#littleray has a nursery

Our Christmas break was full of fun and family and productivity this year! It was so nice to have a whole week home with Rob and our little guy. Although we took turns being sick throughout the week we still enjoyed plenty of time with our families celebrating Christ's birth, a wedding, and the new year! 

Last night we finished littleray's nursery. It's a great feeling to walk by and see it completed. We are ready for him any time now! We can't believe that the time has come so quickly and we are in the final weeks of eagerly awaiting his arrival. 

This space came together just as we had imagined it would and we love it! 

We talked in a previous post about our ideas and color scheme but we still weren't sure where everything would end up and how it would come together. We changed a couple of our original ideas, but that's par for the course whenever we decorate a room!

First of all, let me say that painting with such a dark color of green is a bit scary! It ended up looking lush and lovely but it required two (thick) coats and after the first coat I was, admittedly, shaking in my slippers. It's weird to see that intense color rolled onto a white wall! I almost shied away but I'm glad I rolled with it (pun intended!)

The dark green adds a nice intensity to the room that is otherwise pretty light and bright. I decided to keep the branch hanging lighter so that it would pop off the wall. By using a yarn with variation in color I was able to keep it looking a little more "natural"; I chose to leave the bottom uneven for the same reason. We know that it might not be able to live above the crib forever - once littleray has grabby hands - but for now it creates a pretty and rustic picture! 

  

Opposite the crib are littleray's cabinet and changing table. We are thankful that we can use these pieces for little clothes and baby items and keep the small closet for toys and older boy clothing storage. It's nice to have all the little clothes kept behind closed doors and in drawers because even though they are caaaaaute, they can tend to look a bit messy. 

   

We wanted the room to holler 'boy' while still holding to our neutral tone from our first son's room. By mixing hard and soft patterns with warm and cool tones, I think we accomplished our goal. This fun yellow/lime chair adds brightness to this windowed cubby along the same wall as the crib and it's oh-so-comfy! We opted for soft watercolors paired with a heavy metallic arrow so neither would feel too prominent. The top watercolor will have littleray's name once he is born, but for now it will be blank until we make our announcement! 

   

On the other side of the crib, across the room from the comfy chair, there are cute little stuffed animal mounts alongside our favorite saying. Our first son has this saying in his room too and we thought it was perfect to have both our boys know that we love them to the moon and back! The wall mounted animals are from target's fall collection, I think I ended up grabbing them for less than $5 each on sale which is always a perk when decorating a room! You can see above that there is also a mounted stuffed bear near the comfy chair in the picture above, I thought they were too sweet to pass up!

We decided to skip the mountain shelf that we mentioned in our ideas post. It would have lived where the watercolors are now so we thought it would get a little crowded and displace already existing items. Didn't seem worth it to make something from scratch when we already had the goods to fill the space. We are also waiting on the crib skirt to be delivered (thank you amazon!) and then we will be 100% done with this room. We are so thankful for the generosity and love people have shown for this baby boy already, we all can't wait to meet him!! 

SHOP THIS ROOM:

{Paint} Glidden Universal Grey and Hunter Green

{Crib Sheets} Target

{Crib Skirt} Dwell Studio

{Pillows} Tootie and Tallulah's

{Rug} Home Goods

{Grey Handled Baskets} Home Goods

{Grey Geometric Baskets} Target

{Watercolor Prints} Home Goods

{Metallic Arrow} Home Goods

{Bear Head Mount} Target Similar Product 

{Love You To Moon and Back} Tootie and Tallulah's

{Crib/Changing Table/Dresser/Shelving} Bellini (Ours are secondhand but the company makes other beautiful pieces!)

*This post includes affiliate links. We were not paid to say anything nice about these products we just like these things and want you to know where you can get them too! 

Two Weeks turned Two Months (and counting!)

Oh boy, when they say "allow more time than anticipated for larger projects" they aren't kidding (whoever they are). After seeing our house for the first time we assumed we would leave the kitchen in a very similar state for a long time. As you can see in the pictures below, it wasn't too bad at first glance. Upon moving in we decided to simply do some cosmetic upgrades to cover up the current look by painting cupboards, replacing the weird vinyl floor and eventually replacing countertops. [We replaced the cooktop immediately, you can read about that here!]

   

Well, we started those projects... I got to painting the cupboards before our things were even moved in and while it's not my favorite project ever, it's definitely a doable one with some patience. They turned out nicely and seemed to update the space significantly. 

