Here's Our Laundry Room...

Hello! I am finally getting around to posting an actual room in our "new" house. This is a big day! I have to admit that a major reason that this hasn't happened yet it simply because I hate going through photos and figuring out which ones to use. ;)

We finished the laundry room in January (I know) and I LOVE it. It is seriously the only room in the house that is 100% remodeled to the style that we want everything else to look like someday too.

I really needed it to be pretty but really functional. I wanted to make sure that every single thing in there had a reason for being in there and was easy to get to, so that played a huge role in decorating.  I talked a lot about the inspiration for everything in this post and this post.

Ta-da! Hope you like it as much as I do. :) We tried to skimp on cost as much as possible because 1) we are low on funds, and 2) I like a good deal as much as the next girl. Thankfully I have a live-in handyman and I'm not too shabby with a paint sprayer either so we make it work.

Bryan is really the all-star here because he tiled the floors (this tile) and built all of the craftsman style casings for the doors. He also installed the 5.5" baseboards that look so luxurious to me! I love them. Oh, and he nailed up the paneled ceiling to hide all of the popcorn. I love that man. And we got through this makeover with next to no fights ;).

I used my favorite Home Right sprayer to paint all of the trim, casings, and ceiling. It only took a few minutes after we tarped off the room from the rest of the house. (that's the beauty of re-doing a small room) The walls are BM Early Morning Mist, the trim is BM Paper Mache, and the doors are Valspar Lincoln Cabin Black.

Now, we don't have a window in this room, but I like pictures with natural light because they show the true colors of everything...so for the above photos, the door was open to the garage. BUT, I will share what the room looks like with it closed even though it's not as pretty in pictures :).

I'm not quite sure why it looks greener in these photos? The walls are more greige in real life. We changed out the light to a "natural light" bulb to get rid of the usual yellow tungsten tone--it made such a difference in the feel of the room! We also replaced the light with this schoolhouse one.

I saved on cost by using some leftover shelving that we had from Ikea. They are painted in BM Carolina Gull. The shelves are super handy and functional.  Things are separated in the large baskets like this: candles, small tools that we need frequently, extra light bulbs, lonely socks, shoe cleaners/polishes, and all of the tapes (duct, masking, etc.). It has really helped to corral things and stays organized easily which is nice. There are still a few little baskets and drawers that are empty, too...still trying to figure out what would work in those. 

On top of the dryer, I made a little washing station where our laundry detergent and dryer sheets are kept. I really love this set-up. I always fold laundry in front of the TV and I never need the top of the dryer for anything else, so this works great and looks pretty. 

 (There's the door to the garage.)

Our laundry room tends to be the place where we pile all our bags, jackets, scarves, and shopping bags since it's the first place we come in to from the garage. I got these little numbered hooks at Paul Michael a couple of years ago and finally put them to good use for all of that! I made it prettier for the photo, but normally Parker's Skip Hop backpack is hanging there as well as more than a few Target and TJ Maxx bags that I'm always meaning to return :). I printed the fruit prints from the Graphics Fairy for free. They look super nice in real life and add a lot of color to the room. 

I also seriously consider our cleaning closet a huge blessing in our house. The main reason that I was able to do open shelving was because I could hide everything else behind the closet door. I keep our ironing board, iron, other detergents, stain fighters, batteries, hooks, brooms, mops, paper towels, diapers, and all of our cleaning supplies in there. It's awesome. I guess I should have taken pictures---one day maybe!

So... that's all I've got. I think the only things I still have to do in here are order this laundry print and add an industrial looking bar to hang clothes on the small blank wall next to the garage. (I rarely hang clothes to dry though, which is why I haven't done that last part yet.)

Maybe if I could decorate/organize the rest of my house to this scale it wouldn't be in a constant state of mess? Kidding, kind of.  ;) We will get there. Have a great weekend!

More of our Dining Room

I really wanted to take some pictures of our laundry room to show you all but the weather has been absolutely miserable here (and everywhere else, I think) so it's been too cloudy to get any decent photos. That'll have to wait, I guess!

So, which room still gets enough natural light in the dreary misery that is winter to photograph? The answer: Our Dining Room. I'm still not completely done in here (will I ever be??), but it has come a few more steps forward in the last few months, which is worth a post in my opinion. 

I talked a bit about how the dining table makeover and how I spray painted the brass light in this post, but I also knew that it would be replaced as soon as possible. I have been eyeing this Pottery Barn knock-off chandelier on Overstock for months now. Like, to the point where I would get online just to look at it and then I would walk in our dining room and imagine it in there, and then I wouldn't do anything about it, and then Bryan would call me a crazy lady like he always does, and then I would repeat that process every night of the week. (Please tell me I'm not the only one?) 

