Cup Station

With a few bright colors and a metal wire rack from Ikea that you can put the bottom of your cabinets we made a cup station for our wine glasses and coffee cups.

Blue You

Decorate with blue today, some great ideas in blue at hgtv.com

Stack It Rack- Contemporary Wine

I found this great Wine Rack design that is cute and contemporary! Check out the design on http://www.diyideas.com/.

Easy Candle Design

Add some cute ribbons to your plain candles for some extra color and design.

Cafe Corner

Coffee is a must in our house so we made our own Cafe Corner in our kitchen. Easy and very inexpensive, you can buy a hanging bar from IKEA and screw it into your favorite corner in your kitchen and hang your favorite cups. Our favorite cups are some black and white New York cups.

Two-tone Kitchen

I am sure that most women would agree with me when I say that the kitchen in our home is a very important part of our daily lives. Ray and I tend to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, even though he is a better cook than me (soon to be changed) we spend most of our nights cooking and listening to music in our kitchen. So needless to say my next project is our kitchen cabinets. I just can't decide what I want to do but right now we are only going to paint them not purchase new cabinets so send me your thoughts.....

What is your opinion??

1. Paint bottom cabinets black, top cabinets a yellow brown color like a cream

2. Paint all cabinets one color

Chichi & Pinky want to know what you think, leave comments!

Loft Kitchen Makeover

http://www.hgtv.com/decorating/mixing-contemporary-design-with-traditional-details-in-a-100-year-old-kitchen/pictures/page-2.html

So I thought I would share with you one of my new favorite TV shows called Divine Design. Below is pictures from an episode today of a Kitchen loft that was way out dated into a new gorgeous what you would want Kitchen Loft.

Final Stages

We are in the final stages of finishing our back porch. I ran out of wood stain this weekend when trying to finish the high beams on the ceiling but it is looking great. Check out the picture below I took this weekend. We have one last step, what to do with the floor? It has a nice tile but it is so old we think it may need a simple color renovation. We are thinking painting it a nice light shiny grey to go along with the lighter neutral colors in the paint and wood. Let me know if you like that idea or another idea of what we can do to the flooring.

New Addition to Our Family

We have a new addition to our family! Her name is Noche and as Marian said she is just in time for Halloween. We went to petsmart on Monday to get some items for Chichi and Pinky and I saw this adorable kitty at the adoption event they had. I just could not resiste and Ray knowing I love animals so much gladly welcomed her home with us. She was very shy at first but now she is a little dare devil, climbing on everything she can get to. This is new to us because our other cat Pinky acts more like a dog (learned from Chichi) so she does not jump on things like most cats do. I will try to get some cute pictures of her this weekend if she will sit still long enough!

Old to Blue

One of the best and easiest projects I learned from my DIY shows is turning old pieces of furniture into a new decorative piece with just a few cans on spray paint. There is a great brand I like to use called Krylon and it is sold at Home Depot and Walmart. You can buy in Flat, Semi-gloss, or Gloss. Make sure to do these projects outside because the spray will float in the air and hit other items around. If the furniture is a dark color buy a can of white primer to put under your paint color. I kept the original hardware because it was so interesting and now I have a great beautiful blue end table for a bed.

Total Project Cost- $9

Credit Score Tips You May Not Know

Here are some helpful tips that may help improve your Credit Score. With the economy the way it is now this is important to pay attention to. Let me know if you have any other tips that are not listed??

1. Check for and correct any errors in your credit report. Mistakes happen, and you could be paying for someone else’s poor financial management.

2. Pay down credit card bills. If possible, pay off the entire balance every month. Transferring credit card debt from one card to another could lower your score.

3. Don’t charge your credit cards to the maximum limit.

4. Wait 12 months after credit difficulties to apply for a mortgage. You’re penalized less for problems after a year.

5. Don’t order items for your new home on credit — such as appliances and furniture — until after the loan is approved. The amounts will add to your debt.

6. Don’t open new credit card accounts before applying for a mortgage. Too much available credit can lower your score.

7. Shop for mortgage rates all at once. Too many credit applications can lower your score, but multiple inquiries from the same type of lender are counted as one inquiry if submitted over a short period of time.

