My DIY Vintage Dream Kitchen Remodel

In August (on my actual birthday) we purchased a lovely new house!!  It was built in 1954 and has so much Mid Century charm!  We are having the best DIY time remodeling it by ourselves.

Since it is a pretty big house, at some point over the years it was split into a duplex with a 2 bedroom downstairs and a 3 bedroom upstairs.  This means the house has TWO KITCHENS!! Yes, you heard me right.  TWO!!

With my darling husband being a master chef in the making and me being the queen of all things baked goods, we decided that we were going to keep both and have His and Hers kitchens.  The upstairs became my husbands modern dream kitchen with all of the new appliances and things to make all of his culinary dreams a reality.  My downstairs kitchen has become my vintage daydream, pet project, and pretty much favorite place to be. (My girlfriends say it looks like a kids playhouse, but everything works.)

This post is about my sweet little kitchen makeover from start to finish.

I will start with the initial before and after, because WOW! 

BEFORE

AFTER!! 

  The first thing I did was get rid of all of the old appliances and prime everything.

Before Primer

After Primer

At the same time I was searching all over Craigslist to find the perfect vintage stove.  It did not take me too long to find this beauty, that works perfectly and has been sitting in a lovely ladies storage for 20 some years.  Got if for a steal at $300!!

My new stove, sitting in storage waiting for me to take her home. 

Once I had the stove, I knew what my colors were going to be.  I was going to build the entire kitchen around the Aqua beauty!  I picked Teal, Pink and Yellow as the colors.

Teal, Pink and Yellow, with fancy silver drawer pulls!

I'm also using the same teal as an accent color through the downstairs and the connecting shelf.

Before and after shelf divider at kitchen entrance. Pretty new paint and cute *disco knobs.
(*Not really disco, but that is what I call them) 

At the entrance to the kitchen I wanted my own menu board, so I painted the side of this cupboard with chalkboard paint, and I turned a cute drawer pull upside-down to create a chalk holder.  Now Mamachelle's kitchen has a cool place to display all of the deliciousness being baked in there! 

After all of the painting was done, I pulled up the old beat up floor and installed a brand new one all on my own!  It was a process, but I feel like it was not too terribly hard.

My new floor!! 

Then I added some sweet details, and displayed my vintage collection of stuff and things.

Teeny Wonder Woman!! Eep!

Mr Chester Crumbs

Searched forever to find the perfect mini fridge to keep my milk and eggs.  I needed it to be the right color, but not cost a million dollars. Found this online for less than $200!

And here is the big after!  LOVE my kitchen!!

Up-Cycled garden bench using old dining chairs

We had these dining chairs sitting outside for the Winter.  They got pretty beat up.  The wood on the backs were splitting, the cushions pretty rotten, but the structure was still sound.  I decided to turn them into a Garden bench to use on the patio.

I collected my materials.  I had Home Depot cut a pretty inexpensive but sturdy piece of wood to fit the seats.
Sean picked up this piece of camper foam for me at Fred Myers.
I found the fabric for $3 at the local thrift store.  It is a nice canvas material, and I loved the bright crazy colors for my garden/patio area.

First, I created the cushion by using a bit of wood glue and attaching the foam.

Then I cut the fabric and stapled it on.  Really easy!  Using staples is so forgiving!

I popped the old gross cushions off, saved the screws because I can use them to attach the new cushion.

I could be done at this point, but I didn't like how the backs looked.  Since the seat backs were already splitting from elemental damage of sitting outside, I decided to cut them down and make it a more classic bench style.

I used a Skill saw and cut the backs off.

Had an adorable helper help me sand the parts that were cut.

Then I used some wipe on stain to make it match better.  Since I'm using this outdoors, it doesn't have to be perfect.  I just used what I had on hand.

After the stain dries, just screw the seat onto the chairs and there you have it!  An adorable little bench.

At this point I could add a cute throw pillow on it if I wanted to.  I'd probably pick something solid color in one of the fabric tones.  Maybe a black pillow, or a sunny orange or yellow pillow?  So many fun things could be done to pretty this up!

If I was going to use it indoors, I'd paint the wood white and make it super fancy. But, I don't feel like going to all the trouble for this project.  Also, painting with my little helper always turns into more of a mess than I feel like dealing with today.  I just wanted to do something easy and inexpensive that would give new life to these old chairs that likely would have been firewood otherwise!

Cost me about $20 for materials, but only took me about an hour of time to complete.

Pinterest Challenge

I've got so many great things pinned on my Pinterest boards, I decided last week I was going to start working my way through them when I have time and trying to re-create some of the things I've pinned.  These are the first two that I came up 

These are Strawberry Rhubarb Hand Pies that I made from THIS RECIPE pinned on my Just Desserts board.  I loved making these almost as much as I loved eating them!  I will make these again with different variations for sure. 

And this is the Easy Fruit Leather from my Kids Snacks to Try board.  This was pretty easy to make but I don't know that I will be making it again.  3 hours in the stove with such a low yield doesn't completely seem worth it to me.  Also, I found out if you bag it up over night it is WAY better the next day.  It is kind of crunchy when it comes out of the oven, but it totally softens overnight in a sealed container.  I liked the texture a lot more on day 2. 

