House Tour

Current House:

First House:

Downstairs Bedroom: The Finale!!

So, after many long nights, lots of paint, wainscoting, diy flooring, installing windows, caulking and tossing ideas back and forth, our bedroom is done:

June is really digging the fact that we finished "her" bedroom.....anytime I can't find her, she is usually snuggled up in a ball on the bed!

We painted the doors the same color as the wainscoting and spray painted the middle sections the same color that we painted the vents in the room (Rust-Oleum-Catipillar-farm equipment).  We love how they turned out and we think they add just a little bit of funk to the room!

Since I'm a total fan of before and afters, here is what we started with:



And this is the beautiful room we have now:

It's bigger, it's brighter and now our house is on the market!  Yup, we are looking to move, although we LOVE this house and have had SO many memories here, we want someone else to be able to enjoy this house the way we have!
Like we don't have enough going on right now, I think we've lost our minds....

Downstairs Bedroom: The Finale!!

So, after many long nights, lots of paint, wainscoting, diy flooring, installing windows, caulking and tossing ideas back and forth, our bedroom is done:

June is really digging the fact that we finished "her" bedroom.....anytime I can't find her, she is usually snuggled up in a ball on the bed!

We painted the doors the same color as the wainscoting and spray painted the middle sections the same color that we painted the vents in the room (Rust-Oleum-Catipillar-farm equipment).  We love how they turned out and we think they add just a little bit of funk to the room!

Since I'm a total fan of before and afters, here is what we started with:



And this is the beautiful room we have now:

It's bigger, it's brighter and now our house is on the market!  Yup, we are looking to move, although we LOVE this house and have had SO many memories here, we want someone else to be able to enjoy this house the way we have!
Like we don't have enough going on right now, I think we've lost our minds....

Downstairs Bedroom: Wainscoting

The hubs and I LOVE how wainscoting can add so much character to a very plain room and we knew going into this project that this bedroom was neglected and needed some attention. History has shown (here and here) in our home that adding wainscoting is a cost effective way to make a statement so we did it again. I knew that since this room is much bigger and longer than the other two rooms that we did this in, that I wanted the wainscoting to be taller. I did not want too much detail in it because I thought that it would look too busy with everything else that I had planned, so simple we went. After a lot of cutting, nailing, wood filler, sanding, painting, caulking, more painting and more painting.... we ended with this:

We started out by figuring out how many vertical boards we were going to need. The hubs mostly figured it out by measuring each wall and doing a combination of eyeballing and measuring the best distance between each board. We had a lot to take into account when doing this project. This room had: 1 closet. 2 switches. 2 vents. 3 windows. 8 outlets. (why eight??) Taking into account all of those options, if we would have just gone straight off of measurements throughout the room and keeping it even that way some of the corners wouldn't have matched up and other areas around the windows would have had a board in the middle of the bottom of the window and other windows would have had two boards. Each wall was different, but in the end it all looks even.

We saved some money by reusing the original baseboards that were in the room, as well as the boards that were used to frame around the door and windows. Once all the holes were filled and sanded smooth we started to paint. I used Dutch Boy's "White Lullaby"in Ultra paint and primer in one.

Just to think this is what we started with:

And this is where we are at now:

This room, I believe has seen the biggest transformation from a VERY plain and ordinary to something with a lot of character!  I'm very excited that I managed to get the floors done and now we don't have TOO much more to do in order to get this room back in order!!

Here's the list:

• Hang up the blinds
• Install quarter round on the baseboards
• Paint closet doors
• Find curtains
• Bring all the furniture back in the room and get it back in order 

Downstairs Bedroom: Just a Few Updates!

So the hubs and I have been busy bees around this house.....

Yup. New windows in the living room, dining room, downstairs bedroom and our bedroom upstairs.  Ten windows total, which covers all of our original 1927-ish exterior windows; which by the way when you looked out were SO wavy you couldn't tell if you had too much to drink or it was the windows playing games on your eyes.  I have already noticed a huge difference with our furnace not running what felt like every five minutes and our house is holding the heat so much better!!!
Why we didn't do this sooner... like last year before all this cold and baldness this winter...I haven no clue.  Each window took the hubs about an hour to install and was super easy!!

I added some color to some old vents for the bedroom....

AND the biggest reason why we have been so quiet lately on the blog is because we've been busy creating this:

Turning this:

Into this:

Painting these floors:

Replacing our fans with these lights:

The bedroom kind of gives us the feel of a dining room right now, but once I'm done with it it is going to be a funky, cool bedroom!!  I'm still working on some things with the floors and I will detail in a later post, but I wanted to give some highlights of mine and the hubs' week!! 

