our kitchen is on modwalls' website!

I was on Modwalls' website today looking for some tile for the entryway and saw that they posted the pictures of our kitchen!
http://www.modwalls.com/brioblendcitysunshine.aspx

We're the EXAMPLE kitchen!  So exciting!

Painted Stairs

When we ripped the carpet off the stairs (about 2 years ago) , it revealed some wood that was pretty beat up.  Its all scrathed and has adhesive stuck to it.  The plan is to sand and paint.
We love our house, but we don't plan on being here forever.  So when we do anything to the house it is important to keep in mind that it cannot be too personal.  For instance, we are working on the entryway right now and I really want to do a bright rug pattern out of 1 square inch glass mosaic tiles.  Instead, I think we will do grey tiles.  I also have dreams about what I want to do to the stairs:

But they will probably be white. 

Maybe all of this self editing is good though.  When we do have a forever home it might end up looking like a fun house. 

Tiny Branding Iron Excitement

There seems to be an increasing amount of cross pollination between our home blog and our store blog.  So I'll keep this short but, like the penny floor, it could have some fun home applications.
Browsing Not Cot one day (which you should do if you aren't) I found Shape Ways, which does 3D printing of almost anything imaginable.  Actually, if you are way smarter than me and can do the design side, you can take away the almost and you have known about this for a while.   You also probably call what they use a CNC machine, but I call it a Star Trek box.  As a side note to what is already turning into a tangent Electrolux went even more Star Trek and made a food printer. 

Now these obviously work well for a store but I think they have tons of other applications as well.   A family crest on an old newel post or a wall paper pattern coffee table you are refinishing.  As a thank you for letting you know about tiny branding irons, use the comment section to tell Niki she should let me buy a CNC printer.

The Entryway (sucks)

This horrible entryway has been haunting us since we moved into the house.  I have had plans to rip up the linoleum and replace it with slate for some time.  I had peeked under the linoleum before and saw a subfloor.  I was thinking that I would pull up the top layer, put down the slate and then add some sort of threshhold.

But THEN

it occured to me yesterday that the linoleum, and thus the subfloor, were probably added when the house was carpetted back in the 70's.  Which would mean that there was some original flooring under that subfloor. So, all I needed to do was just pull up the "new" stuff, to expose the original and that would be a huge improvement. 

When I took that picture of the old entryway last night I was thinking that this would be the first project on the house that ended up being easier, cheaper and faster than planned.

Ha!

I pulled up the subfloor to expose hundreds of these nasty little saw things. 

These little bastards do not want to come out of the boards.  From what I can tell, these came as part of the subfloor stuff so that some lazy contractors 40 years ago could just put it down, pound the crap out of it, and bingo, subfloor.  But when I ripped that stuff up, these stayed.  And now that I am trying to pull them up, they are still staying.  I mean, like, really staying.  They laugh in the face of my hammer and pliers.  

So now I am back to slate.  Thanks house.