Living Room Color & Curtains

For the first few months, the empty, white walls of the house really bothered us psychologically.  Everything was really drab and lifeless.

This fabric inspired me for the living room:

The blue in this fabric would look nice from the kitchen, which was being painted a similar blue.  We were looking at greens and browns for the living room walls that would look nice with our dark brown furniture and lamps.  This fabric just jumped out to me as the perfect pattern.

We painted one side of the living room this green color.  It's dark, but in a room this size, it looks really nice. The other side of the living room is a neutral transition color.  We wanted each room on the first floor to be unique but flow together.

I found a curtain book that had a ton of great examples in it, and one of the tutorials explains how to make your own roman shades that actually draw up and down!  As soon as I saw this ivory-colored fabric with fleurs de lis on it, I knew that the fabric I was going to use for the panels would go really well with it.

I should write an entire post on the process of making roman shades!  I wish I had taken better pictures.  The good news is, I plan to make some for other rooms.  The first one was the most difficult, but it was a breeze after that.  I did one roman shade per weekend, and I did one of the four curtain panels early on to test my idea.  It took almost 8 weeks to finish the entire set of 3 roman shades and 4 curtain panels!

I watched and waited for Target to put the curtain rods that I wanted on sale.  I had to buy 4 of them!  My husband sawed off at least 10" from the length of each rod so that I could get this short appearance.  (He goofed up while hanging this rod, as you can see by the extra drill holes that I still need to patch up and paint over...)

I wanted to frame the windows without covering the windows... but I also wanted the ability to have privacy or full sunlight.  This design seemed to give me all of those things.  I can raise or lower the roman shades, and the curtain panels remain in place at all times.  

The patterns on both fabrics work well together, and I also found some wall art with fleurs de lis that pulls the entire theme together.  I even found a Scentsy warmer that coordinates!  (I love it when a plan comes together...)

Now, we both feel like I chose to hang the curtain rods a bit too high ... so there are 2 things we've considered doing.

1) We could take the roman shades down and re-install them in our master bedroom where there are 3 identical windows.  Then, we could make new roman shades that are external-mount (whereas these are internal-mount), and by making them about 8" longer (finished length), we could install them up closer to the curtain rods, but they would still open all the way down to the window sill.  This would really make the windows look huge!

OR,

2) We could use wood semi-circles/arches to cap each window and look like a window casing, which would decrease the amount of green between the rods and the top of the window and also add some character to the room.  We've never done this before, but it might be nice.

That's about it for the living room so far.  We have plans to replace the flooring (when we replace the kitchen flooring), create a family portrait collage on the long wall that has nothing on it so far (we need to update our family photos first though), and I know that my husband wants to organize the entertainment area because he can see cords! (Gasp!)

Now that the blog is pretty well caught up to where we are with the house, my next post will be on the project we're actually working on NOW (August 2013): the Master Closet and Vanity!

Kitchen Makeover and Upgrades

Months ago, one of my first posts was about my husband's project to tear down an entire wall that used to exist between our living room and kitchen.  He really opened up the floor plan, but the drywall is very obviously damaged and uneven under the paint that I rolled over them.

 I chose a blue for the kitchen because of this backsplash that I picked out and want to eventually install:

The blue also had to coordinate with the "hot chocolate" color of our pantry from certain angles, and it had to coordinate with whatever color we chose for our living room, since they now felt like one big space.

I will post better pictures of the green chosen for our living room and show how the blue of our kitchen also made its way into our living room curtain fabric choice, but I haven't posted about the living room makeover yet!

Besides painting, one of the first things we had to do was replace almost every appliance in the kitchen.  There was no oven.  There was no refrigerator, but we had brought the one from our old house.  The dishwasher didn't even function, and the microwave was a little sketchy.

We chose stainless steel appliances because we'd already started a trend toward stainless steel everything!  (I must have had the crockpot on with something yummy in it when I took this picture last winter...)

The plan is to one day stain all of these cabinets to a darker, richer maple color and to install a higher quality wood flooring also.  The flooring that is there now is very cheap laminate, damaged in many places, not installed correctly (boards are shifting everywhere!), and there are gaps between the floor and baseboards all the way around the room, creating places for dirt to pile and bugs to get in.  It's not good.

See how dirty the walls were?  And how incorrect the floor installation was?  There should at least be some quarter round pieces of wood there where the floor meets the baseboard.

The old cabinet hardware was a very shiny gold color and did NOT go well with my new stainless trend!  So, after making some decoration choices like curtain fabric and a few other things I'll show later, here's the new cabinet hardware... much more mellow:

We had to replace the kitchen sink, too.  It was very old, dirty, and shallow compared to what we had at our old house.

