Finished Stairwell!

On inspection day, we were greeted with this view...

(immediately on the left as you walk into the house (door would cover this if open)) Plans for this wall incoming! (painting was done first thing, still working on what will live on this wall)

Dirty gross walls and carpet

Step one was replacing the carpet, about a week into moving in due to an awesome 50% off deal!

Last time, I left off with this photo.  After the paint had dried for a few weeks, I suddenly had a whole weekend to myself (as Kyle went to visit his family out in Ohio). Instead of catching up on homework, I decided it was a good time to hang frames. Priorities!

After
183 photos printed
79 photos selected
16 frames
3 horrible frame accidents (RIP 3 frames) (Michael's does not ship things nicely)
2 gouges in the trim (and subsequent impending repair)
1 hour of frame tetris....


We have our stairwell wall finished! We are continuing the frames upstairs along our hallway wall as well, we had too many favorite pictures to pick from!

Jet was suspicious, and walls weren't quite done here

 You can see we're wrapping the pictures up into the hallway upstairs! I still have a few more frames to hang of singular pictures brought back from Ohio. Kyle's mom's family hasn't given me photos yet either, so those will have to go up when I finally do get them.

Downstairs view with Oreo's butt in the bottom right. 

We are really enjoying seeing our family every day, even if it's just in pictures. Kyle brought home a few pictures from his family visit that will have to go into frames soon, and his family is still rapidly expanding! (One brand new baby and two more coming this year!) I love that this wall(s) will keep growing as our families do.


Next up: finishing up the foyer/ Pressure washing the outside!

Stairway upgrade!

Welcome back! Things have stalled around the house recently due to this adorable little fluffers. In fact, she's caused a few more house projects that we'll have to tackle in the near future, such as redoing our master bathroom.

But onto the project at hand! Our stairway wall was gross. The previous owners must have tried to cover up some of the grunge with white.

You can see the weird paint lines up the wall there. First I filled the holes, sanded and scrubbed the wall clean. 

 So I taped it off to have a fun midway stripe? Not sure what to call it, but my half wall was beyond ready for some paint. We went with the same color as our foyer for continuity, so Krypton from Sherwin Williams.

 One coat, and a break watching TV with the pup so the coat will dry

Finished! Both the episode and the first coat. Painted the second and ripped off the tape. 

Next up, cleaning and painting the trim...and hanging up all our family pictures!! It was such a good feeling to get some more progress going with the house and I'm looking forward to tackling some more. :) 

The Joy of Building Furniture

My office/second guest bedroom is furnished!

It took many weeks of budgeting, internet window shopping and reading reviews but finally we're done!
It started with this:

We had some middle ground (yay freshly painted things)

 Then a slightly harrowing trip to IKEA:

With some slightly unsafe box placement...

The cat was of course, exceedingly happy about the boxes. 

More boxes....




Until FINALLY, we finished building furniture!

 The daybed is so awesome. It pulls out to a king sized bed (which is bigger than our bed, oddly (maybe a new bed in the future!)

My computer desk is from Walmart.com

The little white thing on the right there is my craft table. It pulls out to a full size table if I need it to (when I'm crafting) but I leave it down because I don't have THAT much space!

To-do list:

Touch up door trim

Possibly re-paint the door

Touch up ceiling with white paint

Touch up floor trim

Hang up wall decorations!

Organize the scary closet

Come visit! :)

My pretty pretty office

This is still a work in progress but I think it is OODLES better than the previous horror awaiting us in this room. Here are the photos from Inspection day (previous owners still living there)

Here is the the horrifying photos of the "you know you're going to paint, but not quite yet so what's the point of unpacking!" stage:

That's the nook, it's hard to tell. 

The absolute first thing I did was run and grab rubbing alcohol to check that the room had LATEX based paint and not oil based. I would have cried myself silly if the same thing that happened in the bathroom had happened in this room. Luckily, latex based paint in here!!!!!!!

 I then spent four hours (mostly me, occasionally Kyle would relieve me) stripping the wallpaper border. This room did not want me to do this however, and more often than not, Kyle and I were gouging the wall in an attempt to remove the wallpaper. I had to go behind and spackle all over again. 

 Progress shot of the painting after the priming. I only went with one coat of primer because my arms were tired. Great reasoning, no?

Progress shot of the windows. You can see how the trim was a yellow cream color compared the windows themselves. 

Once finished with the room (and peeling off the tape to see the nice clean line), I noticed that while my line was nice and crisp, there was yellow peeking out onto the ceiling. I got out my trusty craft paint brush and very carefully drew a line around the top with my paint color. 

The Big Reveal!!

