More Projects

During the winter, we haven't been working on projects as much. Mostly I've been deep cleaning and going through boxes.

However, in this last week, I think I've started feeling the Spring bug, and it's made us want to start working on our house again.

I love my kitchen chairs. They're family heirlooms. After we moved to Utah, my grandparents gave us my great-grandma's table on loan. It's been really nice to use. They told us not to hurry to buy a new table. So, we've been using it for a while.

A few months ago, my great-aunt moved out of her large home into an apartment. When she did so, she gave us some of her furniture. Among the furniture came four wooden chairs that, it turns out, match our table. They were also owned by my great-grandma. (We also got some awesome book shelves!)

They are in pretty good shape, though a few of them had paint spots and the like and they were a bit worn.

So, Monday, I decided to re-stain my kitchen chairs. This is what the worst one looked like when I started:

I carefully took the paint off, re-sanded some edges, and applied the stain. When I was finished, it looked like this:

Isn't it beautiful?!

Then, for my birthday, my wonderful parents gave me the new curtain that I'd asked for. Since we've moved into the house, we've had some very interesting blinds on our back glass doors. I forgot to take a before picture, and it took me a while to find any. Evidently, I really didn't like them very much.

Here are a few I did find.

This was the first picture I took. They're open here, so you can't see what they look like as well. 

This is a much better shot. Many of the blinds were missing, so it didn't look very good. (I'm not a big fan of the floral top either.)

This picture shows you the beach towel that we stuck up to help keep the sun out of Kevin's eyes in the morning. 

I was so excited when I received the curtain for my birthday, and last night Grig and I went out and found a rod that we liked to hang it on.

I was going to wait until today to put it up, but I think we all got kind of excited about it last night, and so we had a family party!

Here's Grig putting up the rod:

He did one side, and then he needed to get ready for bed. I finished the other side and Allopex helped me stick it the curtain on the rod and hang it up.

Here's the completed project:

You can see the chairs here too!

I love it! It looks so much better. It is also a blackout curtain, so it's supposed to keep the sun out, as well as heat and cold. I can already feel a difference on the drafts that are coming through my house.

We also received a new swing from Grig's parents for my birthday. We already replaced one of the broken ones on our swing set. I'll have to stick a picture up later.

I'm really excited about my new curtains. I think it makes my dining room look a lot newer and cleaner. Happy birthday to me!