the o'herbert fam

bathrooms!

2012-12-07T22:46:00.000-06:00

hello everyone!

it has been forever since we have updated you on our house projects! that doesn't mean we haven't been busy though! we've just been working on several things at once, and are finally finished and able to show you our work!

we have finally finished both bathrooms. this has been a multi-step project...

1.) replace the vanity countertops

2.) stain the cabinets

3.) paint

4.) frame the mirrors

let's start with the guest bathroom...

our house came with lovely blue swirl vanities with the seashell sinks. you know what i'm talking about? (not the best picture of the sink, but it'll work for now. there's a better one of the sinks in the master bathroom below.)

we knew we wanted to replace the vanities when we bought the house, so in july, we started shopping around for a new vanity. the sizes of our vanities weren't the standard sizes so we were going to have to buy custom sizes. custom = expensive. however, after shopping around, we were able to find a local place that was less than half the price of what lowe's and home depot quoted us. yay local shopping!

to make it cheaper, ash and i did the demo and removed the old vanities and mirrors ourselves.

once the new vanities were installed, we moved on to staining the wood. we used general finishes java gel stain and general finishes satin poly coat, both available from amazon! it was easy, and looks great (in my opinion) so i highly recommend!

after the vanities and cabinets were finished, we moved on to the paint. it was extremely difficult for me to find a neutral color paint that didn't clash with the neutral colored vanity. after many trips to lowe's, i finally found the perfect color! (and i LOVE this color and will probably use it in all of my future houses as my neutral color.) :)

this shows all of my paint sampling! (unfortunately, the winner is not shown on here.) :)

also, i was able to convince ash that we should frame the mirrors. :) (i am thankful he's a good sport!) i am convinced that there is going to be some wife that looks at our house and decides to rent it because of the framed mirrors. and a rented house will make both of us happy!

ready for the final product?!?

i know, those aren't the best pictures, but have you ever tried to take a picture of your guest bathroom?!? they are such tiny rooms, it's a hard thing to do.

now... on to the master bathroom! we did the same process as the guest bathroom, so i'm just going to show you the pictures!

ohh, i also painted our light fixture with an oil rubbed bronze spray paint (thanks les!), and i think it made a HUGE difference! so make sure you check that out below! (fake out, i just realized the before pictures don't show the light. sorry!) i used this spray paint from lowe's, and it was easy. i read online different ways to get the oil rubbed bronze look, first paint black, and then brown, and then.. i forget the rest, and it doesn't matter. buy this paint. it's all you need.

before:

after:

before:

after:

so there ya go! our bathrooms are finally finished! :) thanks for making it to the end of this post! :)

living room finished (kind of?)

2012-08-17T17:38:00.000-05:00

**disclaimer: i wrote this post on july 20, but i needed one last picture of the finished living room. i thought i'd take it that weekend and finish the post. welp, it's august 18th now, so enjoy! :)

heyy everyone!

our living room is pretty much finished, so i thought i'd go ahead and blog about it! i still have to touch up the baseboards, BUT... i don't feel like doing that right now, so it's on hold. :) (and i'm more excited about my next project than i am about painting baseboards!)

we had ashton's boss (a general) and his family, along with the rest of ashton's work team, over for dinner last week, so my goal was to have the living room done before that dinner. and it was as done then as it is now, so i felt pretty successful! :) for those of you who were wondering, the dinner went great! i made a meal of my favorites... butter chicken, sweet green beans, salad and garlic bread. they all seemed to enjoy the meal, and i know one of them asked for the recipes and i believe has made the chicken and green beans since then. ashton told me after the dinner that i had passed the army wife course of hosting a dinner party, so i think that's a good sign. :) (but les, i don't have any pictures for you of the actual dinner. just a picture of the roses i got for the table. $6 at heb!)

back to the living room...

when we bought the house, the living room walls were a dark brown. honestly, it wasn't too bad, but it did make the room pretty dark. i was too indecisive and couldn't figure out what color i wanted - i just knew i wanted a neutral color. (i thought that would narrow down the choices for me. do you know how many neutral options there are to choose from?!?) so i put it out for a facebook vote! luckily, everyone voted for the one that we were leaning towards, so that was a big confidence booster!

