to create a tablescape so she enlisted me to bring some of my own stuff.  which I happily brought. After the fact, though, she decided it was about time to get her own stuff and spruce up the dining room so I was happy to help her out! 

Here is the design board that I created using some of her existing stuff to keep it an easy transformation. It was fun to create because it challenged me to create something beyond my own personal style! 

Sources 

Light fixture ||  Hurricane Candle Holder ||  Greenery Centerpiece || Table Runner ||  Charger ||  Napkin ||  Napkin Ring

My goal in the design board was to keep it rather simple and something that can last throughout the year. I myself like to change things up regularly, but I can respect those like my Mom that like things more permanent.

Once I started searching for sources for her, I quickly realized that there were so many knockoffs for higher end products. That said, I created a splurge vs. save image and sources for those of you who might not like to invest top dollar in home décor items like my myself:)  I couldn’t believe in some cases the items were exactly the same!

Sources 

Charger Splurge \\  Charger Save 

Table Runner Splurge \\  Table Runner Save

Napkin Splurge \\  Napkin Save 

Napkin Ring Splurge \\  Napkin Ring Save

Hurricane Holder splurge \\  Hurricane Holder Save 

Centerpiece Splurge \\  Centerpiece Save

Thanks for stopping by! Fall is finally here so I'm SO excited to start my projects again and share them with you! Stay Tuned:) 

Portland, Seattle & Vancouver Recap & Travel Guide

Hi there! As I'm sure you've probably noticed (or possibly not), I've taken a lot of time to myself these past few months and haven been pretty MIA on the blog.  Last summer we spent a lot of it working on home projects, so this year we decided to lay off the projects and try to soak up this summer as much as possible. So although us being busy making memories this summer (and me training for a half marathon) has meant me be being MIA on the blog, I feel like I have been re-inspired and I’m excited to begin posting more often and get back to home projects! Before jumping back into home stuff, though, I thought I would share a recap and travel guide to our road trip to the Pacific Northwest that we got back from a week ago!    

On our Pacific Northwest road trip we went to Portland, OR the Oregon coast, Seattle and Vancouver and boy was it beautiful. I had been to all these places before when I was a teenager, except for the Oregon coast, but this was Paul's first time to all these cities so it was exciting exploring the cities with him  as an adult and finding our own favorite spots. 

Keep reading to see what our favorite places were in each city!