Let There Be (Super Pretty) Light

I need to go away more often. This weekend I joined some old friends for our annual trip to The Festy, a music festival at Devil's Backbone brewery near Charlottesville. The downside was two nights of sleeping in the rain and a second wind for the cold that's been haunting me for two weeks.

But the PLUS side was coming home to:

(Thanks honey!) The Harlowe Wire pendant lights I ordered from Pottery Barn are even prettier in real life! (Tip, look on Ebay for people selling Pottery Barn coupons. Worth it for bigger purchases.) These lights add just the right amount of sparkle. Now we can see Edison bulbs peaking through without being blinded by the light. Crud, now I have Manford Mann stuck in my head...and you can too:

Sorry, back on track. Glad I did a little bit of extra shopping around and decided to fudge the budget the tiniest bit. These are the first thing you see when looking at the kitchen and one of the first ones when walking in our home, and they totally dress the place up. Woo and hoo. 

New Life for 1920s Handles

Another piece of the kitchen puzzle. Last night, I ordered a vintage glass door knob set on Etsy, from the 1920s. With some adaptations, I plan to use a knob and back plate as the pull for the lower pantry door and just the knob on the top part.

I think the larger scale will fit well with this massive cabinet (22" x 15" and 30" deep), while still tying into the small glass knobs I'm using on most of the doors. It's so exciting waiting for the mail these days!

Ceiling Bling

Maybe it was the heady rush of realizing how much I'd saved on my yard sale cabinet pulls, or maybe it was the need for something SPARKLY to look at  on this dreary fall day. Oh wait--I blame my friend Liz for letting me know that Pottery Barn had 20% off their lights this week. And thus, I found myself pushing our lighting budget up by about $40 (or about $120 if you go by the price of the lights we purchased but are returning) so that we could own three of these: 

We'd gotten a great deal on some copper-look lights with Edison bulbs, at just $40 each including the bulb. And they look nice--if you don't look at them. With the exposed bulb at eye level for adults seated at the bar, the effect was a bit blinding. So the lighting search re-started.


We looked at Ikea, back to Lowe's, Amazon, Etsy, round and round. I think the extra money we are spending on the Harlowe Wire & Glass lights is a small trade off for the time I will save by ending my internet search!

Also alleviating any budget busting guilt was finding these EXACT lights on Ebay, new in the box, for the sale price, but with no shipping or taxes. That saved over $30. Which is just enough to make me feel like I got a good deal and enjoying checking another item off the list.

Victories of Frugality

Ah, that moment of pure joy and smug satisfaction when you realize just how good of a deal you got. In this case, while shopping for appliance pulls, I came across the style of cup pulls (who knew there were so many types of pulls!) that I'd purchased at a yard sale and will be using on our new cabinets.

It turns out they are Hickory brand "Charleston" pulls, selling from $4 to $5 each, and the knobs can be had for about $3 each. So I'm feeling pretty darn good about buying a bag of 12 pulls and 16 knobs for a grand total of...$4. Victory!

Time to go list the knobs, which we are not using, on Ebay and recoup some money towards the kitchen fund. I only need 100 more discoveries like this to offset the cost of that silly load bearing wall! Baby steps.

Knobs! Mismatched Matching

Because I planned to change blogging platforms, I've put off blogging about our Ikea kitchen remodel. Unless you count posts composed in my head. There are like 30 of those.

Anyway, as a result, I still plan to chronicle our DIY remodeling adventures, but it will now be out of order and a bit willy nilly. So, let's start near the end with cabinet hardware. I'd set a low budget ($70) for this considering that we need 12 pulls, 16 knobs and 6 appliance pulls. It meant scouring for deals and some creativity.

I'd picked up this pull and knob set for $4 at a yard sale over the summer, originally for another project, but ended up not using them. While the knobs were a little flowerly, I decided that, for my budget, I could learn to love the cup pulls. The catch was trying to find knobs that would match. Until I thought of a much better idea. NOT matching.

Especially since I was shopping on Amazon and Ebay looking for deals, it was impossible to determine if I'd end up ordering something that would prove useless. Glass became the work around. Last night I ordered 18 of the oval glass knobs pictured at right. For...drum roll...$2.35 each, on Ebay. This is a savings of several dollars per knob, compared to retail prices. With shipping + yard sale pulls, that brings me to about $53 total on cabinet hardware. And I have faith that I'll find those last few appliance pulls at a yard sale this weekend. Stranger things have happened.

At least some parts of this project are coming in under budget. Finally!

New (Old) Stomping Grounds

I'm a bit of a blogging nomad. My first search for a blogging platform came 4 years ago as I sought a home for capturing everything that went into planning my wedding. I went through the various bridal website platforms, a few blogging sites and eventually landed here. Well, at the time, Blogspot: I Do To DIY.

Ah, those early days of domesication. Back when I heard that a marriage takes work, I thought it was meant in a 9-to-5, cushy desk job sort of way. Three years in and I'm a little wiser. Now I know it's roll up your sleeves, put on your hard hat and descend into the mine type of work. I mean, don't get me wrong. The pay is decent and the benefit package is pretty sweet, but...it's for real work.

And when the canary stops singing, it's not every man for himself, you have a family to dig out and bring back up with you. No wonder I'm exhausted all the time!

Or maybe that's because I stay up late blogging and watching HGTV. Yeah, that may have something to do with it too.

Wait. I digress. Marriage led to a new house, "our house," which led to "our" projects. Decks to build, gardens to start, furniture to find and refinish. Wanting to track the process, I wound up on Tumblr, but eventually wanted something more word friendly. A few rounds of Googling and here I am, back where I started. Thanks for having me back, Blogger!