Wheels and I toured the local Parade of Homes recently, along with hundreds of others like the couple above. The general theme was horse country so there were lots of visual references to rural life, like the barn looking garage. Of course, the homes were beautiful, showed off the builders best and were in the not quite a million dollar price range. Three car garages were the standard and there were a couple of four car garages. Six bedrooms, each with a bathroom. Some had main floor master suites as well as a second floor master, a couple also had a mother in law suite on the lower level. A couple of bathrooms on the main level and more on the lower level gave each house between 5 and 8 bathrooms. Half had full movie theaters with room sized screens and theater seating. In each of ... [Read More]
Home decorating
Dress up your garage entry
When you park the car in your garage, do you walk around to the front door to enter the house? I didn’t think so! If your family is like most, chances are you come and go by the garage entry door something like 97.3% of the time. I totally made up that statistic out of thin air just now. But think about it – you drive in the garage, everybody hops out and runs in the house to the potty, for a drink, for dibs on the tv remote. That 2.7 % front door usage includes going for a walk, running in and out the front door to play, picking up the mail and other quick forays. We dress up the front door for curb appeal and to make our home pleasant for us. And seldom use it. Especially if we live in a place where winter is a season that makes its presence known! Why shouldn’t we dress ... [Read More]
How to hang a wall cabinet the easy way
So happy with the transformation of my $5 bathroom cabinet! I think it turned out well and I love, love, love the amount of storage we have now! The white really pops against the new paint color -- Frost, a very light gray with blue tones that goes from lavendar to blue to gray as the light from the Sola Tube in the ceiling changes throughout the day. Our kitchen cabinets delivered about the time we were ready to hang this. Geek that I am, I looked through the directions included for hanging wall cabinets. The directions they gave looked like a great idea! So Wheels and Bytes opted to try it out. And the method worked like a charm! First Wheels determined where the studs were in the area where the cabinet was to hang. The old one that we were replacing was light weight and ... [Read More]
Transition Kitchen: How to make do while your kitchen is remodeled
Cooking is definitely a challenge when your kitchen is a major construction area! I made a temporary kitchen in the dining room. Sharing this morning in case you are thinking of ripping out your kitchen for a redo -- a dose of reality!! It will be so worth it all in the long run. This is Crockpot Central. I have the lunch crockpot going and am getting ready to load the dinner crockpot. The Work Station is on a corner of the dining table. I'm making a crockpot peach cobbler. You won't be reading that recipe here. Total fail even though the work crew gamely ate a portion each -- they were really hungry, which helped it go down :-). The all important coffee, tea and snack station. We break about 4ish each afternoon for a sit down snack, because we are usually involved in ... [Read More]
How to choose color for your home – part II
An oft repeated rule of thumb in choosing color for your home is to start with an accessory you love. The theory is that it is easier to match paint to a color in an expensive or sentimental painting, vase, pillow than it is to find accessories to go with the color. I did that in our kitchen. Only the color inspiration was a set of mugs and trivets from a garage sale that cost $2. Something in the color combination just sang. And now our kitchen sings the same tune. Then I fell in love with a color and dived in head first. Pun fully intended!! Since the name of the color is Sunken Pool. See above! Isn't that just gorgeous?!!!! IRL it is! We chose that color for our powder room on the main floor. The itty bitty room. I didn’t have accessories that I wanted to ... [Read More]
Stellar Staircases — The Results or How to install a stair runner
For weeks I dreamed of a stellar staircase with dark stained treads, white risers and swirling teal stenciled leaves. Then reality happened and I found out there were some questions I should have answered first. Now that we have the answers, here is where we arrived. Those stairs needed padding and floor covering. Not wall to edge as it had been before, but at least the path up and down the stairs had to be covered for appearance, sound control and traction for our pet. At first I could not find stair runners anywhere, then the nearby home center restocked. Their runners were expensive and not what I wanted at all -- dark and/or busy patterns. I bought regular hallway rugs in a neutral gray beige and planned to install those. And then I found a stair runner at a discount home ... [Read More]