New Home for the Unmentionables

After weeks of half-hearted efforts to finished the dresser...it finally lives in the master bedroom full of our socks and other unmentionables.

Over the course of this project I learned a few valuable lessons about refinishing second-hand furniture.

• Measure the distance between the holes for the hardware. I wanted to switch out the hardware for something a little more sleek. However, my dresser happens to have custom hardware in a size that apparently doesn't exist anywhere on the Internet. Luckily, the pulls have grown on me.
  
• Open and close every drawer before making an offer to the seller. I opened four of the five onsite only to realize when we got home that one of the drawers wasn't lined up with the others. Luckily, I know my way around a power sander.
  
• Check to see if the drawers can be removed. Trying to paint drawers while they are still inside a dresser=complicated contortionist positions to get the entire surface area covered. Luckily, in a young, skinner life, I was a very limber dancer.
  
• Don't be afraid to try colors or finishes that are new to you. My heart yearned for a glossy, loud yellow. After some of the challenges above, I opted to add a dark gloss to some of the edges to cover mistakes. Luckily, I don't totally hate shabby chic.
  
• Buy the fancy, thick wrapping paper upfront. For the lining of the drawers, I learned the messy way that the cute Target gift wrap, ain't gonna cut it. A week of waiting and one roll of SMOCK paper later, I was able to achieve the desired effect.
  
• Always negotiate a lower price. After nixing 5-10 dressers that would have cost well over $700, we were overly excited about the prospect of a custom-looking dresser for $100 plus the cost of paint and supplies. As you can see from the bullets above, also factor in surprise expenses and the laziness bug that may hit you mid-project. Luckily, we still saved a TON of Moolah!

Verdict: We love it!

This is where the magic happens...

or something equally awkward like that...

After five years of hand-me-down furniture (that I hated), mismatched bedding, and no decor of which to speak, Cole and I decided to make redoing our master bedroom a priory. My hope is to finish it before the weather gets nice so then we can focus our attention outside.

This weekend we were able to get the walls, ceiling and baseboards painted. In the first picture, the walls look purple, but are really Granite Gray. We also assembled the beautiful new bed that has been sitting in our garage for two weeks. The boys were good sports for my picture taking craziness.



I also started sanding my oh-so-lovely new-to-me ksl dresser. While still a hand-me-down of sorts, I am loving this and pretty sure it is going to end up an amazingly cheerful yellow!


With a lightfixture, bedding, art, and accessories to go...I'm so excited!

Project Backsplash: Mission Complete

When it comes to home improvement projects, I have a confession. Sometimes I blog before a project to force myself to get my butt in gear.

For those who know us best, know that the kitchen backsplash has been quite the ordeal.

Frequently over the last year, we would measure the walls, spend a Saturday visiting every tile store we could think of, grab samples, test samples, crunch the numbers and then loose all motivation to actually complete the project. Either we couldn't find what we both liked or what we both liked was waaaay out of the budget.

This time, we found a perfect blend of the trendy glass tiles we love and the conservative stone our Realtor recommended. I gave you a sneak peak in the last post but just because I love it so much, here you go again. My less-than-stellar photography skills makes the tile look a little green but all the tiles are a safe, neutral brown, beige or clear color.
In all honesty, this project really took us three weekends to complete. :)

Weekend 1: We spent the weekend prepping, laying out tiles, figuring cuts, running to Home Depot to have them make the cuts, applying the tiles to the walls and generally, looking rough.
Not sure how the professionals do it, but we found unusual positions were necessary to tile the corner of the kitchen.

Weekend 2: Scrapping excess mastic out of the grout lines (this job was seriously the pits), filling the lines with grout, cleaning the tiles as quickly as we could manage and again, looking rough. With so many lines to fill and our enthusiasm for wiping excess grout with giant sponges, we later found a few areas that needed more grout. The tiny bits of tape are to give Cole a big heads up that he needs to re grout underneath the tape.

Weekend 3: Scrubbing tiles to remove excess grout from textured tiles, a little hiccup with grout remover (that started eating the edges of our tile), sealing grout lines and again, cleaning away sealer haze as quickly as we possibly could.

Once that was done, we also had to learn the finer points of reinstalling light switch and outlet covers. Surprisingly, more to it than we thought. Long and short of it, after three weeks of my kitchen looking like this: I nearly giggle every time I walk in and see this.
And I smile as I wash my hands in front of this.