and the winner is... D! :)

there were two weeks in june where ashton had to work from 5am-10pm pretty much every day (i mentioned this in our no spend june post). so for whatever reason, i decided that would be a good time for me to do the living room. by myself. well, mostly - ashton helped when he was around and available, which i greatly appreciated. so i primed, and painted, and went back and did most of the touch ups (still a few left to be done). we purchased new blinds for the windows, and ashton installed those. AND... he installed the floor transitions between the living room and kitchen, and the living room and entry way. there weren't any transitions in those two locations, so we had searched home depot and lowe's trying to find something that would work. we looked and looked and couldn't find anything. at one point, we were cleaning out the garage, putting some things in the attic, and what do you know? floor transitions! they hadn't been stained, but ashton took care of that and installed them and it's wonderful!

before i show you the final picture, i always like to go back to a before picture, so here ya go!

before we moved in:

before, but with our furniture:

okay, perhaps not the best before pictures. but here are some after pictures:

i know what you're saying... anne, you didn't really decorate the living room. i know, i know... but i'm now in the "i'm moving in less than six months, so i'm more concerned about making it rent-able" mode.

with the living room done, what's next? well, i am very excited to start on the bathrooms. we're going to paint the walls, color still to be determined. i found this lovely gem online last week and i am so excited. she shows her before and after of staining bathroom cabinets, and the after pictures look so great! i have already ordered the stains, and the new hardware for sink/shower (we're changing to bronze). i also shopped around for new countertops. and i found a winner, so get excited! there will be some new posts soon! :)

july meals!

2012-07-13T23:17:00.002-05:00

i absolutely loved having a month of menus in june, so we decided to repeat it for july! i still use the spreadsheet that i shared with y'all last month, but i didn't like the way it uploaded on here. AND one of my sisters asked me to link to recipes, when possible. soo... with that in mind, i'm going to do this month's a little different.

July 1st - crockpot bbq chicken drumsticks

2nd - honey pork chops

3rd - gone

4th - gone

5th - chef's salad with bacon, ham, eggs, cheese, cucumbers, carrots, croutons

6th - pancakes

7th - bbq chicken leg quarters (on the grill)

8th - cranberry pork tenderloin

9th - italian crockpot chicken

10th - lasagna

11th - DB sausage

12th - chicken breasts in phyllo

13th - breakfast burritos

14th - bbq chicken pizza

15th - turkey & dressing

16th - butter chicken

17th - buffalo chicken garbage bread

18th - pizza

19th - sub sandwiches

20th - teriyaki chicken

21st - pork spareribs

22nd - roast

23rd - hamburgers

24th - cheesy chicken bundles

25th - italian breaded pork chops

26th - chicken crescent squares

27th - family reunion

28th - family reunion

29th - buffalo chicken sandwiches

30th - EAT OUT! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! :)

31st - cheddar bacon chicken

i tried to link to as many recipes as possible! enjoy! :)

anne

nephews and the fourth of july!

2012-07-13T22:54:00.002-05:00

hello everyone!

apparently, i'm not as good at this blogging thing as i had hoped! life gets busy, and i get distracted. i have all kinds of fun things to share though, so i'm going to back up a bit in our lives. :)

we babysat my three nephews for a weekend while my sister and her husband escaped for their anniversary. and oh my goodness. these boys are precious and very well behaved, but we learned very quickly how tiring it is to have kids. especially three at once. i used to say i wanted to have twins or triplets the first time i'm pregnant, but i think i'm taking that back now. (no offense, jen - you know i love your boys!) we had a lot of fun with them... we made cars out of cardboard boxes for their drive-in theater we had planned for saturday night. we went to the lake and the big boys got to go down the slides (over and over and over) while the little one hung out with us, and then everyone got to play in the lake for a bit. (the little one spent the entire time "helping" by throwing the sand back into the lake, haha.) the big boys went bowling with ash (while the little one and i napped, haha). oh, and we can't forget working out - it was a combination of stroller riding, scooter driving, and racing the dog. these kids were as worn out as we were!

