Fall Paint Refresh Color Palette

After much deliberating, I have narrowed down our fall paint refresh colors. We plan to tackle the rooms weekend by weekend, finishing the kitchen refresh in the spring. We’ve done our family room, and next up is our formal living room, upstairs hallway and stairs. Our stairwell rebuild project is on hold for a bit while we determine the order of newels vs. new carpet solutions for the stairs, but I am so ready to brighten up the main living...

Upgrade your Pulls and Knobs to Enhance your Cabinets

Swapping out your existing pulls and knobs is an easy DIY project and can really change the character of your space. It can be as simple as only needing a screw driver. Lucky us, we needed to drill new holes in our cabinets which was a wee bit stressful. Here are some tips and tricks to upgrading those knobs and pulls. Selecting Hardware Finish. Because the majority of our existing finishes are satin, we opted to stay with a similar...

How to Design a Star Wars Boy’s Room

Star Wars are a big thing in our household. Ryan and our son love to build Star Wars LEGO sets, and often find instructions for new sets to make out of our existing LEGO pieces. For major milestone rewards, Star Wars LEGOs have been our prize. So naturally when it came to updating our son’s bedroom last year, Star Wars was the front-runner theme. I started looking for inspiration ideas on Pinterest, but didn’t find a lot at the time....

How to Install Landscape Lighting on a Retaining Wall

Adding lights to an existing retaining wall is possible, but it is easier while being constructed. For both of our wall areas, we were fortunate enough to have areas where the ground rose up to meet the wall caps. After searching online and seeing what the landscape supply stores carried, I selected some powder coated paver wall lights. The process for install is fairly simple as I had already installed the landscape lighting transformer with some moon rays. Here are...

How to Organize your Kitchen Pantry

I have been working on organizing my kitchen pantry for several weeks. Then I saw The Home Edit’s show on Netflix and my mind was blown and I was ready to double down on getting it clean. I Marie Kondo’d our house last January and was so excited to take the next step on my path to orderliness. I love organization, and even have rubbed off on my son, who is excited to organize his Legos in color coordinated bins...

You and Your Contractor: #01 Your Ballpark Price

I am a project manager that has worked for Architecture and Engineering (typically little A big E) firms for many years. I scope, estimate, negotiate, schedule and deliver projects with multi-disciplinary teams. While the projects are different than a residential home project, there are some crossover lessons on how to develop your project and work with (manage) your contractor. My goal is to help provide you with some tools in your toolbox for making the project process smoother. Developing Your...

How to Avoid Common Wood Project Finishing Errors

There are a number of wood preparation and finishing errors on the project below. At some point, I’ve made them all and learned my lessons the hard way. I can tell you that prior to staining, boards always felt smooth and looked ready to turn a beautiful shade of whatever stain I was going to apply. Problem #01: Improper edge treatment and not enough glue. For your glue project, having straight and crisp edges will make your joins look flawless....

Office desk with real wood top

IKEA Hemnes Desk Hack – Finishing Style Touches

This year has been an interesting one for us all. The news in March that we were to work from home created some interesting space challenges for Ryan and I. My office became the guest bedroom, where we had a queen bed and large dresser, and not room for much else. Someone gave us a small Ikea secretary desk, which tied me over for some time. It was broken and when open took up a lot of space without a...

image of our completed pavilion

Backyard Pavilion Project

We love to be outside. There is a season in the Pacific Northwest that comes with a wee bit of precipitation – rain, mist, phantom droplets, and occasionally some snow. We also love to barbeque. After years of trying to stand in the fleeting covering of the protective overhang of the houses roof, we decided it was time for a proper covered area. This is our design-build and style journey of the Pavilion. This is currently a project in process...

Kitchen Refresh – From Grey to White

It’s time to endure more kitchen work. I’ve had a chance to recover from the last overhaul we did, and barely even remember when the entire kitchen, pantry and refrigerator were in our family room, eating dinner at the kitchen table next to the TV. We modernized our kitchen from this: Into this kitchen: I’ve enjoyed you, grey counters, but I’m ready for more white. Here are the top contenders: It’s down to Sileston Et Statuario or Ceaserstone Frosty Carrina....