      

Even after we were feeling settled into the house and the cabinets were starting to take shape with their new color, it just didn't feel right. We didn't like how obviously painted they looked when they were open - as the inside of the cupboards remained the original wood color while the fronts and doors had been painted. You can also see above that we were dealing with a really nice countertop and flooring (can you sense the sarcasm?). Altogether it just wasn't right and felt like a bandaid instead of a solution. 

After living for months with half painted cabinets while we made some decisions about the space, we chose to purchase new countertops and complete the painting. Off to Ikea we went where it just so happened the solid wood butcher-block color that we wanted was 50% off. We were off to a great start when it came to the kitchen budget. We has previously purchased flooring on sale and now this! What a cheap renovation! Are you scoffing at our naiveté yet?

   

While at Ikea we noticed one of their room displays that was as close as I could possibly imagine to a dream kitchen. It had the big farmhouse sink (that was proving to be impossible to install in our current cabinets) and the grey color scheme; to us it was dreamy! We figured it would be fun to use their 3D kitchen layout planner to see what the cost would be and then make an educated decision based on price and not emotion. Home we went (with countertops in tow since they would be part of the plan no matter what) and we used nap time to plan out our kitchen cabinet swap. It ended up being something that we could afford and with a sale/promotion they had going, it was more cost effective than usual.

So there we were a couple days later, in Ikea making the biggest house purchase we'd ever made. We were so excited! After all, how hard could it be to demo the existing cabinets and replace them with the new ones! You can scoff again. Swapping was our goal, but when cabinets were delivered and we started demo we realized it just wasn't our reality.

   

Stay tuned for the next steps in this "two week" turned two month project!

**Spoiler: This story has a happy and beautiful *swoon* ending!

You spin me right Round Room, right round

After almost two months of walking by the paint swatches I had tested on the walls, I finally buckled down this past weekend and (nearly) finished the Round Room. We will come up with a better name for it at some point but for now, we'll stick with it. 

This room was beat up. There were scuff marks and weird discolorations all over. It was pretty overwhelming considering the entire room is approximately 10x10. We're honestly not sure how this room was utilized by the previous owners but it seems to have been used a lot. Please don't judge the fact that we lived with it in this state for 4 months before painting; neither of us wanted to do anything twice. 

    

I painted this room using a Sherwin Williams paint that I picked up from a mom2mom sale on Facebook for a whopping $5. It wasn't a full gallon but there was plenty to paint this size room and there is plenty left. It was very close to the color I had wanted so considering I saved about $40, I went for it. As I said above, I would consider this room nearly finished because it still needs a quick coat of white on the trim and ceiling! I didn't do that this time because I wanted it to feel settled after the weekend.

   

These are opposite angles of the same windowed wall but you can still see how much brighter the whole room looks with a cooler color. Not to mention the new windows that we had installed. WOW. What a difference a whole new house of windows makes. The old ones were 100 year old original, single pane wooden windows. They had been painted over quite a few times and they were impossible to get clean. Out with the old and in with the shiny, bright and new!!

   

The view from this room to the living room is also much nicer now. The coolness in this space and the warmer tones in the living room play well together. There are some elements that we crossed over (dark wood, modern but soft art, and patterned rugs) so that the adjoining rooms wouldn't look bizarre when pictured or viewed together. I think we accomplished the general mission! 

This is one of my favorite walls in the house. I am a sucker for succulents (pun intended) and though I am pretty decent at keeping them alive, I opted for some artificial pieces for this wall. I think the geometric shapes of the planters and the softness of the print tie in very well together. There is also a small glass urn terrarium that I put together a while back sitting on the buffet - I'll post how I did that another time. 

This is my favorite room so far. It ties in nicely with our Dining Room and when the "den" and kitchen are completed (hopefully soon) there will be a very nice flow throughout the main floor of the house! 

Expanding

Apologies for our delay in posting. Since our last post on Mother's Day we took a little break from house projects (after a whirlwind weekend of work on the Dining Room) and then found out that we were going to be parents AGAIN.

We made our official announcement on the Fourth of July which was pretty fun! Good timing and a clever announcement by Rob!

From the time we found out in late May until about a week ago, I wasn't feeling so hot. Nothing as severe as some women have had (thank God and bless those sweet mommas) but definitely enough ookiness to not want to tackle DIY projects.

Now that I'm over the first trimester hurdle and regaining some energy for more than everyday stuff, we are making lists again. Oh, how I love lists!! (where's the heart eye emoji when you need it!)

