catching up with lots of photos

We've done some work in the laundry/pantry/mud room. The goal was to move electrical, HVAC, refinish the floor and install a table.

Immediately after moving in, August 2012

A month after moving in

This worked for a while, until Joey shotgunned a can of Coke or six

Just before the refresh. The main push to update this room was the exposed wiring and the impossible to clean floors.

Ta da! I am so in love with this room! We used Behr patio/porch floor paint and added the confetti flakes. The biggest change is the relocation of the floor vent; this allowed us to finally level the washer. LOVE THIS ROOM.

We've just finished an update to the hall bath. The room is small, so our goal was to find a smaller vanity and make the room feel bigger and brighter.

The day we moved in, August 2012.

Basic but totally usable.

The original vanity was 3" shorter than standard, too dark and too deep for the room.

We will be reusing the mirror elsewhere.

Love the classic look of the new faucet!

New light fixture and new medicine cabinet. Any additional storage in a small room is a bonus.

Love.

By replacing the original vanity with this new one, we gained 3.5" of space, which is HUGE. The room, which has a north facing window, never gets direct sunlight, and now with the lighter vanity feels fresh and bright.

There's a color story in our house: variations of aqua, apple green and orange make appearances in just about every room. I like to be consistent.

kitchen updates

Funny how one smallish project becomes two bigger projects. We've wanted to fix the exhaust/ventilation issue in the kitchen for a while now, and earlier this month we reached the point of no return. Brian did some research on the microwave above the stove and discovered that it could be switched from (useless) recirculating to an up and out exhaust. Sounded like a good plan! We would need to pull the microwave down to change the fan, and then install some duct work and an exterior vent. On a Saturday morning, we removed the microwave and knew immediately it was never going back up.

Removing that big black box made that part of the kitchen feel so much BIGGER and BRIGHTER! We quickly decided to head out and look for a vent hood. We ended up with one from IKEA, and after a trip or two to Lowe's, we had everything we needed to install the new exhaust system.

The night before we started this project, I woke Brian up to tell him that we had to paint the kitchen, that I couldn't live with that color one more day. The kitchen and dining area always felt so dark with an unpleasant amber glow. The cabinetry has a red hue, and along with the red-based beige walls, that room was angry and visually loud. So as we were getting the supplies for the vent work, I picked out three sample pots of Valspar paint.

Over the next week, we worked on finishing the venting and finished by painting.We used Comet Dust by Valspar; it's a good bridge between the blue hall and living room and the gray bedroom. Oh how we love it! Brian no longer has to duck to see what he's cooking - with the added bonus of not having the exhaust blow right in his face - and the whole room feels so much brighter and happier. Even better, it no longer feels like a misstep compared to the other rooms.

Before (on inspection day)

After.

Before

After

Before

After

Standing in our bedroom, looking through the dining area into the hall. The layered colors work so well together.

Standing in the living room, looking into the dining area and the dark TV room.

Again in the living room, looking down the hall. Dining on the right, office beyond.

it's a lovely place to work

Say hello to the updated office! We spent the weekend painting the walls and refinishing/staining the hardwood floors. And hoooo boy, did that work make a difference in there.

About a month after we moved in, we tore out the carpet in the office, revealing original - but badly in need of love - hardwood floors. We lived with the bare wood floors for nearly a year, knowing that when we painted the room we'd tackle the floors, too. After a good cleaning and a light sanding, we applied one coat of Minwax Natural 209. Picture us doing the happy dance when it blended seamlessly with the floor in the hallway!

The walls are Rising Tide, from the same color card in this post. Depending on the time of day and the light coming in, it reads anywhere from pale blue to gray. 

The bookcase also got a fresh coat of color, Pantone's color of the year, Emerald. On one of our many visit's to Lowe's, I noticed the sample pots of paint and HAD TO HAVE SOME. At the time, I didn't know where I was going to use it, but that didn't matter. I needed to have that color in my house. I love how the bookcase pops right off the wall now.

I also used this as an excuse to reorganize my office supplies, magazines and crafting supplies. Go figure.

Brian and I share the office, so he needed to be represented, too. The mug on the right features the design he made for a Boy Scout event in 1985. The other two are from different places he was stationed.

There's still some work to do in there, however. We'd like to add crown, some quarter round to the base boards - just to nicely finish off the look - and of course paint all that trim. But those are projects for another day.

