Sunday sharing!

This weekend is beautiful in Austin and that means outdoor projects. 

We've been very excited to start a deck project out back and as always with the Walkers, well David, that means a DIY project. Why hire someone to do the work when you've got all the tools to do it yourself?

Currently our back patio consists of a  concrete pad immediately adjacent to the house but with very little sprawl to allow for a dining table or just space to be. And also we have a lot of trees and the grass immediately next to the concrete just doesn't grow. So there is typically a lot of mud. 

This is the before. 

David is in the beginning stages of pouring the footings. Hence the forms. And concrete is being poured today.  The footings will be the structure that will make the deck nice and sturdy. 

Work in progress. 

Bowie as spectator. 

Bowie burying his chewy under a footing. He's a regular little mobster. 

And here's a belly bump pic for the week. 33 weeks. 7 more to go. 

Happy weekend projects to you all!

Kitchen Office & Nail Head Tack Board How-To

When we re-arranged our guest bedrooms to make room for baby Ellery, we lost our office.  Granted, we could have crammed a desk into the guest bedroom, but I'm not a fan of cramming.  And I like having a dedicated guest bedroom.

So, one night David and I were brainstorming as we often do, and he offered up putting a desk, a furniture piece, in our kitchen where our bar used to be.  Well then that brought up the discussion of where our bar would go, obviously.  But after some thinking and re-situating, we found the solution.

Move the bar to another area in our living room.  We have the perfect place.  And instead of a furniture piece to be our desk, make a cabinet style kitchen desk.  David put the plan into action, finding a great cabinet maker to make the cabinets, and then had them painted, and we installed ourselves.

This was the before.

And this is the after!



The paint is the same as what is at the fireplace wall paneling.  (The wood cabinet manufacturer from our kitchen went out of business, so that wasn't an option.)

The worksurface is from Ikea, butcher block, cut down and sanded.  We cut the worksurface down to only about 20" instead of 24" or even 30".  We just don't have the depth there because our kitchen table is right behind this chair.  But overall, this depth works great and is all we need.

Our personal file folders are in the bottom drawers and we can stash SO MUCH STUFF in the cabinets and drawers.

The cubby holes are great for bills, sorting tax stuff, and just odds and ends papers that we would like handy.

The tack surface was a definite must.  1} Because we had to move the light switch to accommodate the upper cabinets, and in David's doing so we had some patches we didn't want to have to spend the time to make look perfect.  2}  It just finishes it all off  3}  Its super handy and organizes the things that we want to be able to reference all the time.

The undercabinet light was a surprise add by David and it looks very "hot" in this picture, but gives a nice warm glow to that area.

Here's how I made the NAIL HEAD TACK SURFACE

{MATERIALS]

- Homosote type material from Lowes (cut to your specific size)

  (Its really an insulation type material, black in color, and comes in 4' x 8' sheets and is located in the lumber area, specifically insulation aisle.  Costs about $10 per sheet, and if you are super nice to one of the employees, they will cut it down to size for you!)

- staple gun

- thin felt lining fabric (to give a little padding and hide the black color of the material behind your fabric)

- your preferred fabric

- nail heads (all kinds of finishes and sizes, and can be purchased from JoAnns or fabric stores)

- hammer

- ruler/pencil

{HOW TO}

1.  With the cut to size insulation material ready, we covered it with the felt first, then the fabric, making sure that we were pulling all sides even, etc.  David helped with this.  Much faster and probably more effective if you have 2 people participate in this step.

2.  Then, I used a ruler to make a light pencil line, the thickness of the ruler, from the edge.  (Using the ruler as a straight edge guide was much easier than marking off exactly 1" or 2" from the edge.)

3.  Then from each edge I started marking off 1/2" dots with a pen.  I had to test out this spacing with my 3/8" nail heads first.

