Category Archives: Before and After

Metamorphosis Monday ~ Bathroom

Our Metamorphosis this week is all about the bathroom. We have one bathroom in our Condo. The sink area is separate from the shower and toilet. There are no cabinets in the shower/toilet area. We decided the space above the toilet could be used to our advantage for some more storage.

Here’s what the wall above and around the toilet looked like before. (It is very hard to get good photos in this small space)

Here is Dear at the beginning of the project. We bought this upper Kitchen Cabinet from the Home Depot. It is part of their standard stock items.

It fits and is ready to add the shelves and the doors. We get three shelves of space in this new cabinet.

The doors are on but we’re thinking we need some hardware to make it easier to open the cupboard.

Now we’re getting there. We decide at this point a little shelf would be nice to tie this space together better.

We found a shelf and started experimenting with decor to add to the shelf. Attempt #1…something is not right.

Attempt #2 after finding these 3 matching plates at the Goodwill for $3.00.

I like this look a lot better than attempt #1.

While we were at it we decided these green towels really didn’t go with our wall color.  Truth be told I do not like to dry myself with a towel that has a large decorative pattern on it that is not terry cloth. So we switched out the fancier towels for plain white towels and I like the look a lot better especially now that we have the white cabinet and shelf added.

Susan At Between Naps on the Porch is the hostess for this weekly Metamorphosis Monday. Head on over and see lots of before and afters. Enjoy your Monday everyone.

 

Metamorphosis Monday ~ My Pear Tree

For my Met Monday this week I am at my home in the state of Washington. Usually I’m at my condo in Southern California. My before and after project was completed today during a short period of time while the rain was not falling here. I’m not a gardener by any means but my Pear Tree really was in need of a pruning. All I know about pruning a tree is that branches that grow straight up are the ones to go after. (I sure hope that’s true). So here is my pear tree with all those unsightly branches that are growing straight up…

 

I got the trusty pruning tools out of the garage and started to work all by myself…

 

Here is the result after about an hour and a half. And this next collage shows the before and after from the same angle.

I hope I didn’t kill it. Time will tell.

To see more Metamorphosis click over to Susan’s at Between Naps on the Porch.

Metamorphosis Monday With Blue ~

For this weeks Monday Posts I’m combining Met with Blue. Susan at Between Naps on the Porch and Sally at Smiling Sally are the hostesses of these two weekly events. Met Monday is all about transformations, before and afters. Blue Monday is anything Blue.

 

We have been on the lookout for some bookcases to replace a small folding one we’ve been using between our living room and dining room. We wanted to add some width and height to the space. On Valentine’s day we found the bookcases at Target and Dear put them together.

Both Dear and I think this space has a more “grown-up” look now instead of college dorm.

Some closer shots of the shelves where I can put some of my china, too. See the blue :0)?

The photos in this frame got a “Met” job too. I purchased mats and shuffled the photos. These are our children. I really like the transformation with the added black mats.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today. Have a great week.

For more Metamorphosis Monday visit Susan here.  For more Blue Monday visit Sally here.

 

Metamorphosis Monday ~ Kitchen in Washington

This is what my kitchen in Washington used to look like. I don’t have a lot of before shots because I wasn’t blogging back then and I also don’t have any of my photos that are this old on cd’s and with me in California. Wah, wah , wah…

Please notice the Oak cabinets and the rectangle patched space on the ceiling that used to be a fluorescent light fixture. We had a total of 4 of these fixtures in this kitchen/eating space and we would always kid around and say that we could do surgery on the kitchen island or dining table because it was so bright. Well this was the beginning of changing out all the fluorescent lights and putting in can lights and pendant lights over the island. There is blue wallpaper behind the stove top and above the sink and under the kitchen cabinets. All the appliances and are white or off white.

These photos were taken at one of my daughter’s birthday parties. This end of the kitchen used to have a sliding glass door to the outside porch. Boy did I hate these vertical blinds. Amazing how these kids have all grown up. 2 are married and 2 are engaged to be married and one of the married girls is pregnant with her first. And I suppose that is a kind of metamorphosis, but back to my kitchen. I fussed to my Dear one about those cabinets and walls and sliding glass door and vertical blinds and here’s what he did all by himself with help from our boys.