Nananananananananana BAT Tri-i-i-i-ike!

Last week, on our way home from dinner, we picked up a Kettler Kettrike Alana Tricycle with Pushbar in a free pile on the corner. I was excited because I had been thinking about buying one. Since they usually run around $100, you can imagine how stoked we were to see one sitting right there for free, the only bummer was it was all pink and white and princess colors.  I'm sure the boy would not really care what color it was, but I decided right then I was going to pimp his ride.  My inspiration? The Batmobile!

I forgot to take the before picture, but this is what it looked like only way dirtier and scratched up and minus the bucket in the back.  But the body was still solid!:

First I painted the body black and the guard below the handle bar yellow:

Then I ordered some yellow bike grips for only $7 and a few Batman car decals.

Viola! BatTrike!

Kids, musicians, and a red dress makes Michelle & Sean's Winter wedding shine | @offbeatbride

Our wedding got featured on one of my favorite wedding websites.  I checked their site out a lot when I was looking for inspiration! Check it out!

Kids, musicians, and a red dress makes Michelle & Sean's Winter wedding shine | @offbeatbride

Our Perfect DIY Winter Wedding (on a budget) 01-04-2015

We met in the Winter and fell in love in December, so we really loved the idea of having a Winter wedding.  Since we had Sylvia for the majority of Christmas break, we decided that the weekend before she went back to school would be the perfect time.  The day was amazing.  Everything really fell into place.  The colors were neutral tones with bursts of red and green.  It was just post Christmas so the perfect time for this combo. 

 Cindy Apple provided these lovely photos. 

The venue for our wedding was Sodo Pop.  Perfect size for our event and totally budget friendly! 

 I had this very specific vision of a dessert table, I'd been seeing so many lovely ideas on Pinterest, so that was truly my baby.

The cake plates were mine and borrowed from a few of my friends. Having the variety, created a sweet shabby chic look for the table.

The photos of the kids and the suitcase were just things from my own house!

 

I baked a  variety of cupcakes, and a small carrot cake. (The cake was less for eating but to create a perfect centerpiece for the cake topper and the table.)  I also added baby photos of all three of our kids to the table.

I used a wood burner to burn words into little cut wood discs and used that to label both the dessert table and the buffet.

 All of the cakes turned out so yummy!

 The Cake topper was a statue I found the very first time Sean and I went thrifting together, on one of our very first dates.  It was meaningful to us, so I wanted to incorporate it into our wedding.

My son approved of the dessert buffet!

My Bridesmaids all wore black dressed that they already owned.  I purchased the Jr Bridesmaid dress and Alice's flower Girl dress on after Christmas sales for 70% off.  The ladies all wore red shoes and the guys all wore red ties, that is how we tied it all together.

I had always dreamed of getting married in a red dress, so I was super excited about mine.  I also have always been in love with this vintage style.  My perfect red dress I purchased at unique-vintage.com on clearance for $50! I didn't even need to get it altered.  It was perfect! So well made and such a lush fabric!  I got a million compliments and felt like a princess. (Sylvia even told me I looked like one too!)

My flower Girl Alice and Jr Bridesmaid Sylvia

 The Groomsmen ties were also all on after holiday clearance at Macy's.  They all wore their own suites.

For the decorations, we used a lot of things from nature.  The pine cones were all collected over the prior months by me, baked in my oven to kill anything living in them and then painted with glitter spray paint.  I used my wood burner to decorate the logs.

Perfect center pieces designed by Audrey

Sylvia made the "stained glass" jar for me as a Christmas gift, so I really wanted it to be incorporated into the wedding decor.

All of the greens were fresh and purchased the day before. They were meant for holiday centerpieces, so I lucked out and got them on post holiday sale!  Marked down from $5.99 to $.99 a bundle.

 

The table clothes were a mix of thrift store vintage and snowflake holiday tablecloths that I got after Christmas for 75% off.  We also re-purposed a lot of the burlap table runners, the white lights and small candles from the office holiday party.  We found that doing a Winter wedding right after New Years really did offer a lot of great prices on post Christmas clearance sales

The arch, the isle runner, the cupcake stars, the gold paper straws, all of the flatware and paper plates (All biodegradable and green) and some of the burlap banners I purchased on Amazon at very reasonable prices.

I made a beautiful Winter Sangria as the signature cocktail.  Since it was a Sunday afternoon, I made it much less potent than most Sangria recipes, but it was a hit.  The bartender said people were flying through it!  When the Sangria ran out, we just added bottles of Cava to the fruit in the container which made a fruity Cava cocktail.  People loved that too!















We also had a little photobooth by the door.  It was just a jar with some paper props and a backdrop.  It gave people the option of doing their own photos with their cell phones.  Our guests had a good time with it! 




Our friends all came up and sang a variety of meaningful songs for us and then we had a live band (CFO) finish the night.  It was a dreamy evening for sure!

I even got serenaded by my groom!

 We really did have an awesome stress free day and stayed on budget! It was dreamy!