Here's what we have up our sleeves and what we hope to accomplish before this baby comes in January!!

• install new kitchen cabinets and countertops
• new flooring in kitchen
• shiplap in kitchen
• paint den/desk area
• paint "round room"
• paint foyer and stairwell
• replace staircase runner (if time allows)
• paint playroom attached to Big Brother's room
• paint new nursery

We will be busy but it will be nice to get a lot of this done before there is also a big baby belly in the game as well! 

Be Our Guest!

A house starts to feel like a home when the dining room comes together. We don't always eat in the dining room but once it's finished it makes us feel like people can come in and eat and we can spend time together!

No joke, as I was adding this gif, Be Our Guest came on Pandora!!

We changed our vision about this room when we moved into this house (see our former dining room here for a comparison). Almost everything is new (to us) and our only overlap is a rug from our old living room. We decided to host Mother's Day this year which was a great motivation to get everything finished! Other parts of the house are still in disarray or aren't in their final stage, but it feels great to have made this progress.

Painting a house is way different when you have a 1.5 year old running around. We used to be able to spend a whole day working on a project; now, we can't do that and we don't really want to. Things are taking a lot longer this time around but it's also giving us a ton of time to enjoy the new house with our family and make thoughtful decisions about what we are going to do with our new spaces.

We chose a color scheme for this house before we even moved in and for the most part it has stuck. When we chose the dining room color we knew we were heading in a whole new direction from last time. Darker walls with our lighter original wood floors seemed more modern to us and anything was going to be better than the raspberry walls we walked into. We wanted the dining room to be a bit more industrial farmhouse than its previous traditional feel.

           

One day on Facebook, I came across a table that Rob and I loved on a resale group. $100 for a farmhouse table and three metal bistro chairs? Yes please! It was such a great deal. I got the other four chairs from a resale group online as well, I am telling you it's so fun to hunt and it's awesome when a good deal comes around!

We made the decision to take the knick knack size shelves out of the cubby and use it for a larger statement piece and we are super glad we did. We didn't have anything for this new space so we had to shop (bummer, right?!) but I was pleasantly surprised that upon my first visit to TJMaxx I found this perfect mirror for under $30! The two trays in this area were also a purchase from the same trip and were 25% the cost they usually are at non-discount stores. TJMaxx (and resale groups) for the win!

     

We are super happy with the way this room has turned out. It is the front of the house so you can see it from outside and it makes the whole house look more updated in and out!

If you are reading this thinking "all they had to do was paint" let me get into the real "fun." This house is 100 years old and the "fixes" people decided to do in the past were really half-hearted and annoying. There were 12 sinkers in the walls of this one room ranging from normal to what-needed-that-much-support and more nail holes than we bothered counting. In the cubby there were another seven sinkers/shelf!! What were they putting on these shelves? They also (under an unknown number of paint layers) caulked the cubby shelves which made it super fun to repair. I think we spent more time working on smoothing the walls than we did actually painting. We are happy we spent the time to do it right though, no old nail holes makes for a much cleaner look!

We will be back with more updates soon! We made a lot of progress this weekend while the kiddo spent some time with Grandma and we had a fabulous Mother's Day with our awesome family!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mom-hearted women out there. You are all amazing!

History Is Repeating And We Wish It Wouldn't

So in our first home, within weeks of moving in we had some issues with our dryer smelling like a campfire. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, just a filthy dryer vent that needed a cleaning and it was back to new. Unfortunately, history has repeated itself at our new house and this problem didn't have such an easy fix. 

The good thing was that we learned from the first house issue. When we put the first load of wash into the dryer here at the new house, we hung out for a bit and made sure to keep our noses alert and boy, are we glad that we did! After less than 10 minutes the basement started to stink like burning fibers. Not exactly what you hope to smell. 

We switched the dryer off and immediately pulled it away from the wall. Oh my, we couldn't really believe our eyes. The problem was obvious. The gas line (a problem in itself but we'll get to that later) had rubbed through the foil accordion-type tube leading to the solid vent. Because of this hole, there was a thick layer of lint on everything behind the washer and dryer. 

      

These pictures don't honestly do the thick layer of lint justice but I will tell you that I could peel the lint off the floor in 1+ inch thick sheets. Yuck!

After scraping the floor and vacuuming up what was loose on the walls and back of the machines we left both machines unplugged until the professionals could come in to look at the issue. Here's what they came up with: the dryer vent had  too many right angles on the way to the exterior vent. The more right angles in a vent, the more chance for lint to get stuck and problems to happen. We had to re-route the vent and in order to do that, had to take out some drywall and the cabinet above the washer and dryer. Rob was channeling Chip Gaines on demo day! 