we spent the fourth of july with ashton's family at the lake. lots of good food and fun times on the lake! it was a short trip, and we had to drive home during the normal firework time, so we kind of had a traveling show. we saw fireworks all over the place on the drive home. also, you'll notice that together, he and i make red, white and blue. :)

also, on a sidenote, a different sister of mine and her husband have officially adopted the little boy and girl they had been fostering. which means that i can now show you this adorable picture of my nephew and his pet mouse! (in case you can't tell, that's a computer mouse, haha.)

one of several posts coming tonight, so be on the lookout! :)

anne

no spend june

2012-06-19T11:48:00.003-05:00

hey everyone!

this post is going to be a bit different from our normal house updates, but i've had several people ask for this info, so i thought i'd use the blog to share the info!

we have named june our "no spend" month. i've seen lots of variations of this on other blogs, but for us, it just meant that we were not going to spend money eating out this month. (with a few exceptions... we had already planned a weekend trip with friends, but we still took sandwiches and actually only paid for 2 meals out. and then i surprised my dad for father's day, and my sisters and i all chipped in to pick up bbq for lunch with him, so i spent money then too.)

at the end of may, i sat down and came up with a meal for each day in june and then went through and made a huge shopping list for the entire month. which seemed crazy at the time, but i have enjoyed not having to go to the grocery store each week except for some milk or bread. (another exception... chicken wasn't on sale when i went on my first trip, so i waited a week before i bought it and was able to save $35. thank you mom for telling me to wait until it's $1.97/lb.)

we don't stick to the calendar 100%. we change it up depending on what's going on, or how much energy i have to cook, but the great thing is that i have 30 choices ready for me to choose from, and we're not having those "what are we going to do for dinner?" moments.

the other side of this is that we weren't going to be able to pick up food for breakfast/lunch. this was definitely a bigger problem for me than for the hubs (i have a sonic right down the street from work), so we had to plan our meals and make enough for dinners that we had enough leftovers for lunch the next day. to make it even more interesting... ash has had CRAZY work weeks these past two weeks. i'm talking leaving the house at 5:30am (or earlier) and not getting home until after 10pm, so that means lots of leftovers for him to take!

anyways, friends and family who have heard about this have asked us to share the month's menus, so scroll down for our june menus! the calendar uploads pretty small, but there is a link above it that says june 2012 menu, so you can click on that and it will take you to a different site where you can enlarge the menu. if you want recipes, let me know and i can share those, too! AND... if you have any other good meals you think i should try out, feel free to share those too!

OHH, also, today i was looking online for a menu calendar so i could put the meals in it to post on here and i found a really cool one that you should check out if you start this. it's an excel spreadsheet that allows you to store meals and sides on there, and then you can just pick from a drop down menu. i imagine this will be soo helpful when i'm stuck and can't think of any other ideas to add to the calendar... click on this link: Monthly Menu Calendar.

June 2012 Menu

kitchen is finished! :)

2012-05-28T14:11:00.000-05:00

hello!

this weekend, we have officially finished the kitchen and dining room! (well, until i decide that i actually do want to repaint the walls, which i'm already leaning towards now.)

we painted below the chair rail the same color that was above the rail, so now our kitchen is very yellow! i guess i can't complain, it was so dark before we did anything and we certainly don't have that problem now! :)

i wanted to put something up on our wall in the dining room, but had a hard time figuring out what i wanted. the final product? framed napkins! and i LOVE them! i cut each of the napkins to show different parts, resulting in three coordinating prints! :)

my sister, J, gave me this cool chalkboard as a housewarming present. it is a cabinet door that has been repainted red, and then painted with chalkboard paint. i LOVE this! it was originally going to go in my laundry room, but once i saw it in person, i decided it was too cute to be hidden. so... it is now my menu board!

other than that, the weekend has been spent fixing the fence and gate so our dog can't get out, fixing fans, light switches, ya know... fun things like that.

since we are officially done with the kitchen, i wanted to show some before and after pictures...

before:

after:

before:

after:

before:

after:

before:

after:

so with the kitchen being done, what's next? well, we're going to repaint the living room probably first, and eventually the guest bedroom and office. we're also planning on tackling the yard sometime in june. we'll be sure to keep everyone updated!

crafty projects!

2012-05-21T21:37:00.000-05:00

hello everyone! i can't believe it's been a month and a half since i've posted. well, looking back on the past month and a half, i guess i can believe it. the hubs and i have been super busy - one of my best friend's wedding, girls weekend with my sisters, the hubs' trips to mississippi (had to sing the little song to make sure i spelled that right!) and canada, and the hubs' brother's high school graduation in oklahoma (where the wind comes sweeping down the plains!). we have done a few random projects since the last time i posted, so i thought i would go ahead and update you on those since we are hoping to knock out some bigger projects this next weekend. (hey four day weekend!)

hmm, first off, we'll start with the guest bathroom. our guest bathroom is perfect for us - it's small, but we don't have kids who would be fighting over it. and we only have guests occasionally. however, when my mom stayed with us, she decided it was lacking some storage space. which i agreed with, i just hadn't spent much time trying to figure out how to fix that problem. mom (and sisters!) to the rescue! when my mom was visiting one of my sisters (L), she saw that L had done this (or something similar) in her guest bathroom, so mom took another sister (J) with her later to hobby lobby to help pick out some baskets. they did such a great job! i love them! :) mom brought the baskets to me when she came to help decorate above the cabinets, but we didn't have time to put them up that week.

here's our before picture:

the madre showing me just how she wanted the baskets:

and the final project! yay for towel storage! :)

for a few security projects (don't worry, i have more crafty projects!)...

the previous owners took the door that led from the garage into the house with them. why? who knows?!? so we bought a new door and ash installed it. we still need to install the molding around the door, which will probably happen this next weekend. look at him work!

we had been planning to put 2 inch blinds in our dining room and living room, but hadn't quite gotten to that yet. however, we had a creeper experience, so we quickly decided we needed something over our windows. we went ghetto for one night and threw up a sheet, but then bought and installed blinds the next day.

ghetto sheet...

finishing the installation...

back to crafts!

we have received a lot of housewarming cards, birthday cards, birthday party invitations, wedding invitations, etc. and we used to put them all on the refrigerator. there's just something about a stainless steel fridge that made me not want to put all of these invitations on there, so i wanted to come up with a cool alternative. i didn't realize this at the time, but i stole the idea from pinterest (i saw it on one of my boards after i purchased this).

easter weekend, ash and i went to the warrenton antique festival with my family, and the only thing i was looking for was a shutter. (and that's the only thing i left with too!)

i tied some burlap-y ribbon to the shutter and have it hanging from the top of the cabinet. this cabinet is actually the pantry and you see this side as you walk into the kitchen.

clothespins don't work so well, so i found some clips and attached them to the shutter.

and then i found all of the cards we had around the house and added them to the shutter!

there is one more crafty project that i've done, but i'm going to wait until they're actually being displayed in our house before i post about that one. (fingers crossed - this weekend!) keywords: framed napkins.

okay, well, i think you're pretty much up to date now! hopefully we'll have some new posts for you this weekend!

kitchen projects part 5 (painting and decorating)

2012-04-01T12:26:00.001-05:00

yay, we should be up to date now, so you can pretend that today's blog is written today. :)

my mom is the family expert at decorating tops of kitchen cabinets. we also have this random ledge in the dining room (attached to the kitchen) so i called mom up for her ideas because i wanted it to coordinate with the tops of the cabinets. when mom came up over spring break, she told me she had an idea for the cabinets, but she wouldn't tell me until she saw the cabinets and ledge in person. what was her idea? lanterns! so i got busy buying lanterns. (thank you hobby lobby for having a huge sale!)

unfortunately, we were not quite ready for cabinet decorating when she was here over spring break (floors weren't in, walls not painted, etc.), so she was so kind to take off two days of work this past week and come help us.

i guess i should back up a little... last saturday and sunday (the 24th-25th), ashton and i primed the dining room area and then painted both the kitchen and dining room. we painted it a yellow color. kind of a bright yellow. i'm still not sure this is the best yellow for the room, but i think this color is staying.

mom came in on monday night and stayed until wednesday afternoon - helping us decorate the kitchen, clean the kitchen and living room, AND rearrange the living room. she did such a great job with all of this!

