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!

A Front Door Makeover for $2.50

I need to start off by saying that this makeover won't be lasting for too long. ;)

We are planning to replace our front door sometime in the next year or two in order to let more natural light into our entryway. I would really love to find a door with a glass insert and paint it a fun color--and of course--add our address number to the front of it like we did at our last house. I loved those vinyl numbers so much!

BUT.

Our current situation was pretty boring, and I knew it would make the wait for a new door that much longer with everything looking so plain. 

See what I mean?

I also really wanted to decorate the patio for all of the holidays that are coming up and a grungy white door with a broken storm door to top if off did not set the best scene for a pretty patio display.

  

With money being pretty tight at the moment, I thought that I would just have to deal with it until we saved up for the new door, but then I got an idea: why not check the glorious money-saving "Oops" paint section at Lowe's? (Don't you just love light bulb moments like that?) I headed to Lowe's and pretty much hit the jackpot with two color options for only $2.50 a quart. That's right! Go to Lowe's, it can be your best friend, too. 

The colors I had to choose from were a navy blue and a basic red. I was of course drawn to the navy (I love my blues!), but ultimately decided against it since our house is painted a dark taupe color (not my fave but it's great to cover up aaaaall of the west Texas dirt) and I have two black flower pots that pretty much live on the front patio... and that kind of clash is no good in my book.

I normally steer clear of reds....but this one... I LOVE.

Yep. LOVE.

It is truly amazing what a little bit of paint can do. 

I used some supplies we already had to patch and freshen up all of the trim with a glossy white paint (I still need to touch up a few spots...), and I also attempted to DIY gold leaf the doorbell (but I kinda hate it in person, so I'm still working on that one ;)).

Before...

After...

My next project on the front patio will most likely be switching out the overhead light...

I'm thinking of a lantern, similar to this...

Source

I just think it's super classy, which of course makes me happy. My favorite affordable options are from Overstock...

Source

Source

But I'm really wanting something more substantial, so I will probably keep looking.

Have you ever made a super cheap or even free update that has really changed the look of your home? 

Have a great day!

Parker's Nursery Round Two (Progress)

Our first goal when moving into our new house was to get to have Parker's room completely, 100% finished by the end of our first week. Well...we kinda failed terribly at that, and Mr. Parker ended up sleeping in his pack n' play in my closet for about...3 weeks :). We finally got our act together and painted the walls and moved in all of the furniture so that Parker could at the very least sleep in his own bed. TWO MONTHS after that, I managed to paint all of the trim and doors (they were so yucky) and organized  all of his toys in his new toy closet. ANOTHER month after that and Bryan and I had spent an afternoon hanging everything on the walls and called it good. 

I found that the reason this room took us so long to finish (especially considering that it was the only room that we already had all of the furniture and decorations for), was because we usually do our house projects during naptime or after bedtime...which for obvious reasons, didn't work out so well in this case. :)

It was also really hard for me to decide whether or not to do the board and batten that I LOVED so much in our last house. (It was the last room I said goodbye to in our old house and I cried a lot...so many memories!) Ultimately, we chose not to do the board and batten for right now. We've actually been talking this past week and have decided that this room will definitely stay the nursery for all of our babies (it's the darkest and most quiet room), so we WILL do the board and batten, it's just a question of when. (Hopefully in the next month or two!)

SO.

I just wrote a lot of background info. Sorry about that novel, there. Here is what we started out with...

Yes. I know. It was their "theater room". There were outlets ev-ery-where. And lots of paint.

We still want to do something fun to the ceilings (in the way off future) and put in new carpet. (And of course the B&B)

It's also the darkest room in the house BY FAR, which is why the pictures are not the best quality--sorry :).

Here is what we have done with it (so far)...

His room is about one foot bigger all the way around. And he has a huge closet with room for all of his toys!

(I'm just noticing the water rings on the table. HA! Welcome to my real life.)

We didn't really change anything in here...as you can see!

I did change up the dresser vignette a bit with things we already had. (Isn't Mr. P so sweet in his one-year photo?? Love him.)

Oh, I guess we added that sunburst mirror (I realize it's kinda girly, but there were too many square things on the walls so I needed a different shape and couldn't find anything else around the house).

 The room set-up is a bit different than in the last house. The photo below is actually taken from inside one of the closet doors. The door to the room is the the right of the crib, opposite the window. There is a little walkway before it opens up to the room, which is very nice and gives us some extra space.

Also, please note our carbon monoxide detector. :) More real life for you! I meant to put Parker's newborn pictures in those frames above his crib but still haven't gotten around to it, haha.

That's it! I of course miss the board and batten and cannot WAIT to do that project, but I still love this room just the way it is right now!

