DIY
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New front door
I got a new door! When we bought this house, I didn’t love the front door and I knew that eventually I would buy a new one. My front door had a couple of fun looks while I was waiting for the new one. First, it was the turquoise door. Then I painted it apple green. I was known as the house with the green door…seriously, that is how I described my house. It was hard to choose a new door, it was a big purchase, and I wanted to get it just right. We ended up choosing this door, and I love it! I was nervous about all…
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DIY wreath
We just finished our upstairs hallway and I have been having fun decorating and adding some accessories. I bought this hook originally to hold pictures, but I decided to put it in the hall and hang a wreath on it. I wanted something simple and without a lot of color. I looked all over for a wreath I liked, but I couldn’t find one. School is out and I have some extra time, so I decided to make one instead. I found these fun burlap flowers at JoAnns and I was excited. I am not fond of silk flowers, so these were just right for me. I got a grapevine…
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Mud Room
We are making progress on our main level. This past weekend we worked hard getting the new mud room ready for paint and tile. This room is right off the garage and use to be the laundry/computer desk/mudroom. We have moved our laundry room upstairs, the desk will be in the kitchen, and now I am going to have a for real mud room with cabinet lockers to store all the shoes, backpacks, coats….. Lets just say I am excited for this room! We painted this room the same notre dame gray that I used throughout the main living space of the house. I used the same vintage black and…
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Molding…tons of molding!
There has been a lot of work going on in our home the past few weeks. Lots and lots of painting! I love adding wainscoting to a room, but it is a lot of work. Cutting, sanding, caulking, priming, and painting two coats of white. But it is worth it! Here is a peek of how some of the rooms are coming along. Here is the family room the day we moved in. I am so so so over brown! We took out the harth and added some molding around the fireplace. We spray painted the brass grills on the fireplace and painted the whole wall white. This is our…
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Accent walls
We have still been working on finishing the main floor wainscoting this past week. We have the fireplace wall done…not painted, but framed out, and I love it! It started out a plain wall with just backer board nailed to it. We then measured, measured again, and measured again until we came up with the right dimensions for the molding. We ripped four inch MDF boards, measured again, and cut them to fit. Once the boards were ripped and cut we started assembling. It went pretty quickly at that point. We decided to trim around the fireplace with two inch boards. I want the wall to have a clean look…
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Creating some Columns
Over Christmas we demo’d some walls to make an opening for new columns for our staircase. Well, after finishing the wood upstairs, painting the stairway, and painting the upstairs and entry, we finally are making progress on the columns. We drew up some plans, and went to work covering the two by fours with MDF and backerboard. Both products paint up nicely. We measured how big we want the recessed panel to be, and ripped some MDF strips on the table saw. We brought them in, put them together, and then nailed them when we were happy with how the seams looked. We decided to build out the bottom with…
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My fun clock project
About twelve years ago my hubby built me a clock for Christmas. I love this clock, and have been looking for the perfect place to put it in our home. After we got the wood done in the upstairs hall, we decided the natural spot for the clock would be in the hall. I was so excited, the only problem was the paint color. The color that I had painted it matched the rooms in our old home, not this one. I am keeping the hallway pretty neutral, just black and white photos, even the chair in the landing is black and white. I knew I wanted a pop of…
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Wood
We have finished installing the wood upstairs. It looks amazing, and I am excited! Everywhere except the bedrooms has wood floor and it opens up the space making it feel warm and spacious. I chose a engineered acacia wood floor. I love the dark floors and light walls. It has been a lot of work…especially for my husband…but I am loving the results!
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How I re finished my stair railings
We’ve been busy around here lately. After we got the downstairs wall demo’d we started working on the stair railings. I knew the look I wanted, and knew it would take a lot of work. The original railings were a light oak and white. We are putting a dark acacia wood on the floor, so I wanted the top of my railings to match. We decided that instead of just painting the whole railing, we would try stripping off the varnish and stain and try re staining the wood. We used a citris stripper we found at Home Depot. We painted it on the wood top, waited the recommended time,…
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Master bedroom reveal
I am so excited to show my finished master bedroom. This was a fun transformation for us. Things came together easily, and I love the change the room gave to my home. Here are the before pictures. This room was a blank canvas. It had cream walls, an awful ceiling fan, and no personality. So we transformed the space. We painted the room the same color as the bathroom, painted the molding of the ceiling a paint color two shades lighter and painted the trim the ultra bright white we used through the whole house. We took down the crown molding and created some lower molding, installing LED lights behind…
- Colors, Crafts, Demo, DIY, Furniture, master bedroom, our house, Projects, re-purposed furniture, Rooms I've Created
My Ikea hack
So here I am again posting another fun thing from our bedroom. This is my first Ikea hack, and I am excited to share it. When we were first designing our room, we wanted some book shelves to go on either side of our fireplace. I found these at Ikea. They were just standard bookshelves stained a cream color. I knew I needed to paint them since the white clashed so bad with the white in my room. So we went to work painting them….the first time. A beautiful shade of deep gray. Notice, the gray is only on the insides. We did not use any primer or liquid sand…
- Colors, Crafts, Demo, DIY, Furniture, master bedroom, our house, Projects, re-purposed furniture, Rooms I've Created
Mixing some old with some new
December is over and January is a new month and a new year. December was a whirlwind for me this year, and although I got a lot done in my house, I didn’t get a lot done on my blog. We have been working on our master bedroom the past couple of months. My older post showed my room painted, and the ceiling painted as well. I painted the room Silver sage from Restoration hardware. I love the color, so calming and relaxing. One of the fun new additions I put in the room was a new fireplace. It is a real flame fireplace. It burns a real fire using…
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Half bath
So while we were doing our big master bath project, we decided to finish the half bath downstairs at the same time. This is the room before the demo. All I can say about it is EWWW! I have hated this room since the day we moved in. The paint was brown…I hate the color brown, the floors were wood which the toilet leaked on and made it smell great, and it was where all our guests went to use the restroom. Embarrassing right! So let’s just say, I was more than a little excited to demo this room! We ripped out everything including the floors. The room is small,…
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A little this and that
We are finished with the master bath project finally and have moved onto the master bedroom. Last Saturday Jeff and I looked at each other and said we should paint the room…just go for it, just like that. It only took a couple of hours and we had ourselves a beautifully painted bedroom. I couldn’t believe how quickly we got it done. I guess I was use to the bathroom project, long, messy, and labor intensive. Not at all, this was quick, and fun, and exciting. Here is the bedroom before paint. Just a plain white room with this funky ceiling treatment. We were originally thinking about putting up ceiling…
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Finish Master Bath Pictures
Finally…after almost three months my bathroom is done. I am so happy to have that room finished. This has been one of our hardest re models. I don’t know if it was because it was the start of school, or it was being up rooted and having my things in all different places in the house. I also know that I don’t deal well with messes, and this was a mess for quite a while. Anyway….here is the before… And here is the finished bathroom. I took a lot of different pictures. It is hard to photograph the room because of the orientation. I love how it turned out…very calming…
