So fast forward back a few weeks ago – I had been wanting to start a home improvement blog for months and months, almost a year.  I had been documenting my how to’s, what I was doing and how I was doing it, taking ‘before and afters’, etc., but I just couldn’t decide on a name.  And I believe that the name is important… for some reason.  I mean, if you look at other amazing home blogs, they are not necessarily at all clever or beautiful names.  But I wanted mine to be clever and beautiful.  So Ryan and I were talking, and he was recounting the sweet n wonderful story of how he was just blown away, and so touched by me saying that back when we were dating (married now almost 5 years) – and all the sudden I looked up and said – THAT’S IT!  SWEET N WONDERFUL!

Okay, we really wanted ‘Sweet and Wonderful’, but you can’t have everything you want, can you?  That URL is a bakery, so that is over, but that’s okay – Ryan came up with something just as good – Sweet n Wonderful.

He also pointed out that Sweet n Wonderful, ‘SW’ are my initials.  I fell in love with the name instantly.  Plus, I had come up with some other names, but I wasn’t obsessed with any of the names, and nothing ‘meant anything’ to me.  This has deep meaning for me.

I had been thinking to myself recently – where did I pick up ‘sweet n wonderful’ anyway?  I didn’t know, and we had already bought the URL.  But recently, while my dear little Gram was in the hospital, my mom and I went to visit her (she’s out now, thank the Lord! and doing great), as we were there giving her her flowers and some magazines, she hugged me and said – “You’re sweet n wonderful!”  THAT’S IT – that’s where I got it from – my little Gram!  She must have been saying that for years and years, and it just stuck with me.

So for many reasons, all full of love and meaning, this blog’s name is Sweet n Wonderful.

I only started fixing it up, piece by piece, a few years ago, in 2011, but I am gaining momentum and have become more obsessed with making our house beautiful.  I keep building confidence with the projects I try, as nothing has been a disaster, and everything has turned out very well.  I think that my software engineering background has made me realize that I am capable of doing a lot more home projects than I had ever imagined – as long as I do the research, and consider, and if something goes wrong / not as expected, step back and work towards a fix.

Some projects I have tackled in the last 3 years, which I will be detailing here ASAP:

• Getting pendant lighting put into our kitchen
• Replacing our old brass light over our dining room table with a beautiful silver chandelier
• Fixing up our downstairs bathroom – huge towel bar removal, repositioning of the toilet paper holder, new toilet paper holder, new mirror, new towel ring, and new paint
• New light fixture over our kitchen sink
• Painting the entire downstairs (with my mom and a good friend – and it still took months of weekends)
• New dining room table and chairs (replacing our old hand-me-downs)
• Upstairs guest ‘my’ bathroom – removed the huge towel bar, put in Container Store hooks for storage help, new toilet paper holder, and a new towel ring – such a work in progress
• Great room – new roman shades
• Entire downstairs – painted all doors black (from white), and replaced ALL hardware (door handles, deadbolts, hinges) with silver hardware (was all brass – yuck) – this is the project that began the mayhem of house addiction
• ‘Painted’ the kitchen cabinets, and transformed them from the nasty ‘builder oak’ to a beautiful dark, dark brown using Rustoleum’s Cabinet Transformations – more on that later – biggest difference a project has made in the house.  Even though this is technically ‘paint’ the wood grain shows through beautifully, and everyone agrees – they look like they were restained, which is exactly what I was going for!
• Put up a shell tile (white iridescent) backsplash in the kitchen – work in progress, this baby is taking forever, but I’m almost done, and the change is amazing
• Removed our completely useless upper cabinet and range hood under that cabinet in the kitchen, and replaced it with a beautiful stainless steel range hood – wow; amazing; that space up there was useless for a shortie like me anyway, and I believe that this makes our kitchen look so much bigger!
• Got an amazing ‘slide in’ stainless range / stove on Craigslist for $400.  Amazing deal, and we’re loving it!  We’re still in a race to replace our other appliances with stainless steel (currently we still have a black dishwasher and a black refrigerator)
• Replaced our outside builder grade lights with beautiful, modern looking, huge lights
• Bought and spray painted silver a Joss & Main starburst mirror, and put it over our mantle.  Finally something beautiful over the mantle!
• Installed light timers to automatically turn on and off our outdoor lights – we always forgot to turn them off, they would burn out, and they were just a pain.  This is such a great fix!

Here are some pics of items accomplished that I will be blogging about (already completed – the easy part)…

I call this my ‘doors to black project’ – before and afters of the white doors with brass hardware, and the After black doors with silver hardware!

And this shows the progress I’ve made on our kitchen so far!  The backsplash is almost done!  I am going to have the backsplash reaching to the ceiling behind the range hood.

Spray painted the cheapest starburst mirror I could find on Joss and Main to a beautiful silver,

Our before and after of our new outdoor lights.  From ugly ‘gothic castle’ to beautiful, modern lights!

Outdoor light timers!