we were able to place some of our treasures up on the cabinets... such as a vase ashton brought back from afghanistan, a clay heart that ashton's mom made for us and used at our rehearsal dinner, a flower print my dad gave me for christmas one year, and other little things we've collected over the years.

so here you go... some finished pictures of our kitchen cabinet decorations!

kitchen projects part 4 (tiling the floor)

2012-03-31T23:27:00.000-05:00

we'll say this post was written on friday, march 23.

before we start, i want to remind you what the floor looked like before...

all right... everyone got those lovely green tiles in their mind? good, let's begin! :)

ashton had thursday and friday (march 15-16) off from work, so his plan was to lay the new tile floor on his days off. so wednesday evening, we went to lowe's and picked out our grout and all of our tiling supplies. on thursday, ashton removed the last few tiles that were left in the kitchen (under the fridge and stove where i couldn't reach) as well as the tiles in our laundry room (connected to the kitchen). he also had to prep the floor with this flexible floor sealant (which you'll see as the pink layer on the floor in this pic).

thursday night, ashton stayed up until 5am (i guess technically friday morning) working on the floor. anne did not, she had to work the next day. once he woke up friday, he kept working, and i joined once i got home from work. with the two of us working on this, we were still up until 2am saturday morning. who knew tiling a floor took soo long?

oh, you noticed the fridge in that last picture? yes, that's because the fridge was currently in our living room. it's amazing how much larger our living room seemed once that was back in the kitchen. :)

because we used 18" tiles, the smart people at home depot told us to make sure to give the floor plenty of time to dry since the tiles were so big... at least 24 hours, but recommended 48 hours. we finished laying the tiles at 2am saturday morning, and ashton had an 8am sunday (the 18th) flight to canada. soo... we waited to grout until after ashton got back.

while ashton was gone, his mom, pop and brother stopped by for a night since this was their spring break. (don't worry, they did stop by for another night when ashton was actually home, so they did get to spend time with him as well.) they got to enjoy the experience of having the fridge in the living room. and... the living room was probably worse than when our other guests were there because we had a lot more stuff crammed into the living room. once again, no complaints from any of them!

ashton flew back in late on wednesday (the 21st), and for some crazy reason, we decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and grout the floor. yet again, we were up until 2am. you would think we would have learned the first time!

thursday and friday were spent cleaning the floor (which was quite a chore! i recommend to anyone doing their own floor - clean the grout as you go!) and moving everything back in. these were also probably the first days that our house started to feel like an actual house that we could live in. :)

some pictures of the finished floor with our dining room table and chairs on it...

next up... painting and decorating! :) my goal is to post it tomorrow, and then you should all be up to date!

kitchen projects part 3 (backsplash)

2012-03-31T11:48:00.000-05:00

let's pretend this post was written on sunday, march 11. :)

monday, march 5, was my first day of work at a medical clinic as a receptionist. between my new job and ashton having a busy and late-night work week, we didn't get a lot done on the weekdays. i did go pick up our backsplash from the fedex place, so that was exciting to actually have these in our possession. we had the idea early on to have a brick backsplash, but i was a little nervous about what they would actually look like in person.

we also started looking at floor tiles, trying to pick out what our future floor was going to look like. we had lots of scenes like this...

so which of those tiles did we pick? none. we ended up checking out a local place here that cut us a great deal on a glazed porcelain tile (18" tiles that ashton appreciated).

friday, ashton got off work a little early, so we headed off to home depot to pick up all of our backsplashing supplies, and ashton got busy.

my mom was going to be coming in town to spend the night, so my job was to clean the guest bathroom for her. it. was. disgusting. we, obviously, don't use the guest bathroom since we have our own, so we may have forgotten that it had been winterized and was covered (kind of) so it was moldy and gross and disgusting. no fears, i took care of that. (you're welcome, mom!)

saturday, we picked up our floor tiles before i headed to college station for a bridal shower for one of my best friends, tara. (yay weddings!) and while i was at the shower, wonderful ashton continued to work on the backsplash. here's what it looked like before i left...