Lots of progress in this house and still lots more to do!!

Wainscoting in the Bathroom

We did wainscoting in our upstairs bedroom and absolutely LOVED the way it transformed the room!  That project really gave us the most bang for our buck!  When we decided to redo the downstairs bathroom one of our main ideas, not including subway tile and barn lighting, was wainscoting.  We wanted more simplicity to it and a lot of just straight lines, versus using the cove moulding like we did upstairs to give the wainscoting a smoother inside look. 

We followed the same process as the upstairs, starting out with figuring out how high and how many "boxes" we were going to have!  Since this room is a tight squeeze we opted for less is more.  We only used 1x6 for the base moulding and 1x4's for everything else for this project, no cove moulding, no chair rail, just 1x6's, 1x4's, caulk, primer and paint.

The hubs first started out by installing the door casing around the door and the built-in.

The hubs made level chalk lines on the walls to give him something to follow when attaching the boards.

Once the hubs figured out the placement he went to town cutting the boards and attaching them to the walls. We ran into a predicament in the below picture because where the sink was going to be placed a "normal" board wouldn't have fit, so we opted to use two lathe pieces which worked out perfect!

Once he was done, I went to town using caulk for all the seams and wood filler for all the nail holes.  After that was all dry I primed the wood and the walls and waited for it to dry, then followed it up with the same ceiling white I used on the ceiling.  I originally was going to use the Marshmallow color that I used on the porch and in the upstairs bedroom, but I think the paint took a crap on me and looked more pink then anything, and trust me I mixed it like there was no tomorrow.  I painted the upper walls the same color I used in the walls in the dining room (Almond Brittle 17C-2) in eggshell.

Please excuse the door, that will be  my project this weekend when I'm off of work!

We have made HUGE progress on this bathroom and cannot wait for the big reveal!  We were so excited to finally have a working toilet and sink in the downstairs, we were surprised when we realized it has been over a year since we started gutting this room...damn kitchen projects getting in the way... :)  We cannot wait to do a full reveal early next week!

Here's the updated list as of of everything we need to do and need to buy for this project:

• Clean out crap aka: empty boxes and dog food from the room
• Clear out any remaining debris and rip up remaining flooring
• Remove/replace unused pipe/electrical wiring
• Replace any weak flooring
• Install piping for shower/faucet
• Update electrical
• Buy concrete board and drywall
• Frame out shower and built-in
• Insulate walls
• Install concrete board and drywall 
• Figure out if we are doing a shower basin or having a tiled shower floor
• Buy tile
• Install tile
• Grout tile
• Caulk corners
• Seal grout
• Paint
• Touch up paint
• Install molding/trim
• Remember that we forgot a bunch of little stuff that we will buy and take forever to put in.

Rug Hunting

Happy Saturday! The hubs and I are so happy that the weather's finally getting nice, but it means we have to hurry up on the bathroom so we can actually enjoy it!  Since we are stuck working all weekend I have managed to start on a "research project"!

Between our up coming landscaping project outside, our downstairs bathroom reno still in the works and a basement that looks like a demilitarized zone because of the bathroom project, you'd think that we are at max capacity for projects, almost...but no.

The rugs that we currently have in both rooms are complete polar opposites, and while both are opposite of each other they are COMPLETELY not our style!

The rug in the dining room is a more traditional look:

And the rug in the living room is more contemporary:



We are trying to get away from darker colors, especially since our living room is pretty small we want lighter furniture and accessories.  Since a new couch isn't in the budget right now, a rug or two will have to do!

We do have plans to brighten up this room with a little paint and some wood, but unlike most "normal" people who start out with painting and end with decorating their rooms, the hubs and I are the opposite.  I'm so finicky with decorating, and it takes me FOREVER to find the right rugs, curtains, accessories... and when I do find them I have to jump at then immediately!  Right now I'm on the hunt for rugs for both the living room and dining room and these are a few of the ideas I've come across:



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I LOVE LOVE LOVE this rug! I love how the blues, creams, greens and browns all compliment each other, as well as it would tie in the green from the living room and I think that this rug would definitely brighten up our dining room!


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I think this brown rug would go great in the living room and tie in the dining room as well!


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They are all from Overstock and I love the selection that they have there! I've bought a lot of different stuff from there and the shipping has always been fast, the quality is fantastic and the prices are super reasonable!

Now the hubs and I just have to narrow down the rugs and figure out which two are the winners!!


**** I wasn't paid to post this by Overstock.  My opinions are strictly my own, from my own experiences with the product and although mine was positive, not everyone may feel the same.****