Smorgasbord of Home Updates

When you have as many projects going on as we do, things get a little crazy around the house. Now, none of them are necessarily BIG projects, but all of these medium projects are causing chaos. We wanted to give you an update and some good laughs on each of our projects, so here we go...

1. The tiny bathroom that is feeling massive. I am going to be painting flowers for the next year if I keep up at this pace. Obviously wanting the painting to look good, I'm having to move rather slowly. A dozen flower bunches can easily take a couple hours and that's usually what I can sneak in here and there. Luckily, I'm loving how it's turning out and it is something I enjoy doing. I just get anxious when I want to get a project done...not allowed with this one! I'm now trying to decide if I just do the upper half or if I want to go with the full "wow" effect by doing the whole thing. Here is where we stand and the sad thing is, Dustin reminded me a mirror is going on this wall...sad realization, but if I ever switch the mirror I'll want the pattern there (is what I keep telling myself).

We also have a lovely new fixture in our dining room:

You know you've lost it when you start referring to a toilet as "cute."

2. The fireplace that is seeping into other areas of the house. I mean that literally. Time for the the funny story: My wonderful husband ripped out the nasty tile that was there before and then had to fill up the holes where the tiles stuck too well. He had it all ready to go for the thin leveling concrete substance. Got that all measured out, stirred and then poured it over the hearth. It looked smooth, filled the space and he was proud. Sitting there he realized one side started to look lower and then lower and then panic set in. He ran downstairs and there was concrete dripping through the ceiling. Now, luckily (for this situation) our basement is unfinished and we just use it for storage. Unluckily, it dripped right on top of his tools stored down there. He was not a happy camper and of course his lovely wife picked that exact moment to call him to "check in"...whoops! It eventually stopped, just caused some clean up. Nothing is easy...

Leveling round two was done with a little anger and is not as smooth...we are told we can smooth out when putting the tile on.

3. The island in uneven territory. The island project is actually the one we are feeling good about because Dustin has been working hard to get the cabinets painted! I think they look awesome and I'm definitely glad we went in the direction of unfinished cabinets. Now we need to find somewhere level to attach the three cabinets together...which might be impossible in our 92 year old home. We have to get them attached on level ground, so we can level out the bottom on our uneven floor by adding a wider base. The good news is that the ceiling fan in there has been making a terrible noise, so I no longer have to convince Dustin to get rid of it. Painting and hearing that awful noise has helped him decide a pretty light is better!

4. The magic carpet that Teddy likes to ride. On a happy note, Teddy is doing much better! He is recovering and back to his peppy self...thank goodness! Sad teddy made me feel so bad.

Like the rug? It's our new office rug! Remember I asked you all for opinions a while back on rugs in this post? Well I ordered the popular choice number one and it was backordered forever. When it came the colors looked different and I didn't like it. I thought the accent color was orange, but it ended up being a weird brown. Love free returns and shipped it back. Found a new addition to the Urban Outfitters rug collection and fell in love! Teddy has been enjoying it as well and it's his new favorite spot to watch me work.

We have another project we are crazily deciding to start hopefully this month, but this one we are hiring out for - yay! I will give you all updates on that one soon.

Hope I didn't wear you out with our crazy projects...I keep telling myself we will get there eventually!

Lots of Love,

Painting the Wallpaper Chapter One

Last week, after finally getting the paint base color on the walls, I started painting the "wallpaper." The good news is, I love it! The not necessarily bad, but bad news is, I have a million more flowers to go. Thank goodness I'm attempting this project on our teeny tiny powder room! It's been fun thus far (on the 13 flowers I have accomplished...) and I find painting relaxing. Definitely making a commitment to this house by putting hours (ok, it will take many days) of work into painting little flowers all over the walls. Which, is probably a good thing because on mornings like today's when our shower knobs stop working, I'll need a firm commitment.

Check out the progress I've made in the past few days:

First night - did the test run to make sure I one, could paint the flowers and two, liked them.

Then another night I added a few more...

And yesterday I got a few more done before our weekend guests got into town...

Photos via me

Today I wanted to get that top part done, but I may have had one (or multiple) drinks too many last night with Dustin's brothers - it's been a painfully slow and lazy day. Hopefully, a couple nights this week I can get more painting in. Definitely a good way to come home and clear my mind from work. Since we have a busy social calendar the next couple weeks, this "little" undertaking is probably going to take a month or so, but I'm really excited about it. Plus, the powder room probably needs essentials like a toilet, sink and oh, a floor! One day it will be done...

