Guess I Should Leave More Often

Last week I had to go out of town for a business trip and came home to some great improvements!

The first was an idea that I saw on Pinterest which replaced the plastic silverware tray with wood separators built into the drawer.  We purchased all of the wood before I left, and while I was in Jacksonville Chris sent me these pictures.

It's a little hard to get the big spoons out, but it's doable.  We rarely use them anyways, lol. Chris also did it for the drawer in the butler's pantry for our wedding silverware that will be used for special occasions.

The other improvement was creating a linen closest! I may have mentioned before that our house does not have a linen closet in it.  We actually didn't notice this until our 2nd or 3rd tour of the house.  Thankfully, the main guest room closet had a little bit of extra space in it which Chris utilized to install a track system and some shelves.  

You can make out the bump out in the closet from this picture of the game room corner.  That area where you see the electric outlet is the added space in the closet.  It's hard to get shots inside of the closet since it's small and there are no lights, but here's one from before I left of Chris measuring out the tracks.

Chris installed the tracks, cut and painted the wood for the shelves and I was able to come home and load it up with our extra towels and sheets.

I don't know if I can tell him enough, but I am so grateful for my handy husband!!

It's Nice To Have A Place To Sit

And something other than an air mattress to sleep on!

Our furniture and boxes from the storage shed arrived and we attempted to set up and unpack as much as we could before we left for our annual birthday celebration - this time in San Francisco!

Recap coming soon!

We still have a ways to go, but at least at this point we're able to live here and work as we go.  We set up one of the guest rooms since it may be a little while until our master bed frame and new king mattress are purchased.

This room still needs:

- hang frames and art work

- a bench for the end of the bed

- build some shelves into the closet to act as a linen closet (I didn't even notice until our 2nd or 3rd visit to the house that there was no linen closet upstairs)

Chris' gameroom now houses all of the furniture that used to reside in our apartment living room.

Projects for this room include:

- building some shelves to hold DVDs and games

- spray painting that lamp base

- switching out lamp shade

- framing and hanging posters

- finding some smaller end tables to put near the couch

- decide what to do with extra end table that doesn't go at the end of the chaise lounge 

And finally, it's so nice to be able to eat meals in our breakfast nook.  

I'm a little bothered by the fact that the table is not centered under the light, but if it was it would be in the way of the back patio door.  We removed the leaf from our former dining room table and placed the smaller table in the breakfast nook. There is so much we want to do to the kitchen (new countertops, appliances, back splash, etc) but those changes will come much further down the road.

So there is some of the progress we have made in the last couple of weeks.  Now it's time for me to get back into the work routine after enjoying 2 weeks and the holiday off!

The Painting Difference

We have been busy busy painting up a storm over at the new house.

We wanted to capitalize on a mainly empty house by knocking out as many rooms as we could before the movers delivered all of our boxes and furniture.  Besides the dining room, the laundry room and the gameroom we also painted my previously neon green office (in Oslo Blue)...

And two of the three guest rooms.

We did this room in Juniper Berries, which I really loved and wanted to do in my office but I thought it might be too dark for the smaller space.

This was supposed to be a color match to Sherwin Williams Rain, but I don't see as much of the greenish tint like I did in the sample pot.

While we were painting those rooms, we left the main area and the ceiling in the dining room to the pros who finished it all in three days!

Amazing how much they can get done in a short period of time

Along with painting the main area SW Jubilee and the dining room ceiling to match the Behr Ultra Pure White that we painted on the bottom half, the painters also painted all of the doors that faced into the main areas, the trim and the staircase spindles.

The new white color for the doors on the left, the old off white on the right

I love how the Jubilee turned out in the main area, especially with the new white trim!

It has been go, go, go these past two weeks, and I'm so ready for it to slow down a little since the majority of the painting has been completed.  Now our focus is on unpacking boxes, fun fun.

Have you painted many rooms in your house?