What can I say? I am in love.

The Prince's Pad

One of the funnest parts of being pregnant was planning Crew's nursery. I had hours of fun pouring over blogs, magazines and Web sites dreaming about what colors he might like, theme vs. no theme, how to get furniture I liked without paying an arm and a leg, and so much more.

Because I had so much fun, this may be the longest home improvement post I have ever written. If you don't need the play by play, see the two collages below. If you want the nitty gritty, keep reading.

and


Hope you enjoy; this is our favorite room yet!

Just three months ago, our designated baby room looked a little like this:

and this


Amidst months of home renovations, this room became the perfect "catch all" for Christmas decorations, out-of-season clothing and home decor that still needed to be unpacked and put on display.

Once we cleared out all of the bins and such, we got to work prepping the ceilings and walls for some much needed color. This included patching the walls and removing literally 10 ceiling hooks like these:

While we appreciated a good hook as much as the next guy, our most recent theory is that the room served as a green house of hanging plants for some previous owner.

Once the walls and ceiling had been prepped and primed, it came time to choose the wall color.

Knowing that we wanted fun colors and visual interest, our weekend of paint sampling resulted in the following finalists:

It was a tight race between the green and dark blue but we played it a little bit safe with the wall color knowing that there were a lot of colors and patterns to follow. Because of the bold nature of the blue, we used it as an accent wall and finished off the other three walls in a cream that had just a hint of blue added.

Uninspired by any of the bedding I could afford, I took my mom up on an offer to help me with a bumper pad and crib skirt. I planned to round out the bedding with a homemade quilt by yours truly. After weeks of combing local fabric stores, I fell head over heels in love with this collection by local designer Riley Blake:



With our basic inspiration in line, it was time to tackle our storage issues. The closets of a 1960's split level leave much to be desired. The addition of a baby didn't change the fact that Cole would continue to need the baby room closet for his clothes.

Thanks to the "Billy" closets at Ikea and a little brainstorming by Cole, we were able to come up with a storage solution that gave us bukoos of storage, cute shelves for decorating and a kind of swanky built in storage look.



Cole started with two six foot bookshelves and mounted them to the wall. He then added the half sized shelves in front of the original bookshelves and bracketed them to each other. We finished each new storage unit off with doors and beautiful pulls from Anthropologie.

Butting the two shelves together gave us a really deep space for drawer length containers that now hold Crew's clothes, accessories, bath necessities and everything else he needs.

With the storage dilemma solved we added the recliner and changing station.


The recliner was a no-brainer once we realized that we would end up paying the same amount for a quality wood glider as we would a gliding recliner. Plus, the cheap-os in us love the idea that when we no longer need the chair for rocking little ones to sleep, it is neutral enough that we can use it in another room of the house.

Normally I think changing tables are just another piece of expensive furniture for new parents to buy. However, since we plan to try reusable diapers (once Crew is big enough to fit into them) I figured it would be a good investment to have a designated station for all the diapering "stuff."

The matching changing table for our amazing find of a crib was going to set us back a whopping $450, so we opted for a similar styled table with a dramatically smaller price tag (gotta love online shopping).

Favorite finishing touches like the letters

these curtains

and stocking the shelves


proved to be the perfect projects for Stacy (Cole's mom) and I as we patiently waited for the lil man to make his appearance.

Of course lengthy descriptions aside, this finishing touch was the only thing I needed to make the nursery complete.


We just love this guy!

A La Basement Bathroom

Although this project has been done for a couple months now, I still thought it would be fun to post a few pictures of our finished basement bathroom. For those of you who don't remember what we started with, the bathroom used to consist of a vanity and a sadly misplaced toilet. We decided to add an oversized shower and replace both the old toilet and vanity and tile the floor. Add a bright splash of color to the walls, super sexy glass tiles and a few white towels/accessories and, Wallah!

Before:

After:

The Feel of Carpet between Our Toes

Oh glorious carpet!

Yesterday we installed carpet in our basement family room, guest room and hallway. Cole and I wasted no time enlisting a friend to help us drag in our TV and couch. "Lie to Me" (DVR'ed) was never quite so enjoyable. I look forward to vacuuming it again tonight, just because I can.

Feast your eyes on our flecked beige carpet, perfectly butted with our now-finished baseboards and trim. We are itching to entertain our Thanksgiving guests with our comfy new floors.

Movie Night Anyone?