FINALLY Organized!!

I need to make a confession...I am obsessed with being organized. I NEED to know EXACTLY where everything in my house is.

The one thing that I really dislike about our house is it's lack of a mud room. I wish that there was a place to put all of the forms that come home from school and where we could have a family calendar and grocery lists, but where they would not be seen by every guest coming into our house.

Our kitchen pantry is set back in a tiny hall through a doorway off of our kitchen. Tiny is an understatement...the space is only 50 inches wide x 40 inches deep. The kitchen pantry is to the right and to the left was a blank wall. (On a side note- the other side of the door that you see in this picture is our laundry room/ hallway to the garage.)

The previous owners of our house had hung a coat rack very low on the wall to the left of the pantry hallway. It was a great height for kids to hang their coats, and for me to hang my purse, but otherwise it was really kind of useless. That being said, we didn't do anything about changing the pantry hallway until the coat rack fell (probably because my purse was too heavy, but I will never admit that to Mike!) .

Once the rack fell, I needed to decide if I wanted to continue to leave that hallway as a waste of space or try to find a way to utilize it better. I'm not one to waste space- I like to actually USE every room that we have instead of leaving dedicated spaces that get used once or twice a year.

I started by filling the holes in the wall that were left by the falling coat rack and some other random nail holes that were in the wall.

I apologize for the poor quality pictures, but let's remember that this space is only 50 inches wide. I was literally standing in my pantry as I took this shot!

As you can see, I outlined the wall with painters tape. I knew that I wanted to paint the wall with Magnetic Primer so that I could move all of Emma's pictures and school notices off of the refrigerator and onto my new "Command Center". I still had some left over from a previous project so I only needed to purchase one small can of Rustoleum Magnetic Primer at Home Depot for $20.99.

Here's my advice for Magnetic Primer... do thin coats, but do a lot of them. I used 5 coats of the Rustoleum Magnetic Primer for my wall. I also recommend testing the magnetic-ness of the primer once its dry with the magnets that you plan to use to be sure that it is strong enough.

After the Magnetic Primer was thoroughly dry ( at least 24 hours), I coated the wall with 4 coats of Rustoleum Chalkboard Paint in Black. which I also got at HD for $24.99.

Again- Sorry for the not so great pics, but it has to be the most difficult thing in the house to photograph.

I am using the top of the wall to hold all of those random things that usually wind up on the fridge doors- like Emma's artwork and my measurement conversion magnet. Seriously, who wants to convert ounces to cups in their head- its just way too much work.

I have a row of days of the week magnets so that I can see at a glance what is going on that week. Otherwise, I inevitably remember that Emma has ballet lessons 10 minutes before we are supposed to be there. There's also a generous amount of space for a grocery list.

The entire bottom of the wall belongs to Emma. She already knows where in our miscellaneous kitchen drawer the chalk and eraser are kept and feels free to help herself. Its a great way to keep her occupied while I am trying to cook dinner.

I have to say- out of all of the improvements that we have made in the house lately- this is one of my favorites. It's been finished almost a week and has already been a big help.

Up next...the new vegetable garden!

We've been busy!

I know... I know... It's been a while since my last post (2 1/2 months!!!) but I have an excuse. We have been incredibly busy. So busy in fact that its too much to fit into one post.

I will begin at the beginning...

This is what our back deck looked like when we bought our house. Actually, when we bought the house it was even worse. The pergola was covered in a REALLY ugly vine and there was lattice up the front of the deck completely obscuring the view so the vine had something to grow on. It was gross. I think there was something living in the vine. I hated to walk out the back door.

Even more upsetting though was the overall state of the deck. According to our neighbors, the people that we purchased the house from did no maintenance anywhere on the house for the four years that they owned it...and that definitely included the deck. It hadn't been cleaned and it definitely had not been sealed or stained. The pergola was in such bad shape that the cross beams were no longer sitting square on the ledger board. We lived with it for a year and basically had resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to have to rip the entire thing off and start over. Afterall, we were beginning to get tired of constantly removing splinters from our daughter's feet (She refuses to wear shoes out there). Why did we wait so long if it was so bad? Because replacing the deck was not in the budget when there was so much else that really needed to be done. So, it got placed on the back burner.

And then we went to Home Depot one day to get spray paint for another project. Mike and I walked past a display for Deck ReStore, a product which swears that it will seal up any cracks in the old wood on your deck and make your old deck like new. We thought it was too good to be true, but asked the Paint Guy in H.D. anyway. He was amazing and basically walked us through all the steps of what we needed to do to rehab our deck. He even gave us hints on how to apply the ReStore in a slightly different way than what the directions said. Armed with the info we got from the Paint Guy, we decided to give it a shot.

First and foremost, the pergola needed to go. We removed it and cut the support posts down to the ground. Then we replaced the hand rails around the entire deck. They were in really bad condition and one of them had cut outs for the pergola support posts so that one definitely would have had to go.

We also added a few new 2 x 4s to beef up the main posts of the railings so that everything was completely safe.

Then,  we scrubbed the deck clean. Our H.D. Rock Star recommended that we use the Behr Premium Plus 2 in 1 Wood Prep. It took us 2 days and 2 containers of the Wood Prep to get the deck clean, but the difference was amazing. It looked like a completely new deck.

Next, we were on to staining. We decided to stain the railings of the deck white and the floor of the deck and the tops of the hand rails chocolate brown. We used Behr Premium Plus Solid Stain in Ultra Pure White for the hand rails and the lattice on the bottom of the deck. It took two coats to get nice even coverage.

 The next weekend, we moved on to staining the floor of the deck. Now, the package instructions for the ReStore product had mentioned that we shouldn't apply it when the temperature is over 90 degrees. Unfortunately, this is South Carolina so that would have meant staining it in the dark or waiting until October. Neither of those seemed like an option to us so we took a shot. We started to apply one coat with the roller (as the package instructs) and then planned to wait three hours (again- as instructed) to apply the second coat.

In hind sight, we probably should have set our alarm for the crack of dawn (which we did do when putting on the second coat) and maybe chosen a day that was not 100 degrees. It went on okay but it wasn't as smooth of a finish as what we were hoping for so we went to the pool and hoped it would look better once dry. Luckily for us about 5 hours of 100 degree heat later- the skies opened up and we had a MAJOR rain storm. I think that it helped to smooth out some of the rougher spots.

We had to wait until the next weekend to complete the second coat of the ReStore because it rained nearly every night that week. (I wasn't crazy enough to attempt to do this myself with a 4 year old trying to "help". Before we did the second coat, I went back to my local Home Depot (a/k/a Second Home) and picked up two 3 inch brushes. The paint guy had told us that the first coat is basically like a primer and that the second coat is what is really important. He recommended using the brushes but cautioned us to make sure that we applied a very thick coat.

Thank goodness we listened to him! The deck looks amazing! The bottom boards are completely sealed. We definitely are not going to get any more splinters! It looks like Trex (which is the composite decking stuff) except for 3 packages of the Deck ReStore we spent $117 instead of like $500 to replace the deck with Trex.

I still have to take better after pictures but we need to finish the touch ups and stain the top rails. ReStore carries its own line of solid stains which are available through their website in colors to match the product that goes on the deck.




Just as a disclaimer- I have not received anything from Home Depot, Behr or the people who make Deck ReStore. I did, however, get a free paint stirrer from Ron, the AMAZING paint guy at the Home Depot in Greenville, SC- but I kinda think he was just being nice. (c: