Cake Makin'

The last few months have brought some first, paid cakes for my sister and I.  We have been making cakes for a few years now, mostly for our nieces' and nephews' birthdays, family events and church functions.  Through a few referrals, we've been approached to make cakes for a baby shower, a wedding and a first birthday party.

Last weekend, we baked and decorated the wedding cake and it turned out looking great.  (I was told it tasted good, too!)

The couple wanted a simple, fondant covered cake with purple ribbons.  They wanted it to look similar to the card box they made and they gave use some artificial flowers and petals to use for the display.  

Their cake topper was simple and elegant and a simple cake design complimented it nicely.

The baby shower was back in June and, for the cake, we were just told "it's going to be a boy, so put some blue on it."  He had some fun with it.

The giraffe was modeled from fondant mixed with tylose powder. (a hardening agent)

We also made some iPhone app cupcakes for our oldest sister's May birthday.  She was attending a meeting for app developers on the day of her birthday and made the request for these.  Some of the cupcakes were custom made for apps designed by those in attendance.  They were a big hit!

And I made some floral-themed, fondant-covered cupcakes for Mother's Day.

I'm really excited about the recent business.  We've been wanting to make a cake business/home bakery official for a while and are in the process of making that happen.  I've been thinking of some potential business names and brainstorming some ideas for marketing our services.  The pieces are falling into place!  :-)

The Big Kitchen Reveal

I'm sorry if I teased you with a sneak peek of our little kitchen and then slacked off with posting some more pictures.  The good news is that today is your lucky day!  We had an open house with a small group of family and friends on the Fourth of July and I finally got the kitchen/dining room looking presentable and somewhat decorated.  So, that means there are some pictures to share with you!

First up, let's not forget where we've been:

A kitchen in this bad of shape left little to be desired.

And paneling so ugly, it had to be removed.  Heck, this entire wall needed to go.

The tiny dining room seemed so dark and cramped.  That paneling wall is what's on the other side of the fridge photo above.

And carpeting in the kitchen?  Very bad.  This whole space was very bad.  The only answer was to completely gut and start over.

So, we got to work.  On demolition day (back in August of 2009) we started the transformation.

Goodbye paneling wall!  That's my dad getting down to business. Notice how bad the floor was under the carpeting.  We found a layer of tile under the carpet, which was applied directly on top of our hardwood with some type of tar glue.

The cabinets all came down, along with all the paneling.  (Chris' mom got in on the demolition action.)  Nice hole in the ceiling, huh?  Turns out, the previous owner had some plumbing problems in the upstairs bathroom and whoever she contracted to fix it just hammered a hole in the ceiling to access the pipes.  She patched it herself by placing cardboard from a pizza box in the hole and covering it with what we believed to be spray foam.  That was a fun discovery.  

And then, with the wall down and the paneling gone, we got to work chiseling the tile off the hardwood.  

Over the next several months, our kitchen received new drywall on both the walls and the ceiling.

My father-in-law installed a bulkhead.

And then he started to install our cabinets and counter tops.

The floor in the kitchen was tiled and Chris and I sanded and refinished the hardwood in the dining area (and everywhere else in the house!)

And I got busy painting the cabinets, which were purchased on eBay.  Thanks to Edie at Life in Grace, I was inspired by how great painted cabinets can look!

Things started to fall into place after we painted the rooms, installed subway tile and had appliances delivered.

Thanks for hanging with me!  Sorry to drag this on, but I thought you might appreciate the next series of pictures more if you saw what all was done to get it looking this way.

So, here goes!  Our ugly little kitchen was transformed into a bright, beautiful space.  We still have some more to do, but for now, I am in love!

Being that Chris & I are both tall, having a refrigerator with a bottom freezer made a lot of sense.  We love it! Having our food at eye level is super convenient.  

The subway tile turned out great!  I was a little worried about white tile with white cabinets, but I'm so happy we went this route.

Here's a close-up of the tile job.  My father-in-law did a great job.

With the wall removed between the kitchen and dining room, the space is much more open and bright.  I'm a huge fan of the poppy and aqua color combination made popular by Martha Stewart.  I really like how the white kitchen really makes the little red and blue accents pop.

I love my little "baking center."  The shelf was purchased at Cracker Barrel, of all places.  I bought it when we stopped for breakfast on our way to Cleveland to get the eBay cabinets because I loved the color.  I'm still debating what to hang on the wall on either side of the shelf.  I may try and pick up some red-handled antique kitchen utensils. 

I hang my measuring spoons and baking utensils from the hooks on the sides.  My flower sifter is on the top and the mason jars, given to me by my mother, hold our flour, oatmeal and powdered sugar. Cupcake liners and cookie cutters are stashed in the drawer.  I keep sprinkles in the jars next to the sugar tin, which was a Hobby Lobby clearance steal at $1.80!

The cupcake print was purchased on sale at Joann's.  It came in that frame and I only paid $7.99.  I love how the colors coordinate with other decor elements in the room.

Our built-in shelf, which was a window at one point long before we owned the house, still needs a little decorative assistance.  For now, it displays my serving dishes and a few plants given to me by my sister out our open house.

Those baskets are great for hiding the little stuff I don't use very often, like our gravy boat, sugar & creamer set and some candles.

On the opposite side, I have a small shelf and a mirror made from an old window.  You can kind of see our dishwasher (black part of the peninsula counter).  I was part of the eBay kitchen and we made an offer on it while we were there removing the cabinets.  I'm so happy we have a dishwasher!  (Who wouldn't be, right?) It seems to blend in well because it's black, but one day I hope to replace it with a stainless model to match the rest of the appliances.  For now, it works and doesn't look too bad.  That's good enough for me!

The mirror was purchased at Goodwill for $5.  I bought the shelf at a yard sale for $2 and painted it.  It's the perfect size for this space and gives us some much needed storage for glassware and a couple serving pieces. This wall still needs some more decorations.

Just for the fun of it, here is the shelf before I painted it.  Paint is like a magic wand.

Here's a good shot of our light fixture, with the lights out for a better look.  It was purchased at Lowe's and installed by me.  Electric work is a little scary, but you can do it!  Just be sure to kill the circuit breaker!  The artwork in the dining area (can I call it a dining room?) is also from Joann's.

And here are our floors!  A tremendous amount of hard work was put into these, but it was worth the effort!  I'm still amazed by how good the wood looks.  I was so discouraged when we saw the tile beneath the carpet.  My dad told me the sander would make it better.  He was right!  The kitchen tile is ceramic and we chose it in a slate color to coordinate with the counters.

My kitchen makes me so happy!  Lots of cakes and cupcakes will be made here!  

We moved into our house in April.  I told you I was a big slacker with posting pictures!  Although, hanging stuff on the walls was one of the things we didn't do until last week, after deciding to host the open house.   I think that after patching so many holes, we were a little hammer shy when it came to putting any new nails in the walls.  It's amazing how hanging a framed print or some curtains can really dress up a space and make it look more finished.

Things we still have to do in this space include:

• Find a corner hutch for the dining area
• Add some more decorative elements for the walls and shelves
• Finish sewing the curtains for both windows.  I bought some aqua-ish blue fabric, but ran out of time before the open house.
• Purchase new stools and dining chairs.  The current stools were picked up by Chris' mom at a rummage sale and the dining table and chairs came from my parents' neighbors.  Er, umm...from my parents' neighbors' junk pile on neighborhood clean-up day.  Yeah, that's how we roll!

And, here's a little breakdown on some of the details:

• Cabinets - purchased on eBay (I won the auction by 3 cents!) and painted with Ace Hardware's Cabinet and Trim paint in Contemporary White.  (This paint is amazing!  Our cabinets have a smooth, brushstroke-free finish.)
• Appliances - All from Sears.  The fridge is LG and the stove and microwave are Frigidaire Gallery.
• Paint - Walls are "Linen" and trim/shelves are "String of Pearls".  Both are by Valspar from Lowe's
• Subway tile back splash and ceramic floor tile - Home Depot
• Light fixtures - Lowe's

Thanks for checking out this extremely long and picture-heavy post!  I'm super proud of all the hard work we did and of how we were able to complete the whole project on a limited budget.  Our only splurge was the stainless appliances, and I think they were worth it!  Of course, we would never have been able to do all of this alone.  Our parents, especially Chris' dad, were amazing in helping with everything!

I'm planning on doing some posts very soon on my little vegetable garden and also on the buffet of mini desserts I put together for the open house.  So, stay tuned for yummy treats! And, of course, I'll have to get around to taking some photos of the rest of the house.  

Refinishing our floors Pt. 2

Yes, I know.  This blog has been severely neglected over the last month.  But, I do have a VERY good reason.  It involves this:

Yes!  We moved in!  FINALLY!  There is still so much more to do (and still more stuff to pack and move), but the place is livable and we are slowly settling in.

I want to finish a few things before I take pictures of our kitchen, bedroom, living room, dining area, bathroom and other areas to share with the internets.  In the mean time, I figured I could give you a run down of the rest of our floor refinishing project.

After we sanded all the floors, we removed all the dust from the rooms.  We wiped down the walls, the trim and any nook and cranny where dust might settle.  For the floors, we first swept them with a broom, then followed with a shop vac.

Just to be sure we got everything, we went over the entire floor with a tack cloth.  Any dust left behind could end up settling in the poly coat, making the floor feel rough.  We wanted to avoid that as much as possible.

We tried a few different brands and really liked the ones made by 3M.  We found them at Ace Hardware.

The next step was to cover the floors with a few coats of polyurethane to protect them and give them that purdy, glossy shine.  We decided not to stain them because we wanted the look of the natural wood to show as much as possible.

For our floors, we used a water-based poly.  We picked water-based over oil-based because we wanted something that was fast-drying and low on odor.  Oil-based polys are more durable, but really stink up the place, take longer to fully cure and aren't as easy to clean up.

We bought this at Home Depot for about $38 a bottle.  I think we used four of five bottles to do all of the wood floors in the house.  That's six rooms and the stairs.

The first coat went on quickly.  We did it mop-style by using a Water Wiz attached to a pole.  We bought those at Home Depot, too.

We applied the poly with the grain and were careful to work our way out of each room by starting in the corner farthest from the door.

The polyurethane looked like watered down Elmer's glue, was a little cloudy during the application and dried clear.  We put it in a paint pan to make it easier to load our applicator.

To cover the areas where the applicator wouldn't reach, or to smooth out any drips or poly build up, we used a small paint brush.

After the first coat completely dried (we let it go overnight), we had to sand the floors again.  The reason was that the bare wood expands and the grain rises when it absorbs the polyurethane.  The floor was very rough after the first coat and sanding is standard practice.

We used 220 grit sandpaper and did the work through a combination of hand sanding and using a small palm sander.  We sanded lightly along the grain until the result was a smooth finish.

Then, it was a repeat of the dust removal process.  There wasn't much dust to clean up, but we still swept, ran the shop vac and used a tack cloth.  Dust is bad!

As you could assume, we used the same techniques as the first coat when we added two more coats of polyurethane.  With the water-based poly, we didn't have to sand between coats as long as we did them within six hours of each other.  The floors dried enough to walk on in about an hour, so we jumped right into both coats in one evening.

The floors had to cure for a few days before we could move in furniture.  We probably let them sit for about a week just to give them plenty of time to cure.

The results are fabulous!  I am so tickled pink with how nice our floors turned out!  I love them!

Oooooh...shiny!

It's a big change from what they were before.

The dining room floor after one pass of the drum sander.  The edges hadn't been sanded at this point, but you can see how bad the floors were when we pulled up the carpet.

I'm really proud of the work we did on the floors, but don't get me wrong---it kicked our butts!  Especially the sanding part.  That is some hard labor.  But, it's so nice to have beautiful hardwood floors throughout our house!  I love the warm, welcoming feeling they provide and the small monetary investment of DIY floor refinishing (which for us, it was about $500 in sandpaper, rentals, supplies and materials) was more than worth it. Carpeting or professional refinishing services would never have been as affordable.  

Did I mention how much I love the floors?!?!?