Guess I Should Leave More Often Part II

When the cat's away, the mice will play... or in our case - when the wife's away, the husband gets a bunch of house projects done!

This past extra long weekend (Thursday - Tuesday), my family enjoyed a trip back home to Philly/New Jersey for my cousin's wedding.  Since Chris recently started his new job, he wasn't able to make the trip with us so he had 6 days to himself at home.

Philly airport, the house I grew up in, Pat's Cheesesteaks, Atlantic City

My cousin and his new wife!

While I was enjoying reliving memories of my youth, Chris was busy knocking out project after project in our home.  First up was mounting the TV in our bedroom.

We've had the TV on the floor for some time, waiting for our handyman to come mount it and hide the cords behind the wall.  Well our handyman has been very busy with his main job, so Chris opted to just mount it himself and build a shelf to hold the cable box.  Now I can actually watch tv in bed instead of on the floor!  We'll get around to hiding the cords later.

Chris has been the king of shelving lately.  Last time it was creating the linen closet, this time it was building shelves in his gameroom for our DVDs and his video games.

Similar to the linen closet, Chris used a track system so we could alter the heights of the shelves if we need to.  He cut and painted wood and attached little blocks to the ends to hold the DVDs in.

Me being the type A personality, I went ahead and alphabetized the DVDs then loaded up the shelves.  While going through them, I noticed that there are a lot that that we should probably get rid of because we never watch them (as in still in the plastic from when they were purchased).

On the other side of the room Chris created a wrap around system to utilize the corner bump out.

Corner before

Looking at this picture one might think we were starting up a GameStop!

I have no doubt these shelves will fill up once we unpack the rest of his graphic novels and other decor items.  Mario says Yippee!!

And the last project was a complete shock to me!  We were texting Sunday night and Chris asked if I wanted to see his hair cut.  I thought this was a little odd because Chris tends to get the same haircut, only once during the summer he surprised me by coming back with a shaved head.  So I'm thinking he's done something cray cray to his hair.

Nope, same haircut, but one huge surprise behind him - he painted our master bath!!

I love how the white cabinets pop more against the green walls then they did with the beige.  We still need to hang items (like towel hooks and some art) and get a couple more mats, but I am just so happy that the painting is done!

After 5 hours of painting the nooks and crannies of the master bath, Chris is truly looking forward to a relaxing weekend this upcoming weekend.  With all of the projects he has completed lately, I have no issues with a veg out weekend!

A Place To Lay Our Heads

Can I just tell you how happy I am that we can actually sleep in our master bedroom now??

First things first, we finally got around to painting our master bedroom.  We went with Behr Caribe and Ultra Pure White.  We originally were going to go with just the blue, but when we put it up on the wall I thought it would be a little too much to have the whole room in that color.

Chris went around and painted the baseboard in the matching white (it's still the original off white in the photo above) just in time for the arrival of our new bed frame!  I did a lot of online window shopping after falling in love with a headboard that I saw on This Casita.  I located it on Amazon, but ended up buying a version of it on Wayfair to get the foot rails as well.

Chris did all the heavy lifting, piecing together the frame while I worked on putting up our annual birthday pictures and the DIY map.

Once the bed frame was up, we took the plunge and purchased a king size Tempurpedic mattress.  I've never purchased a new mattress and Chris was rocking a futon before moving in with me. We have been eyeing one for some time, always gravitating to the same Cloud model every time we stopped into a Sleep Experts or Mattress Firm.  We used the rational that we need to invest in a good night's sleep, and this one has a 25 year warranty along with a 1 year love your mattress guarantee (which means we have 365 days to decide if we really like it, and if we don't we can send it back and get another mattress).  

The mattress was delivered the next day and I was quick to finally break open the bedding that we originally registered for our 2011 wedding, but ended up buying ourselves because it was discontinued between the time we set up our registry and our wedding date. This actually ended up working in our favor because when it was discontinued, all of the pieces were marked down AND I still got to use Bed Bath and Beyond coupons to reduce the price even more (just had to travel to 3 different stores in order to get everything)! 

I purchased pretty much every accent pillow that went with the set

As you can tell, the bed and the bench are the only pieces of furniture in our room.  We still need to find some nightstands and a dresser as well as some sort of seating by the windows for the reading nook.  But for now I'm just so excited to see where this room started and where it is today!

What do you like most about your bedroom?

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?

A Bold Choice

While Chris and I pick out and agree on the colors in the majority of the rooms, we did decide that we each would get complete control over one room in the house.  For me it's my office and for Chris it is his gameroom.

The other night, we headed over and knocked out another night of painting this time in his gameroom. 

Gameroom during our first showing

As I'm sure you know by now, Chris and I really love the colors blue and green.  We are trying to branch out with different colors as well - our main area will be Sherwin Williams Jubilee which is a silver gray color and you've already seen the white and juniper ash in the laundry room.  But with the gameroom as his area of full control, I kinda knew it would be a nice bold blue (Behr Bermudan Blue).  I really like the shade he picked out and with the sunlight that flows through those two windows it's actually a little lighter in person than it appears in these pictures.

You may have also noticed in the picture above a couple of ceiling fans.  Most designers may cringe at ceiling fans, but living in Texas we kinda depend on them to help battle the heat.  Chris the handyman went around upstairs, removed the boob lights and installed the fans in each of the guest rooms.

I love the additional light in each of these rooms and the fans help push the cold air from the vents.

As we move items over from my parents' house and clear out our storage shed, we'll continue to piece together Chris' gameroom which will include updating the single light with a remote ceiling fan.

Do you have any bold colors in your home?

Stripes Make Me Smile

I'm loving the stripes that we just finished in our laundry room!

