The Furniture is Here!

In a previous post, I wrote about our experience picking out our furniture at Rooms To Go... do you know when that was? That was May 4th... almost 2 months ago. For 2 freaking months we've been without a place to sit or lay down in our home... until today.

We were actually running late to meet them, so when we got there the guys (and there were only two of them--- beastly) had pretty much already unloaded the truck. Within a few minutes, this is what we had.

We pretty much when from zero to sixty as far as furniture goes. It was a pretty good feeling... kind of like they delivered and Instant House.

The only thing we had them assemble and set up was the bedroom furniture... and it was pretty much so we could unpack this:

 Yes, our memory foam mattress. We had to unleash it for the world to enjoy... or for at least Marco to enjoy.

And here are a few shots of our bedroom furniture fully assembled.

And a very exciting picture of Nicole vs. Packing Plastic.

Spray Painting Bathroom Hardware

We've probably been over the fact that we're cheap, right?

So naturally, instead of buying new hardware for the bathroom cabinets, we decided to recycle them.

We used Krylon's Brushed Metallic Spray Paint in Oil Rubbed Bronze. And then topped it with a coat of Krylon Triple-Thick Clear Glaze

On Sunday, I started with the hinges from the bathroom cabinets. The were nasty, gold, and rusting. They really needed this.

Door hinges, before.

I sprayed them a total of 3 times (once for each side). Then hit them with clear glaze.

Door Hinges, finished.

So after that was done, we decided to tackle the cabinet handles. We actually only needed to paint one set, since the other set (in the Master Bath) didn't match at all. We bought new handles from Lowe's (the 3 in. "Davis" pull by allen + roth) that would kind of look similar. I wanted everything to match, but Mike made me realize that they are two different bathrooms, and rarely would I be seeing all the handles at once.

New vs. Old

We installed the new handles first, since that was the easiest part.

Then it was time to spray the handles for the guest bathroom. Mike had seen a really efficient way to spray paint door hardware on HGTV awhile ago. You just grab some toothpicks and stick whatever you're spraying into a block of Styrofoam. That way you can get all sides easily.

Handles before...

Handles after.

Handles attached.

The weird white sheen on the handles is from the clear gloss spray paint. It's not as noticeable in real life.

Best Place Ever: The Rooms To Go Outlet

Today we took another one of those huge grown up steps. We bought more furniture. Furniture that brings us a few steps closer to actually living in the house we've been painstakingly renovating.

The only pieces of huge furniture we really still needed we a dining room table, and a mattress. And since we had been there before, and saw really great prices on really great furniture, we decided to go back to the Rooms To Go Outlet in Norcross.

Since most everything we bought was on clearance, its hard to find links to it on the RTG website. But after a quick Google search, I found a few pictures of the exact items or similar.

Mike has had a pretty specific idea of the type of mattress he wants for a long time. This is of course his first house, which means that this is his first real adult mattress... the first mattress that he has a choice in, that isn't a hand-me-down, or cheap apartment mattress. Unfortunately, since his desired mattress, a Tempur-Pedic, is a million dollars (not, actually), we tried to find an alternative.


We sat on every bed in the mattress section, and kept coming back to the Simmons ComforPedic Loft Illumination Plush Drop Top.

Sleeping on this thing will be an epic experience.


Next, we got a dining room table. I wanted a counter-height table. Not sure why, but I did. All the ones they had there were pretty ugly, though. So that was a fail. We ended up find a really awesome alternative. I'm not sure of that the name of it is at Rooms To Go (its no longer on their website). But, I found the same table a local furniture store.

Our dining room table has a bench. How cool is that? Because we don't actually know. The cool-ness of said table will be determined in its application.


We also picked up something extra.

This is the Maddox Storage Bench. We have been looking for a storage bench for the end of our bed for awhile. This one was $100 OFF. Seriously. We couldn't pass it up. For the record, it is not perfect. The closing and opening mechanism is kind of off, but nothing we can't fix.

We decided since we have a truck now, we would just take all of our stuff home today. Our sofas and bedroom set are going to be delivered from the regular RTG store on Thursday.

Mike signing for our items.

Very exciting stuff. It's all in the garage, but still, very exciting.


For fun. Mike in the giant chair at the RTG Outlet.

Painting the Bathroom Cabinets

A few posts ago, I showed pictures of the new Baltic Brown granite bathroom countertops. And in this post, I (think) I mentioned that the cabinets would not remain white for much longer.

Yeah, I know. Why would we change those cute dingy not-so-white cabinets? They have such nice mismatched hardware, too... :-X

So the first step was buying paint. I went to Lowe's (which I never do, this was my first time buying paint from them) and picked out a few colors.

