It’s the time of year when I start to reminisce about the days when my kids were little. Their birthdays are coming up soon and they will be 17 and 15 years old. My daughter will be off to college in a year and a half! It seems unfair that time drags when you are young, but seems to speed up once you have children.
Tag Archives: home
Turning Drab Army Housing into Our Home: Blog Series Introduction
Home vs Residence
Home isn’t simply where you sleep or live–it’s the space in which you do your living, and as such it should reflect your personality and express your lifestyle. It should be a place that makes YOU feel welcome and comfortable. It should function in a way that makes your life just a tad bit easier. In all, it should be YOURS and not “theirs” (aka the manager/owner).
The Renter’s Dilemma
Because every rental comes with its own special set of rules, renters often feel that they must live with those white, off-white, or other bland colored walls. Though we are allowed to paint our space, I am going to try my best to avoid it simply because I don’t want the hassle of repainting them when we leave in 3-4 years (which is inevitable in the Army). We are however, allowed to mount pictures and shelves with no repercussions or special repairs before we move out.
In this blog series–which I will complete over the next year–I will share the process of making any drab rental into your home.
Drafting Ideas
I have several ideas brewing already and can’t wait to share all of the finished projects and rooms with you.
Here are some of my plans for our new space.
The Entry Nook
After entering the house, there is a longish hallway with an opening to the immediate left that leads to the sitting room/dining area followed by a strange alcove that sort of looks like it could be a closet, and then another opening to the left that leads into the kitchen.
I call this weird space the Entry Nook. I want to use this space pragmatically, but make it stylish at the same time. The idea is to have a dresser with four drawers (even though I drew it with three)–one for each family member. Hats, scarves, gloves, umbrellas, purses–or whatever can be stored here. It is a dropping zone right now, and I hate it. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
The Dining Room
This is our dining room. In this picture it is pretty empty because I took it the week after we moved in (2.5 months before our furniture arrived). This is still the basic plan, but we are planning on buying Ikea’s Ingatorp table and Ingolf chairs in white.
The door in the picture leads into the kitchen. The bookcase corner is positioned between the dining room and living room, but the hubby wants to put a large fish tank there. It is still under debate.
Blank “Hallway”: AKA the Family Command Center
As I mentioned before, there are two openings to the left of the entry hall. This area is almost like a small hallway. There is a good sized blank wall and an otherwise useless space. Here, I have a temporary “command” center. I should have all of my supplies for this space in the next week or so. This will probably be the topic of my second or third posting in this blog series.
The Coffee Zone
We are coffee LOVERS in this house. As soon as I saw this kitchen, I knew exactly how this space would be used. After a recent trip to Ikea, I now have pretty much everything I need for this space and will be posting about it soon.
To help make more sense of the layout of the house, I’ll tell you what is behind this wall: It’s the Entry Nook! And behind the wall of the command center is the guest bath.
I am very excited about the upcoming projects and hope you will enjoy this blog series.
Tschüß!
I Fell Into a Whirlwind of Crazy
I know it has been awhile since I have updated this blog, and for those of you who actually followed it and read it—I give you my sincerest apologies. If you even bother at all to read this, I am very very grateful!
I did not fall of the planet, but I did fall into a whirlwind of chaos. I was supposed to share my experience of updating our home before we left for Germany. I even have two blog drafts that I never got around to completing! Well, after my last post, things became hectic. I started my first semester at UCCS–and it was TOUGH! Tons of papers had to be written for my classes, I had to run around town returning cable boxes, modems, picking up medical records, getting the dogs ready for international travel, getting the kids and myself check-ups for international travel, and running up to Denver twice to get our passports in order. We also traded in “Cherry,” my Chevy HHR for a Honda Odyssey. There seemed to be a million and one things in my way.
So what did we accomplish? If you haven’t been reading, the Drab to Fab home improvement list can be found here.
We replaced the kitchen counter tops, sink, and faucet. We painted the kitchen cabinets and replaced the ceiling light fixture. We tiled the family room (all 340 sq feet). We replaced the vinyl flooring in the laundry/3rd bathroom and the kids bathroom. We re-grouted the master bath and kids bath. We re-glazed or re-surfaced the shower tubs and caulked all of the bathrooms. We replaced the garage door openers (well hubby did that all by himself). We repainted the basement, kitchen, living room, dining room, and family room. We also replaced all of the outdoor light fixtures. I’m sure there is much more that I left of the list. We did it all in 4 months and went about $400 over our $8,000 budget. Here are some images that I did manage to take with the intention of blogging about all of this.
- Tiling the family room
- Our “New” Honda Odyssey
- Re-finishing the Kids Bath Sink with Rust-Oleum Counter Transformations
- New Kitchen Light Fixture
- Backyard Landscaping–this is only the first of 2 deliveries.