Lots of Love,

Paint Color Struggles

Painting the powder room this weekend was not the easy project I was planning on. Neon red. Neon red was the first color attempt fail. I purchased a pretty coral orange color and in that room it was painfully vibrant. At first I thought it was going to be a pretty color, then as I continued on and the sun started streaming through I felt like I was in a red room of pain. Doesn't help that it's tiny and you can barely move in it. Seriously, this color radiated out of the room like a neon sign. Epic color pick fail. Probably should have helped to read Sherwin William's article: "The Play of Light and Color," especially this part:

"Take the same can of paint and apply it to two rooms, one that receives limited natural light and another that's flooded with sunshine, and it will look and act like two different colors. For example, a warm orange-red paint in a room with a north-facing window will make the room appear brighter and warmer and help offset the bluish cast to the light. However, that same red-orange paint in a room with a west-facing window will become intensely vivid – perhaps overwhelmingly so – in the late afternoon."

The room definitely has a West facing window...whoops! I of course felt discouraged that I wasted my free Saturday painting with a bad color. Dustin went to Sherwin Williams to see if they could tone it down a little, but it was still too similar. This morning I had my mom bring me her peach color from her living room, thinking maybe that direction would be prettier and less vibrant. It was very blah. On one wall it looked like a decent tone, on the other it looked sickly yellowish. Started to feel totally lost on inspiration and went to take a nap (pretty sure the vibrant tone of red haunted my dreams):

I wish my phone captured the red glow the room gave off! You can at least see how crazy red and bright it turned out. The lighter color is the peach. It looks ok there because of the red reflecting off, but up close it did nothing for me.

After trying to find a new inspiration, I felt a little depressed because I loved my original inspiration so much:

Rifle Paper Co. Wallpaper and yes I realize the color above looks nothing like this! Sadly holding my phone up close to it, they are similar...dang color tones and light!

I stared at the walls for a little while and the idea of mixing my two paints together popped up in my mind. I thought, what the heck, not much more to lose. Poured a little peach into the red and stirred it up.

I had a great result! It made a toned down orange coral that wasn't giving me a headache.

I like to say it went from a violent sunburn to pale to sun kissed! Ok it's still a little burn, but toned down, thank goodness! Dustin and I think painting the light flowers on it will also calm it down a little. It isn't neon anymore which is always a plus and I think it looks good. It will be our warm pop of color room hidden in the kitchen. Need to finish the edges, paint the ceiling (oh yea, originally thought painting it the original crazy red color was a good idea - ugh!) and painting the wood work. Then I can get started on the million flowers I think I can handle painting. With that, we also need to reinforce the floor (another ugh - around the toilet the wood rotted and I can see a small hole through to our basement - not good), lay our gorgeous tile and then put the fixtures in there. On top of that, we were crazy enough to take on fixing our sprinkler this weekend, ripping out the fireplace tile (more on that this week) and have an unfinished island in our kitchen - our house is a mess!!! The weather must have made us a little ambitious...

Happy Easter!

Lots of Love,

Powder Room Makeover Update

I came home from a long day to a wonderfully sanded powder room! I know sounds lame, but it is a big step in the makeover process. After ripping off the wallpaper, we needed to skim coat some parts to smooth things out. That turned into lots of sanding (which is difficult for a husband struggling with allergies!).

I know it doesn't look pretty, but that's coming! When sanding is totally done, I will be able to paint the walls. We figured painting the walls should happen before we put in our pretty new tile. Speaking of which, we purchased tile! Ended up going with something somewhat different from our original choices featured here. While at Menards with my in-laws, we stumbled upon this gorgeous basketweave tile and fell in love...with the look and the price:

Marble Basketweave Polished Stone Tile 

It is currently on sale for $8.99/square foot, which I know is still pricey for tile, but we don't need very much for our bathroom. We figured if we want the marble look, we might as well go for it in the tiniest room of the house! It was actually a great price compared to competitors and I'm definitely glad we shopped around a little bit. Here are some favorite Pinterest examples to show off similar marble floor looks:

Image via Curbly

Image via Decor Pad

So excited to keep working on this project and I will keep you updated along the way! No work on Friday, so I plan on hopefully getting some house projects going!

Lots of Love,

Back to the Bathroom

Back in November, I told you that we started project powder room - November. Sad thing is when I searched my blog for the powder room inspiration post, I realized it was written many months ago. I promise we are going to get this thing done soon! We hit a few hiccups that were a little discouraging and un-motivating. Removing the wallpaper wasn't good enough, the walls were really patchy, so we had to skim them. Then sand them down; my husband was not such a big fan of that part. Luckily he purchased a huge shop vac on black Friday that easily cleaned up the mess. When he decided to tackle the sink removal one night, let's just say he needed saving and a lot of towels were used. Sometimes old houses are frustrating.

