Quick & Easy DIY

This little project was sooo easy and painless but turned out really beautiful. It actually exceeded my expectations!

I've been working on the home office for one of my clients. She works from home so the office must be super functional. I decided to have two desks for her - a "work" desk for her 9 to 5 and her "life" desk for everything else.

For her "work" desk, this was our inspiration:



I went with these elements from IKEA to "build" her desk:

1, 2, 3

When I purchased the top, I knew I would have to stain it to achieve the same look as the inspiration picture. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to find the desk top to be in it's completely natural state - no sanding was required!! Hence the "quick and easy" part of this DIY.

I pre-treated the wood with this:



I then used this stain:



The color is "Early American" and the little can is more than enough for this project. I used two coats and followed the instructions on the can.

Once the stain was completely dry, I used two coats of this (again, following the instructions on the can):



I used satin because I just wanted that subtle glow, like well-oiled wood. I'm not a huge fan of gloss on wood.

And here is how it turned out - very similar to the inspiration picture!





I snapped this picture last week after putting together the desk storage pieces:



I'll be bringing their top over later today :)

Slowly Moving Along...

On Friday our granite was finally installed!! Yay! It's funny, we thought this kitchen project was going to be really quick and easy and of course that's never how things turn out with home updates!

Here are some (bad) iPhone pictures to show the progress:

Now that the granite is in, we're having issues with the stove. Our stove is ANCIENT, but we really wanted to keep it for now. Honestly, it still works great, and I like how it looks better than the cheapy ones now that they sell at Lowe's and Home Depot. Of course the ones both Matt and I like are $1,000+. We're really hoping to make the one we have now work, but I will need to have my handyman come out and see if we can. Since the counters are thicker, it needs to be heightened... so we'll see.

And, as you can see, next up is the backsplash project! I'll definitely be sharing my DIY adventures with you about that. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get to it though... ah!

So that's the latest with the kitchen, it's definitely a very slow moving (and frustrating) project! I can't wait until it's finished :)

Kitchen Update

It's funny.. we set out on updating our kitchen with the hopes that it would be a really quick & easy job, but of course that's never how things go when you renovate something in your home!

Earlier this week, our dishwasher just happened to die right in the middle of things. As much as that new expense sucked, it worked out pretty well! We were able to find a gently used stainless steel dishwasher on Craigslist and the guy selling it was a repair guy. He ended up removing our old dishwasher (and disposed of it), and delivered/installed the new one for a REALLY great price! It worked out so perfectly!

You can see our old dishwasher in this picture:

I'm going to keep it real here.... our kitchen is a DISASTER zone. Here are pictures of it this morning:

And here is our "new to us" dishwasher.. it's still sticking out because we're going to push it back in when the counters are installed. You can also note that half our counters have been pulled up.. ha!

 We are also living with our fridge pulled completely out.. it's crazy over here!

The counters are going in tomorrow (yay!!) and the floors are being installed on Saturday. After all the back and forth with the floor tile, we finally have all the tile purchased and I laid some out to get a feel for it. It's just a basic neutral, but it flows perfectly with our carpet which is what I was looking for!

I'm praying everything returns back to some sort of livable normalcy by the end of the weekend.

So here are the plans once the counters and floors are in. We are keeping our current fridge and stove for now. We can always replace those later down the road, but truth is we'd probably move before investing in those pricey appliances. 

We will be replacing the old, ugly hood range with this stainless steel one from Lowe's: 

Then comes the DIY backsplash project! I found this post from Dream Book Design to be very helpful: 

They used a product called Bondera, and we plan on doing the same. It's a bit pricey, BUT it will save us time and energy, which is well worth it. 

I'll be using this basic white subway tile from Home Depot:

I'm planning on using medium gray grout, similar to this: 

via

I'm using Oyster Gray grout on our floors, and considered using that on our backsplash as well, but then I found this picture and it looks a little light. 

Oyster Gray Grout via The Inspired Room

I'll probably go one shade darker since our counters are dark gray/almost black!

And that's where we are currently at with the kitchen! Hopefully everything will go well and we'll be ready to tackle the backsplash on Monday! :)