Sunday, July 21, 2013

Let The Games Begin!

Well we are officially under contract on the house. After 8 days, 10 showings, and 4 offers we have accepted an offer. We lucked out (big time) with the market and people are really looking right now. We were offered our asking price and the buyers actually want our farmhouse table. We were thrilled that they asked for the table! We have loved the table but it really was custom made for our dining room. We love the idea of it staying with the house, I wish we could track it from here :) 

Now onto a couple weeks of inspections, appraising, negotiating, and PACKING! How is it possible that I am packing AGAIN. Hopefully we will have our New Hampshire location locked down soon. We are planning on renting for 6 months to a year and then looking for a house. We have a cute little beach cottage in mind and if everything goes through we will share the details soon. Wish us luck!

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Listing Update

As I announced last week, we listed our house for sale. We started off with a bang. We had 6 showings in the first three days (one couple coming back for seconds) and those showings followed with two offers. We are getting interesting feedback and I am BEYOND stressed. I am not a person that handles stress well so this is rough. Brian keeps telling me, "we are only 4 days in", buck up. 

Some of the feedback we are getting is:
-Cute kitchen
-Love the island
-Cute dog?? (obvious but not really helpful:)
-Master is too small
-Living room is too small (we had this issue when we looked but ended up loving the cozy feel of it)
-Clean
-Well maintained

I will tell you I was much happier on the buying end of the deal and I can not wait until this is over. Lets hope that we can make one of these offers work and we'll be on our way to buying in the Hamp! 


Sunday, July 14, 2013

Painted Door Hinges?

All, and I mean all, of our door hinges have paint on them. Clearly the previous owners wanted quick(er) paint jobs and just left the doors on. The house was a rental for a couple years before we moved in so I assume they painted a lot and this is the result...

Not pretty at all. In fact, it has driven us crazy for the last 8 months. We talked and talked about replacing them, spray painting them, or scraping the paint off. All these jobs sound pretty tedious but we did not want to look at it anymore. Mostly we don't want future buyers looking at it either, total turn off. 

We first tried a magic eraser....nope. Then we used a screwdriver to scrap the paint off....nope. Next we took to google and pinterest. Turns out all you need is: an old crock-pot, water, and some dish soap. We got to work and removed all the hinges. 

Seriously, just take the time to remove when painting.


We found an old crock-pot at Goodwill for $4.94. Sweet deal! Filled it up with water, a little dish soap, and the hinges from 3 doors in the pot and turned it on to high for 3 hours. 


Paint came right off with a little rub a dub dub and occasionally some sponge love. (I clearly should be a poet) 


Tadaaaaa! Like magic. 


$4.94 and we have shiny new(ish) looking hinges. I'll take it. 


Friday, July 12, 2013

Big Changes Coming...

We have been working hard over here and making some progress. Most of our time has been spent doing a lot of touch ups and little changes. I figured since the changes have been minor and all over the house I would just dump them all into one post. 

Media cabinet next to the fireplace and some new art on the walls.

Uh...we sold our couch this week. It was gigantic and not working out for us. We have definitely been sitting on the floor. It has been fun for Amelia and Goose to have all that space. 

Our office/piano room. Leaves a lot to be desired. But I love the color. 
Moved some homemade art to the entryway. Look at that cute little pig in the corner. I had a pet pig growing up and this is a little shout out to our good old Effie. The funny thing is that we flew with that little pig in a carry on a couple years ago. When it went through the scanner, TSA had a panic attack and thought we stuffed a dog in our carry on. 
Guest room. Also a little boring, but that bed is SUPER comfortable
Guest bath. We didn't do much in here. Changed the hardware and cleaned basically. 


Master bedroom. I think this actually looks the same as when we moved in. Anyway trying to sell this furniture as well because as nice as it is, not my style. Interested??


Master bath got the same makeover the 1/2 bath did. Love it! We also made some hardware and light fixture changes in here.