"s" is for...

I've been wanting an "S" for the mantle or bookshelf for a while, but hadn't found the right one at the right price until a couple weekends ago.

I found this one at World Market for $8. The right size (between 6" to 10") but I hated the printed paper.

A couple coats of paint would help that, right? I used some white acrylic paint as a primer, and originally thought I'd make the final coat gray.

Unfortunately, the gray looked to flat and sad-faced, so two coats of black acrylic paint later and it's ready to hang on the wall.

The only thing to do now is find the right home. 

before and after: master bedroom

This post is long overdue, given that we did this over my birthday weekend at the end of March.

When we moved into the house, all the rooms were painted the stager's favorite: beige, or as I like to call it  BLEIGE, as in blech beige. This did not go with our gray bedding or give off the feel I wanted for the bedroom. I want our bedroom to be a quiet, calm place, cool and dark and quiet.

Before we got the paint up on the walls, we needed to address this weird little nook opposite my side of the bed. We had thought about taking out my dresser and putting in a "built-in" wardrobe that would allow me to have all my dresses and extensive handbag collection in the same room; at this point they were in the TV room and office respectively. But knowing that at some point down the road we'll be pulling out the carpet and replacing it with cork flooring I wasn't 100% sold on such a major purchase/project.

What Brian came up with instead is installing two shelves above my dresser to display my bags. And really, let's face it, that's what my priority really was. This option also allowed us to keep Joey's bed tucked into the corner practically out of sight.

The braces were painted the same color as the wall, Filtered Shade by Valspar. The shelves were painted Swiss Coffee*, also by Valspar. Here's how the rest of the room came out:

We painted the sink area but not the water closet (just to the left of the sinks) or our closet (to the right of the sinks).  We want to retile the WC with less bleige tile, and the closet...well we'll tackle that when we replace the flooring.

Hello, Ladies. This makes me so very happy.

A husband that will custom build shelves to hold your beloved Kate Spade handbags is most definitely a keeper.

Now our bedroom feels more ours, and has the feeling I was going for. I'm always on the lookout for a midcentury modern dresser for me that's more like the one we found via Craigslist for Brian, something with a little warmer tone to echo the headboard. I'd also love to replace our nightstands eventually, again with something with a more midcentury modern look.

*Slowly but surely all the trim in the house will be repainted Swiss Coffee, too. We used it on the front door trim and fireplace mantle we DIY'd.

year of the yard, status update

Here's where we started about a week after moving in and installing the fence:

Not great, but not the worst, either. Then we DIY'd a patio:

We continued the patio to the edge of the house (three more rows). But the winter was not kind to our yard, and we ended up with a muddy mess. Said muddy mess required wiping Joey's feet a dozen times a day - something he HATES.

Not fun, not pretty. We debated the pros and cons seeding the yard or laying sod. Seeding the yard would require keeping the dog out of the back yard for at least a month, defeating the purpose of having a fenced in yard. Sod it was. The problem with sod is that it requires prep work, and the amount of prep work is determined by how uncrappy the yard is. Unfortunately for us, ours was/is MEGA-CRAPPY. The previous ownder, Hoarder Tom, didn't believe in yard maintenance. At all. The yard is uneven, incredibly rocky, full of random stuff like lengths of chain, roofing nails, broken dish pieces, you name it, all with a web of thick vines and roots lurking just under the surface. Had we hired a landscaping company to prep the ground and lay the sod, it would have been an obscene amount of money. Brian decided to buy a tiller and do it himself.

He probably tilled this main area of the yard half a dozen times over the course of several weekends. Then we had sod delivered and put it down ourselves.

And now it looks like this:

I think Joey is the happiest about the new yard:

quick art project

I've been flummoxed for a while about what to put above the fireplace. A large mirror? A large piece of art? Nothing?

Until I find the perfect whatever, the mantle has been seasonally decorated, the latest being Spring inspired.

The artwork on the left, near the gnome (a Target find), is made of up paint chips, an $8 IKEA frame and a glue stick. I trimmed the paint chips into approximately 2" x 2" squares, flipped over the frame insert - you know, the gray paper in all IKEA frames - and just started gluing. A quick 10 minutes later, I was done. I love how it turned out. And who knows, I may do another one with more autumnal colors.