With that said, we are on the uptick and now that everything is out we can really get to work making this a super cute powder room with old house character! Today, I convinced my mom to hit up Home Depot with me to check out floor tile. Oh yeah, I made the decision that I want to rip out the floor...I mean if everything is out, it's now or never. Plus the little white squares that someone put in years ago aren't lined up and it makes me crazy. I was so excited by the options I found at Home Depot! They had exactly what I was wanting to see and at good price points.

1. Ceramic B&W 2. Marble B&W 3. Marble Hexagon

I think the second one is probably my favorite because I love that it's not solid white, adds a little more detail. With that said, it's hard not to just go with the option that is 1/4th of the price. It's pretty and fits the style of our house. I will say though if I want to put marble tile somewhere, I should probably put it in the tiny bathroom so I don't have to buy as much! The hexagon is really pretty too if we decide the black and white is too busy for the small space. I also want to get opinions from people who know more about tile because I want something that will last. It won't get everyday use, but it will be a staple for guests. It's a good thing that I found great options, but I just don't know what to go with!

Now I need to figure out how to convince my friend's husband to help us with this adventure since we know nothing about laying tile...

Lots of Love,

Powder Room Sans Wallpaper

If you can recall, a couple months ago I told you that we needed to get working on our downstairs powder room (and by a couple months ago, I mean 5). Well folks, we are finally at a place where we are ready to conquer the task. In the past couple of weeks, Dustin accomplished the hard and tedious task of removing the old wallpaper. Since it's a tiny space there wasn't a lot, but maneuvering around the small room made it difficult. Luckily, we had needed to remove the toilet, so that wasn't taking up space. To complete the job, he tried out a wallpaper remover: WP Chomp.

He said the product was easy to use and effective. It was great for taking off the (very, very old) glue underneath the wallpaper. Sounds like a great find to me - love when you stumble upon a useful household product!

The bathroom looks a little sad without the wallpaper and is screaming for some color:

Really attractive.....

This weekend we both in town and don't have much going on, so I decided it would be a good weekend to keep this project going. As luck would have it, Sherwin Williams felt the same way:

If you have an upcoming project, now is your time to stock up on the paint! They told me once that you can even go in and buy the paint unmixed at 40%, then bring it back in later when you've decided on the color for mixing. We should probably stock up on white paint for our woodwork - going to be a needed future project.

What's my final decision on inspiration for the tiny bathroom? Rifle Paper Co.'s gorgeous Peonies Wallpaper:

Now before you get excited and confused thinking we are putting in the real wallpaper, we aren't. 1. I couldn't convince my husband to spend that much on wallpaper (work in progress) 2. neither of use know how to wallpaper and 3. Dustin proclaimed that he hates wallpaper after spending hours tearing it down. So, how am I going to work in this inspiration? To start, I love the orangey, coral color for the main color. It will look really pretty with this antique gold light pendant we purchased for the room. Next, I'm going to try (this could fail, so don't get disappointed) to paint a similar pattern on the walls. I need to make a sample board when we purchase the paint to make sure it's something I think I can conquer. It's going to take some time, but the room is the perfect size to attempt something like this. I will mess around with the type of flowers to do, but I love the colors. Fingers crossed! I will keep you posted throughout the weekend. There is going to be a lot of sanding and cleaning up to do before we can even think about painting.

Lots of Love,

Powder Room Ideas

Last night, Dustin and his brother conquered removing the nasty, rusting toilet from our main floor powder room. It seriously was probably 50+ years old. Time for an update! We are going to have to remove the sink and redo the room. It is currently wallpapered and the wallpaper has seen better days. It is peeling and since the toilet and sink were on the wall, we now have open patches. Not a good look! It does, however, give me the chance to make a fun powder room (silver lining to a lot of work ahead!). My main concern is how small the room is. It is teeny tiny:

Picture from when we first moved in:

The sink is way too big for the space, so by finding a smaller wall mount sink, we can make it possible for people to comfortably use the room. A new toilet will help as well and if I find the one I'm picturing in my head, it will look classier.

Here are my current inspirations:

Picture sources can be found on my Dream House Pinterest board.

Hopefully we can get the current wallpaper off fairly easily and the sink comes out easier than the toilet did. I also need to look for a new toilet that looks pretty - ha, I know that sounds odd.

Lots of Love,