(isn't he doing a great job?!?)

while i was in college station, i got a text from ashton with a picture showing how much he had done. check it out...

he did such a great job with the bricks! mom came back with me on saturday, and was also a good sport about clearing her own path through the living room. my mom won the award for our first overnight guest. :)

she left early on sunday, and ashton and i did some all-day shopping for our office desk and bookshelf, as well as 2 more chairs for our kitchen table. that night, we grouted the backsplash. really, ashton grouted, but he did call for reinforcements to wash the grout off the backsplash.

my parents came back in town on monday night and stayed the night, so i was glad that the bricks were finished by the time they came!

stay tuned! next project... tiling the floor! :)

kitchen projects part 2 (removing backsplash, new countertops!)

2012-03-31T11:47:00.003-05:00

pretend this blog post was written saturday, march 3. because that's what i'm going to pretend. we have done so many projects during the month of march that it would be a ridiculously long post, so i'm going to break it up, and include some other activities from along the way. i just laughed re-reading the last post that was written on february 22 that says perhaps we'd have a completed kitchen by the weekend of march 2. it's march 30, and we pretty much just finished. we still have a few small projects, but most of it is done.

so first, the weekend of february 24-26, we went camping with a group of friends at pedernales falls. soo much fun!

a great break for us from the kitchen projects, but unfortunately, it also fell during a weekend before a very busy week for us (kitchen-wise). our countertops were scheduled to be installed thursday, march 1, which means we had to remove the old countertops before then, as well as remove and replace the drywall where the backsplash had been.

by monday, we had removed all of the backsplash and drywall behind the backsplash, as well as some of the smaller countertops.

on tuesday, i didn't have to work, so i primed the walls around the cabinet area of our kitchen. when ashton got home, he removed the rest of the countertops.

on wednesday, ashton installed the new drywall (he did most of it, i think i helped hold it up while he cut and while he screwed it in) and i worked on pulling the tile floor up. (we somehow failed to get pics of ashton doing any of his projects... sorry!)

on thursday, our sink and countertops were installed!!! yay!

on friday, i came home to a garage floor covered with water and realized our hot water heater was leaking. :( so after our attempts to just fix the heater, we gave in and decided to buy a new one. (the price was ridiculous, but the hot showers are oh so worth it!) ALSO... on friday, i mowed for the first time ever! we had a mini tree farm growing in our front yard, and my sister warned me that the city would fine us for not mowing, so i got busy.

on saturday, ashton's grandparents were our first official house visitors, and they were such good sports about everything! we didn't have water on due to the leaking hot water heater and you still had to crawl over boxes and clear your own path through the living room. luckily for all of us, they wanted to go out to eat for lunch, so the not having water issue wasn't a big deal after all. :)

kitchen projects! (part 1 of many!)

2012-02-22T20:46:00.000-06:00

ashton and i have been super busy these past few days. we've made a lot of progress on the kitchen, but we still have a lot left to do! and because of that, i'm not going to show all of the pictures on this post. here's the deal... we're replacing countertops, backsplash and the floor, as well as repainting the walls, so we didn't tape or cover anything in the kitchen when we painted the cabinets. there's currently paint all over the place, so while the cabinets look excellent, the pictures don't do them justice because everything else looks so messy right now. i'll show you some pictures of us working, and 2 teaser pictures of cabinets, and hopefully we'll be able to show the completed kitchen by the end of next week (or maybe by the end of our spring break, depending on how much time we have).

so with that being said, let's look at pictures! :)

removing cabinets and drawers, and all of the hardware that goes with them.

our door-less cabinets.

we took a little detour and removed some of the backsplash along the way.

painting the doors and drawers in the backyard.

this cabinet is actually in our laundry room, which is attached to the kitchen. it was pointed out to us that if the laundry room door is open, we'll want this cabinet to match our kitchen cabinets. so here's your sneak peek at what our kitchen might look like!

we've gone from this...

to this...

we have stuff in our cabinets!! the bookshelf is almost cleared off. yay! :)

ashton has also put on his electrician hat this past week and worked on some projects... got the dishwasher and garbage disposal working, as well as replaced an element on the hot water heater (we apparently purchased a faulty one).

