Basement update

Here is a little update of the basement, AKA what used to be "peewee's playhouse"!

Shaun had some time off from work for Christmas, and some time off from school as

well....so he stayed busy working on the house.

Here is what he did to the basement thus far....

He got it ALL primed.

It took a few coats to cover the intense color scheme the previous owners had

going on down there.

We haven't decided on a color to paint over the primer yet, but even the primer

looks 100 times better than what it used to be.

The door to the basement is in between the kitchen and laundry room...

The stairway is covered in a cheap bluish carpet (that will be changed)...

I love the old school arched brick above the stairs, but wish someone

had not painted over the brick...

 When you get to the bottom of the stairs, this is the view to your right 

(also the west side of the house)

 This is the doorway to the basement bedroom, which is across from the stairs

 Bottom of stairway (east side of House)

And in case you forgot how it used to look......

Merry Chritmas Couches!

Shaun has a friend from work whose parents own

a furniture store in North Carolina called 

Stanford Furniture...

They live here in Denver and when his Mother heard that

we didn't have any furniture for our 

home that they helped us move into, she gave us hers!

No joke!

We are so excited to sit on a couch and watch a movie together

as our little family.

Here is the BEAUTIFUL couches she gave us and the process of moving them

into a hundred year old home (old homes have very small door frames)

Perfectly baked potatos!

Why is it that baked potatos always taste better at a restaurant?

I can tell you why.... because most of us "bake" them wrong!

Up until last night when I actually researched "baked potato", I had

been wrapping them in foil and

throwing them in the oven for an hour and a half...

And than left wondering why they didn't taste like the one from

Texas roadhouse or Red Lobster.  

If you want that crispy potato skin and moist inside...

Here is the solution....and to make this 

relevant to the blog, and saving money...I will tell you how to make this 

$5 buck dinner for 2 (or 2.5 in our case).

Chelsea's honey mustard salmon and perfectly baked potato!!!

Steps for the perfectly baked potato:

 Step 1: 

Thoroughly wash your Russet potatoes (they bake the best), scrub them a little even...

they grew under ground, and were picked and bagged by people with 

dirty hands...(just sayin')

Step 2:

Put the potatoes onto a baking tray and pour some

Extra virgin olive oil (or regular canola oil) on top of each one, and than roll them

in the oil that is inevitably on the tray to make sure they get an even coat of oil!

Than give them a light coating of coarse sea salt...or in my case I used regular old

salt, and it still worked great.

ALSO, poke a few holes in each one, or they could explode

Step 3:

Bake them in the oven at 325 degrees (right on the baking tray..no foil etc)

for an hour and a half...you may need more

time depending on how large your potatoes are!

At the same time you put the potatoes in the oven, throw your frozen salmon into some

foil and let it bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes...(same as the potatoes, convenient)

when there is 15 minutes left of cooking time pour the honey mustard (see recipe below) 

on top of the

salmon and DO NOT recover with the foil...

just let it bake another 15 mins without the foil.

While this is all cooking make a salad and you have a 5 dollar dinner for 2!

Honey Mustard Recipe:

3 parts mayo or sour cream

1.5 parts mustard

1 part honey

add some garlic salt to taste (I suggest penzey spice's garlic salt)

COST:

Salmon 1 pound at Sunflower Market= $4 dollars on sale

Potatoes=15 cents each

Salad=about 75 cents

Church pew redo

 There is a store that the "habitat for humanity" opened that's called Restore.
It's one of my favorite places to browse because the selection changes on an hourly basis...I have even been known to stand back by the receiving door to see what people are donating, so I can be the first one to buy it.
It is the perfect place to go to find things to fix up your home, or the perfect place to donate things when you are renovating your home.
A lot of the stuff that people donate when renovating their homes is not very old.

This little find however is super old, and super abused (see the stain in the middles of the cushion?).
It is an old church pew that had the hymn book holder in the back.  I bought it for $9.00 and some stain for $2.00....borrowed a power sander from a friend and went to town.
Ripped off all the cushion and fabric. Stained the wood at nights after Caden went to bed.  I am now in the process of choosing a fabric to cover the new CLEAN cushion.

These are all "before" pics, the "after" pic will come when I find some unique upholstery fabric at a decent price.

Tips on staining an old piece of furniture:

• Sand the wood until it looks like "unstained" wood...see the pic above, the right side of the hymn book holder has been sanded, the left hand side has not.
• Wear a mask when sanding and staining
• When you brush the stain onto the wood, take an old rag and wipe over the part you just stained...otherwise you will get globs of stain and it will take days to dry!
• If after you wipe over the newly stained wood, the color is not dark enough for you..just brush on some more stain, and wipe again with the rag...repeat this step until you get desired darkness.

How to Winterize your windows

We noticed our windows in this house were a little

bit breezy, and our heat was set at 69 degrees...but the rooms still seemed cooler

than they should have been.

Nervous about getting an outrageous bill this month, Shaun called the energy company and asked what the previou owners most expensive energy bill was

last year.....

$250 for one month!

WHAT?

So we got proactive and bought some weatherization stuff to help 

prevent a bill this big from happening with us!

This is a SUPER CHEAP way to cut cost on your heating bill:

Apply that plastic window covering to all your drafty windows!

You can buy window insulation kits from a hardware store. 

Kits will have a plastic shrink film that is put on  the indoor window frame with double-stick tape, 

then to fit it perfectly to the window you heat it with a hair dryer to shrink the film and remove any wrinkles.  

