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.

we've been busy

The living room ceiling, it has been painted. And boy howdy does it look better! The room feels so bright, clean and fresh. Next up in there: trim. 

Original beige ceiling. Blech.

Newly painted white ceiling. Yay!

***

We painted the master bath vanity. It helped lighten up that part of the room A LOT and it was a test run on how easy/hard it will be to paint the kitchen cabinetry when it's time. Turns out it's not that hard. We used Valspar Kitchen and Bath in Rocky Bluffs; it's one shade darker than the wall color (Filtered Shade). I will say that for the first few days afterward, I was NOT on board. I don't know what my problem was, really, but it has grown on me and now I love it. There's still a lot we'd like to do in there, like replace the counter, retile and paint the water closet, and do something with the mirror.

This photo was in the listing for the house and is the only one I have as a before.

Here's the after in indirect sunlight from the water closet on the left. 

You'll notice we didn't paint the kick plate. Doing so would've involved pulling the carpet to get a clean line and then trying to put the carpet back without issue. No thank you. We'll tackle that (and all the trim) when we replace the carpet with hardwoods.

***

Our front door has undergone quite a transformation. It has a fancy new coat of Valspar Peek-a-Boo Blue AND new vinyl house numbers. It makes me ridiculously happy every time we come and go. I also painted the light fixture and railings with brushed nickel spray paint to coordinate with the door hardware and mailbox.

Shortly after moving in. Yuck.

We replaced the door about a year ago. Much better.

Bam!

getting the beige out

Another painting project can be checked off: the living room. We used Valspar Ultra in Lighthouse Shadows and are in love it.

It's a nice soft blue with a touch of gray, which pairs really well with the orangey red oak floors. 

It's amazing how much brighter the room feels now, too. It feels clean and fresh and OURS.

We still need to paint the ceiling, which is the same beige the walls used to be. Thankfully this is the only room (and hall) that needs to have the ceiling redone. To help the crown stand out - and to keep us from having to redo all the ceilings so they're the same white - we're going to do a half-tint of the lightest color on the paint sample: 

Once that's done, we'll begin the daunting task of repainting all the trim in the house, room by room. I love the idea of crisp, white, glossy trim.

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:

i can't have a bunny, but...

There's nothing that says, "This is MY house now" as quickly or easily as painting a room. Last week we picked three colors from our DIY paint deck, made a quick (HAHA) trip to Lowe's and bought samples.

Up went the three choices: Soft Rabbit Brown, Summer Sparrow and Magnet Dapple (all by Valspar). Care to guess who painted which samples? Mine's on the left. The mood we were going for was dark, warm and cozy. We spend our evenings in here watching TV or playing video games, and that just seems to call for a dark room.

It didn't take us long to come up with the winner, Soft Rabbit Brown, which was my favorite from the get-go. It didn't take us long on Saturday to empty the bookcases, push the furniture into the center of the room and remove the artwork. While Brian took Joey to DayCamp, I taped off the room and then we got started.

Within an afternoon our room was painted, dry and back to normal. We are IN LOVE with the room.

Before:

After:

We would like to pull up the carpet to reveal the hardwood floors underneath, and maybe put a nice plush rug down, but that's a project for another weekend. At night this room is exactly what we wanted and to us, that's a DIY success.

laundry room redux

Anyone that follows me on Twitter* or Instagram* has seen and heard all about our fur baby, Joey. Joey, our year and a half old rescue, is...how you say...rambunctious. Maybe needy. Definitely has separation anxiety. Since moving in, when we've left Joey alone he's had free reign of the house and can bark and howl without upsetting our neighbors. This has unfortunately led to some fantastic messes upon our (usually MY) return, however. And with the exception of my poor Nalgene bottle, all of these messes had their genesis in the laundry room.

The open shelves were RIPE with mischievous opportunities. The bins of yard/dog walking shoes were frequently emptied and scattered around the house. The packs of Coke were routinely torn open and it was always a scavenger hunt to find all the cans, praying that they were all still unopened. Two weeks ago four cans went missing and had exploded in the kitchen, living room, TV room and our bedroom. Joey was WIRED FOR HOURS and it took two hours to get the mess cleaned up. Last week was the final straw when he turned my fleece boots into chew toys and tried to eat Brian's NOOK.

We had to come up with something else for the laundry/mud room. After a not-so-quick trip to IKEA, we came up with this solution.

The bottom half of the Billy bookcases hold all of the items Joey loves to destroy and/or play with, and now they're safely hidden behind doors that have been child-proofed. Brian installed those hooks that you have to press down before the door opens all the way, and unless Joey sprouts opposable thumbs, we're good. The rugs are actually bath mats that are soft and nubby and easily washed. Joey has already turned them into a cozy little nest.

The room still needs a fresh coat of paint and a new floor, but those will have to wait until we switch out the water heater (which won't happen until we install a natural gas line to the house). All in good time. I love this little room now, it's a bright and cheery welcome when we enter the house.

*@MrsSchil