- Entry Light Pendant
- Dining room Chandelier
- New counters, sink faucet and a fresh paint job for the cabinets
- I got all A’s in 4 tough classes! The studying instead of blogging was worth it!
Traveling overseas for vacation is not this intense, but a military relocation overseas is ridiculously difficult! With all of the work in the house and all of the other “stuff” that needed to be done, there was no time for blogging. I didn’t have time to take very many pictures of the progress.
It took the packers 2 whole days to pack up the house and another whole day to load our stuff into crates.
Moving sucks.
- Moving Day
We drove from Colorado Springs to the Dallas airport in the afternoon on January 7th. What a whirlwind of crazy! We packed that minivan with 7 suitcases, two teenagers, two large dogs, and ourselves.
- Just a “few” of our bags
Looking back, I honestly don’t know how we made it to Germany without losing our minds. After a very long flight to Frankfurt (9.5 hours), we still had a 4-hour drive to our duty station—and sleep.
Though we finally got into our housing on Jan 20, we are still not quite settled in. Our car arrived safely one month after we did. Let me tell you—grocery shopping without a car stinks! Sometimes we used the taxi, but it isn’t cheap, so we hauled our loaded bags on foot most of the time.
It was almost 3 full months before our household goods arrived. Army loaner furniture=YUCK! I am and always will be grateful for the furniture and borrowed kitchen items, but it certainly wasn’t ideal. We didn’t even have internet for the first month. Imagine teenagers with no TV, cell phones, computers, or video games for 1.5 months! Yup it was a picnic.
The house is now mostly unpacked and I have the internet, my car, and a growing wardrobe. I am almost satisfied. I will have lots to share as we make a home in government housing, travel around Europe, and learn about the German way of life. For now though, I am mostly happy and can’t wait to blog about our experiences over the past 2 months.
- Welcome to Germany
Tschüs!
~Angelique
From Drab To Fab: Days 5-8–Trunks, Budgets, and Life
It’s been a super busy week here at Casa Stevens. Here’s a summary of what I’ve been up to in my efforts to get this house done.
Day Five: Tuesday Touch Up
Most of the day was spent touching up the paint in the formal living and dining rooms. I also worked on the vintage steamer trunk, which is coming along nicely. I started working on this on Sunday (Aug 11). It was tough work getting it prepped for priming. Here is the before & after shot (of primer, not paint).
Day Six: Mom Duties Called
I had to take the entire day off to finish up my daughter’s school clothes shopping. In all, it was the most pleasant day that I’ve had in at least two weeks. She even found her homecoming dress on sale at the Goodwill for $10!
Day Seven: Project Budget and Number Crunching
I spent the majority of my day using Excel to create my itemized budget worksheet and virtual shopping lists (thanks Home Depot!). Though it was time consuming, I broke each project down into categories and created expense columns which included projected costs, actual costs, and a column for the difference. I made sure to include a good amount of money for incidentals in each category. The hubby was pleased. This way we will know exactly where we stand budget wise for each project. This should keep us on track and prevent us from running out of dough before we are done.
I also finished up the painting of the chandelier and bought a new chain for it.
Day Eight: School Prep
Unfortunately, I had to take yet another day off from getting the house done. At least sitting at the PC and working on the budget was a necessity for this overhaul of the house. Friday was the day I got all my ducks lined up for my fall semester at UCCS. Buying textbooks, turning in forms, and getting familiar with the campus (locating my classes) was in no means how meant to spend my Friday, but I’m glad I could check it off of my very long to-do list!
Updated Rococo Style Vintage (70’s) Wall Mirror
I found this fantastic mirror at the thrift store for $6.99, but It was purple tag day, so it was marked 30% off! I just couldn’t pass it up! I had been wanting one for a long time to finish off a wall in my modern glam living room…and even Mr. Wallet couldn’t say no to $4.90.
The mirror and frame were extremely dusty, so my first step was to clean the whole thing. First, I removed the mirror, then I sprayed a light solution of TSP (yes I know it’s bad stuff) over the frame and scrubbed all the crevices with a nylon brush. After thoroughly rinsing it, I set it in the sun to dry.
The next step in the project was priming. I used short bursts with the spray. I wanted to be very careful not to apply too much, as the primer and paint can pool up in the crevices.
I let the primer dry for 24 hours because We had a bit of a late afternoon thundershower which caused the humidity in the garage to rise.
It is already starting to look fabulous! Next up: High Gloss Black Spray Paint.
Two coats of this stuff, and it looks like the real deal!
Perfect fit for my modern glam wall.
I’d say it’s a pretty close match to my Inspiration Design Board.
Just in case you forgot how ugly the mirror was here’s a lovely before and after photo.
Live Life. Create Dreams. 