The sink we chose was found in the reduced-price section (like most elements of our new home thus far!).  I've always wanted one of those faucets that you can just pull off of the base, and I finally found one for a decent price!

The counter top was completely separated from the wall when we moved in.  Either it had not been installed correctly or it had been pulled free from the wall at some point.  That is still not fixed because we intend to replace the counter tops, once we can afford to.

The lighting above the kitchen sink was kinda plain and cheap.

This is actually the FIRST curtain fabric that I chose and ended up replacing because it just wasn't right.  You can see the new sink here, the blue paint color, and the single backsplace square that I bought for reference.  

We replaced the light with a stainless steel colored pendant, and I chose a different fabric with a simpler color palette and pattern.  This one has little birdies and leaves in it, which coordinates with the leaf pattern on our cabinet hardware.

I got some very inexpensive silver curtain rods for the sink window and the two windows on the back wall, sewed a very simple flat panel for each, and then hung them with silver ring clips.  Cake.

For our wedding anniversary in April, my husband found me these 2 coordinating gems:

An adorable ring holder and this framed keepsake commemorating our establishment as the awesome couple we are ...

We got rid of the blinds on the back door, mostly because they were stained badly and pretty yuck.  We did, however, keep the wooden blinds on the windows.  These are the only two windows in the house that have wooden blinds, and they're in great condition.

I intend to take that light fixture down just as soon as my husband finishes the recessed lighting project that he started months ago ... (Are you listening, honey?! Can we please get that finished before the holidays?!)

There's another Before picture of the kitchen where you can see the old light fixtures.

And here are some shots of the recessed lighting that my husband and brother-in-law installed, complete with dimmers!  I LOVE it!

There is a row above the main alley, a row above the center counter top, and there *will be* a third row above the dining table and backdoor area.

The only thing that I don't love about the lighting is the fact that each row has a light switch, but none of the light switches are next to each other, and their placement doesn't make sense either.  That's annoying, but otherwise, I love how I can control the way the room looks by turning on certain rows and dimming them.

A few months ago, we ended up having to replace the refrigerator, too.  It just couldn't keep up anymore, and our food was spoiling way too quickly.

The best picture that I have of the fridge is the one I took of our cat, seeking refuge from the Great Dane that we were fostering at the time.  Thanks to this hefty purchase, our plan to replace counter tops and install the backsplash has been put on hold.... <sad face/> ... I'm thankful for interest-free financing.

The kitchen is a work in progress.  The back door and window treatments, counter tops, flooring, cabinets, and the third row of lighting are all still to come, as well as decorative accents that I'm keeping my eye out for now that I have the birdie theme chosen.

On to the Living Room!

Phase 1: Master Closet Renovation with Vanity

I need a vanity!  Don't believe me?  Just look at how messy this bathroom counter can get!  And this is after I moved most of my products to a makeshift closet vanity...

*QUICK TEASER: Look at this awesome solid granite counter top that we got for 60% off its original special order price and that someone returned to Lowe's for some strange, insane reason!  I love it when people's expensive special orders find their way into my hands for a major discount!  I don't know when we'll get a chance to actually install it, but I am still really excited to have it ready when we do!  It's sparkly...

So, back to the fact that I need a vanity ....

I stole our older daughter's vanity/desk because she's rarely at the house and rarely used it anyway (she's my step-daughter and lives primarily with her mother).  I planned to build out my own vanity and also a double vanity for the girls' room at some point.  It only partially helped me get organized, as you can see from the picture.  This was only a temporary plan because I had my sights set on a Master Closet renovation, complete with Vanity!

Let's discuss all of the reasons that I hate this closet, shall we?

#1: I don't put clothing on shelves that low.  Do you know why?  My CATS, that's why.  It's like an invitation for their lazy, hairy selves.

#2: What woman wants to share a shoe rack with her husband?  And why do his get to go on top?

#3: I don't know many people who have closets this size, nor do most closets have freakishly large, gorgeous windows in them that provide natural light.  Why in the world would you build a SHOE shelf in front of one of those beautiful windows?

#4: Wire shelving.  This should really go up at #1, but I'm too lazy to change the numbers now, and if anyone actually reads my blog, they should know my personal vendetta against wire shelves already.

#5: Carpet funk, and why is it STICKY?!  There must have been a rug down with a sticky backing because it took months and multiple carpet cleanings for my bare feet to stop sticking to this carpet.  Talk about gross!

