Orange walls, bad paint jobs and Tiger, OH MY!

Today is the Master Bedroom Tour!

This is a picture taken from the listing website.
Although Kyle fixed my computer, my original photos from Day 1 were magically lost. :( I'm hoping once we track down my old camera's SD card the pictures will still be on there.

Now, some of my favorite features of the house are the fact that there are cathedral ceilings in the master bedroom and also in the den (the den& kitchen were the real sellers of this house!). However, cathedral ceilings and two rookie painters do not mix (especially if they are sleep deprived).
So, we hired this job out. It was a huge relief to just have the darn thing done and not worry about it.

Now, weirdly, the GINORMOUS(19 x 19) room has ceramic tile. The picture above has wood floors and carpet?  But the combination of swirly reddish in gray tiles with the orange walls was EXTREMELY overwhelming and orangey. Not a fan.

Enough text, here comes our (mostly) finished master bedroom!

 We went with Sherwin Williams -Rain color, which is a soft blue (kinda gray) color that works with the ceramic tiles way better.

 Banana for scale in the doorway there. UPDATE: Jet has a stuffed banana and it happened to be there, I did not plant a banana in the doorway.
 The cat did not teleport, these were taken at different times. :) You can see the lovely cable hanging down out of the wall above the right bookcase. We have to run it along the line of the wall to fix it. Previous seller decided they could wire the house themselves and it is a nightmare for the bedrooms. We originally had over 50 feet of cabling just laying around the bedroom. Verizon guy was upset and said they would not have come if we had done this ourselves.

 This looks greeny, but it's blue! Also, fun story about that lovely fan. I think Day 2, the painter came in and was eyeballing everything when we noticed a wasp flying around the room. One wasp was annoying, but not that big of a deal. Finally we kept seeing more and more and realized that a wasp's nest was IN the ceiling fan. Painter murdered all the wasps for me because Kyle was at work. Woo!

 We are keeping things real here by leaving the clutter. Eventually it will go away.  I'm still on the fence about these Venetian blinds. First off, someone splattered orange paint all over them in original paint job, so they have to go anyway.  I'm leaning towards curtains because I'd like to put some on the three windows on opposite wall and think it'll look a little more balanced. Plus I've discovered I like curtains, who knew!

 We have a HUUUUUGE walk in closet. It's also full of clutter.

 Master bathroom! Has a walk in shower, that has some ledges in it and tons of shelves. So nice!

 I was SO excited about the double sinks. Definite perk.

 Self portrait of horrible clutter and the vanity area (have not washed out shelves in mirror or below)

I thought this was exceptionally silly. Why on earth did they wire an outlet to the middle of the wall that is covered by a door anyway? Oh, and when I went to use it yesterday for giggles, it didn't work. Oh well!  The door on the right is a very gross closet that needs cleaned out and currently is the home to kitty's litter box.


There's the master suite!

Friendsgiving!

On Saturday we held our first Thanksgiving for everyone.  I spent the day making 3 turkeys and a ham as well as some side dishes.  It was a potluck, and everyone else filled in the gaps of the menu.

We had to cram three tables together to fit a total of 14 people and one baby. :)

 I'm cracking up at how different this wall paint looks in every single picture. I'd say the foreground walls are the best representation to life.

 We had some awesome mismatched chairs going on, but everyone fit!

I'm pretty sure that cat has to photobomb every photo shoot!


This is our dining room and in the background there is our front room...painted same color and without a purpose at the moment. It has our stereo in it and that's it!



The night before Friendsgiving, I decided that I would use the added motivation to clean up, to paint the floor trim.

 I did not see the cat until afterwards. The little piece there is what the trim looked like before I painted, and you can see the in progress (primer) trim as well. I am unsure why they went with two different kinds of trim, but it was annoying me so I fixed it!

 My favorite part of painting is ripping the tape off and seeing the nice crisp line afterwards.

Ta-da! And if you look at the earlier whole room posts, you can see the trim peeking out from the corners of the pictures.  I think it looks much better (but I still have to touch up some areas).  Now to tackle every other room in the house for trim! (Over a very long period of time, whew, it's exhausting to hand sand things)


Hopefully my friends won't mind the pictures with everyone here and celebrating, but I felt that it captured exactly what we're trying to create here at our home...a place to relax and have fun with friends and family!

So great to be able to celebrate with everyone.

Creepy Basement

To continue on our home tour, we're going to the basement. It is creepy and I hardly go down there (like, maybe 5 times total).  It is not clean, and is not a priority even a little bit! I highly advise shoes at all times downstairs.

 So, here's the foyer and the door on the immediate right is the basement, garage to the far right. (I hung a painting in the foyer!!)

 I actually don't mind the stairs, and that's the only thing I'm okay with in the basement!

 Kyle has bravely dumped his Bowflex down in the basement in order to pretend we needed the basement. There's a pile of carpet leftover from when the carpet was replaced upstairs (which I totally didn't mention. Go look at the upstairs post, all new carpeting put in!!)