Anyways, I finally bit the bullet and ordered it. I was really only worried about purchasing it in the first place for two reasons, the first being that it's black and although I am incorporating a few black accents around the house, I still get nervous since I love my lights and neutrals. The second reason is that it's three feet wide, and I wondered if it would look silly over our pedestal table that is just over four feet wide. It doesn't though, thank goodness!

It just looks awesome, to me at least.

Here is what the dining room looked like when we closed on the house.

Since then we have...

-Taken down wallpaper and border, textured the walls

-Painted walls and ceiling

-Ripped out linoleum, added new wood floors

-Taken down blinds, hung new curtains 

-Replaced the chandelier

-Refinished our dining table and have begun decorating/accessorizing

Here is where we are right now:

It's like a breath of fresh air to me! The curtains probably make the biggest statement. They are from Ikea.

 Have I mentioned how hard it is to photograph this room? No? Okay...it's hard. The windows are always blown out in photos, which makes everything else super dark.

You can see a little bit of the craftsman style doorways my handy husband just finished last weekend. I LOVE them. They were just plain drywall before. 

And notice the barstools I told you all about that are a score from Craigslist. I don't know what color they will end up being (?) but we love eating our meals at the counter. They are currently black with natural seats but the finish is super worn. 

You can also see that I moved the birch painting that used to hang over our mantel. ( I get emailed about that thing more than anything else--except maybe Parker's room.) I sometimes think about moving it back, but am obsessed with how much it adds to this room. And a peek of our cabinets!! I will photograph our kitchen at some point. 

I wish I could convey through these photos how big these windows are....but my lens only shows so much. :)

We still need to bulk up the baseboards and paint them to match the cabinets, add blinds (probably bamboo...), and a rug. I am so torn on the rug because it really needs to be round to fit the room, but I'm also considering making the table bigger with the extra leaves we have for it. There is a good 7-8 feet between the table and the barstools (hard to see, I know), so I'm kind of wanting to fill up that space with more table and more seating. Would a round rug look weird with that? Thoughts?

So there's my before and after for the day. Have a great rest of your week!

Fireplace Makeover! And some shelves...

Hello, hello!

Today I wanted to share our fireplace makeover. Although I think we might like to add more to it in the future, I am REALLY loving what it looks like right now. 

If you'll remember, we started out with this...

And then we put in new floors, painted the walls, and the trim and came to this...

I was still SO bothered with how dark the brick was, so one day I just started painting it with white primer. Bryan and I talked about how else we could change it without spending too much, and about a week and $40 later, we came up with this:

(We're going to pretend the the floors aren't dirty, okay?)

I am seriously loving it! 

After some debate, I've decided to go a bit more vintage/coastal with this house since I tend to buy home accessories and art (especially seasonal decor) that lean toward those styles. That decision is what led us to move forward with painted brick and a bit more rustic looking mantle.

I used Benjamin Moore Gray Owl (75%) for the color and we bought plain pine boards at Home Depot and stained them with (what else) Danish Oil. We also finally added quarter round to the base of the fireplace.

I still need to caulk and paint the trim on the sides (we tried to remove it completely but the brick doesn't even meet that wall so that was a no go!), but after that I will be done with this thing!

I also had a bit of fun last week and moved my Ikea shelves that we originally had in the craft room to the living room. Kind of shocked Bryan with that one when he came home from work, but I think he likes it. I thought it would be a good way to display our books and some extra decor, and most importantly, to hide of all of Parker's toys!

(Five points if you can spot the two-year-old TJ Maxx price tag that I have never taken off and the tipped over wreath--I'm obviously not that observant when I take pictures.)

This has truly made nightly clean-ups SO much easier since I don't have to sneak in Parker's room and put away his toys (or stuff them in a corner for the next day). ;)

I still have a couple of more things to do in the living room before I'm happy with it (for the moment, anyway). We finally hung curtains a few weeks ago but I still need to hem and iron them. I also ordered blinds and am anxiously awaiting getting them in the mail, AND I need to paint the back door and touch up all the trim...and hang artwork. (and, and, and...)

Also, if I were to pull back the lens on these photos, you would see that our living room is currently home to our kitchen cabinets which I am halfway through painting. I would be done, but stinky weather has put me on hold for now...darn. 

Cannot wait to share more! We are moving, moving, moving.

We also took this kid to the pumpkin patch tonight.

He's my favorite crazy car-loving boy on the planet!

Have a great week!

Dining Room Updates

When we first looked at our house, I fell in love with the huge bay windows in the dining room, but that was pretty much the ONLY thing I liked about this room. The blinds, wallpaper, light fixture, and icky linoleum had to go -- and fast.

You agree? Good. :)

When we moved in, my mother-in-law and I immediately began tearing down the wallpaper and chair rail. I've always heard terrible things about taking down wallpaper, but I thought it was kind of fun. (I'm weird.) The texture underneath the wallpaper didn't match the existing walls, so we had someone come out a add the texture--which was a lot more pricey than I thought it would be, but I was happy to have it done. Bryan laid the new floors, and my family (mostly my dad) painted the dining room in the same color we had in our old house -- Benjamin Moore Camouflage, and the ceiling in Valspar Antique White. I also took down those old blinds as soon as I could, as well. Let there be light, right?  

After ALL of that, we were out of money but still wanted to update a few things to get us through 'Phase One' of the dining room makeover.

First, I needed to do something (free) to this brass light.

In the future, hopefully by the time we renovate the kitchen, I want to completely replace this light with a big dramatic chandelier of some sort. But to get us through for now, I decided to remove the light covers and spray paint the metal part with a basic white that I already had. 

Here is what I ended up with...

I have to say, I really love how it turned out...kind of industrial in  a cheap way, haha. I used some of those round bulbs we already had and (you know, the ones that are used in those dated strip vanity lights--yeah, we have those too), but I like the overall look of them on this light.

For the next project, I really, really, wanted my husband to sand down and re-stain our table. Bryan was nice enough to re-finish the table top about a year and a half ago, but it wasn't sealed properly (sorry B), so it had gradually lost a lot of the color from cleanings. 

I was also really tired of the cherry color (which didn't entirely match the pedestal base) and thought that since our new floors were darker, it would be best to lighten the table up completely.

After a lot of bribing with golf and more golf, Bryan sanded down the entire table (in the garage, in the middle of August in Texas for that matter). I got like 15 small projects done while he did this, so I still owe him pretty big. I helped a teensy bit by sanding the table top finely and staining it, but my wonderful husband did pretty much all of the dirty work. :) We used Danish Oil to give it just a bit of natural color, and sealed it with  a poly-acrylic sealer in satin. (We researched sealers a lot and this one seemed the best for the matte look we wanted and has held up perfectly with a toddler and constant cleanings.)

SO. 

Here, again, is what we originally started out with...

And here is our 'For Now' After...

We still have A LOT we want to do in here. Among these are: getting new blinds that are raised to the ceiling (I'm thinking bamboo, of course), new curtains that also go to the ceiling (some sort of subtle pattern), a new chandelier, possibly a new rug (I can't decided what is easier to clean with a kiddo), and I also want to decorate the walls, maybe move our Craigslist buffet in here...etc. 

Bryan did a beautiful job with the table and I am SO obsessed with the look of  it now. He left the existing stain in the crevices of the pedestal, partly because it was too hard to sand, but partly because I really loved the distressed look it gives off. Winner!

So, there is a little before and after for you. Hope you enjoyed it!

Have a wonderful Wednesday.

Quick Fix.

Hi there! First, thank you all so much for your well wishes on our third anniversary yesterday! It is truly crazy how fast time flies.

A few days ago, I shared how we lined the binds for privacy in our guest bedroom and nursery. Yes, they work great, yes it was cheap to accomplish, BUT there was one problem with our "After".

Our new "blackout" blinds weren't exactly the prettiest things to look at from the outside. Whoops :). (Don't mind the sprinkler--just keeping it real!)

My OCD self had to figure out a solution...SO I headed to the fabric store, bought some clearance outdoor fabric (ticking stripe baby!), and did a little hemming....

A little ironing....

And then staple-gunned my blind-covering concoction right on to the top of blinds...

Side Note: Don't you just hate when you finish a project and in all of your "I'm Finished!" happiness are bummed to realize that you need to take it down and fix something? That is the downfall of all DIY projects in my opinion.

...And re-hung the new and even more improved project for the outside world to see.

Ahhhhh, so much better. My OCD-ness can calm it's little self down now. ;)

Are there any projects that you have had to re-do to make them more functional for your lifestyle and space?

We are headed to the airport to pick up my sweet mother-in-law for a weekend of fun and baby-kissin'! Have a great day.