And the craziest picture of all....the one that justifies the title of big changes. Our lawn got a new little ornament today.
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WE ARE FOR SALE!!!!

I know I know, we JUST moved here. We got an incredible opportunity and we are taking it. We are moving to New Hampshire and we are thrilled. 

The question I keep getting is, "what are you going to call your blog now?". Well, that is still up in the air but I am probably going to keep it how it is. Our style is still very much Golden Peach and while our location is no longer gonna be peachy (moving to the Granite State) our style is very rustic and southern with a hint of beach. Golden Peach still applies, even in the Northeast. 

We love new opportunities, meeting new people, and new experiences! We want to see it all and can't wait to find out what New Hampshire has to offer. Now about selling this house and finding a new one... 

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Kitchen Progress

Since we are getting close to finishing rooms I thought I would share a kitchen progress picture. We love our country kitchen but it really needed some help when we moved in. The kitchen didn't have much counter space, not a lot of storage, an awful back splash, and wonderful bisque appliances. 

Here is a look when we first moved in...


We took of the laminate back splash and 3 layers of wallpaper underneath off, painted the walls, added a chalkboard wall, removed a cabinet, added a light fixture, and put in some open shelving. 



We have now put some of our finishing touches on this kitchen. We would love to do more (mainly those appliances), but this is where we are now... 


We finished the crown molding, installed the mason jar light, and added the kitchen island.

Added this sweet little kitchen cart from Ikea. 

We replaced our wrought iron looking utensil holder with this hand painted beaut from Goodwill ($2). 

Here is a better look at the crown and pendant light.

Once you have open shelves you may never go back. So convenient! We would love to put in some actual open stainless shelves but that is on our full kitchen redo list. 

Painted our open shelving to match the cabinets, and styled them a little better. 

Our kitchen is nowhere near done, but we think it is coming around. As we are getting our projects done I am starting to feel like this place is our home. It has been so fun customizing this home to our needs and taste. 




Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Finished Half Bath

Yes that's right I said finished. Now, that being said, in a dream world full of lots of money we wouldn't be finished. For now we are very happy with the result. With a little money, lots of paint, and a little elbow grease I have an official before and after for you. Lets take a little walk. 

When we moved in it looked like this. 


We removed some (3 layers) of wall paper, removed the chair rail, and painted. We still hated this room. It was dated and had ceramic everything that was tiled into the walls. 
         
Check it out. Ceramic toilet paper holder, soap holder, toothbrush holder, and on the wall was a huge towel rack (with no shower??).

So after removing the ceramic holders, replacing the hardware, replacing the light fixture, and painting everything we have our after. Oh so refreshing.


We finally like the way that it is looking. Painting the vanity makes a HUGE difference! We painted the vanity with Sherwin Williams ProChoice paint color matched to Benjamin Moores decorators white (that's a mouthful). The walls are painted with Sherwin Williams Harmony (eco friendly) in Sea Salt. The counter tops were painted with Rustoleum counter top paint in Clay. As far as the hardware goes we found the light fixture and faucet at Home Depot (on sale) and the towel and paper holders as Ikea. The knobs on our vanity are actually our old knobs that we spray painted with Rustoluem Universal in brushed nickel. The art is a little homemade shout out to our beloved ocean. Loving the way this turned out :)





Sunday, July 7, 2013

Chalkboard Drawings

Since painting the chalkboard wall in our kitchen I try to keep it fun with new drawings. Sometimes they are festive, but usually they relate to whatever is on my mind. Here are two fairly recent drawings that I did. 

Inspiration for the spontaneous life I live being married to Brian.

Cinco de Mayo chalkboard (inspired by this blog). 



Saturday, July 6, 2013

Island Time

We have a kitchen island!I have finally found the time to put all the finishing touches on the island, and I love it. Our kitchen had some unused space (it basically could be a dance floor) so we decided to add a little extra counter space. We love the rustic look so we went with a shabby kitchen cart design with a butcher block top. The top matches our dining table so it all ties together. It is about 3'x2' and has two shelves for storage. Who doesn't love a little extra storage! 