Here’s the view from the kitchen through the spot where the sliding glass door used to be and the porch used to be. The porch is now our family room and the sliding glass door opening was moved over to the left somewhat. I really love this space and am so happy the slider and vertical blinds are gone forever.

Here’s a view of the kitchen from the family room. No more fluorescent. No more Oak finish cabinets. No more blue wall paper. Dear painted the walls and cabinets 3 shades of green all from the same family (base color). He put fixtures on all the cabinets. He installed tile on the walls below the upper cabinets around the sink and above the stove top. He added decorative fruit tile above the stove top also. We traded out all the white appliances for stainless or black. He put in a new kitchen window with white molding. And trimmed out the door openings with decorative trim moldings.

I ended up finding all these random shots of different parts of my kitchen since the redo. Here’s a closer look at the decorative tile.

This is the opposite wall from the majority of the cabinets.

A closer look at the two shades of green on the cabinets and the hardware.

The Kitchen island where we generally set out our food buffet style. Our next projects in this kitchen will be to replace the counter tops and the flooring. Since we are living in the condo in California right now these projects are “on hold”.

For more Metamorphosis Monday visit Susan at Between Naps on the Porch.

 

Metamorphosis Monday & Blue Monday!

    AND

Time for another Metamorphosis Monday hosted by Susan at Between Naps on the Porch and since my metamorphosis happens in my blue kitchen with some of my blue goodies showing, this is also Blue Monday hosted by Smiling Sally! What amazing transformations blogdom showed us last Monday. Yikes! If you didn’t get a chance you should take a look.

Today I’m showing you my condo pantry cupboard which Dear improved on. The 2 shelves were held up with wimpy plastic braces and were beginning to warp and lean because of the weight on them. Like a ditz I forgot to take a photo before I pulled every last item out of the cupboard and filled every available flat surface in my kitchen with the stuff!

My pantry cupboard is accessed through that skinny door and this shows the shelves out of it. The location of the cupboard makes it quite an interesting process to access the items we end up putting around the corner in the cupboard that you can’t see. I hope that makes sense. The door is narrow but there is additional space to the right of the door that you cannot see…

Here’s Dear being a contortionist so he could attach the cleat on the wall to support the shelves properly.

Dear really enjoys projects and using his power tools. He always does a fabulous job, too.

Cleats are in and it’s time for the shelves with one more than I had before! Yippee for more storage space.

Voila! Now I just have to put all the stuff back in a more organized way.

Oh it is so much nicer to have everything put away instead of all over the kitchen counters!

Besides the blue walls I spotted well over 20 blue items in my kitchen while all was exposed for the world to see.

Usually the electric water pot is put away, too, but I needed a cup of Earl Grey to enjoy the moment…

For more Metamorphosis visit Susan here and for more Blue Monday visit Sally here.

Metamorphosis Monday

Welcome to Metamorphosis Monday hosted by Susan at Between Naps on the Porch. I really think this is going to be fun. I’m in different stages of metamorphosing some things so for today I’m digging one up from the past. Now don’t be too shocked when you see the “before” shot.

My daughter’s room before…

My daughter’s room after I helped her clean up (What a nice mommy, I am)

Now all we have to do is re-decorate!!

For more transformations visit Susan at Between Naps on the Porch.

BooMama’s Before and After ~

BooMamaBeforeAfter

It’s a before and after project. So all you have to do is post about something you want to re-do, re-decorate, clean up, etc. and then do it before July 25th and re-post your before and after results. How cool and motivating is that. To get the official scoop click over to BooMama.

Here’s what I’m going to try to do.

1. Create an inviting atmosphere on my deck in Seattle (I’m in our condo in So. California right now but I get to be at my home in Seattle from July 1st – August 15th )

2. Do a thorough cleaning of my Seattle home since my adult children have been “taking care of it” while I’m in Southern California.

3. Show some photos of our huge project…redoing the basement. My husband only has 3 weeks in Seattle so I don’t know what we’ll be able to accomplish but I will show the progress…

Here are some photos of the torn up basement. We had some water issues so this was a “have to do” project! The hard part about my husband completing this project is that we are living 1200 miles away right now because of his job.

So I hope to show you some great changes July 25th!