Updates!

Well, it's been a long time since I updated this little blog.  Life's been more than a bit busy.  But I'm going to give you a little peek into what the house looks like today.

Living Room Before:

And living room today:

The mirror came from the Darling Octopus stash.  I painted it and had it installed. We just had the book cases built this spring and I spent the first part of the summer break painting them. They make me ridiculously happy.  So much so, here are more pictures.

    

For the longest time, we did not have a TV in the living room but have recently brought it down.  It needed a pice of furniture to set upon.  I had this dresser and painted it with chalk paint.  I'm tickled with how it turned it out.

Here's the kitchen before:

That horrific yellow backsplash is an ancient laminate that extends up behind the upper cabinets and I've lived with it for seven years.  I got sick of it but wasn't ready to rip out the kitchen to redo it.  So, I picked up a roll of paintable headboard wallpaper and covered it all up.  Painted it all to match the rest of the kitchen (BM silver sage in semi gloss). Wish I had done it years ago. And what it looks like today:

I did the backsplash last year after becoming thoroughly sick of looking at the backer board.  It's a collection of talevera tile and my own glasswork.

Here are a couple of close ups.

























Here is that terrible image of the stairwell as we did the first walk through:

And here it is today:

This was the door to the terrace on the left and door to the jack and jill bath on the right.  The bath is gone and in that corner, we built a walk in closet.  I finally painted it this summer.  

And now the interior of the closet:

The master bedroom is still a work in progress but I've finally ordered some window blinds that should be here this week.  Yes, to my eternal shame, we still have paper shades up in the bedroom.  But, I did have something special put up.

So, here is the back corner in all it's original glory. That little closet was demo'd and that whole back wall taken out:

And here it is today:

I adore this wallpaper mural.  love love love love love it.  So much so that I am willing to show it with my messy, unmade bed.  It's from Anthropologie.  And it's glorious.  

So, that's the latest haps.  As I get more pics taken, I will try to post more. No promises though.

Little Bedroom Redo

The room across from our master isn't one that is easy to take pictures of because it's so small.  Like 6x9 small.  It's a room we've ignored for years as we haven't needed it.  We need it now, so the same weekend we did the mini-kitchen update, we did this bedroom as well.  When we first moved it, most of the room was taken up by a cedar closet which made the room functionally unusable so we promptly demolished.

Most of the plaster had been taken down and the room lived like this for a very long time.  At one point, we slapped up some hideous paneling to pass a refi inspection.

In the initial renovations four years ago, we demolished a linen closet at the end of the hall in order to capture the space for the bedroom closet.  We build decent sized closets in all three bedrooms.  So, in the picture directly above, you're looking at the back of the old doorway that is now covered in drywall.

My same wonderful friends who installed my kitchen also finished up the demo of the plaster and installed all the drywall to get this room ready.

 I and another friend were in charge of mudding which was a new experience for me.  It's hardly a perfect job, but it's not any worse than the job I paid a bunch of doofy guys to do four years ago.  And I work a lot cheaper.  

 Window moldings were in very rough shape and the sill broken.  I have my wonderful handy woman scheduled to come do that work mid August.  

 This door backs up to the hall bath, so we had to build an access panel to get to the plumbing to the tub.  

Today, I have a handy man coming to build shelves on the left side of this closet to act as a linen closet of sorts. Outside the closet, tT\he doorway will be framed out in shelving units that will be built in to give this small room added storage.

See how the closet bumps back from the doorway.  That's the area that will be filled with shelving that will be trimmed out and painted white.  Maybe a fun color on the back side....

 So, once the mudding was done, it was time to paint.  Some people go out and buy samples or pick up swatches and paste them all over and look at them and mull them over and see them in different times of day and all of that.  Not me, or at least, not always.  Nope, walked into Lowes, picked out three or four colors, decided on one I liked and had them mix me up two cans of flat paint. 

 It's Valspar's Woodlawn Sterling Blue and it doesn't photograph well at all.  It's a lovely blue green grey color, very pale, and changes with the light.  I think it will be great once I get all the trim painted a bright white.  

 The window over the transom will be replaced with glass that I made.  In fact, that's down in the basement with a coat of paint drying on it.  I'll try to remember to take pictures of it tomorrow when I flip it to paint the other side.

 All the doors to the hallway are going black.  The hallway is a deep grey color and the doors look really rich with the white trim.  The inside of the door will by the BM Simply White that goes throughout the house.  I love that crispness against the muted earth tones that I adore.  I'll take pics while the shelves are going in today and try to post a final tomorrow.