Pros: Cheap and effective, (SAVES MONEY!)

 Cons: Gives windows a cloudy, shrink-wrapped look

...it may not look that great, but to save a few bucks it's worth it to me.

 Step 1:

Put the tape around the windows, making sure there are no gaps between tape pieces.

 

Step 2:

Cut the plastic to the size of your windows (easiest done, while they are laying on the floor), and than 

carefully place on the already-placed tape.  Do this slowly making sure to get

the plastic as flat against the tape as possible.

Step 3:

The easiest part of this process...blow dry the plastic.  This will shrink the plastic to a snug fit over the windows.  But do not get the blow dryer too close to the plastic...it will burn a hole....we

learned this from experience.

If that does happen, you can just put a little duct tape over the hole!

Good luck, and Yes this has helped us keep the heat down a bit!

Basement Makeover?

This picture makes it look like they filmed "Peewee's Playhouse" in our basement,

but surprisingly they didn't.....

It was just a very bad paint decision by a previous owner!

It is a half basement with a TV area, one partially finished bedroom (on the left), and one storage/boiler room (in the back)

The TV area has the big beam in the center (holding up the house).

And the stairs are where I am standing to take the picture.

We would like to finish this area off and make it into a little TV/playroom.

Any suggestions?

I was thinking CARPET, lots of Primer/paint and a cheap projector......

What do you think?

Living room Before/After

before we moved into our home,

we would show people pics of the living room etc...

and the first thing they would say was,

"Whoa, that red...."

meaning they hated the red color the living room had on all 4 walls.

We weren't huge fans of the red, which btw was much

more intense in real life than the pictures.

So off to Sherwin Williams in search of paint and primer we went!

Luckily it was their 40% off sale...

(which they do every 3-4 months, so never pay full price for their paint)

When we got there we asked the guy who was working if

 they had any paint that had been brought back and that if they 

could give us an awesome discount on...

Luckily they had a very basic Tan color in a 5 gallon tub, 

that someone bought and than decided they didn't like.

I asked how much the discount would be, and he said we could just HAVE IT FOR FREE!

No way!  The color would be perfect for Caden's room and maybe the basement

playroom....perfect...!

The guy was feeling extra generous and gave us the

"contractor discount", which meant, we basically got the living room paint and primer,

several hundreds of dollars worth of paint for less than $100 bucks

TOTAL.

Here are the before and After....what do you think?

BEFORE: bloodshed Red

AFTER: Marongold by Sherwin Williams

I will have a tutorial soon, on how to get that perfect edge between two colors when painting...and PS, it has nothing to do with tape!

Steap and Cheap Furniture

Over the Summer I began hoarding furniture I found at garage sales, estate sales, 

thrift stores, and even free things on the side of the road!

When we moved from Idaho to

Denver in July of 2010 to live with my parents for 6 months.....

(which actually ended up being 2.5 years), 

we sold all our furniture.

I was at World Market one day and saw this couch...I loved the color and had to have it!

But since the price tag was 700 bucks, I couldn't have it.

A few months later, I found this beauty at an Estate Sale...and at a 

price of $135, it REALLY was mine.

We had it appraised by a specialty furniture store owner and found out that they sell 

a similar chair (without the ottoman) for $2000!

This was definitely my fave find this year!

Tips for shopping Estate Sales:

• The first day things are priced double what they are going to sell them for on the last day of the sale....

• They will usually barter with you. For example, the chair was listed at 150..but I said if I pay cash instead of check and also buy that patio table and 6 chairs (which was listed at 20), will you take 160 for the 2 together?  And she said "yes".  So I saved $10 bucks.

•  And keep in mind that just because it's old doesn't make it worth more, if it doesn't seem like a good deal, than it isn't

 

5th times a charm

My husband Shaun and I began looking for

a home in April of 2012.

We searched all summer, looking at homes with our realtor

day and night.

We put an offer on the first property, which was a HUD home and although

we bid 2K over the asking price....we were outbid by someone else.

Property number two was another HUD home,

that needed A LOT of TLC.  But it was in a neighborhood that had homes in the 275K+ range,  

(so this home was listed at more than 100 K less than their neighbors).

Since we got outbid with the last offer, we decided to offer 7K over the listed asking price.

And once again we were outbid!

Property number 3 was another HUD home and it was in mint condiditon, 

but it was also listed at 35K over our budget.

But we figured we would try and give them our full budget offer.

No luck, we were outbid.

Property number 4 was an incredible old home in the Denver/Cherry Creek area.

It was also A HUD home, and listed at twice our budget allowance.

But by this point I figured why not give them an offer of our full budget?

The home needed a lot of work, but the property alone was worth more than 

we offered, so we figured if they accepted our offfer, we couldn't lose.

They did not accept any of the offers they received during the bidding period...

I am not sure it has even sold yet (4 months later).

Property number 5 was a home I saw go on the market in July, and I loved it!  But listed at

a price 35K over our budget, it was not going to happen!

well months went by and nobody bought it....

So one day when we were out looking at homes, I told Shaun to drive past it.."Just to see".

It was so awesome, it was built in 1912, all brick, BEAUTIFUL.

And way too expensive.

Well luck came our way and THE NEXT DAY, they dropped the asking price into

a range that was within our budget!!!

We made an offer the following Friday, and it is now our Home Sweet Home.

these are the pics I took the night we saw the home, so they aren't great...better ones to come!

1912 Farm house in Colorado

The living Room

The kitchen

the smurf bathroom

the east side of the home