also, i promise i help ashton with all of these projects. i'm just more concerned about taking pictures than he is... thus, why he is in most of the pictures. :) he did take a few of me, but i'm holding off on sharing those because they show more of the kitchen. we work really well as a team (if i do say so myself), sometimes splitting up a project, depending on our strengths (i put in the shelf paper, he painted touch ups) or we work together (i screwed the hinges on to the cabinet doors, he screwed the doors back on the cabinets).

future projects...

i ordered our cabinet hardware on friday, so that will hopefully be delivered soon so we can install all of the knobs and drawer pulls.
remove and replace drywall where the backsplash was.
remove the old countertops.
i also ordered our backsplash, so that should be coming soon too (but won't be installed until after our countertops are installed).
we also decided to change our door knobs and hinges for our interior doors to a bronze door knob (because we like those better and it matches our exterior door knobs). we ordered those last week, and received them on monday. our bedroom and bathroom door are the only two doors that have been painted, so we installed the new door knobs on those two and are just waiting for the new hinges (coming with the cabinet hardware) to actually hang the doors back up.
and quite possibly most exciting of all... our countertops are officially scheduled to be installed on march 1. (why, oh why, is it leap year this year? i don't want to wait an extra day!) we were originally told march 1, and then lowe's changed it to march 31, but the contractor remembered talking to me when he came out to measure about how we were very ready to have the countertops and sink installed, so he was able to schedule us early when a day opened up. yay contractor! :)

light fixtures and master bedroom.

2012-02-17T17:50:00.000-06:00

hello again!

i am sorry there hasn't been a new post as soon as i said there would be! hopefully you'll forgive us - we've been a little busy.

ashton was in kansas last week for work, so before he left, i asked him to install the fans in the living room and bedroom. i'm not a fan of dark, and i'm certainly not a fan of dark in a house when i'm alone. well, super-achiever that he is, he installed the fans in the living room, master bedroom, and guest bedroom, as well as the light fixture in our dining room. (isn't he great?) here are some pics of him and our new lights. :)

(also, mom - that's the ledge i was talking about in the dining room.)

i also decided that i wanted to paint the master bedroom while he was gone. i think ashton was a little bit nervous about this (i tend to get paint everywhere - floor, ceiling, and in this instance - our sheets), but he humored me and off we went to pick out our new room color.

if you will remember, the bedroom was originally painted a really dark grayish blue.

we bought our primer to cover up the blue, and we chose a green for our new color. on saturday (ashton's last full day before he left for kansas), we taped off about half of the floor and ceiling and started putting primer on the wall. we also painted one wall with the green that we had chosen to see what we thought and... ended up deciding to change to a green that was a little bit darker.

some little primer elves decided to do a little priming themselves. i'm just impressed that they managed to paint that close to ashton without him noticing.

so on sunday, i finished taping and priming the rest of the room, and then because i was feeling so productive, went ahead and painted two of the walls. i finished the last two walls on monday. when ashton got home, we painted the door, windowsills, and trim. i'm just going to throw this out there... our paint job looks pretty good.

after a few trips to target looking for two more panels to match the curtains we had in our old room, (which i finally found in separate trips, of course), and installing new curtain rods, our bedroom is pretty much finished. we still have a few blank walls, but we don't have anything picked out to go up there yet, so they'll just have to hang out until we get some good ideas.

don't mind that trash on the chair. ;-)

a perfect example of one of the blank walls i was referring to. also, i have no idea what that white dot is on the wall in this picture. i promise it's not like that on the actual wall.

projects in our near future:

paint cabinets in kitchen - should be happening this weekend. we both have monday off, so hopefully we'll get a lot done!
paint master bathroom.

that's all i have for now! i'll post pics again once the cabinets are done. i'm soo excited about those getting painted, just not as excited about actually painting them. :)

anne

first stage of projects.

2012-02-02T15:23:00.000-06:00

ashton and i have been working hard to make our house liveable. i mean, we've been living in it the entire time, so i guess we're trying to make it more comfortable to live in. :)

1.) hot water heater. if you know me (which you should, if you're reading this blog...), you know how important hot water is to me. the hot water heater wasn't working when we moved in, which we knew beforehand, so with some helpful info from my brother-in-law, we decided to just replace the elements and thermostats rather than purchase a new hot water heater. after a purchase of a special tool to remove the elements, and a few showers at other houses, ashton was able to get the hot water heater working. and i was extremely thankful! (fyi... the total cost of fixing the hot water heater was $50, which included 2 elements, 2 thermostats, and the tool. the cost of a new hot water heater was $250.)