   

   

Of course the first space we broke into was where the water lines were running (something you wouldn't know by the exposed pipes - another weird choice) and so we had to move over and break into the next section. The insulation came out and the ceiling also had to be exposed to move the gas line. The professionals moved the dryer vent into the space where you can see the insulation above and they moved the exit point on the outside of the house as well. Now there are only two turns (as per usual) and it's a solid pipe so there are less places for lint to get caught. The professional said that it was a miracle a fire hadn't started because it was clearly used for a long time with the broken vent. 

We still need to have the gas line rerouted so it isn't as long as it is now (something to look forward to... ha!). This house is proving to need quite a bit of work to say the least, but we LOVE this house and are having a fun time making it our own!

Until next time, thanks for catching up!

A new space for our growing boy!

The first room in the house to get cleaned, painted, refinished floors and decorated was our little guy's room. It feels a little less nursery than before but since he is still in his crib and we are in complete denial that he is growing up we are still rocking the original nursery vibe. 

I started by painting all the trim in his room the day we closed. It was a super high priority for us to get our buddy's room done before we moved in so that he could have a smooth transition to the new house. Everything in this house is dingy and needs a good scrub and we are pretty sure that every wall is painted with flat paint which makes everything look dull. By putting a coat of semi-gloss on the trim, baseboards and windows we brightened everything up a bit. We also used satin paint on the walls to make them scrubbable and durable for little boy dirt! 

   

As you can see things get a little weird after a long day of closing and starting projects! Nothing like a painting selfie to keep you going. You can (kind of) see in the picture on the left above the difference between our fresh semi-gloss white and the flat white. In person, it's pretty obvious.  

After painting the trim, I went around and edged in the room. I don't like to tape off rooms cause I think it just takes too long so I spent a little extra time being careful when I edged with my favorite shorty brush* to get a clean edge. Rob came in while I was putting my second coat on the edging the rolled the walls. Teamwork makes the dream work people. 

We chose to go a shade lighter than his room in our 1st house because it was going to be covering the whole wall. At the other house there was wainscoting in his room which supported the darker grey. The difference in lighting between the old house pictures and new house makes the color look super similar but there is a difference, promise! 

After some decisions about what goes where and how we wanted to maximize his space we ended up with another sweet space for our boy. We love the windows and how sunny his room gets. After having his room up in our bungalow's second floor (the cave room) we are loving the brightness! The curtains on the larger window are no longer tied, we were just trying to "train" them to stay open. Blackout curtains are so thick!

   

There is a whole other view to this room facing towards the camera that we will be posting soon along with the little dude's playroom pictures! Keep your eye out! 

*This post includes an affiliate link. We were not paid to say anything nice about this product, Lindsey just loves it!

A Closing Day Post on Opening Day

We are in! We got our keys last Thursday morning. It was so dark, it felt like evening and yet we were walking on sunshine. We were so happy to be getting the keys to our new house and start the projects we had been planning.

After meeting our realtor at the house for a final walk through, along with Rob's mom who was going to watch our boy for the day, we took an obligatory "first" picture at the new house and off to the closing we went. It was fairly simple and straightforward. We got to meet the people who were selling us the house and they were lovely. They told us about the neighborhood and how fun halloween is and our excitement grew! At the end of the meeting we parted ways with them and our wonderful realtor and headed over to the new house, cars full of supplies and work clothes at the ready!

When we got to the house we were trying to decide where to start. Rob decided to start by taking pictures of the whole house while it was empty to really get a true "before" image. When he was in the kitchen we started to fool around with the appliances. Microwave, refrigerator and oven appeared to be brand new, with stickers still inside the fridge! The cooktop looked used and dated so we knew we would replace it eventually but hoped we could use it as is for a while. Well, we tried all the burners and only one actually works. We were bummed cause it's a fairly costly item to replace but for that moment we pushed it to the back of our minds and hoped it would be our only hiccup. Dishwasher: we saw there was some leftover soap from a previous load so we decided to run it to clear that out. It wouldn't start. Actually, it did "start" but it made a horrible noise and no water was running. We pulled the dishwasher out (not fun or easy because the floor had only been laid up to the appliance, not underneath. A word of warning for future DIYers: this makes removing appliances very difficult!), made sure the connections were solid and the water was on and still nothing. Great, now we need two appliances right off the bat.

