{renovate} copper cups

Welcome, Houzz readers! If this is your first time visiting my site, you can read a little bit about me here. I hope you look around and decide to stay a while! By way of a quick introduction, here are a few of my projects you might enjoy:
Kitchen remodel
Back entry remodel
Striped hallway


Last month, you might remember, we went to a big antique show and brought home a set of copper cups.

Since then, I've been using them around the house in flower arrangements. But, we actually bought them to drink out of, so I had to get to work cleaning them. You can see, above, that they were really tarnished. Let's take a closer look:

YEARS of built up tarnish. While it gives it a great 'antique' look, that might not be what we're going for when drinking out of them:

I knew for sure I wanted to de-tarnish the insides, but then possibly the outsides.

Here are my weapons of choice:

I had both of these laying around because of the copper counters and a couple copper pans we have. My original thought was that I would compare the two. But I quickly learned they have two different functions! Wenol didn't cut through the thick tarnish, so I first needed to go to work on the tarnish with Copper Glo. But once I'd cut through the tarnish, Wenol really shines up the copper and makes it purty.  So I cleaned all the insides (no pictures, but trust me - kinda messy, not that exciting :) and then had to decide about the outsides. And here's the thing friends, I actually like the outsides all sparkly and coppery. The issue? Chris likes them better tarnished.

We have a divided household. :) For now, half are clean and sparkly and half are tarnished and antiqued.

The antiqued ones are great for flowers.

But for some reason I am more comfortable drinking out of the clean and sparkly ones.

What do you guys think? After I finished with the copper glo/wenol combo, I washed them all with soap and water. Is it safe to drink out of cups so tarnished? Is tarnish bad for you? Which look do you like better? I'd love to hear your thoughts about the great copper debate 2013 :)

ps. I wasn't paid to review these two products, I just wanted to fill you in on what I use! 

{inspired} the antique show

Friends! I owe you photos from my kitchen. I ran out of light this weekend to take photos, so I'll take a few before work this week and get them up (hooray for it actually being light in the morning before work!). But in the meantime, I thought I'd share some photos from the antique show we went to this weekend. A couple times a year a huge antique show comes through town and I'm not sure I've ever gone. We thought we'd head over and check it out before we buckled town and painted our little hearts out in the kitchen.

We saw a lot of really great things. And a lot of not so really great things. You know, typical antique show fare :). A quick note about the photos: the lighting in this building was TERRIBLE and I was using my iPhone. So, the pictures aren't the greatest - sorry about that in advance :) With that said, here are some of my favorites from the show:

Love these little ice cream bowls. The sweet light coral color is great for spring and the display had me wanting to throw an ice cream party :).

There were a couple different colors of these tea cups and saucers, but all were lined with gold. LOVE. And want to figure out a way to diy this and still have it be food safe.

I love displays of matchbooks. So pretty.

And speaking of pretty - this collection of vintage containers was gorgeous. All the colors were so vivid and beautiful. A small grouping with a single flower stem in each would be so cute.

Granny chic? Maybe. But I think a cross stitch like this would look great on a gallery wall.

Letters. I always love letters.

I LOVE this lamp. The white parts were actually a really light blue, and we all know that I've been loving green and blue lately :).

I have a good/bad habit of only buying things that I KNOW I have space for. This is good, because I don't have a lot of un-used things lying around. On the other hand this is bad because I passed up some really awesome things! There are a few things I wish I would've bought this weekend, including:

This super sweet little stool. I'm still kicking myself. I love the color, the shape and the cute floral/shamrock pattern stitched in on top.

This botanical print! It was really sweet and the color was beautiful.

There were so many great trophies - I'm sure I could've found space for one at home.

After all that, though, we did not come home empty handed.

We brought home these fantastic copper cups. They need to be cleaned up a little, but that's easy! I'll make sure to show you the process for cleaning when I get to it :).

 The cups have these great rings at the bottom - sort of like plastic cups, except much cooler.

And this sweet little wheat embossing. I am so excited to use them!

Have you picked up any great antiques lately? 

{renovate} kitchen backsplash and counters

Well, if you follow me on Instagram (jennmccormick), you know that over the long weekend we tiled! Specifically, the kitchen backsplash! But along with tiling, we also got a few other major things done. On a very related note, we seriously have the most amazing friends. You know the friends that way-back-when helped us renovate our back entry and refinish our hardwoods? Those are the same friends that helped demo the kitchen and built our cabinets? Well they came over this weekend specifically to tile and do whatever else we still needed help with. I cannot even begin to tell you guys how grateful we are that they're in our lives -- and how much we'll owe them when they buy a house :).

Backsplash

We have a backsplash! And oh does it change the look of the space!

The tile is Ann Sacks Swiss Cross. I am so in love. Because it's such a small space, we wanted something that had personality, but was still neutral and classic. I think this fit the bill so well.
 

I didn't take a lot of photos of the process, because I was actually tiling! The girls tiled while the boys did other stuff. It was my first time tiling - and it was actually pretty easy. The hardest part was figuring out the pattern so we could begin.

Up next will be grout - hopefully this weekend.  But FIRST we need to decide on what color grout - white or gray. I am so torn! Any opinions, friends?

ps. You can also see that we installed window trim after the last post about trim :). Much better!

Counter

First, the counter top extension! We've been planning this since the beginning. We couldn't plan the island to be as long as we wanted - for clearance reasons - but, we really wanted it longer than the space logically allowed. Enter, the extension. It can go up when we need it, down when we have a lot of people over and need the space. We still need to install the piece that moves it up and down, so that's next.

While the girls were tiling, the boys were adding the extension and gluing down the copper.

Making sure it's a tight, solid fit :). Yep, there was a rolling pin involved.

The boys also did some ducting work, which I'll show you later. But really, it isn't all that exciting, but is really nice to be getting done!

And this guy? He was our supervisor for the day :).

All in all, a very productive weekend. It's going to take me quite awhile to finish up and paint all the trim, but I'm getting so excited to share final photos with you guys!

{inspired} copper accents

Friends, have you ever noticed how amazingly gorgeous copper is? Seriously. I was on a gold kick for quite awhile, but then, well, we went and installed a copper countertop. Have I mentioned that? No. Well, I'll be showing it to you next week. Chris fought tooth and nail for it, and I'm SO glad he did, because I'm now a firm advocate of copper. Wow. 

In that spirit, I thought maybe you'd like to end the week with some gorgeous copper eye-candy. See how gorgeous it can be in a room?

 anya adores

I think a little can go along way and even adding just an accent in a room would be beautiful. Here's are some accessories I've run across lately that I'm drooling over:

clockwise: pendants, lantern,   stone+copper cooker,  lamp, vintage molds, pitchers

What do you think? Do you have copper in your home? Would you add it as an accent? I hope you have fantastic weekend friends!