#6: There's just so much more that could be done with this space ... of course, I think that about every single room of the house, especially closets!  But seriously, look at the wasted space beneath the hanging clothes, above the hanging clothes, extra places to hang stuff that could actually be built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelves, etc.  Waste!

#7: There is nowhere in the master bathroom to store linens, toiletries, medicines, and other things people typically stuff into the bathroom closet or under the sink.  So this closet also needs to give us a way to efficiently store those things.  Right now, there are a few shelves devoted to that.  But I could do so much better....

Don't get me wrong... there are many great things about this closet.  But, my husband and I didn't buy this house to keep it as-is ... we bought it at a severely reduced price to fix it up and make it what we WANT.

We're just picky like that, I guess.

And so, this past weekend, we began to tear down all of that ridiculously-located shelving.

We found some high quality wood flooring on clearance at Lowe's for $20/box that someone had originally special-ordered for $129/box ... and then RETURNED it!  Again, we love it when this happens!  We have plenty of space in the basement to store all sorts of things until we're ready to start a new project with it.

But, in this case, I was dying to get my vanity put together because it's something I use every single day, and I was going nuts with all of the clutter.  So we decided to spend our fairly open weekend getting started!

I found this formica counter top piece at Lowe's on clearance for $30 and scooped it up for the vanity.  I flirted with a full-price white marble-looking counter top for double that price, but I was really trying to be diligent about staying on a budget.  It helped that my husband said he had a use for this counter top somewhere else if I changed my mind!  We'll see how this one looks once the vanity starts coming together.

I finally pulled the trigger on some purple paint that leans more toward the gray side than previous samples I had purchased (and slathered on parts of the wall ... you can see it in one of the pictures above ... that color was way too red).

Once my husband had all of the shelving taken down and stacked away, I was ready to get painting!

The plan was to paint MY part of the closet purple; not his.  We agreed on a blue for his part of the closet and a gray/silver transition color for the big wall that spans both and holds mostly my clothes.

I had to fill all of the giant, gaping holes from those stupid wire shelves first, but then I was free to trim.

Another big reason that my cluttered vanity situation wasn't working is that no power outlets existed back in my vanity area.  I had to get up and go use my hairdryer in the bathroom still.

But who has two thumbs and married an electrician??  This girl!  While I painted, he ran an outlet to that part of the closet for me.

I finished up late that night, just after my husband ripped out the nasty carpet (that we discovered my cat had been peeing on for a long time) and took down the baseboards so that he could lay the new flooring.

I really, really like the color!  A lot!

 After a couple of days passed (stupid life got in the way of our closet renovation!), it was time to begin laying the floor!

I did not participate in this part at all ... my husband did it all.

He did discover that we are 2 boxes short, though ... so that sucks.  I'm not sure how he goofed up the math, but I trusted that he had it right, and nope.  We have to find 2 more.

He stopped at about halfway, which is where my part of the closet turns into his part of the closet, which I hadn't painted yet.  Nor did he have the flooring to finish it anyway!

He did go ahead and rip out the carpet and take down the baseboards in the remainder of the closet, and in doing so, he learned that the previous homeowners had installed tile directly over linoleum in the bathroom!

< bathroom tile ... ^ linoleum under tile ... > wood sub-floor in closet

As my husband explained to me (yeah right, like I knew this before!), you first have to have cement board above the wood, which you then cover with the mortar, which you then lay the tiles into to make them stick, and then you go over the whole thing with grout to smooth the edges.  The cement board does 2 things:

1) It prevents moisture from getting underneath the title.  In a bathroom, I can see this being especially paramount.

2) It provides the mortar with something else to stick to under there.  Mortar would just slide around on the linoleum.  In fact, a giant crack in one of the tiles now makes a lot of sense ... because of how the tile is installed, it probably cracked very easily when some random object was dropped on it.

So this is how it all looks right now ...
The next step is to find more flooring.  I highly doubt we'll find it at $20/box, so I'm slightly less happy about that price now.  My husband can sugar-coat it all he wants by saying that we got 3 of the boxes for that price, but I would have preferred to get all 5 boxes for that price.  This girl likes to stick to the budget!

I am now in "Vanity Mode" ... I snagged a bunch of great things to up-cycle at Goodwill this weekend, and I have new spray paint, some cabinet drawer pulls, a few miscellaneous decorations and organizers, and some fabric swatches to play with for curtains...  I also have some white shelving that I bought from Target on sale months ago that need to get installed, plus the counter top for my vanity.  I haven't found a cute stool/chair yet, or a rug to accent and also protect the floor.  I still need to paint the baseboards, too.

Stay tuned for more progress as we lead up to the Big Reveal of our Master Closet, complete with Vanity!