We headed out to lunch pretty feeling pretty "blah" that we had to spend this kind of money right away (on things we thought worked) and sat down at Panera ready to research prices and options. We landed on Home Depot. They aren't usually our first choice for big purchases but with a coupon we had and a sale they had running we were able to get a nice gas Whirlpool cooktop (pictured below) for a great price and it will be delivered on the 12th! yay! For now we cook with one burner! 

For some reason, we chose not to get a dishwasher while we were there and boy are we glad we didn't. Turns out, the water valve handle wasn't actually turning the valve. A plumber only charged us $45 for the inspection and the "fix" and it's literally like new! We're thrilled, to say the least, not to have to spend that money! 

The rest of our closing day went pretty smoothly! Rob worked on taking the kitchen cupboards apart (more on that later) while I edged in and painted our little guy's room. We got a visit from Rob's parents and our buddy and the dogs got to play in their new yard.

We also met some of our neighbors and have realized quickly that the world is pretty small! "Howdy Neighbors!" Some of them also have chickens which is super awesome and we've already been given half a dozen yummy fresh eggs and had one of them visit our front yard!

a place to sit

Rob once again brought one of my visions to life! It was a little different working on a project with a six month old around the house so most of the construction and work fell on Rob who did a great job! 

In our small house we have to be creative when it comes to our use of space! Our kitchen is one of the places we were a little uncomfortable in because there was no space to sit while we were in there together, feeding the babe or making dinner. We also don't have a lot of storage in our small kitchen and there are some items that we have to bring up from the basement every time we want to use them (read: crockpot, griddle, dutch oven)

Out of this, came the idea to add an eat in area to the kitchen. A bench was the original idea and after looking through lots of ideas we decided to put forth a little extra effort and make it into a storage area - imagine how thrilled Rob was that my plan kept getting more and more grand haha! 

I'll post the "step by step" below but will not include measurements because each space is different anyway! If anyone would like more details - please contact us!

Materials:
- 2 sheets of plywood
- 6, 8ft 2x4's
- 1, 1x4 (poplar)
- 2 Piano Hinges
- tack nails
- wood screws
- wood glue
- stain
- polycrylic

We removed the existing moulding where the bench would be installed so it would be flush against the wall. 

Using 2x4's that were measured and cut appropriately, Rob laid the base of the bench - we laid a base instead of trimming in the sides in order to end up with the most storage space we could get. 

Once the base was laid, Rob cut one of the sheets of plywood down and installed it as the floor of the storage compartment. 

Next, Rob built in the vertical and horizontal supports on the back walls. There wasn't a great need to measure the distance between vertical supports because the project wasn't very large - we would recommend every 18-24 inches if the project is larger. 

Rob then screwed in the plywood "fronts" of the bench so the final supports would have something to be secured to.

In this picture you can see where Rob installed the cross supports behind the front walls of the bench, again this was a decision we made based on the size of the project. We decided that adding wood in the corner to make a square would create the best support for that space since the lid would not be lifting there. 

The smaller pieces of wood (the poplar that we had ripped) was cut to be the part of the lid that goes against the wall. We needed to add something that the hinges could connect to.

Once everything was cut to fit, I stained the lids and poplar back boards. I decided three coats was the magic number and gave me the color I wanted. I let it dry for 24 hours before we installed. 

Before installing the lids (while the stain was drying) I painted the fronts with white, kitchen grade paint and stained the tops of the frame with the same color as the lids so that the seams would be less visible. 

We started the the process of laying down the lid by glueing and then tacking in those poplar boards along the walls. Then we installed the corner square of the lid (again with glue and tack nails). It was all easy peasy and fitting nicely. 

Then came time for the hinged tops to be installed. Let me tell you, PIANO HINGES ARE THE WORST. We centered and screwed them into the lifting lids first because we wouldn't have been able to get to them otherwise. Can you imagine how exciting it was to hold a large wooden lid level and have someone else try to screw it in at the same time? It was thrilling. We just had to get one screw in on each end and then Rob could handle the rest - never have two screws been more difficult! 

Overall it was a pretty simple project and we are so proud of the result! Rob did an awesome job and it looks better than I could have imagined! We still need to install the finishes on the face but I'm not sure what I want it to look like so we will leave that unfinished for a while. 

It's been so nice to have baby boy's big high chair stand out of the way. Now that we are able to put that actually seat right on the bench, we save lots of space in the kitchen!