It looks like a lot of nailheads, and it was, but once you get the rhythm, it goes fast.  Any angle or slight misplacement off that 1/2" mark will make a bigger difference to your eye than you'd imagine, so attention to detail is key.  But the fabric we used (linen) was very forgiving.  And sometimes you had to just guide the nailhead into "straight" with your other hand as you hammered.  But like I said, after a while, you get the hang of it.



So that's it!  Our newest project to make our home ever more efficient and refined.

Soon to be posted to the blog, professional photos of our house.  Yes!  We have some new adventures under our wings as of the beginning of the year, and we needed some professional photos of some of our work.  More to come on that.

Have a great weekend and a great Superbowl Sunday!

the walkers, lately

Lots of big things have been going on in the Walker household of late.  Here is a little snippet of the past couple of weeks here at the end of 2013.



We found out our baby is a little GIRL!  Here is the "money shot" from the anatomy scan we had back in mid November.  She's getting big!  And is wonderfully healthy and perfect.  We are very blessed.

As some of my friends know, I'm kind of crafty.  So, telling our family was a big deal to me and I wanted to make it special.  So, we set up a night for all of us to meet at dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Matt's El Rancho.  I figured it was loud and a big place and 14 people wouldn't be a hassle, etc.  Plus, I needed my queso fix for the week.

Our way of telling our friends was through "cascarones".  (confetti eggs)  I thought it was appropriate with the restaurant theme, and I gave David 2 options and he chose this one. 

So, I carefully cracked open and cleaned 12 eggs ahead of time, got the packaging purchased and everything ready until the night we found out... and filled them with the appropriate color confetti before the next evening's dinner festivities.

Our family's surprise announcement!

That is the dinkiest piece of confetti.  It says "Its a girl". 

The next day at work, the interior design studio girls decorated my desk. 

And then we  David has been hard at work last weekend on replacing our side fence.  The previous fence was chain link, yuck.  And now it matches the other side/gate and is tremendously updated.  More yard projects are under way.  Even today, in 30 degree weather, David and his dad are hauling off old firewood piles and railroad ties that were left in our backyard from before we bought the house.  "Clean slate" David says.  Maybe in the spring we can work on building a deck in the backyard.  We love being outside, and our backyard is beautiful, but there just isn't any good functional living space.

David and I took our Christmas picture last weekend.  Baby bump and all. 

[Side note:  I spilled water on my laptop and it is in the shop for another week or so.  It is very sad to me because I cannot do any editing of photos or graphics stuff like I always do.  Its like I lost my phone or my hairdryer.  Its apart of my every day. End, sob story.]

And the baby bump.  This was at end of week 22.  Again, I must not have any stomach muscles to hold anything in, because the bump is bigger than most I know around my same time frame.

At work, there are "Stork Parking" spaces.  I finally pulled the trigger and asked if I could start parking there.  My hips are kind of killing me and without an elevator, our garage can get very cumbersome to walk in and out of 2-3 times a day. 

Our next fun project we have been working on is to have a kitchen built-in desk/office made.  Since we had to dedicate one of our guest bedrooms to the baby's room, the other serves as an actual bedroom (which I use a lot due to the snoring factor of the significant other) and there is no room for a desk/office component. 

This is where our "office" currently sits, and where we will have the actual cabinets installed.  They will match our kitchen cabinets, but be painted.  Big surprise, the color gray.  The desktop won't be too deep, only 20" and we have included some mail slots up top with the upper cabinets. 

Inspirational images include the following: 

via

via

I'm super excited to clean up the area.  Enjoy the clutter you see in the before picture.  I AM human, and my life is not perfect.  No one's should be.

Okay everyone, enjoy this weekend's cold snap.  I sure am, inside with the heat going, plotting away at my next project.  Undoubtedly one that will cost money and make David have to work ;)

Oh!  And, "follow" the blog, because soon I'm not going to use Facebook as my "blast".  Follow and get an update via email of new posts!

custom bathroom stencil - so fresh

I have been wanting to get an electronic cutter/blade printer for a long time now.  Its so nerdy of me, but as a crafty person, who likes graphics... what can I say? 