 That's right, our basement has the lovely heating and water stuff smack in the middle of the basement, making it pretty weird and not very useful.  (Left side!)

back to the right side:

Looky, an outside door.

And it goes outside! (more on outside in a later post!)

 Now back over to the right side, you'll see the fun cabinet. 

 Which actually hides the sump pump and radon stuff (well, kinda, the radon stuff is sticking out of the cabinet there).

 Here's more cabinets! But alas, it opens to insulation and pipes.

 Attention to detail right there, ducks on every knob!

Here is ONE thing that has changed in the basement.

This was a lovely creepy toilet hole. When you flushed the toilet, water (which you can kinda see)would rush and air would hiss. UM, BIOLOGICAL HAZARD ANYONE? It also stuck up from the floor, guaranteeing that I would trip on it approximately 80 times whenever I was in the basement.

 The seller fixed it! Yay! It's flush with the floor and properly sealed! Anyway, back to the tour.

 We have a weird pretend closet (no door, just a gaping hole) that Kyle is calling the paint closet (because there was paint stored in there).

 What's this? A huge wonderfully large bathroom, in the basement of creepiness.

 Full tub, also left us another shower curtain, so weird. This is the "dog tub" Because I can get here straight from outside. You'll see his shampoo and washing cup right there on the edge!  There is a full linen closet down here as well.

 Yes, I have to wear shoes in the basement due to creepy unwashed floors. But also showing how HUGE the bathroom is.  Those rust spots are from some sort of metal furniture that used to live there previously.

 There's a closet on the left side which you can kinda see in the left side shot up above.  Our sink decided to detach the hose and apparently dumped all the water down here. AWESOME. She thoughtfully left us some hangers.

 And a really gross ottoman, the ceiling tile caved in from some light water from upstairs.




And now, the best part of this basement!!!

 We have affectionately named it the "murder room."

At some point, there was an addition built onto the house, and they decided to also build a basement addition underneath it (which I find SO weird) but left it totally unfinished. Helloooo actual dirt left on that original retaining wall! Also, they didn't bother to fix the venting from the bathroom, so it actually vents into this room, instead of going outside.

 Here's more of the murder room. 

Fun fact: We invited over some neighbors and found out that the previous owner had been RENTING THIS BASEMENT OUT to a woman and daughter who lived down here. What? How?! Kyle and I cannot even wrap our minds around this. Conclusion is that they maybe slept in the murder room, which is totally scary.



That concludes our creepy basement tour!

Tour of the unfinished, unpacked upstairs!

Today we're going to take a tour of the unfinished, unpacked upstairs! (meaning, no finished master bedroom peek today!)

 Here is a shot of the hallway from the master! You can see the stairs on the right (a little) and a tiny peek of our master bedroom color!
The first door on the right is... my "office"/second guest room...which is a dump zone for all things Juli.

 It is currently horrifyingly pink and with a yellow border. This is going to change ASAP (hopefully between Thanksgiving and Christmas).

There is a fun little nook in the corner.

 And if the pink was not bad enough, they left it yellow on one side.  I'm really looking forward to tackling the paint job and destroying that wallpaper.  Oh, and 

You'll see that there is a smiley face in the wall (with a nice gouge).

I plan to paint this room a light blue color and maybe paint a mural (Kyle and I are still debating over this one (read: Juli wants a mural and Kyle does not like the idea)). I would like to bring in a daybed for guests and for comfy sitting purposes in the office. The big hold up at the moment is finding two desks that are: A. functional B. Not ugly (you'll notice I don't say pretty, I've given up hope) C. go okay together (again, no high hopes) D.  Not costing more than a few hundred for both






Next up is the "Fish" Bathroom (guest bathroom).  I thought this was weird, but Kyle didn't think so (left a shower curtain?!).

 They left us the shower curtain, towel, fish painting (on right) and a silly fish light plate.

 I zoomed in on it so you all could have a giggle. We're leaving it alone at the moment because it is looooww on priority list. We do have to install a toilet paper holder, or a  "paper holder" as Home Depot so delicately put it.

 Here is the "purple" room, or our Guest bedroom.  

 I think that this does not do justice to HOW blindingly blue that is. It is electric color. Upon closer inspection, it appears that the room used to be TOTALLY that color and they painted purple on top of it. (If you look at the edges near ceiling, blue peeks out).  Plans to re-paint this are imminent, probably after the holidays.




And finally, the only room in the entire house that we were okay with the color in (but they still did a terrible job painting, so we have to touch up ceiling and paint trim).

 Sign was made for us by a friend for Kyle's last birthday (after lots of frantic explaining by Juli). THANKS RACHEL!!! WE LOVE IT.

 Here is Kyle's office, partially set up. They left behind the white shelves with the orange doors. No, it is not lit, just neon-y.

Kyle enjoys the shelves and has been wedging all his games and controllers in there, not to mention my own games and controllers!



Thanks for taking the tour of 2/3 of the upstairs!  :)