Quick house projects.

Post-party (to welcome the wee niece) blues...or maybe just the lazy woman blues.  It always seems hard to get back to your normal routine when you get used to sitting on the couch, but we are trying our best....even went walking three weekdays in a row!  Anyways, I haven't been cooking alot from Pinterest (hasn't slowed me down in the pinning department tho) so I thought I'd save what I have done for the end of the month.  Which means I was post-less for my mid-month blog post.

Since a lot of you are interested in ye old mansion, I thought I'd show you a few projects that have gotten accomplished around here lately.

When my parents came up for the shower we put dad to work for a day before he made his escape from the country.  His first project was to get the rest of my counter top installed in the bathroom.  I still need to finish with a bit of pain and trim work to cover up how it had to be lifted on the second cupboard, but OH! how I love to have a place to fold and fill up with junk.

How does that happen so quick?!  I've got the sewing machine out of the closet now and decided that the new counter is going to be it's semi-permanent home.  Hopefully it will get me sewing more!  In celebration of finally having a nice long bathroom counter top again, I let M&M pick out a new Beta for her fishbowl.  Not sure how much the little guy likes it tho.  I slammed the door to the washing machine the other day and he shot around the bowl about 3 times before he settled back to his normally calm self.  And when the washing machine starts to shake, rattle, and roll, fishies' water gets a little wavy too.  More like a natural environment I keep hoping, since we aren't usually too good with keeping our fishies around very long!  Notice my little tiny clothes rod on the side I can dry hanging only clothes on now too!

Unfortunately, this project wasn't on the list, but it was bugging Dad just to look at it, so he did a bunch of maneuvering with the refrigerator and finally got it leveled.  The cupboard above it also seemed to be sinking a little in the front so it needed some help too.  Wish I would have gotten him to change the swing on my fridge and freezer doors, but I'm so used to getting tucked in the corner to open them that I completely forgot until I was looking at this picture!

Originally I had asked him to work on some of my missing counter tops (we didn't get all of the granite from the original kitchen), but he came up short with ordering butcherblock.  We did have supplies for one of the odd spots, tho.  Because this cupboard goes from floor to ceiling we only needed a very thin piece of counter top.  Way back in the summer we found these granite tiles at Lowes or Home Depot that matched perfectly.  One cut and a bit of glue and I now have a place to pull my stand mixer out to.

I'll need to do a bit of painting in black to the edges because they have an unfinished look, but I'm just loving how finished it looks compared to the old concept where you could see through to the drawers below!

A quick drill through the existing, but too small hole, in the counter top meant my soap dispenser also got installed!

Here's a project I got to with my mom while she was here.  Took her opinion and finished it up after they were gone.  I saw this idea on Pinterest for windows that were off centered.  This window is only about half the size of my curtains.  This means that about 1/4 of the curtain rod and curtain are actually covering wall to make the window seem centered and larger.  The curtains were ones I had bought on clearance at Sears several years ago and actually hung in the window of our bedroom in the last house too.  The curtain rod was one I got quite cheaply at JoAnn Fabrics on a super clearance deal too.  Until I finally put them up I didn't realize their wasn't actually a rod holder (to attach the rod to the wall).  I found some silver metal hold backs (to hold curtains back, not actually rods), at Canadian Tire and they do the trick just fine.

Another project partly finished is the bottom set of stairs are scraped and sanded and painted.  I did them in the same Chesnut Pony from Benjamin Moore at Canadian Tire that I did the ceilings in downstairs.  They are not a forever finished project, because I have a few nicked spots already and I'd really like barn board treads to give them an old-fashioned look.  For now tho, it is a huge improvement, and at least look semi-clean following a vacuuming!  I still have to finish the three stairs above the landing.  Most days I just tell myself that it reminds me how awful they looked before my project.

Looking forward to getting outside and putting the hubby to work with some landscaping ideas, especially since the inside work doesn't seem to thrill him very much!  If this cold weather would quit maybe our snow would melt and M&M could get her seeds planted.