2.) our appliances have been delivered! the fridge and stove have been plugged in and are working. the dishwasher is still in progress. and the microwave/vent hood is just going to hang out in the box until kitchen remodeling is done. we figured there was no reason to install it just to have to pull it down soon.

(OH... and you may notice the hole in the counter where a sink should be. yeah, that wasn't in the house either. however, one is included with the countertops. see below.)

3.) we ordered our new countertops over the weekend. lowe's is coming out to measure the countertops next week, and the projected completion date is march 1. which can't come fast enough. the countertops also come with a free sink, so we'll be kitchen sink-less until march 1.

4.) ashton has installed new locks on our doors, which i greatly appreciated! he has also installed smoke detectors throughout the house. there were some already installed, but when we had the house inspected, the inspector told us there had to be detectors in all of the bedrooms. so we did that... and threw one up in the living room and kitchen. we like to be safe. :)

5.) because we are painting the kitchen cabinets in the very near future, we decided to not unpack everything into the cabinets yet. so... we are using a linen closet and a bookshelf that we moved into the dining room area as our kitchen pantry and storage. this is definitely a lot easier than trying to dig through boxes.

hmm, what else have we done?

ohh... 6.) shower head! they took the shower head out of the master bathroom, which makes showering a tad bit difficult. soo.. we bought a new shower head and a little curved pipe, and now we have a fantastic shower!

future projects over the next week:

install lights/ceiling fans in the master bedroom, living room, guest bedroom and dining room. yes, they took all of those too.
sand and paint kitchen cabinets. (this will probably be done next weekend, so it'll be a while before you get to see those pics.)
install a door between the laundry room and garage.
whatever else we come up with/have time for! :)

have a great weekend! i'll check in again when we have more projects done to show you!

anne

our new house!

2012-02-01T22:10:00.000-06:00

hello everyone! i'm sorry for the long gap in blog posts, but our lives have been a little crazy this past month with holiday travels, getting everything finalized to buy our new house, packing and cleaning the old house, etc. and let me just tell you - the process to get everything finalized to buy the new house was far from quick and easy. i have always heard usaa is supposed to be the best bank, but their mortgage department is less than impressive. and i'm just going to leave it at that. as i told my friend, tara - i refuse to blog about the mortgage experience because i don't want to relive that in the future. it was miserable.

we bought a house that was a foreclosure, so we got a really good deal pricewise. however, there's a lot of work that a.) NEEDED to be done just to live in the house and b.) we WANTED to be done just so the house is nicer. i'm going to try my best to keep up with before and after pictures and keep you updated on our projects.

with that being said, here are some pictures of our house before we even moved in. enjoy! :)

Kitchen. They took the appliances with them.

We'll be redoing the cabinets, countertops, backsplash, and floor. Soo... pretty much the entire kitchen! :)

Dining room - connected to the kitchen and living room.

Living room.

Entryway.

Bedroom that we'll use as an office/study

Guest bathroom.

Guest bedroom. (Exciting picture, I know!)

Master bedroom.

Master bathroom.

Our new house! :)

Our First (Rental) House

2012-01-03T17:35:00.024-06:00

We are in the process of buying a new house (we are hoping to close on January 19th), but before we moved out of this house, I wanted to share pictures of our first house together since most of you probably won't be able to visit before the 19th. :)

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Master Bedroom and Bathroom

Guest Bedroom and Bathroom

Welcome!

2012-01-03T17:19:00.004-06:00

Hello!

Welcome to the O'Herbert blog! :) No, I did not actually change my name to O'Herbert, but my clever friends called our wedding the O'Herbert wedding, and I thought this was fun... so I stole it for the blog.

I've been wanting to create a blog for us, but I've been busy and putting it off. However, we have some fun stuff coming up in our lives so I thought this would be a great way to get all of the info to our family and friends without having to tell the same story over and over. I know, I know, this means not as many Anne stories. :)

So with that being said, welcome and happy reading!

Putting the O' in O'Herbert!

Anne