We can never resist entering a contest (a few of you may remember our infamous Blair Witch/Home Depot video) so when we read that Houseblogs.net was sponsoring a sweepstakes in partnership with True Value we, of course, had to enter.

We’ve done so many DIY projects here at Bungalow Insanity, it’s hard to choose a favorite, but one which stands out among many is our kitchen remodel. Basically, we designed the entire kitchen around four $10 salvaged windows. Continue Reading »

While there are still some trim and backsplash details to finish up, the overall kitchen is done. Since we got everthing cleaned up for our Christmas party, we figured we’d better grab a shot while we could!

By the time we we purchased our bungalow in 2004, it had been abused as a rental house for well over a decade. As you might expect, none of the original lighting remained (with the exception of the brass fitters in the living and dining room box beams.) Sadly, everything else was long gone, but don’t feel too sorry for us - we definitely had fun choosing new lighting!

We selected copper-foiled Tiffany-style stained glass shades from Rejuvenation for our living room sconces, box beam fixtures and dining room chandelier.

In our kitchen, we used five Arts and Crafts style pendant fixtures from Progress Lighting. (To tie the fixtures together with the rest of the room, we installed matching carmel-swirled glass panels in the cabinets flanking our refrigerator.)

For our ground floor bathroom, we chose sconces and overhead lighting from Schoolhouse Electric

In our front entry hall, we used another stained glass fixture from Rejuvenation which incorporated all of our paint colors from the entry hall, living room and dining room, which really helps tie the ground floor together.

While not necessarily a lot of help, Chloe sure does add a lot of cuteness to any project. Seen in the background are fir boards that have been stained for the kitchen trim.

We used the same vertical grain fir that we used on our window trim.  I found Mr. Plywood to be a great place to buy fir, as they have a nice selection of "shorts" that are about 1/2 the per foot price of custom lengths.  Since most of the shorts are 6-8′, they work out perfectly for door and baseboard trim.  It’s a (relatively) cheap way to get fir trim.  Even though this is VGF while the original woodwork in the rest of our house is flat-grain, it still has a very authentic and original look once it’s stained.

This is what our trim looked like after staining.  We were extremely fortunate that the Minwax Cherry stain on the fir trim and windows was an almost exact match to the stain on our cabinets.  It really helps tie the room together, and it didn’t require any customizing of the stain, like we had to do on the living and dining room windows.

 No more plywood or holes in our kitchen wall! 

The frames Julio made for the casement windows.  The windows were not perfectly square and were slightly warped, so it was challenging to make the frames fit them well. 

We filled up this dumpster with wood to be recycled and another one twice the size with trash.  Julio’s brother Carmen was in town to help, and together the two of them carried over 11,000 lbs. from the back patio and 2nd floor down the twenty steps to the street level.  They both slept very well that night…

The new engineered oak floors.  They look great!