But while actually creating these stripes, we were doing anything but smiling.  I now know why people tend to do stripes in small rooms or on accent walls because it is so much work!

I'm not going to lie, I was ready to throw in the towel about 10 mins into this project as we struggled to figure out the spacing, number of stripes and getting the laser level to stick.

I have to give so much credit to Chris who soldiered on when I was ready to call it a night, putting up the majority of the tape around the room.

I was naive to think that we could knock this out in one night.  Once we were both off of work, and made a trip to home depot before heading over to the house it took us until 11 pm to finish the taping.  The worst part is that this room is so small and to do the stripes around the room we would have to close the door making it so hot!

Since Chris had to close the next night (our last night before the washer and dryer would be delivered), I went over and painted all of the stripes alone.  My dad had already painted over the original beige with Behr Ultra Pure White, and we decided on Juniper Ash for the stripes.  The painting was super easy, and I'm a little addicted to pulling off the tape so that was the part I looked forward to the most.

A couple of hours later and the room was ready and waiting for our new washer and dryer!

There are still some items we would like to do to this room.  I would like to change out the old school light and Chris is planning on creating a couple of shelves to go in place of the current one that has warped paint peeling from it.  

For now though, I'm just weirdly looking forward to doing the first real load of laundry.

Do you have any rooms with stripes?  If so is it a small room or accent wall?

Our First Night

What a busy weekend!!

After receiving our keys on Friday, I got to work making a list of things that we needed to get in order to stay the night at our house.  One of the more important items was to pick up an air mattress so we wouldn't have to sleep on the floor.

We hit up the grocery store to get some essentials like paper goods, toilet paper, bottled water and some ice for the cooler since the prior owners took their fridge with them.  We packed up both of our cars and headed over to the house, the excitement was finally starting to take over!

I drove up first, ready to pull into the garage and was greeted with junk blocking my way. When moving the box of leftover closet hangers and wood, we also found out that they left the trash cans completely filled so we won't be able to use it until our next trash day.  Throughout the house we learned that the sellers left several items, some good (a ladder, yard tools, fire extinguishers, light bulbs, instruction manuals), some not so great (broken lamps, old paint, old posters) and one with some potential - a large artificial Christmas tree! Once things die down a bit, I'm going to see how it looks before deciding if we get rid of it.

Once we dropped off our bags, we made our first of several runs to Home Depot.  I can't tell you how happy I am that the Home Depot and Lowes are only about 5 mins from our house!  We stocked up on some additional paint supplies, putty, shelf liners and a step stool before heading back in time for the pizza delivery.  (On a side note, I really like Domino's feature of ordering online early and setting it up for a later delivery time). Eating pizza the first night reminded me of my family's move from Pennsylvania to Texas, standing around our kitchen island enjoying some Pizza Hut before our camp out in our new house. We popped a bottle of Champagne and toasted to our first night.

After dinner on the floor (note to self - take some chairs over), we decided to start painting our dining room.  Thanks to Pinterest, the idea to paint the dining room half color and half white under the chair rail stuck in my head.  Chris was totally on board, so our overnight painting session was on!  We knocked out the white half first (Behr Ultra Pure White) before moving onto the bluish color on top.  Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the Behr paint, because it was a can of oops paint that I picked up for $7 over a year ago.

The dining room before

Just painting the white half gave the room a fresh feeling.

Although it was late, we decided to start on the blue half, finishing up around 1 am.  We called it a night since Chris had to work in the morning, and I finished the second coat on Saturday after hitting up Home Depot to color match the paint and get another gallon.

The iPhone doesn't really do the color justice, so I snapped a couple of shots with my DSLR on Sunday.

As you can see, the blue varies from different angles.  I finished up painting inside all of the windowsills on Sunday while Chris replaced two out of three of our toilets.  This was one of those fun unexpected to do items.  We noticed that the toilets were old and having a really hard time flushing simple toilet paper so we went ahead and purchased high efficiency replacements. 

Out with the old, 1 more to change out

And one more shot after the drops cloths were removed.

The room is still in progress as we have decided to paint over the beige ceiling.  Since we are planning on having professionals handle the painting in our 2 story main areas, we'll leave the vaulted dining room ceiling to the pros as well.  We also need to paint the doors that lead to the kitchen and the floorboard trim as the beige really sticks out next to the crisp white.  Now for a side by side comparison.

Chris and I both agree that painting has helped to feel like it's our home and not just someone else's house that we will be living in.  I was sore as anything after our first weekend of work, but I'm excited to work on other rooms before the movers are scheduled to come.

What did you do the first night/weekend in your home?

In Progress: Renovation Updates

New Paint!  New Floors!  New Fixtures!

We've been busy around the house with more renovations and I'm dying to share the finished products.  Unfortunately, getting to the after isn't as quick as we would like (a money tree would really help out!).  But, we're working it and slowly but surely we'll get there.

The Dining Room

Mom & Dad scored some great oops paint for the dining room, a nice grey with some green undertones.

That ladder is older than me!  When my parents purchased their first house in 1979, the previous owners left that ladder with the home.  After years and years of added height, it was finally time to replace it with a new one.

The Living Room

I always laughed at those commercials with the furniture slides, but those things really work!  

Via Amazon

Mom and I were able to move out the sofa, 2 love seats, glass coffee table & entertainment center all by ourselves.

Even with professional cleanings, 17 years of wear and tear makes for ugh carpet 

Now the room is ready for a major upgrade to laminate wood flooring!

In other news, I also had the chance to read through this very inspiring book!

I've have one or two (or 20) projects that I can't wait to try out!

Has your "in progress" phase of a project or renovation taken longer than you would like?