This past weekend Hubby, Sugarbaby, and I set off to Lowe’s to get the lumber and supplies to build our farmhouse table. Sugarbear and Sugarpop stayed with the in laws since we needed the entire cargo area of the van for our materials. We also picked up our 8 foot American Cherry butcher block we ordered from Lumber Liquidators. But that project will have to wait until we are done with our table, benches, and chairs.

Hubby drew out a sketch and modified the original plan to make the table more of a square instead of a rectangle. We had originally planned on going with a pine table, but seeing that pine is a soft wood has lots of imperfections from the manufacturing and would get too many dents in the table from the kids’ abuse, we settled on a hardwood–red oak. We knew the materials would be more expensive, but it would withstand many years of hard use and abuse–think 3 kids and a dog. We did buy our 2×4’s in white wood pine and Hubby discovered a few of them were warped when he was framing up the table and had to twist them to straighten them out. He worked most of Saturday and all of Sunday getting the table framed up and it is almost ready for the table top surface. He will use a router to round and smooth out the edges of the planks, then use the wood filler for cracks and screws, sand the top again. Then we will stain and put on many coats of polyeurathane for durability.

Table in progress

This will take a couple of weeks or so until we are finished. In the meantime, I am still working on my decluttering and organizing.

I had every intention of categorizing all of my photos in separate albums, but as I went through each photo and copy (way before digital days) I was pretty tired. So I found a couple of plain black albums at Target and extra inserts slapped them in there. I will go back and finish this project, but for now this is as good as it gets. I found some photos that I didn’t recognize so I’ll send them to some relatives to see if it is theirs. Getting all of this photos in an album was a big relief!

before

after

Ah, feels so much better!

I had every intention to following the 52 weeks to getting organized series, but somehow fell to the wayside. Instead I modified the series to fit my needs and how I want my home to be organized. I am still going to use 52 weeks to get organized and am so invigorated to do so!

We are still in the living room and it is taking a little bit of time to get this room organized the way I want. This cabinet used to store games and other miscellaneous items so I decided to clean it out and place the games in another place. I wanted to make room for the dvd storage case we purchased from Amazon and wanted to put other decorative items that were not being used here for storage as well. The top drawer is a little junky as well.  Here is the before pics:

I’m slowly working my way around the living room.

Hubby and I decided to build a farmhouse table ourselves rather than pay someone else for it.We needed a bigger table for all five of us now that Sugarbaby will be sitting in a highchair and will be at the table eating solids soon. We found the plans here, but decided to modify it a bit and go with a square one rather than a rectangular one. We decided to build a sample one to get an idea on how the boards would look. We are going with 1×6’s, for a wider plank, and 2×4’s and so far we like what we see. Here are some pics of what we did so far. 1/2 of the table is stained with Minwax Polyshades (stain + polyeurathane) Classic Oak Gloss and the other half is Pecan Gloss. We did both to see what each shade looked like and which one we liked better.

Classic Oak Gloss stain

I wanted to see what the other side looked like with the Pecan Gloss stained looked like so Hubby did the other side. We noticed with the wood filler if we didn’t let it dry completely for 24 hours it will come out with the stain. He sanded off the Pecan Gloss and we are testing the sample by letting the filler dry for 24 hours and then restaining. I am excited about this project!

I managed to get the top and bottom cabinets cleaned out. I also cleaned out the drawer that was super junky too.

Here is the afters!

The plumbing will be removed when we remove the sink and countertop.

My drawer
before

after

I wiped down the drawer and cabinets.

Of course my countertop is still in progress:

The pictures will either be hung on the gallery wall or on my photo ledges. Hope to have my afters of that in a couple of days.

I am currently working in the living room and have put my loose leaf photos in photo albums in categories: Sugarpop’s, Sugarbear’s, high school and beyond friends. Here is my cluttered pile of pictures before.

Since taking this photo I have found more pictures so I’m a bit backed up in getting them organized. I hope to post afters later in the week.

Hubby and I went to Lowe’s and bought the lumber to make photo ledges. I had planned on installing them on my big blank wall going up my stairs, but I’m still debating on where to put them. Here is my before and in progress photos. The plans I was using is from here and we found the lumber already cut in half so we didn’t have to cut them at all. I chose Minwax: Walnut color.

I’ll have my afters soon!

The first week of January and I am going to start in my living room. I have a wet bar that I could never figure out what to do with it and it constantly gets junky and there is no purpose to it. We were going to turn this into the homework nook, but Hubby and I decided to use it to for extra storage. And we plan on taking off the counter top/sink and install an American Cherry butcher block. It is currently on order and will be ready in about 2-3 weeks so I have time to get that wet bar cleaned out. We’ll get a computer desk/cabinet for the homework and kids’ computer. We already have the computer, but need a place to store that and lock up the computer stuff away from curious destructive boys!

Here are my befores:

I also plan on putting all of my loose photos in a photo albums and also put my dvds in one big album. Also organize my cabinet with the games, as well as my craft cabinet. Those will be done in the coming weeks. I’m also in the process of putting together my gallery wall and doing my photo ledges so the framed photos will go up there. Things are slowly coming together!

I came across this organizational series in a couple of months ago and decided to finally get the rest of the house organized using this system. I had gotten quite a bit done last year while I was “nesting”, but need to fine tune and tweak everything. I also will need to go through my crawlspace yet again and get rid of unwanted items.

I’m excited to get the house in order and keep it that way. It has helped me get the home chores done in a more efficient manner. I will tackle all of my organizing projects each week to document what I have done  by the end of the 52 weeks. Let’s get started with week 1!

I want to wish you and yours a Happy New Year and hope 2012 will be a healthy and prosperous year.

I have some exciting plans for our home and hope to get back to my goal weight before I got surprised with baby #3.