And to answer any sourcing questions: (with links to what I could find online)

Crib: Craigslist, Rug: Lowe's, Rocker: Craiglist (Sealy brand), Ottoman: TJ Maxx, Dresser: Antique, Stacking baskets: TJ Maxx (I still see them from time to time), Side Table: TJ Maxx, Hanging Baskets: World Market (I believe they are discontinued...), Light Fixture: Ikea, Lamp: TJ Maxx, Airplanes: TJ Maxx, Curtains: Target, Bamboo Blinds: Lowe's, Sunburst Mirror: Hobby Lobby, Grapevine Balls: Hobby Lobby, Wire Baskets: Paul Michael, Wooden Frame: Target, Metal Wall Frames: Ross, Succulent: Ikea, Eucalyptus Bunch and Vase: TJ Maxx, Chair Fabric: Waverly Country Linen via Joann Fabrics, Crib Skirt & Pillow Fabric: Croscill Home via Joann Fabrics (discontinued, sorry!), Houndstooth Pillow Fabric: Croscill Home via Joann Fabrics, Blue Plaid Fabric on Pillow and Clothing Art: Robert Allen Home via Joann Fabrics (discontinued!), Paint Color: Valspar Cliveden Gray Morning, Satin (20% lighter in this room), Crib Color: Valspar Gray Silt, Satin, Ceiling Color: Valspar Antique White, Flat

Have a great day!

Beginnings of a Fireplace Makeover

On Monday, I shared the "Before" pictures of our living room and the direction I'm hoping to take to make it over. I also mentioned that a big project in this room is re-doing fireplace. 

We started out with this...an ugly cover, lots of brown, and a taupey-beige mantle.

(Here is another really terrible "Before" picture I took on my good camera. Sorry! Worst blogger ever.)

I painted the mantle a bright white, we painted the walls, and pried off that terrible cover. (We also replaced the floors.) That left us with this...

(You can see a teensy bit of our Goodwill armchair that I scored for $25 and plan to reupholster.)

It's definitely not "styled" or anything, I've just hung my trusty old painting that I love so much, but it looks a heck of a lot better already, if I do say so myself :).

My immediate plans for the next phase of this makeover are to paint the inside of the fireplace black (why do they paint them white in the first place? They always end up looking terrible), and possibly staining the brick to more of a red color so it doesn't blend in with the floor so much. 

Our "ways-off" plans include replacing the mantle with something much more substantial that surrounds the entire fire box and comes down to the hearth. We have also discussed doing some sort of moulding treatment to the wall above the mantle---but we don't know if that's for sure. And of course I need to fully decorate it! I love to decorate mantles. :)

I hope to share more inspiration and details for our mantle makeover sometime next week.

Have a great day!

The Little House: Final Before and After Part Two

Hello! Today, I'm continuing my final before and after of our previous home. As I mentioned before, I hit the jackpot on Google and found the old listing pictures of the house as it was when we bought it. Again, I will say that while it was clean and nicely decorated, it was definitely not my style. ;)

 

Let's begin with what ended up being my favorite room in the whole house: Parker's nursery. This is the room I get emailed about the most and gets pinned the most. It's also the one that I spent the most time thinking about and working on...which is why I probably felt that all of the other rooms in our house were never "done". Lesson learned. I am trying to plan more with our new house so I can love each room just as much as this one!

 

Before:

 

 

PINK.

 

After:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up next is the Master Bedroom, which was entirely too small for a king bed in my opinion, but these people still tried it out (with some sponged walls--awesome!)...

 

 

Before:

 

 

 

After:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the "Master" Bathroom. It's amazing what paint, new hardware, and a little light can do. (You're also missing out on the glorious blue linoleum floors in the before picture.

 

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

 

 

 

 

And lastly, the room that was always changing and I sadly never got to finish. It went from a junk room, to a guest bedroom, to a playroom. It would have been really cool if I had finished decorating, but oh well...

 

Before:

 

 

 

 

After: (Obviously we didn't get to the ceiling fan)

 

 

 

 

 (Imagine an art gallery wall for coloring pages and finger paint masterpieces, fun huge framed alphabet prints, a book wall, a reading corner with fun patterned pillows...you get the point.)

 

 

 

I think the major lesson we've learned here is that opening the blinds helps tremendously.  ;)

 

Well, that's that. It was very bittersweet to close that chapter of our life and move on to a new (and daunting) one. But we are excited and I hope to eventually make our new house the home that we will love for a long time! I will start the "Before" tour of that house ASAP.

 

Has your current house come a long way from where it was when you moved in? What things do you think help improve a home's overall look and value?