8. Avoid finance companies. Even if you pay the loan on time, the interest is high and it will probably be considered a sign of poor credit management.
This information is copyrighted by the Fannie Mae Foundation and is used with permission of the Fannie Mae Foundation. To obtain a complete copy of the publication, Knowing and Understanding Your Credit, visit www.homebuyingguide.org.

Porch Master Ray

Ray needs major credit on this project. We have a great back porch that was screened in but we just did not like it. We could not see very well into our wonderful backyard. We pulled down the screen and the privacy fence, that needed some major muscle from Ray. Then we went to the fence section in the hardware store and started talking with the employees on ideas what we could do. This is a great update that really anyone can do without paying mucho money to a contractor. We are in the final stage of staining all the wood and installing the outdoor blinds so check back later for the final picture!

New Uses for Old Stuff

When I moved to Atlanta after college I inherited some furniture from my parents, you know to help save money with my low budget at the time. One piece I was given was a wood dinning room table that also had a matching China cabinet. Well recently my mom took back the table and re-painted it for one of my younger sisters, it looks great. So now we have a China cabinet taking up space. Ray had a great idea, I can take the top off the China cabinet and make a bar, we love our Maragaritas!!! So here it is our bar project. (The before picture is after I primed it white)

Items needed:

1. White primer (get that kind that sticks to all material) $15
2. Choose your color paint, I love semi-gloss (pictured is a light yellow) $26
3. One piece of finished pine wood from Home Depot for the top $15
4. 1 small can of stain $7
5. Foam roller, small size (same one I used on the cabinet)

Total Cost- $63

Just A Little Paint Goes A Long Way........

One of my most recent projects was this large built in shelf unit that is in our main living room. At first we were just not sure what to do with this. Take it down or keep it, and if we keep it how can we change it to not look so old and huge. After many thoughts I thought well let me try to paint it first and if it is awful I will take it down. I thought wow paiting with a brush is going to take so long, there is so much detail on this cabinet so I went to Home Depot and bought spray paint. Now I have done many projects before with spray paint but never in the house. My advice, spary paint in the house is not good. I went back to Home Depot, these people know us by name jaja, and bought one can of paint and a special foam roller. Wow this roller was a god sent, this paint is perfectly smooth and you cannot even tell it was not originally this color. I sprayed the original hardware a silver metal spray to keep the original old look and it looks amazing. Hope you like this, it took my about 5 hours!

Cost- $25 for Paint, $5 for foam roller (special for cabinets)

Total- $30 Wow!!!!

Floor it Real or Floor it Fake

Since our home is a older home the house was covered in carpet. Unfortunately, our renter's messed up the carpet so bad the first thing we had to do in our house is change the floors. We decided that wood floors would make the house much more modern and increase the value. Since this was our first project we had no experience in remodelling so we searched every store looking at all the different choices: wood, bamboo, laminant, etc. We choose bamboo but it was so expensive and we were told it was hard to install so we hired a couple of guys to redo the master bedroom, hallway, and main living room. Here are the cost:

1 day Labor- $800

Materials-$400

Total Cost $1200

Ouch! That hurts, and we still had 4 more rooms to be done. So after searching we found some great laminate that looks just like real wood. We attended a free class at a local floor store to learn how to DIY. We finished 4 rooms for about $500, wow that is a $700 savings. Check your local floor or hardware store for free classes, it is really not that hard and you feel great after.

Below is a picture of one room for the laminate before....

Here is after with our cute dog Chichi...



Welcome to our Home! Bienvenido a nuestra casa!

Welcome to our home! We would like to share with you our journey as we romdel our home together.

We are not experts by any means, we are just a couple who loves watching do-it-yourself shows on HGTV and DIY TV.

I am more of a read the instruction manual or look up on the Internet the steps on how to replace a light and Ray is more of I know how to do it even though I have no experience. Opposite yes, but together we work wonderful and each project we tackle makes our home even more beautiful. I would like to share with you the projects that we have taken on so far and soon to come.