Meet our new sectional - Karl

Yep, we went with what seems to be the most popular choice for a well priced sectional among bloggers- the Karlstad sofa and chaise lounge from Ikea!

We've been planning to make this change for quite a while. Our old couches were nice and soft and still in good shape, but just too big for the space. So they'll likely go into storage until my brother graduates college (yay, hand-me-down furniture!).

We knew one thing going in with Karl was that we hated his legs. The light color just didn't work with the dark fabric (we went with Sivik Dark Grey) and he just felt too short with the 5 7/8" legs. So after a lot of research and seeing various failed methods of changing the legs, we went for it and ordered these 8" legs from Waldell Mfg.

 Well they are actually more like 7" legs, and the metal color is silver (unlike their picture that shows gold). But we decided to go for it anyways. I stained them with one coat of Kona stain and sealer, and we decided we were happy with that coat. I didn't bother spending time taping off the metal part since I knew I could scrap off the stain that got on there, but actually we decided it gives it an "antique-y" look similar to what our favorite store, Ballard Designs, does on a lot of furniture. So I'll likely go back and dab more stain on the metal to even it out.



Then on to assembly.... it took us about 2.5 hours, which includes the leg change, so not too bad. Here's how we made that change. First, we pried off the plastic black piece that goes between the leg and the couch frame to get a sturdy surface to attach the brackets for the legs.

Then we pre-drilled holes for the screws to make sure they went in straight and didn't split any wood.

Then simply screwing in the bracket. We used a combination of the provided screws and a few extra long ones mixed in, in case that gave it a little more bite into the wood.

Then screw in the legs and repeat for all 8 legs! It's pretty simple after you get the hang of it. The good news is the legs feel very very secure. So we'll be monitoring them to make sure they don't loosen up as the couch gets used. But we're pretty confident at this point!

We are very happy with the final product, just have to get some more pillows (not all of our old ones worked with the new color scheme), probably a garden stool or other small object to put next to the chaise to hold drinks, and of course a new coffee table!

Wedding DIY: BBQ Sauce Favors!

For our wedding favors, we wanted to do something fun, something 'us', and something guests wouldn't throw away the next day {i.e. food}. So we immediately thought of doing a canned BBQ sauce after I saw a similar concept on Pinterest.

Our final product - Sweet & Tangy Version

So we set off on an adventure to find the perfect barbeque sauce and discovered that we actually wanted to make 2 sauces- the Bride's sauce {sweet & tangy} and the Groom's sauce {mustard based}.

We found this great recipe for a 14 spice dry rub along with the sweet and tangy BBQ sauce over on The Yummy Life. Greg's a fan of the mustard based sauces, so he found this one on Just a Pinch. We made a small test batch, and they were both perfect!

We must of our ingredients from Costco since you could buy in bulk, and then got the spices fresh from the Farmer's Market. We didn't take many pictures during the cooking process, well, because it was really really messy, and cooking that much of anything isn't pretty!

After a full day of cooking and canning, we got them all laid out on the dining room table, and then waited for the cans to cool so we could see if they were all successfully canned. I think it was 2 that failed, so we put those two them in the fridge for us to enjoy. But hey, 2 out of 140 isn't bad in my opinion.

We did all of this in June 2013, because we knew the canned BBQ sauce would last for at least a year, so that would give our guests plenty of time to use it, and we didn't want to wait to long and stress ourselves out at the last minute. Though we did wait until September to put together the spice packets that we attached to the BBQ, since we knew that would harden much quicker.

If you are familiar with canning, you know that the ring on top is really only important during the canning process and you can actually take that off once the jar is successfully canned. So once I was ready to package the BBQ's to give out, I cut out square of fabric to put under the ring for a cute look and tied everything together with a small business card with the name of the sauce and some twine. Just to be extra fancy, the tags match the wedding invitations!




I also made this little chalkboard sign to go with the favors, but I'm guessing the wedding coordinator decided not to put it out, since it's missing from all of the pictures. But oh well.... it all still looked great!

Does the ceiling look weird to you?

Yeah, not a fun realization..... But that's what happened last week when we hung a picture in the entryway to the basement. I looked up and the ceiling looked like it was wet and sort of bubbly. So naturally, Greg grabbed a step ladder and reached to touch it, and went right through the ceiling.

Since it's directly below the toilet of the half-bath, we knew immediately that we had a problem. So after a moment of freaking out, we called our resident plumbing expert {Greg's dad}. He suggested that we cut into the ceiling and just look and see whats leaking.

Greg's dad said it would likely be one of two things- 1) the trap is leaking {not good, we would need a plumber} or 2) the toilet seal was leaking {we can fix}. So of course we were hoping for option 2.
It was still really hard to decide what was leaking, so after some Google searching, we decided to put some green dye in the toilet to see if the leak was coming from there.

Other than an interesting picture, it didn't really help us. But we did eventually decide that the leak was coming from the toilet seal, which meant a simple wax seal replacement, yay! Or so we thought....

Nope, still leaking. After a bunch of trial and error, we figured out that the previous owners had cut off the old flange when installing tile. Then they put down a cast iron flange extender and a plastic flange extender and a bunch of silicone, with 2 wax seals on top of that. So I guess that was their solution for the leaking toilet, and it lasted about 3 years or so.

The left picture is showing what we originally thought was a flange connected to the waste pipe, but then we removed it and found it was just a flange extender and there was another cast iron flange extender attached to the subfloor. In the right picture, you can see essentially two pipes inside each other: the inner pipe is the waste pipe, and the other pipe is what I assume was the original flange that was sawed off, likely when they added/replaced tile in this bathroom.
Note: It's good to stuff a towel in the waste pipe to prevent sewer gas from entering your house. Oh, also, sorry for the gross pictures, plumbing isn't pretty....

So we decided to fix the issue instead of continuing this ridiculous solution. So we bought a 3" diameter Push Tite flange, which easily pushes right down into the waste pipe. Then to raise the height of the flange, we added two 1/4" flange extenders (only because Home Depot didn't have any 1/2" extenders in stock), adding silicone between each extension. We let that dry for 24 hours per the silicone instructions, put the wax seal on, then the toilet and voila! No more leaking toilet!

Now onto patching that hole in the basement ceiling....

Backyard Upgrade: Part 3- The GRASS!!!

You got to see our plan, the prepping steps, and now, finally, you can see the grass! Or the beginnings of it anyway. It's been pretty rainy/cloudy here for several days, so hopefully it will clear up so the grass (and the garden) will shoot up!

It's starting to fill in, but there's still a lot that hasn't sprouted yet. We'll probably give it another week and then maybe reseed the empty areas. Since it has been kind of rainy, some of the seed probably got washed away. It's a pretty dramatic change from how it looked back in December when we moved in, and we are super happy with it! Now we'll just have to add some garden art in here and there to make it more 'us'.

You can see where I already got a solar powered kitty to watch over the garden. It was a yard sale find a few weeks ago, I'd seen the same one at Big Lots, but just wouldn't pay $12 for it, but for $2, it was perfect!

Here's what the backyard used to look like, in various stages of progression. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of the backyard when we moved in, but just image 2-3 feet of decaying pine straw and leaves, that's basically what it looked like.

And after adding the tiles and watching the grass grow in!

It's still got some more growing to do. And probably another round or two of reseeding. But we're excited! You can't see it quite as well in the aerial view as you can when you look at it. That's probably due to my 5 year old camera....Oh and just to throw a note in about our rain barrel- it's awesome, since building it like a month ago, we haven't had to use anything else to water the garden or the grass!

DIY Rain Barrel

Last weekend we tackled a project we've been wanting to do for awhile- make a rain barrel to collect rain water from the gutter run-off. This is especially good for us since we don't have a hose outlet in the back yard (that's a project for another day!). There's tons of useful information on the internet about making rain barrels, so we went with a simple solution for now. We may add some more modifications to it as time goes on.

Materials
Barrel- we just used a $9 Rubbermaid trashcan
Spigot
Hose washer
'Nut'- I mean something to screw in inside the barrel to hold the spigot in place, we used a female coupler
 Bricks (optional) - we wanted it off the ground, so it's raised by a few inches with some landscape bricks we had

The whole process was pretty simply; first, cut off down spout at desired height. Attach flexible gutter tubing to the downspout, secure to fence (or other object) for more stability. Cut holes in trashcan (or barrel), one for the gutter tubing, and another for the spigot. Slide hose washer onto spigot threading, then into the hole in the rain barrel, then screw the but on from the inside. Put lid on and slide the tubing down into the barrel. Finished!

Since we got some rain over the weekend, we got to test it out last night! It works really well. We are going to add some caulking to the spigot joint once it dries out to make sure it doesn't start leaking, but so far so good. It works more like a siphon if you attach a short hose to it, not much water pressure of course. But it's good enough to fill up my watering can, which beats walking back and forth from the garage to fill up a bucket with water! Plus this water is free!

Sewing a Pillow

I made a pillow! Aren't you proud of me?

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we are working on an outdoor project, and that part of it involves sewing. I haven't said exactly what the project is yet, because I think it will look awesome once completed and it doesn't look awesome yet. You can probably deduce that we're making some sort of seating unit with pillows and cushion, and you'd be right!

The pillow I made isn't necessarily for the outdoor unit, but we'll probably use it there. It was a practice run for me to see if I can sew in a straight line. I won't go into great detail on how I made the pillow (even me with no sewing experience can guess how to make a pillow), but I did learn a few things from it:

1. I'm terrible at hand stitching after stuffing a pillow
2. I don't sew in straight lines (but I guess they are straight enough)

There's not much I can do about not being able to sew in a straight line- I'll just keep practicing, maybe by the end you won't be able to tell. But most of the project is sewing on the wrong side, so once you flip it, you don't see my uneven seams too much.

The hand stitching part is a problem though. You can see how terribly it went in the picture (the bottom of the pillow), I ended up machine stitching to finish it, since it was already not going well. So I definitely didn't want my cushions (oh yeah, that's what the final project is) to turn out that way.

So other than learning to sew a cushion, I need to learn how to:

1. Sew a zipper so I don't have to hand stitch
2. Sew piping (it'll help my seams look better, I hope...)

This whole cushion project is going to take awhile. So stay tuned for updates, I'll try to link everything so you can follow the whole story of this crazy outdoor seating unit!

Part 1: Super Secret Outdoor Project
Part 2: Sewing a Pillow - This Post!
Parts 3-infinity: ????

P.S. The fabric for the pillow is what we are using on the cushions too, I love it! It's going to look great with bright colored pillows!

Veggie Garden- 1 Month Update

It's been {exactly} one month since we planted our vegetable garden, and as much as I'd like to say that I planned that, I didn't. It's just a happy mistake. The garden overall seems to be doing really well.

And no, you aren't imagining that wooden fence back there, it wasn't there before. A house is just about complete back behind our road, but fortunately, the house is farther down, so we just see the fence and woods.

The store bought better-boy tomato plant is in the back and has grown pretty large, it has lots of flowers and even one mini tomato growing. There's a few smaller tomatoes in this picture too.

This Cherokee Tomato plant is the lone Cherokee seedling survivor, those torrential downpours killed the weakest, and I'm not really sure what happened to the other seedling. But this one has done really well and is almost as big as the store bought Cherokee!

The cucumbers are massive! I have no idea what we're going to do with all of them. Guess we'll be making lots of pickles. Fun process, gross smell! We started with 4 store bought plants, one died, but the other 3 are looking good!

All 3 of the pepper seedlings we planted have survived! We know there is one Bell Pepper and one Poblano Pepper, but we aren't quite sure what the middle one is. The seedlings got mixed up when we were planting, so that one will be a surprise!

We planted 4 zucchini seeds since none our of seedlings made it to transplant time (thanks Nutmeg). All 4 sprouted, but 2 of them didn't last long. These two are getting big and seem to be performing well!

I don't know anything about onions, so I have no idea if these are doing well or dying. At least 1 has died, but a few others seem to have grown another 'leaf', I really have no idea what it's called on an onion.

Like the zucchini, we planted Cherry Tomato seedlings, which are still pretty small. But about 3-4 look like they're doing well.

Broccoli seedlings, planted straight into the ground. Some of the seeds got washed out of the row, so they are somewhat random throughout that side for now. We'll see what makes it, they are still pretty tiny.

The Kale, Butter Lettuce, and Arugula are doing really well! These are the ones we got from Oakhurst Community Garden. They are huge! So are the other lettuce varieties we planted in containers on the deck. They have their big plant sale this weekend, so I'm excited to go check that out and see what they have now!

Melon seedlings (Cantaloupe, Crimson Watermelon, and Orange Watermelon) are still small. They took a lot longer to sprout than the zucchini and broccoli seedlings. Only time will tell.
Not too much is going on with the blackberry plants, they are supposed to be fall bloomers, so we'll have to wait a while to see action there. Something weird is going on with the blueberry plants though, they all bloomed and didn't produce any fruit, so we'll have to research what's going on there.

Stay tuned for another update soon!

Smelly Kitty Litter Box - Part 2

So we're getting close to 4 months with our new litter box system. The cats love it (or at least we do!), the basement doesn't smell like a litter box anymore, and (most of) the litter is contained and not spread across the floor! So since it seems to be a success, here's what we've done now:

What we wanted to do was add-

1. Trim around the outside of the hole
2. A 'cat' door
3. Hanging storage for the litter scoop and a few bags

Eventually, we want to add-

1. A upholstered cushion on top
2. Touch up the wood where it's been scratched
3. Possible fix the hinge for the top (you can see that it's bent and destroyed) 

 


Cat Door

We headed over to Hancock fabric and got a subtle grey vinyl. Cut it to size using the cut out door as a model, then just glued it above the inside of the door. I'm not sure how much it actually helps with keeping smells in, but it does make it look nicer. Plus, the cats don't mind it. It's kind of cute actually, they peak in first to make sure it's not occupied before entering!


Door Trim

So we still haven't done this, we've had some many project going on, it's been impossible to get anything done! It'll happen eventually, so I'll do another update then. Hopefully that update will include a few more fixes/upgrades!


Litter Box Extension

The litter box we had originally put it there would probably be fine for one cat, but we have one massive cat (Lion) and one quickly growing kitten (Nutmeg)! We looked around forever for a storage box, or any kind of plastic box that were the right dimensions (less than 14" wide and as long as possible). Once we determined that no one makes boxes that size, we came up with the idea to get another box the same size as the original, and put them together. This almost doubled the length of the litter box! We tried gluing them together, but as of now, haven't had a great solution to attach them, so now they are mostly secured with pink duct tape. It's worked surprisingly well so far, but we're still trying to think of a better solution!

Litter Box Essentials

• Litter scoop- Hanging on a hook on the wall near the entrance
• Litter mat- Since the one we had goes up the walls of the chest, they kept falling over. So we added some garment snaps to keep it in place. Three snaps per side seems to hold pretty well.
• Plastic bags for used litter- Originally we thought about adding storage inside the chest to hold plastic bags, but we didn't want to crowd them too much. For now we store them in a small trashcan next to the litter chest, but I saw a Pinterest project for storing them that I'll have to try!

Overall, the litter box chest has been amazing! It pretty much contains all the smell and keeps them from spreading litter everywhere.  The only time you really smell something is if your next to it and one of them decides to use it, but even then it's not too bad. Doing normal stuff like having an air freshener in the room helps too, of course.

Repurposing the old cabinets

Note- We actually did this a long time ago, but I just realized that I never finished the post!

Since we took down the cabinets over the island, we didn't want to trash them. So we decided to put them up in the garage for some extra storage (who doesn't need extra storage, right?). Greg's dad had told us the easiest way to do it would be to secure a 2x4 to the wall (in the studs, of course), then balance the cabinets on the 2x4 while one person screws the cabinets into the studs.Then you just screw the cabinets sides together for a little more sturdiness.

Leveling the 2x4 board.

You know the funny thing about cats? They can't stand to not be allowed to go somewhere, like a garage. So ours are constantly trying to run out the garage door, well Lion tries to get out any door, but they are both obsessed with the garage. So we gave in during this project and let them hang out with us in the garage (with the outer garage door closed of course so they can't escape). Trust me, it was much better than hearing their pathetic crying and whimpering from the other side of the door!

Lion wanted to inspect the cabinet

So of course then Nutmeg also had to inspect.

Finished product (well minus the cabinet doors that we still haven't put back on...)

Cost of the project? $0! Wahoo for free projects! The only things we used (other than the cabinets) were some drywall screws, which we always have on hand, and the scrap 2x4.

Mission: DIY Cat Tree

Mission: DIY Cat Tree is short for "Mission: Keep the cats off the dining room table!" But that seemed too long to be a blog post title :)

Our cats, like most others, love to look out windows. Bird watching, squirrel watching, they love it all!

If I could only find a way out, I would so hunt
down those birds and eat them.

~Lionheart (the 20 pound Maine Coon)

Trust me, he trys to find a way out the door almost everyday, so I'm pretty sure that's what he's thinking. Little does he know that he wouldn't get his daily wet food.


Anyways, back on topic.....We want a small cat tree to put next to the dining room window, since that's where the cats [mainly Nutmeg] like to hang out and watch birdies. We already have one next to the french doors by the deck, which is also a favorite location for bird watching. I bought a cat tree probably 5 years ago when I first brought Kitty to Atlanta. She never cared much for it, and neither have Nutmeg and Lion. It's almost identical to this one available on Overstock. So 5 years of wear later, the top platform has been broken off, and it's a little wobbly. Plus it's huge and the only place we could find for it was next to the TV console in the basement, which encourages Nutmeg to run across it in his hyper fits, never a good thing!

So we deconstructed it a few nights ago and decided that we'll re-purpose it to build a new, nicer looking and probably small cat tree. Maybe we'll even turn it into 2 cat trees! These are some images I found online that we like-

So we'll see what ends up happening with the kitties and their bird watching. This project might take awhile to finish, we have soo much going on lately! Greg's parents are coming for a visit this weekend, and  next weekend Kristine and I are going to visit Kristin! And on a somewhat related note, check out another adorable video of Nutmeg playing golf! He's so tiny in the video, it was taken in July 2011.