Demolition Derby

No one has ever accused me of being a patient person. When we moved into our house Tuesday afternoon, I was absolutely itching to tackle, and rip down, some of the house's original decorative "accents." Some would have, oh, I don't know, started to organize the disaster situation going on in our family room:

But I decided that the far more pressing matter was to rip off the embellishments on the kitchen cabinets. Within 3 hours of moving in, I could no longer resist the burning temptation to claw them off with my bare hands. You can sort of see them in this picture below (taken from our realtor's website):

I wish I had a better picture of them, but my "before" pictures are on my mom's camera, who is out of town right now. Blogging FAIL; I promise to get better at this! Anyway, they were these small, metal embellishments that looked like they had been nailed on to the cabinet doors to look like fancy hinges. Only they weren't hinges, they were just cheap, old metal do-hickeys haphazardly attached for the sole purpose of torturing the psyche of future owners of the home. I found a screwdriver and pried them all off while Dave was still at work.

Then, I gave the cabinets a good scrubbing, a good Pledge-ing, added an area rug, some cute dishtowels (thanks Mom!), and one Supremely Handsome Dog. Now, it looks like this:

I think it looks much cleaner and at least a tad more modern, n'est-ce pas? Our future plan is to DIY paint the cabinets a nice cream color and replace the old hardware to give it a quick update, while we save up (or win the lottery) to completely renovate it for a nice, new kitchen (not DIY, we'll leave that one to the professionals). Something has to be done about these laminate floors too. I'm thinking DIY peel-and-stick tiles?

More updates to come soon, and hopefully I'll have some real pictures for you soon (the "after" pictures in this post were taken with an iPhone because I currently can't find my camera). We did one other quick, but major, demolition. Hint: it involves a smashed finger (mine), a hammer, the strong man who lives in the house (not Charlie), and culminates in cleaning 40 years of kitchen gunk.

Welcome Home

We've recently purchased a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath ranch in the suburbs. It was built in 1979, and while its been well cared for, it looks like it hasn't had an ounce of updating since then. This is the story of our slow, and sometimes painful, updating of the house. Like most young couples, we're on a budget, so we're going to DIY lots of projects and learn as we go.

Now, let us introduce the major players in this operation.

Julia and Dave:

Our Wondermutt, Charlie:

And, of course, the star of the blog, our Little Pink Home:

"Before" pictures to come this evening! But, here's a preview of the 70's tastic decor we are working with: