Boys Bathroom

Hello! So, we have been doing a lot of house projects, including filling the 1,000 tiny air bubbles that have popped up in the wood floors (actually not as horrible as it sounds, just very tedious and kind of expensive). In more exciting news, we have completely GUTTED the boys bathroom (please realize that when I say "we", I mean "Bryan") to actually began a real-life-not-just-in-my-head renovation on it!

Here is the original inspiration board I made:

(links on Pinterest board)

I've already gone a different route on a few things (pretty much just the vanity), but we have already purchased the tub and tile for the shower and started the wondrous herringbone pattern on the walls. BEAUTIFUL, I tell you. I love this subway tile trend. And it's super cheap--like it cost $70 to get all of the tile. YES.


I am here today to ask a few questions.

First, how do you feel about mixing hardware finishes? I absolutely love it when I see it on Pinterest and blogs but am terrified to carry it out in real life. Well, not exactly terrified, more just stuck…there are too many pretty things and I can't decide!

I love the look of chrome faucets and hardware in a bathroom, (so clean! so sleek!) but I also love the rustic/farmhouse look of black/bronze. In fact, all of the light fixtures that we've added around our house are black so I'm trying to stick with that in the lighting department. And then there's GOLD. Oh, I love antiqued gold. Specifically for mirrors. But all of this together? I do not know.

A few photos that I love as general inspiration (and notice the metal mixing)…

(All pins are on my bathroom Pinterest board--it is a horribly curated board, literally just put together in my haste to do our bathrooms--some of the photos aren't my style…I just like specific aspects…yada yada yada… )

So my question #2 is… should I do the vanity lighting on either side of the mirror or above it? Chrome or black? 

I am for sure getting a chrome faucet (see inspiration board), and we just bought this chrome shower head and faucet:

(from Home Depot)

I have a black/bronze sconce in the inspiration photo (which now I can't even find and I think is too expensive anyway), but I also like these options…

In bronze:

via

via

And chrome:

via

via

And then there's this gold wonder…too expensive, but if someone else wants me to put in their house, I totally will!

via

So, a little help here is key. I need it. I'm driving my husband crazy. 

Adios!

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!

Here's the Plan for Our Bedroom...

Hello! 

So, back to our house. We have been knocking out a TON of projects lately, and quite truthfully, I haven't been dealing with the mess very well, but it feels good to finally see real progress. FINALLY. 

More on those later :).

Another project that I have managed to be crazy enough to start during the existing chaos is making over our bedroom. I cannot take it anymore. Did you know that it is seriously depressing to wake up to this every morning?

These pictures are from our walk-through, so we currently have a bed in here and our dressers from our last bedroom, but that's it. We have not painted (I KNOW), we have not hung anything on the walls, and we definitely have not replaced that icky fan or the water-damaged carpet. 

(creepy mirrors)

I do want to say though, that I LOVE this house. I love this bedroom. I love the size of it! It is huge and it has the perfect spot for a king bed (underneath those creepy mirrors), room for all of our furniture, and plenty of space left over to play and walk around. I've always wanted windows on either side of our bed and now we have them. I am thankful--but I am ready for things to be pretty again.

The main reason we haven't done anything in this room (or most of the house, for that matter) is that I have been trying to save up some money. Well, I did that (!) but then was torn on how I wanted to decorate everything. When we moved into this house, I said that I was going to be more bold in my decorating choices...but I just can't. I am drawn to soft color palettes, natural textures, and clean lines. And I am happy with that. :)

With ALL of that being said...I have finally gotten around to selecting paint and fabrics and putting together an inspiration board for our bedroom. Here it is:

We already have the headboard. It's a Drexel Heritage and I got it at TJ Maxx for $250. It was extremely discounted because it didn't have the frame with it, which was fine because I was just wanting a headboard anyways. I LOVE this thing. It is huge and substantial and a true statement piece but in a subtle way.

The paint color that I have chosen is Benjamin Moore Refined. I'm going to use it at 50% though. I have about seven paint colors on our wall right now and this one is SO pretty and soft. It goes super perfectly with the fabrics for this room. I ordered about 30 swatches from fabrics.com and am SO excited to use these together. (Sidenote: When asked if he cared about using a floral fabric in our room, Bryan immediately rolled his eyes and said "I'm a guy, why would I care?" And that is why I love him ;)

I've already gotten a new quilt from Overstock (this one), and we just got it in the mail two days ago. It is awesome. I also went and got king-sized pillows last night so now we actually have pillows that fit our bed!! If only I could convey my genuine excitement over this fact--it is ridiculous.

I'm still on the lookout for an awesome couple of dressers and have my eye on several bedside tables. I would really like a mirrored set to add another layer to the room. Let me see....a woven bench or set of stools would be amazing for the foot of the bed---something light and airy though--gourd lamps are a must, and so are my favorite bamboo blinds, also from Overstock (I like that place a little too much). I'm also thinking of sticking with my favorite white curtains from Ikea for both windows. They are so airy and nice looking in real life!

We eventually want to replace the old carpet with something like sisal or a natural fiber (along with new baseboards), but that will unfortunately be the last thing we do in the house since we have so much dust and construction going on. I'm trying to be patient about that one but it is hard to wait!

We also have something fun planned for the ceilings and the only thing I'm still truly torn on is whether to stick with a new ceiling fan since we do actually use it throughout the summer (SO HOT), or go the pretty but less practical route and get a glitzy ceiling mount like the one above.

ALSO. There is this weird little corner in the room. It's about 3 feet deep and 6 feet long and neither of us know what to do with it. It's driving me nuts!

Originally we talked about building a desk for me to work at. But then I didn't want to bring work mess into our room, so that idea was nixed. Then we talked about building bookshelves, but we have those in the living room (though they can be moved...), then we talked about being a small sitting area....and then about closing it off to be an extra closet. (We each have our own walk-in closet in our bathroom though.) What do you think? Any ideas? I'm having a hard time finding inspiration for this particular problem and am just stumped.

So that's where we are with that. It's so exciting and refreshing to get going on this. I hope to hear some of your thoughts and suggestions!

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Organizing the Closet

Well, redoing the bathroom also spurred on a "need" to redo the closet. The door to our closet is actually inside the bathroom, and is usually open at all times....so having a new, pretty bathroom, and a boring, messy closet = no fun.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I'm on a new kick to start being more creative with my wardrobe (which at the moment is going very well). While I was gathering inspiration for this, I came across a whole slew of blog posts on how having a more organized (and pretty) closet will help in making the most of the clothes and outfits you already own (my favorite series of posts on this subject can be found here, courtesy of Kendi Everyday).

So, all of this new motivation was put to good use this weekend as we took our closet from boring and less-than-functional, to something that really works.

Here are a few "befores":

Notice that all of my shoes are thrown on the top shelf (that I couldn't even see over...which means that I would just grab whatever my hands touched first). I also hung a jewelry organizer that worked really well until I started packing it too full of stuff :).

We also had an issue with throwing shoes on the floor. Especially when there wasn't enough room on our shoe rack.

All of Bryan's clothes are on the bottom rack, while mine are well, everywhere else. It gets a little crowded.

Another form of DIY jewelry organization. This was cute for about 2 weeks, and then the pins started falling off because my jewelry was too heavy, which resulted in an even bigger mess (and both Bryan and I getting stabbed in the feet).

We also had boring, beige walls, which looked really yellow with the uncovered light bulb.

So, we cleaned everything out...

And started over!



I'm a white hanger addict. They all have to be the same. It's the OCD in me. All of our clothes are still pretty packed in, but we just had a huge garage sale two months ago, so I wanted to give everything we have a second chance before I decided to toss it :). I also found a place for my scarves, and was able to put my beloved Vera Bradley on display as well as other favorite purses.

We went and bought 5 white wire shelves at Wal-Mart for our shoes. Best. Decision. Ever. It is SO much easier to have our shoes organized on these. Love. Bryan was able to fit all of his shoes on the top 2 shelves, and I put my heels and flats on it. I cut the hanging shoe organizer that we already had and put sandals and casual shoes in it.

My boots are the only shoes that remain on the top shelf of the closet, mostly because it's summer and I don't wear them right now. I'll probaly switch them out when the seasons change.

I have too many shoes.

You may have also noticed something a little different (and fun) on the ceiling. Yes, my love of stripes made it's way into the closet too (You can also find them in our laundry room)!

We also found a light to cover the bare bulb...much better.

Last but not least, I tackled my jewelry problem. It still looks like I have a lot (which I do), but I got rid of about half of the jewelry that I already owned. This isn't even all of it. Many of my favorites are on display in our bathroom. (I am ashamed).

I found cup hooks at Wal-Mart and had Bryan install them. Love this. It's so easy to see every piece of jewelry that I have now. In fact, I'm wearing a pair of earrings today that I haven't worn in 3 years just because I didn't realize that I still had them. But now I know :).

And there you have it. That was our weekend project!

Have a great Wednesday :).

THE Workbench.

Bryan's dream for the summer was to make a workbench in the garage. Last week, that dream was achieved, but I have to admit that when I came home from work and saw the reality of it, I was a little surprised.

This is the biggest workbench I've ever seen in my life. And it's in our garage. Forever.

The counter comes up to my elbows. I'm not joking.

It's unfortunate that the pictures don't show the true huge-ness of it, but I promise you....it takes up half of our garage. Oh, my husband. At least he's happy with it, right? And I suppose it's good that he has a designated space to work on now, instead of using the entire garage and/or house. He also spent a lot of time hanging everything on the walls and making it look pretty, which of course I thought was cute :).

Happy Tuesday!

The Master Bathroom

Our bathroom is teeny tiny. Like 5'x7'. No joke.  There's nothing "master-ish" about it all. But, we've worked with what we have and actually really love how the space has turned out.

BEFORE:

And the AFTER:

Such a big (and better) difference, in my opinion!

I found these mini sunburst mirrors at Ross. The succulent is in another milk glass vase that my mother-in-law gave me and the glass jar is from the one and only TJ Maxx.

Bryan re-tiled the floor with basic beige ceramic tile from Lowe's. If this hadn't been a starter home and we were planning to stay for a long time, we would have done something more fun, but I still love this! He did a great job. The bath mat is from Ross.

Bryan put a fresh coat of paint on the cabinets (they were SO chipped) and I went to town decorating the countertop.

The soap dispenser is from Target. I found the milk glass bowl at an antique shop and designated it as a "jewelry bowl". I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I tried to be more practical when decorating our bathroom....so I figured I would make a pretty place for jewelry to belong rather than just throwing it all over the counter...and house.

I also chose to display makeup brushes in a little box I found at Ross. I found a sponge at Target and thought it would be cute to display on the counter. It ended up being too big, so I cut it to fit haha!

The paint color we used is called "Castle Sands" by Valspar. It's very similar to what will be going on our bedroom walls too! I bought the bamboo blinds (that are throughout the house) from Overstock.

Pretty.

I LOVE the shower curtain. Target. All good things come from Target, I've learned.

This little sunburst mirror is hard to see in the other pictures, but I really love it. I just hung it off the window pane. I think it adds a really fun touch!

And there you have it. Our new and improved Master Bathroom!!

Have a great Tuesday!

I am sharing this HERE.