I did some research on both the Cricut system and the Silhouette system.  Both have their positives and negatives.  But for me, having the Adobe programs that I use that help me create fun graphics and fonts was the reason I chose the one I did.  With the Cricut, you cannot print your own creations.  You have to buy packages of cut-outs, packages, not just one.  And you cannot import your own graphics.  With the Silhouette, you can.  So I chose that one.  (And you can buy 1 design at a time for about $1, not $10 for a package of 10 when you only need the 1 design.)  With the Silhouette, you have to pay $60 more for the "extended" version of the software that lets you import your own content.  But its worth it.  It takes a little bit of knowledge about "vector" files and how to work around that type of software, but I'm used to it, so the software came easy to me.   I know there are so many things that I can't even comprehend to create or know how to work, but its going to be fun.

Silhouette Cameo

On to the fun project.  I've always wanted to put something above our towel hooks in our hallway bathroom.  Something fun, graphic, a quote, etc.  This will be our kids bathroom, so the more fun... yet classic, the better.  So I created a stencil of a fun lyrics verse.  You'll know it when you see it.

I was able to create the text in Adobe Illustrator, then save it as a .svg file and import it into the Silhouette software.  Then I loaded the vinyl adhesive backed paper into the machine and pressed "cut".  (There is more to that, but Silhouette American has a great blog with lots of tutorials, so if you're interested, go there!  http://blog.silhouetteamerica.com/)

And here is the process to make it all happen.

The printer/cutter cuts the vinyl so that it doesn't go through the backing layer.  This image shows the vinyl after I peeled the "positive" off.  Because I was making a stencil, the part that created the negative was what I wanted. 

 

vinyl stencil

 

Then you have to apply the "transfer paper" to the front of the vinyl, which makes it easier to apply to the wall.  If you don't do this, there is the high potential for intricate designs like this to get distorted by your human hands when applying to the wall.  So place the sticky side of the transfer paper to the front of the vinyl.

 

Then, peel the backing off of the vinyl sheet.  Exposing the adhesive that will stick the stencil to the wall.  Then place the pieces as you need.  Its all a process of layers and essentially getting only the vinyl "sticker" onto the wall that becomes your stencil.

 

 

I found that I should have cut around the letters more, because the transfer paper is super sticky and peeling it off of the front of the vinyl was a little cumbersome.  You'll see that I peeled it off in smaller sections to help.

 

Vinyl stencil only, transfer paper removed, ready to paint.  I will say that its advisable to go back and rub all the edges of the graphic with a tongue depressor or your finger with a white hand towel.  The more the edges are pressed down to the wall, especially with a high texture wall, the better.

 

Paint.  I used a sponge stamper pouncer thing.  (I'm crafty, but I'm not going to spend the time to know the names of all the crap/tools.)

 

I forgot the first rule of stenciling!  Paint the original wall color first.  In this case, I should have gone and gotten a little bit of our existing wall color, and painted that over the whole design.  This seals the edges, and bleeds into any crevices so that the accent/colored paint won't.  But I was in too much of a hurry and I'm not the most patient person in the world.

 

Final product.  I may do something more to it.  Possibly add a painted frame around it or have David create a wooden pallet wood frame, but for now its fun.

chalkboards

So, the new "it" thing is chalkboard art.  If you frequent Pinterest as much as I do, then you've seen some pretty cool chalkboard art.  Well... I wanted to get in on the fun, so I bought some chalkboard paint pens, chalkboard contact paper, and an A-frame decorative framed chalkboard on Amazon.  {By the way, Amazon is really great for EVERYTHING you would ever want to buy.}

Here were my purchases.

Kittrich Corporation Chalkboard Contact Paper

 

 

LIquid Chalkers in White

 

 

NeoChalk Liquid Chalk in White

 

Large A-frame Chalkboard from Etsy-MintageDesigns

{This one hasn't arrived yet, so I started without it}

 

The day these arrived I was so excited, but I waited until the weekend to play with them.  And the first thing I did was transform our pantry cabinet, and created a chalkboard on the inside of our pantry doors. 

