Pleats Are In Again

Hanging our curtains became an all weekend affair. Who would have thought a weekend would have been spent hanging 4 panels of IKEA curtains. We went to hang our new curtains on Friday night and soon realized we didn't want them to be hung with the clips like I had originally intended. Darcy won out on this and I'm glad he fought for the solution we came up with. We made our weekly pilgrimage to Home Depot on Friday night looking for rings and a solution to how to hang the curtains without the clips. 

We came up with using pleat hooks and the rings. At the time we didn't realize this was a common way to hang curtains and it would result in pleats. Da... After we got home we realized the pleat hooks we bought were not the right ones. They have a butterfly wing on each side and it wouldn't fit inside of the slots of the curtains. We searched all over GP finally finding them at Fabricland. If you are looking for anything related to curtains, drapes, rods or accessories head to Fabricland. We hit the jack pot. 

This will create a single pleat, double or triple pleat. These 2 videos helped to show me how to create the pleats and the different options for IKEA curtains. I love Google and You Tube for helping to come to decisions about how to do stuff. 

We chose to hang the curtain rod close to the ceiling because our ceilings are low. It helps to give the room a feeling of being higher than they really are. This site gives some great advice on how to far to place the curtains from the window frame. 

Fred Gonsowski Garden Home - The Right Way to Hang Curtains and Drapes

As Darcy was installing the rods, I went to work creating several different configurations and finally coming to this final product. It was 8 spaces, hook, 8 spaces and hook to create a single pleat. I tried double pleat and smaller pleats but it didn't quite look right. Pulling out and redoing 50 pleats can take it's toll on your fingers. Mine are killing me as I'm typing. 

We decided to hang the rod brackets 8 inches from the trim and the rod extended another foot past the bracket. We needed to do this because we used 4 panels and we wanted to have light coming in. 

 

Here is the final product. They just need to be hemmed and ironed. I'll tackle that this week. 

I've loved these curtains for years. I'm so happy with the way they've turned out. Darcy keeps saying I could look else where but what he doesn't realize is these were my inspiration for this room looking this way. It's calming and serene. Just what I need after a long day at work. 

We've Come A Long Way Baby

I've got so much to share but I wanted to update you on the new living room arrangement. It's not finished, mainly because we still have our double ovens sitting in the their. Oh I wish they would get installed but we've got to wait until the beginning of March when D's cousin can come up. 

The living room has been in many different states depending on what we were demolishing or repairing or painting. It's a large room but it's got this wall which extends into the space. I would have loved to have taken this wall/closet out and made the room a large rectangle but budget, wiring, heating/cooling vents and ceiling repairs prevented us from taking it out. Plus, it's my cleaning/storage/pantry closet now. 

Here's what the room looked like before we moved in. 

Yucky Hey!!!

Here's how it looked at various stages of renovations

Pre-hardwood flooring

After hardwood was installed and we could have some furniture to sit on. 

Here's the 75% finished room. 

My apologies for the terrible photos. I'm still learning how to use my camera and the light in the room isn't great. We're still trying to figure this part out as to the best places to have lamps and such. We would love pot lights, maybe when the electrician visits in March. Obviously, there needs to be some styling going on and it will come, but for now I think this is the arrangement we'll be going with. We need a different coffee table, some pictures up and the right side of the room is cluttered with double ovens, dog crates and dog beds. I'm confident it will get cleaned up, at least that's what I keep telling myself. One day!!!! I put up our curtains this weekend so my hope is to get that post done sometime this week, if you're interested please come back and visit. 

April

Kitchen Begins A New Life

The most exciting transformation to date has been the kitchen. Please note that it is not complete but we are slowing working towards it. Tearing out the cabinets was not that difficult but it sure made a huge difference as far as the look of the space. We started with the area where the fridge enclosure would go. This proved to be harder and more challenging than we anticipated. Building the high cabinets was not difficult but lifting and putting them into place was an exercise in strength, perseverance, and problem solving. These high cabinets must weigh about 100 or more pounds. It took some creative thinking and in the end we used my husbands car jack, placed a board on top to help distribute the weight of the cabinet. We could lift them and place legs underneath without straining ourselves.

I can't wait to get rid of these. 

Freshly painted while I was having a much needed massage.

I know it's a mess but we just needed places to store items from the counter top, off the floor and from the wall and base cabinets on the other side. 

We removed the tall cabinet, base cabinet and wall cabinet and replaced them with two high cabinets. The middle one will have a built in microwave and the smaller 15" will have drawers which pull out. Our reason for this was to not have stuff accumulate on this one little counter that was there as you can see in the before picture on the left. I don't want any unnecessary spaces. When we lived in this house 6 years ago, we really felt this space was not being utilized. 

Once this area of cabinets were built we now had places to place some of the simple kitchen items we needed while the other side of the kitchen was being torn out. It took us at least two weekends. The last one we really worked hard because we were under a deadline to complete the install before the carpenters came to install the hardwood flooring (this is a whole other post I will share in the future).

The cabinets are coming down, thank goodness. There were old, smelly and not in very good condition.

I can't wait to get rid of the corner cabinets. I think they are a waist of space and very impractical. 

Yahoo!!! 

Here it is painted and one of the new upper cabinets are installed. We were to have a 12" and an 18" cabinet on either side of the hood fan that will go up but we changed our minds. Instead the 12" cabinet will go on the left of this cabinet here. 

It has been so nice to get rid of the yellow wall colour and replace it with something more modern. We chose Benjamin Moore's Ranchwood as our wall colour. 

From here, work continued to remove upper cabinets and paint then came the base cabinets. Well this was quite the task. 

We're trying to figure out how we will cut the back of the sink cabinets out. We eventually figured it out. 

Wall has been painted and ready to have the new base cabinets installed.

Here's the end result for what got accomplished for this section of the kitchen. 

You'll see that Darcy did a fantastic job of cutting out the enclosure for the plumbing.

This is how the kitchen remained for about a month. We installed a temporary counter top that cost us about 36.00. It was a piece of melamine we cut in half and laid each piece on either side so we could at least have a cutting surface. 

This past weekend we installed the rest of the cabinets and the doors. The kitchen is slowly starting to take shape. I am very pleased with the progress we've made so far but more is needed to complete this project. Here's what needs to be done before it is finished. 

1. Counter top to be installed
2. Electrical for double oven 
3. Double ovens to be installed
4. Rest of wall cabinets installed
5. Doors and drawers installed
6. Toe kicks 
7. Final plinths on each side of cabinets
8. Crown moulding
9. Moulding under counters
10. Hood fan hooked up
11. Stove top installed
12. Fridge to be placed
13. Island to be built
14. Placement of where island to go (I'll need your help on a decision for this one)
15. Butcher block on island
16. Organize cabinets and unpack kitchen boxes

Please come back to visit to see what the latest look of the kitchen is now and to see the progress that has been made. Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.

April