Spotswood House

Since I haven’t posted this series in awhile I will share a few of the things we have purchased recently.

I love to pick up little trinkets and I have so much stored away in our house. In the guest room you can open the closet, dresser drawer, or cabinet and it is filled with “decorative things”. So. Many. Things. But that doesn’t stop me. How can you say “no” to that cute little gold spiky chain thing (below), especially when it only cost $1.

I found an unique garage sale advertised on Craigslist. A professional stager was downsizing some of her loot so I took a chance and drug Adam with me to Mclean, VA. So, we pull up to this mini-mansion (Mclean also happens to be a really nice area) not knowing what to expect but let tell me you, this place was a gold mine. I think I ended up spending over $200 (you know what, it might have been $300) and the gold spiky thing is one of the many things I picked up.

This is one of the first things I bought on Facebook Marketplace. I think I paid $30. It’s an antiqued mirror side table.

Here is another side table we picked up. This was pretty close to our house so that always makes me excited. Some of the trips we make in DC to get things feels so out of the way. This table is from World Market and set us back $50.

I’m now on the hunt for a 40 – 44 inch smart tv (either Samsung or LG) to fit the tv stand I bought recently.  But I may change my mind on the tv stand and buy a different one. I have problems, lol.

 

 

 

When we were planning our kitchen design we decided we didn’t want upper cabinets except to frame around the refrigerator and the microwave above the range. But as we have moved further into the remodel we have started making more tweaks along the way.

Here is the kitchen before any upper cabinets.

The thought was to have floating shelves instead of upper cabinets but as you can see there isn’t much space widthwise to have long floating shelves since there is a massive window smack dab in the middle of the wall. So we debated adding a cabinet on the left-hand side near the dishwasher. We already bought an upper cabinet for the microwave, which is on the right-hand side of the room for above the stove. If we bought the upper cabinet we could save money on the backsplash tile but then there is the extra expense of purchasing the cabinet…decisions, decisions.

Another thing we had to consider was crown molding. For a more modern look we could have the cabinets go all the way to the ceiling or we could add the crown which gives the cabinets a more polished look (IMHO) and is a little bit more traditional. So we went with the crown molding. As much as I want this house to be modern that is not what I gravitate towards.

Back to the remodel. Next, we installed the microwave above the stove and the cabinet above the microwave.

So it looks kinda crooked in the picture but that is probably an operator error by the photographer (me).  So, I’m really proud of Adam for getting the crown molding installed. He has attempted cutting crown molding in the past with little success and we had one hiccup during the first cut today but he figured it out. Whew, thank goodness because there are so many intricate cuts and I have no idea how I passed geometry in high school so I was ZERO help in that process.

So back to that cabinet idea on the other side of the room…well we decided to buy the upper cabinet.

Remember when you were growing up and you would go into your friends  parents formal living room and they would have plastic on their couch or porcelain collectibles, well that is what the plastic on the cabinets remind me of. No worries, we will remove the plastic eventually.

Here’s another shot. Those cabinets in the middle of room form the base of our island.

So let’s talk about averages/standards. Google says the average distance between the countertops and bottom of upper cabinets is 18 inches. Well, who really follows averages anyway. With the addition of crown molding,  which added about 2 3/4 inches to our upper cabinet (on the left), our average distance is 16 inches. So I did some investigating (I checked my own kitchen) and found the distance between the countertop and cabinets at my primary house are 18 inches on one wall and 16 inches on another wall. So I don’t think it will be an issue not having a “standard” distance between our cabinets and countertop. If it is an issue, just move over to the island.

What we will need to work through is how far up to have the tile backsplash go. I mentioned before I wanted it to go up to the ceiling but now that we have upper cabinets we could just run them up to the bottom of the upper cabinet. The problem is the length between the stove and microwave is different than the distance between the upper cabinet and countertop on the left-hand side of the room. So the tile wouldn’t end at the same height on the left and right-hand side of the room. We are still working through how to solve this problem.

Hopefully, we’ll get our countertop installed next week. Notice I didn’t say countertops. We are getting a quartz countertop on the wall with the window but we are trying to decide what to put on the island. Adam wants butcher block but I’m not sold yet. Stay tuned to see where we end up.

