Original – “Little Beauty”
Here’s my “fixed” version. Using CS4, I cropped the picture. Then I played with curves to help with the exposure. I increased the vibrance to bring out the color. I rotated it some (I’m really into angles lately). I smoothed out the dirt on her arms and face and reduced the noise to help with the dirt too. I added some warmth to the picture (colors>yellow).
Ok, so here’s my 3rd and final post on my kitchen. Well, at least until we do more renovations. Here’s pics of how the cabinets look now. I’ve also posted my fav nicknacks and pictures from different angles. You can click on the pic to see larger version and most of them have notes to go along with them for more explanation.
Part 1 Kitchen Renovations: New Appliances
Part 2 Kitchen Renovations: Cabinets
Haven’t done 10 on Tuesday in ages!!
10 Favorite Places to Shop
1. Walmart
2. Target
3. Sam’s
4. Hobby Lobby
5. Old Navy
6. JC Penney
7. Kroger
8. Online
9. Ross
10. Victoria Secret’s
Last Friday Drew’s school held their annual Bash N Dash. We’ve actually never gone, because there’s always something going on. I was happy that we got to make it this year especially since it’s his last year there. They have a 1 mile fun run and 5K. Drew decided to do the 5K. His first race and he WON! He was the fastest kid in his school. Do I see a track star in my future? 🙂
See a few more pics here
I was reading Rae Ann’s blog yesterday and she had a post about her daughter in dance costumes. Seeing those, just took me back. In fact, it did so much that I decided to pull out the old photo albums and scan pictures.
I started dancing at age 3 or 4. I went to Tracy Dee’s Dance Studio and loved it. My Dad was a freelance photographer at the time, so he took the pics for the studio and as you’ll see he took pics at our recitals. This is just an assortment of pictures I have. For some reason, I can’t find the pictures from my older years in dancing.
I adore this picture!
Waiting to go on stage
Let’s Go Fly a Kite
What’s up with the hair in the back sticking up? Did my Grandmother not know how to wet that down? Geez…
Gotta luv the tutu!
I loved being upfront and center, between 2 boys. 🙂
Tap
Tap
This was for Pac Man.
Not sure what’s up with the cow lick.
Ragedy Ann
This cracks me up. Rolling her eyes and my Dad.
This girl was older than me, but I remember thinking how beautiful she was. Her mom did her makeup so nicely. I was so jealous!
Poo Bear?
This is my dance teacher off stage doing the steps in case anyone forgets.
So the next thing on our to do list for the kitchen was to do something with the GAWD awful cabinets. We have a friend, Tony, that is into woodworking and he agreed to make new doors for out cabinets. As you can see from the pictures the actual cabinets are in good shape, but they’re a dark brown. The doors are particalboard covered in a manilla-colored laminate with wooden handles. Ug-a-lee! Not our style at all.
So we decided to have Tony make the doors out of oak. We gave him all the measurements of the 30 something doors and drawer fronts, all of which are different sizes, by the way. Ugh. While he was working on that, we took all the doors and drawer fronts off, cleaned out all the cabinets, and started sanding the cabinets down. A lot of work! Every few days we would get a stack of doors and drawer fronts. We would sand those down and stain them, which would take about 3 days. Once we had the cabinets completely sanded down, we stained the existing cabinets with the stain we were using on the doors/drawer fronts. We decided on the hidden hinges and I had a very difficult time deciding on what handles and/or knobs I wanted to use. After changing my mind about 4 times, I finally settled on some handles that I absolutely love!
Another issue with the kitchen was that there’s a teeny-tiny excuse of a pantry seen here. Next to the pantry you can see how the bar wraps around, which is a total waste of space. We changed our plan several times with what to do with this wall, because we kept coming up with better ideas. We decided to have Tony build a wall to ceiling pantry and get rid of the bar extension.
Here’s the results of the now very useful space.
Cabinet Hardware
So now that we have all that done, when our financial situation gets back to normal we will be ripping out all the tile on the countertops and backsplash and replace with something more modern. Then the linoleum on the floors will be replaced with some nice ceramic tiles. I’d also like to put some recessed lighting in and get rid of the parlor type chandelier!
Coming up next…Just more pictures of my kitchen and eating area.
Over at Kelly’s Blog she’s doing a weekly post to share different rooms of her house. I know other’s have done the Home Tours post, which I’ve wanted to do. We’ve been in this house 2 years come May 15th and we knew when we bought it there was a lot we wanted to do with the home. It had some updates that we really like and a few additions also. The first thing we knew we would have to conquer was the kitchen. I believe at some point the kitchen was redone, but it’s very 70’s feeling and just ick! Summer 2007, right after we moved in we replaced most of the appliances. Here’s pictures of the original appliances and their replacements.
I think this old oven did a better job of heating the room rather than the food that we put in it! I LOVE my new oven. It’s great not have to bend over to check the food, etc.
1960’s stovetop – All the burners were so crooked and straightening them just made them worse. Everything cooked uneven and I had to worry about stuff boiling over on the one side.
New dishwasher is so quiet and has a timer, which is great. Load the dishwasher after dinner and set it to wash in the middle of the night so they’re clean the next morning!
Coming up next…Part 2 Kitchen Renovations: Cabinets
Last weekend we were in Peachtree City for a soccer tournament. I actually didn’t go up there till Saturday afternoon, because I was photographing a horse show. I was able to make it for the swim party and watched the game on Sunday. The kids had a blast in the pool even though the adults thought the water was way too cold to even think about getting in!
Surfin’
Blowing up an intertube
Scooter
Original – “My Shadow”
Here’s my “fixed” version. Using CS4, I cropped the picture. Then I played with curves to help with the exposure. I increased the vibrance to bring out the color. I rotated it some (I’m really into angles lately). I smoothed out the dirt on her arms and face and reduced the noise to help with the dirt too. I added some warmth to the picture (colors>yellow).