 

The contact paper is super easy to cut.  I used a metal ruler and a rotary blade.  (The rotary blade is awesome I just found out, especially with the straightedge ruler.  And, you can cut right on the granite and it doesn't scratch at all.)

 

 

This was the pantry door before. 

 

After contact paper.  Smooth out with a credit card or similarly rigid flat thing-a-ma-jig.

 

After chalk paint! 

{I couldn't think of any groceries at the moment.}

 

{and this will be full by next weekend ;)}

 

And it washes off with water, so it super easy to re-write, erase, and start another list!

 

Then I got really adventurous and found some inspirational chalkboard images on Pinterest, and copied one by looking at it.  This is in our utility room :)

 

 

 

Here are some of my chalkboard art inspirations that I found on Pinterest.  I have tried to cite my sources as best I could.

 

 



(I can't find the source, my apologies.)

Etsy - LilyandVal

http://chalkboardhouse.blogspot.com/

 

Etsy - LilyandVal

DesignerDigitals.com

Pen N' Paperflowers Studio and Design

Etsy - LilyandVal

Etsy - LilyandVal

More fun projects from Katie and David coming soon!

front yard landscaping

We did it.  We finished the entire front flower bed plantings in one weekend.  1.5 days to be exact.

I'll be honest.  It took a lot of sweat equity to get this operation complete.  And we are not gardening experts  so it was a little bit of "fly by the seat of your pants" and "take the knowledge that dad gave you" type of thing.  And, David has an interesting ability to just know how to get things done.  Have I mentioned he's amazing?

Either way, we finished.  David did the post-hole digging for each plant and I planted and fertilized right behind him, then we mulched.  {Mulch is rule #1 in gardening 101}.  You need mulch to protect against weeds and keep the moisture in. My hamstrings are killing me.   He has blisters on his hands.  All in a days work.


We started at 8am prepping the soil.  David's dad has every tool known to man a gas powered tiller.  It mixes up the dirt and stuff.  It helps.  Our soil seemed pretty good.  Not too dry, really what do we know?  Seemed good to us, so we decided not to add any soil...  Just another step and more time.  

Then we went to The Great Outdoors which was amazing.  A young kid, Taylor, helped us find everything on our list.  (Prepared by me, in excel from the plans that Catherine made for us. Just call me Type A.) Everything we planted is native Texas, they can endure and actually love the sun.  And, we're pretty lucky in that the 100+ trees we have on our lot provide a lot of shade help.

Not everything on the list suited our fancy.  In particular, we opted to not buy as many "japanese yew" plants or "columbine", but substituted with other items that we liked a lot.  It ended up working out really well, and improvise is key to any plan, right?  We walked out of there for a decent price, what we expected, and it was only 11:00 am.

We laid out everything according to the plan, and started digging, planting, fertilizing, and watering.  Its pretty simple, but multiply that by about 100 plants and it gets overwhelming.  But we finished about 2/3 of the planting by 5:30 pm on Saturday, and hit the showers for a fancy shindig at the Four Seasons.  

{Shout out to Kathryn and Rick Ary on their beautiful nuptials last night.  It was such a fun night and Kathryn was so beautiful and the smile on Rick's face! priceless. }

We woke up nursing "the beverly flu"/hangover (thats another post), popped some advil and hydrated and got right back to work on the remaining 1/3 of planting.  

Here is the final product.  We are pretty proud of ourselves and the value that we added to our house.  And, have I mentioned that its scary how well David and I work together?  Go here for the BEFORE.

Dolly in the grass. {they love their home} and it makes me so happy.

All in all, life is good.  We are done with house stuff for at least a year ;)  But of course we've got some ideas in our back pocket.  They include:

- painting the brick

- back yard deck/arbor/built-in grilling station

- back yard landscaping

- pool.  just kidding  (there's no room in our backyard because our septic tank holds all the real estate.)

I'd love to hear what everyone else has been doing to their house/home to ring in Spring/Summer!