Painted that light switch plate in a fit of whimsy. Uncertain if it is actually staying there, at least it is not a pink heart covered in XOXOXOXO's!

 Left side

 Right side with nook! (Currently sitting at that very chair!) This is not my actual desk, but it's all I got until February sometime.

 NEWLY painted trim. This took me a very short time to do.  I scrubbed the whole thing with a toothbrush, primed the sucker and then painted one coat of the shiny white. We still have to caulk around the edges for an extra clean look.

 I also bought new outlet plates for this room, but totally forgot to get the one on the left. Oops! I'll be going back to home depot again soon.

This door was a pain in my butt. There is a tiny 1/3 inch sliver on the left that HAD to be painted or it looked atrocious. I couldn't tape it, so I just jammed my paint brush in and went to town, then cleaned off the door frame as I got half of the paint on it. I still have to remove the FOUR command hooks on there but am afraid to because of the memory of the pain from last time(bruised thumb). 

I am SO happy to have my room painted the pretty happy color: "Tradewind" by Sherwin Williams. 

It is one shade lighter than our bedroom color (I originally wanted this shade in our bedroom, but Kyle voted for "Rain" (one shade darker)). 

It makes me so happy to finally have the space painted and cleaned out! I've been hanging out here way too much, considering the furniture only got put in a few hours ago. I smile every time I walk into the room. I can't WAIT to decorate the whole thing and see how it turns out!!

Next up for this room:  Bringing all the stuff back in, and organizing. Decorating! The big furniture buying will be in February (yay budgets), and I'll post another little post then showing the "finished" product! 

Busy last two weeks over here. Next up: staircase& family picture wall! 

(Hint Hint! If you are related to us: Please send us your photos!!)

The seemingly simple bathroom re-do.

This is a story about over confidence.

One day over Christmas break, I decided, you know what? The half bathroom on the main level is teeny tiny and it is annoying green and palm tree-y, I'm just going to strip the wallpaper down one night and strip the room down and tape it off and then paint the whole sucker the next day, by myself.

Well, that is not how this went. 

Here is a weird before shot of the palm trees in their magnificence. 

Here I am, tackling the wallpaper removal like a pro. Sprayed with a mix of dawn&hot water (50/50), peel top layer off, scrape the bottom off with a plastic putty knife. Rinse. Repeat. 

Kyle had a few friends over while I was weirdly standing on the toilet and counter top in the bathroom happily stripping away wallpaper. Luckily no one needed to use the bathroom while I was doing this. This process took me about 45 minutes, and I happily went to the "Ground Zero" stage of the paint job. 

Ground Zero entails pulling out all of the wall fixtures, taping and spackling. Knocked this right out the park in another easy 15 minutes.

Here is a bad color representation of our choices for the bathroom.

Here are the actual color choices. We were trying to decide between the soft blue-gray color of the foyer (which the bathroom is off of) or a fun little pop of  aqua color (that's not too crazy, since it's the adjoining rooms). Please ignore the unpainted room arch thing.

I hopped right into the painting. 

Here is some of the obnoxiously tiny crevices to paint.

I opted for two coats of primer (two on left, one on right). With the darker color, it's better to be safe, than sorry. And again, I thought I was such a pro at painting. Now comes the BEST PART! I love peeling the tape off to see those nice clean lines of the room.

But it didn't happen!

AT ALL.

Terrible terrible terrible. I was so mad. Some not so pretty words flew out of my mouth that evening.  I ignored this bathroom for a week and a half. Because it had not occured to me that the previous owner would use oil based paint in the bathroom where the same color was latex based in the foyer, I did not take the 10 seconds to rub some rubbing alcohol on and see. 

We went to Ohio and came back. I was still avoiding the bathroom. Finally, a week later, I brainstormed about what to do with the bathroom. I had no desire to sand the whole thing down, or strip all the paint off.

So, I did a cop out. 

That's right! I sanded the edges down and got a teeny tiny craft paintbrush (used previously to help paint pottery) and put some oil based primer down. Then, I painted a thick coat of Krypton (the color in there) over top and we're left with a magically fixed room (but don't look too closely or you'll see some bumps and edges in there).

Finally, the last update to the room was to replace the light and fan switch (light switch was faulty, had to be at a weird position to turn on and would just turn off by itself)

Here is a lovely in progress shot of Kyle installing the switches. I was originally in charge of holding the flashlight and passing tools, but I apparently was replaced by a roll of toilet paper. So flattering. 

Much prettier than the off cream color it was before.  I also replaced the outlet cover and light switch cover to match our newly white switches.

Ta-da! This was by far the most aggravating room to do, but I am SO glad it is done. Looks way better, I think!

Last thing to do in here is to frame in the mirror!