Deep Earth vs. Dark Granite

Mike and I had originally picked "Deep Earth" by Valspar, but when I went to go buy the quart of it, my wallet had a change of heart. So, I tried to find a close match in the Olympic brand, which is 5 dollars cheaper per quart than Valspar. The color I picked was "Dark Granite", which seemed appropriate.

Something amazing happened while I was waiting for my paint to be mixed. The girl at the counter made a huge mistake.

She accidentally mixed a gallon of it. SCORE! Instead of Oops!-ing it out and remixing my quart, she just marked it down to the quart price. So now, I have more than enough for any thing I want to paint Dark Granite in the house.

Since the cabinets we're white, I didn't have to prime them. I did wipe them down and steel wool them were necessary. Then I got to painting. It took almost 3 coats to get them to look the way I wanted. I'm going to say that that was due too the semi-gloss sheen of the paint, and the glossiness of the previous paint.

This would be the end result.

Its kind of crazy how much better it looks. We still have to get new hardware, but this is pretty amazing so far.

Our BRIGHT Front Door

We once had a red door.

By once, I mean this afternoon.

We also had brass hardware. Red and gold have never been my favorite color combination.

We decided that this needed to change. Not only was it boring and old, but it was poorly painted (shocker) and sticking to the frame.

We had a lot of extra paint left over from the master bedroom accent wall; Blue Agave by BEHR.

And since we're both down for saving money, we decided we could deal with a light turquoise door.

I primed it out first using Kilz.

And this is how it turned out.

We also changed all of the hardware to brushed nickel.

From the street it looks SO much better.

The obligatory before and after:

The only problem with this little project is the fact that we just used a flat sheen to paint our front door. Not ideal, but we will figure out how to deal with this later.

Our Old Ugly Sink... is Sunk.

That was corny.

But our new sinks... are far from that.

If you don't remember our old sinks... this is what they looked like.

Over the weekend, Alejandro offered to put in the granite that we picked. Its cool, because he actually has a lot of granite on hand. So all we had to do was tell him which one we liked, and he would cut and install the sinks for us.

We picked Baltic Brown.

 We gave Alejandro a key, and since we both work, we didn't get to see the sinks until today.

We couldn't be happier with our choice. We are going to paint the white cabinets a dark brown, and install vessel sinks (Alejandro is going to cut the holes later). These are the sinks we're thinking about.

For side-by-side reference, here is the before and after.

We Love FREE

Nothing is better than getting something for free.

Actually, one thing is better. Getting AMAZING stuff for free.

By way of my Aunt Rita and my mom, we became the owners of a lot of cool stuff today.

All in all, we walked away with:

• A box of light switch plate covers.
• A storage cabinet for the bathroom.
• A wicker bistro table set
• 1 over-sized wicker chair (that doesn't match the set).
• A mail box.
• Numerous decorative bowls.
• An IKEA Malm side table.
• A white Budda head.

Yes. A white Budda head.

My new BFF.

We plan on spray painting most of these things obnoxious colors. Especially the buddah. We've contemplate lime green (my aunt had a full-sized one this color), turquoise, and silver.

Stay tuned.

Bye Bye Bad Flooring PT. 2

 We have updates on the flooring.

Firstly... This is what our floor looked like yesterday morning.

This is what it looked like when we left last night.

And this is what it looks like today.

Oww owww.

It still needs to be sealed and what not, but this is very exciting.

Alejandro is also almost finished with the bathrooms upstairs. They looked like this yesterday.

And now:

Yes, so that's the update on that.

We also decided to start progress on another nasty problem in the house: The carpet.

Not a great picture, but EW, right? It was actually relatively new carpet. But these people were just THAT dirty.

We took up all the carpet in all of the bedrooms, but we still have the hallway and stairway to do.

We decided to go back to a place we found while we were driving one day: Dalton Direct Carpet Outlet Inc. in Norcross.

The remnant warehouse.

We don't need that much, so we went to the their showroom/warehouse and looked for a piece for our project.

After 30 seconds of looking, we both saw one that we loved.

It's the Casanova carpet by Beaulieu, in the color Delta Sands (buy here). We a little under $300 for the whole remnant piece, which will cover the hallway, closets, and stairs. And since we're going to put it in ourselves, labor costs will be $0. And that's a win.

Here is an upclose shot.

We liked it because its a really tightly woven carpet. So, when we get our dog we don't have to worry about him/her pulling it up.

So that's the end of part 2 of our Horrible Flooring Adventure. More to come soon.