 

Adam picked up the kitchen cabinets this past Friday and unfortunately it rained ALL WEEKEND LONG. We had to transport the cabinets as best we could in our Honda Civic, lol. Needless to say, we didn’t get all of the cabinets to Spotswood House. When life gives you rain, you wine….drink wine that it is.

We went to our Early Mountain Winery pickup party today. We sampled Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, and Novum ( a red blend). We did a special tasting of their newest wine, Rise, which is supposed to compete with the best-of-the-best.

You can’t drink wine without something to snack on and Early Mountain always puts out a nice spread. I just love the snack sized plates they gave us. They’re high end disposable plates, very woodsy looking. Those little caramel popper bites were sooooo good.

It rained the whole way to the winery and stopped as soon as we arrived. The good thing about the rain is it dropped the temperature down to 65 degrees today. I was so excited, I absolutely love fall.  You can still see the mist behind Adam on the mountain.

Here are a couple shots of the Early Mountain landscape.

Before we left we had to pickup our wine. You can see all of the wine boxes lined up ready to go. These parties bring out a lot of people!

While we had a little detour today we did get a lot of work done at the house. We have one wall of cabinets in and the island put together. We also decided to make a couple tweaks along the way. I will be back soon with an update. Bye for now – Lindsey

We have made a lot of progress in the kitchen since the last post. We had drywall done last week and Adam’s parents visited again to help. They got the concrete board on the floor to prep for floor tile and finished out the window in the kitchen. We got the oven installed and it works! That’s a sigh of relief since I bought it on Facebook months ago.

But with all of this progress there is still more work to be done. I think we are going to have to paint the ceiling in the living room and one of the bedrooms because the drywall that was replaced doesn’t match the paint.  That will not be a fun project.

We wanted to pick up the cabinets this past weekend but everything was closed for Labor Day so Adam and I are going to try to get the cabinets on Saturday. Then on Sunday we have a wine tasting 🙂 Not to get too off subject but we joined a Virginia wine club through Early Mountain Vineyards. Once a quarter they host a happy hour with hor d’oeuvres and wine tastings of the wine you’ll be taking home that day. Fun fact, Early Mountain Vineyards is owned by Steve and Jean Case, founders of AOL.

Back on track….squirrel…..ok, so we plan to get cabinets this weekend. Then we need to pick out floor tile. And I need to purchase the tile backsplash. Also, we need to pick a paint color for the kitchen and order the countertops. Now Adam has decided he wants the island top to be butcher block. Here I was thinking the end is in sight and there is so much left to do. But here is the progress we have made so far. I have never been so excited to see drywall before.

I have no idea how people work a full-time job and blog on the side on a regular basis. I have fallen woefully behind on my Secondhand Find of the Week. I thought, “Oh, this will be easy! I buy something every single week for Spotswood House.” And here we are, behind schedule yet again. So today will be a twofer.

I am getting towards the end of my buying spree which makes me very sad. The latest purchases were not items I needed but I found them, they were a great deal, and I had to have them. A couple weeks ago I found a leather chair and ottoman on Craigslist and I waited too long to pull the trigger and they were gone. So I have been canvassing my various secondhand sites looking for a leather chair. I wasn’t having much luck and then out of the blue while I was out of town in Tampa I found a “Distressed Pottery Barn Leather Chair” on Facebook Marketplace for $150. After trying to coordinate a pickup time with the seller, I found out the chair was actually Crate & Barrel, not Pottery Barn. The original owners bought it for almost $2000. I had to do my due diligence and sure enough I found it on Crate & Barrel’s website (see below).

You never know if a leather chair will be comfortable without sitting in it but I told Adam for $150 we had to buy it and if we didn’t like it we could probably re-sell for more than we paid. We picked the chair up today and it is really comfortable! It is a little bit more worn in than what we thought (maybe the owners had a cat?!) with some scratches but nothing too bad, it adds character. Here are the actual pictures of the chair we bought.

Okay, we are moving from a leather chair to a decorative wall art piece. Back story; I subscribe to about 6 design magazines. A couple years ago I saw a framed picture in a magazine that I loved and filed it away for future reference. I just spent the last half hour trying to find the magazine cut-out but I gave up, I have way too many design inspirations. Then, while we were in Costa Rica I saw a reproduction of the picture while shopping in Tamarindo. Then, I saw the picture again on Facebook Marketplace for $7. I was going to buy it but the seller and I weren’t able to coordinate a pickup. Then, the seller wrote me back over the weekend and asked if I was still interested. I said I would buy it but only if she would accept $5. Long story short, it took a lot of work to get this picture but I love it (see below). I have no idea where I am going to put it but it’s just such a fun piece. Be back soon with more finds – Lindsey

I didn’t think we would get our special ordered window until next week so I was so excited when it came in last Friday. Adam and I took the painful journey down 95 South in bumper-to-bumper traffic (I can’t wait for summer to be over) to get to Orange, Virginia on Saturday. Here is a before picture:

We had two single windows side-by-side and decided to go with one large window. Here is no window:

Here is the after:

Of course we still have to frame out the window and fill-in the siding but I really like having one big window versus two small windows. Now that we have the window done and Adam has run all of the new electrical we can move forward with drywall.

We are NOT going to attempt drywall ourselves. We have a couple people coming this weekend to give us an estimate. Hopefully we can get the drywall done in time to put the cabinets in during Labor Day Weekend. On a side note, the tile backsplash I really want is a little bit more expensive (twice as much) than I intended. So here is what happened…we were going to add tile about halfway up the wall but without having upper cabinets the tile looks weird. See some examples below.

I want the tile that goes ALLLLLLLLLLLL the way to the top. So Adam and I will have to do some negotiating on which tile option we go with. Here are some subway tile examples below. FYI, we are not planning on installing subway tile.

Hope to be back soon with drywall pictures and then kitchen cabinets…yippee. Then we can move on to more demo; the carport and Florida room. Also, I haven’t posted any pictures of what we’re considering for the bathroom remodel. More to come soon. Bye – Lindsey

 

We are in the process of prepping the kitchen for the full remodel. Adam ran electrical for outlets, we pulled up the vinyl floor to get to the subfloor, and Adam replaced the 2 x 4s that were damaged by termites.

Before – termite damage

After – new 2 x 4s

Before – old fashioned vinyl

After – we have found subfloor

The next steps for the kitchen before we can do drywall are running one more electrical outlet, replacing some insulation..blah, blah, blah…but the part I am excited about is replacing the windows. Right now we have two windows side-by-side in the kitchen and we were thinking about doing the same thing with smaller windows BUT I want this kitchen to be a little bit on the modern side so we decided to buy one big window – 60 x 36. Making the window a little bit shorter than what we currently have will give us more distance around the sink area. The new window is going to push our timeframe back a little bit (won’t get the window until the end of August) but will be so worth it in the end. I am getting really anxious about the kitchen. We have basically made all of the design decisions, it is now just a waiting game for all of the pieces to fall in place. Be back soon with more updates – Lindsey

Current window in kitchen

New window – So this picture is super lame and doesn’t give you a good idea of what impact it will have but such is life. I promise it will be perfect 🙂

This is mainly a house remodel blog but every once in awhile you gotta take a break. Adam and I just returned from our trip to Costa Rica and it was AMAZING!!!!! I cannot wait to go back. We were there for four nights which is usually enough time for us to see what we want and move on but there is still so much more left to do.

A little bit of background information: We stayed at the JW Marriott – Guanacaste, an oceanfront resort. The resort was beautiful and immaculate but it was quite remote and Americanized so you couldn’t get a feel for the local scene and culture. The resort is about 1.5 hours from the airport and about 2.5 hours from the rainforest. I wouldn’t stay here again but that isn’t a knock on the resort, I would just rather be in the middle of action, not secluded.

The first full day we were in Costa Rica we went to Tamarindo, a surf town about 30 minutes from the resort. This place was spectacular, totally laid back and chill. Pretty much everyone speaks English and a lot of stores/restaurants are owned by Americans. This is where I got my shop on. They had some tourist trap shops but some really cute boutiques too. I would really like to return to Costa Rica and spend a couple days in Tamarindo.

We stopped at a restaurant while in Tamarindo – The Surf Shack. This place had THE BEST FRENCH FRIES I have EVER eaten. Sorry for the caps but I cannot put into words how delicious/amazing /bomb/redonk these french fries were. The tacos and burgers were good too. So this place is owned by an American couple – the husband is from Seattle and the wife is from Colorado. They sold all of their belongings 8 years ago and moved to Tamarindo – that is so cool and total boss. Here is their store hours sign.

The next day we were in Costa Rica we went to the rainforest. We thought we were going on a group tour but it ended up being Adam, myself, and the tour guide (Elmer). It took us 2.5 hours to get to our first destination, Llanos de Cortez Waterfall, Guanacaste (I think).  After we left the waterfalls we saw a sloth on our way to the rainforest.

 

After the sloths and waterfall we arrived at Tenorio Volcano National Park (also known as Rio Celeste). The hike was insane! I’m going to be real, if you can’t climb lots of stairs you cannot come to this park. It was a workout and then some. Combine that with the heat and humidity…bonkers but so worth it if you can handle it. I definitely recommend renting the rubber boots because you will be trudging through mud but the payoff is not describable. Just look at the pictures below.

I will be back soon with part two (this blog is not user friendly to operate at all).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I am never looking for anything specific when I do my daily search for second hand finds and this happens to be one of those times. I think I was scrolling through furniture on Facebook Marketplace when I can across a reproduction mid century modern (MCM) chair. It looked okay in the picture but I couldn’t resist the urge to reach out to see if it was available. I contacted the seller and she said someone was picking it up later in the week and then I did something I have never done before, way bolder than how I normally conduct myself for these kind of purchases…I asked her if she wanted to get it off of her hands sooner because I could pick it up that day. It worked.

I drug Adam with me which he hates doing because it is so confusing finding your way half of the time and  most of these people live in high rises so you have to figure out where the freight elevator is or is it okay to come into the lobby. This trip wasn’t so bad because we were going to Arlington, not DC. I have gotten to point where if I find something in DC I want I have to bribe Adam with the promise of stopping at a bar for a few drinks and appetizers first before picking up my latest find. But it works!

So I picked up my MCM chair for $40 and the process was super easy. Here she is. Look at those pretty lines.

We haven’t made a whole lot of progress at the house for the past 2 weeks and there are a variety of reasons why. First, we have to deal with our termite problem which will be addressed next Monday. Supposedly termites are extremely common in houses in Virginia…yay, lucky us! Secondly, we are dealing with end of life concerns for our dog Nestle. He is around 16.5 years old and is suffering from congestive heart failure and liver failure. Basically what that means is his heart is enlarged and puts pressure on him so it creates this awful hacking bout he goes into a few times a day. I thought we were going to have to put him down this coming weekend but he is on meds now and seems a little bit better but it is extremely stressful. Thirdly, it has been raining like cats and dogs here which is really good for my grass but makes working at our house pretty difficult, especially when you are trying to transport furniture to the house in a truck.

We did go cabinet and countertop shopping this past weekend. I guess it would’ve helped if I took pictures. We are going to stick with a bright white kitchen but with just a touch of modern. Here is a stock picture of the shaker style cabinets we are looking at purchasing (below). We are going with 42 inch upper cabinets with crown molding.

The biggest question now is if we are going to pick a different color island base and different countertop for the island. I’m not really a huge fan of the mismatched island but it is very popular. The funny thing is the countertops are just as expensive as the kitchen cabinets. That is so bizarre to me. We have decided to go with quartz countertops. It is the number one seller right now and is basically indestructible which sounds perfect for a rental. Here are some options we are considering:

Snow white quartz countertops

Marble looking quartz. This looks very fake in the picture but in-person it is a creamy white-gray with just a faint amount of marbling.

Here is the light fixture I want to go above the island. This thing is sooooo gorgeous! Lighting is my thing…it truly makes or breaks a room. I will show you some of my cool lights in my primary house in a future post. I’m watching this light on my OfferUp app to see if the price drops:

I can’t wait until we purchase the kitchen cabinets and countertops. Once we get the termite treatment Adam will fix the rotted 2 x 4s and then we will get drywall put up. We are not going to attempt drywall ourselves, that is one project we don’t want to take on. Until next time – Lindsey