Check out our mason jar
 light hanging in the window :)

Looking forward to styling up the shelves a little but we really want them for functional use. I love having things easy to grab when I'm cooking. 

Our kitchen is getting there. Love DIY :)






Friday, July 5, 2013

It's the little things...

As we have been updating our home we have been looking for little details that could use some love. Something that caught our attention from the beginning was the light fixture in our family room. It is a fan with some funky pendants over the lights. The fan is fine (sits a little low) but the lights gave off the weirdest disco affect. 

We decided to replace the pendants to give off a softer light without the affects of a discoteca. 

So much better. We also wanted to update the fan/light pulls that hang down. The ones that were on there were broken and pretty basic and we wanted to add a little fun factor. The new pulls have a picture of a fan and a light bulb. I thought that was so cute. 


As we make our way around our house we find that these little details make such a difference. One thing at a time right. 



Thursday, July 4, 2013

Painting Laminate Countertops

Hands down the best part of DIY is looking at before and after pictures. Even though I don't have a complete after picture for this project I have some SERIOUS progress going on. We are busy over here and I FINALLY have some things to share with you. We actually have a deadline for our projects (more on that later), so hopefully I can keep more up to date with it on the blog.

Our house is very 1986. It was built in 1986 and has not been updated AT ALL. Well, unless you count layers of wallpaper covered with paint updating....which I don't. All of our counter tops are laminate, our floors are laminate, and our mirrors are builder grade. Don't even get me started on our light fixtures and hardware. We would love to do full overhauls of the kitchen and all 3 bathrooms but that is not in the price range right now. We decided to find ways to update our house without breaking the bank. First we are starting with our half bathroom. Remember when we moved in and it looked like this?   


Then we took off 3 layers of wallpaper, removed the chair rail, took of a huge towel rack, and painted the walls. Then it started to look slightly better, looking like this. 


We laid out our plans and it went a little something like this:
-Replace light fixture
-Remove all ceramic fixtures and replace with brushed nickel hardware
-Paint vanity
-Paint counter tops (ooooh yeah)
-Frame mirror

We are well underway on our budget friendly overhaul. First up is the counter tops. Well we actually started with an explosion of stuff (please ignore the mess, I am a messy DIYer). Oh and yes that is a GIGANTIC soda...no judging. 
We started with painting the vanity a nice shade of white, decorators white by Benjamin Moore color matched to Sherwin Williams Pro Classic paint to be exact. Well you can see that painting the vanity white really brought out the awesome shade of nasty in the counters. 

I did a lot of research on painting laminate counter tops and have read great things about Rustoleum counter top paint. After a lot of thought we decided to go for it. They have 16 different color selections and we ended up going for a charcoalish color called Clay. Well we LOVE it! It turned out better than I expected! See for yourself.  

What a difference paint can make!
The process was pretty easy. I started cleaning the counters with a surface cleaner and followed that with some love from the magic eraser. After letting them dry I taped off the sink, walls, and mirror. I don't normally tape but I wasn't sure what the consistency would be like so I wanted to be safe. I am very glad I taped because it was thick and not easy to remove (like when I ran into the door frame with my roller).
I used both a roller and a high quality angle brush. It went on thick and dried fairly fast so I had to work quick. I did notice that I had brush marks but I could no longer see the marks as the paint started to dry. I also read that it is best to remove the tape while the paint is still wet to prevent from pulling of paint with the tape. It really did turn out with a nice smooth finish. 
Yes that is a new faucet...more on that later.

I have a few more touch ups and some caulking to do but I have to wait 48 hours to touch up. It takes around 72 hours to dry before we can even touch the counters. Oh and also it is smmmmeeelllly. But the result is totally worth it. Budget friendly DIY all the way. 

Next project on deck. Finishing up the vanity doors/drawers. Now if the paint would just dry in this humidity I might actually get somewhere.