a little more finished

So, last post I shared our new herringbone wood plank wall with you:

I mentioned that we also made more updates recently.  After getting the herringbone up, an architect friend (who has amazing taste and design skills and I trust immensely) suggested it was a little busy even with the (new) TV mounted.  We agreed and decided that our hemming and hawing over whether to purchase the doors for the bookcases was an easy choice - they needed to be bought, despite the fact that I painted the backs.  So, two days after Christmas my awesome hubby headed off on the 2.5 hour drive (each way!) to IKEA and came home with the doors.  

And, I was smitten.  

Obviously not finished.  We still need hardware, install the top for the middle unit (a beech butcher block top that we stained), trim out the sides, baseboards and crown.  Then we hope to continue moving on the board and batten on the blue & white walls.  It has been all moving quickly this winter, but we're also finally finishing the basement bathroom.  More on that in the coming days!  

I Heart Herringbone

I can't seem to keep up with regular word-y posts, but I keep getting messages asking about our basement floors and built-ins, so I figured I could update people with short-but-sweet, to-the-point posts.

We've actually done a ton since I last posted….finished the floors (but still not the trim), made huge progress on our basement bath and done some really fun stuff with the Besta built-in wall.

As a reminder, here's where we last left off with the wall:

And here it is after a recent update:

Hello gorgeous!  (Pardon the construction mess).  Yep, a herringbone wood plank wall.  More updates coming soon!  

plum brown

As if we didn't have enough going on after deciding to install hardwood flooring, I also decided on a whim to repaint the playroom (i.e., technically our formal dining, but we're not "formal dining" people, so....).  Actually, we repainted the master bedroom too, but that was always in the plans.  More on that later!

We had visited some friends in St. Louis last summer and their house is ah-mazing!  He is an architect and has an amazing eye for design as well, so I pretty much drool over every.single.thing about their home.

Just a couple of things in particular were 1) their floors and 2) their foyer color.  The foyer color was a rich, beautiful dark color - not quite purple, not quite brown.  It is a Sherwin Williams color called Plum Brown.  I grabbed a chip and compared it to our current color scheme to see how it played in.

Above you can see the plum brown next to our great room color (BM's Camouflage), and to the right our yet-to-be-painted master bedroom color (BM's Silver Half Dollar).  This color is also planned for the kitchen, and because of our open concept, I want them all to mesh well.  I love them all together, so I went ahead and purchased the paint.  After having painted with BM in our great room though, I went ahead and had BM color match it for me.

Going on, to say it was a little different was a HUGE understatement...

Sorry for the blurry photo.  Anyway, once it was up and dried I had this:

I LOVED it!  It was exactly what I was going for.  And yes, the baby sat (and slept) contentedly in that carseat while I painted almost the entire room.  

We've now lived with this color for a little while, and I can say that I still love it just as much as the first day.  The floors are dark also, remember, so I was looking forward to getting lighter furniture in the room, a rug and art on the walls to brighten things up.  After now having that done also, we want to brighten it further, so we've decided to go ahead and put board and batten on the walls in this room also, which will be good practice for the basement.  That being said, we haven't done anything to "finish" the moulding in this room in the meantime.  

What do you think?  Do you have any bold colors in your home? Where?  

picking the floors

Picking the floors for us was a long process. We actually started looking at flooring during the fall/winter of 2011.  We looked both online as well as in showrooms locally.  Ultimately we decided last year that it just wasn't the right time, so we held off.  Some of that has to do with our money choices, which I'll share more about some other time.

One benefit of shopping local was service and the ability to see nice big samples that they would let us take home and return.  The samples were always a nice large size, so you could get a good feel for the flooring in your space.  Downside?  Price.  The prices locally were always far larger than online for similar woods (and in some case, the same wood).

The site we focusing our online shopping on was BuildDirect.  I first learned of this site when Dana over at HouseTweaking used it in her Underdog house.  I loved the look of her floors (see here), but felt that birch wouldn't hold up well to our three (two at the time we first started shopping) kids, one (two at the time!) dog and cat. We wanted something harder, more substantial, more dense.  What I loved about it was they would send you samples - as many as five - for free.  You could order more than five, but then just have to pay shipping.  Over the course of the two winters we were shopping we ordered LOTS of samples.

Once we were more seriously shopping it helped that Dana did a "how are they holding up" type post about her floors.  It was good to be able to go read about how she felt about the floors after living with them for a while, and honestly it sold us on BuildDirect even more.

Long story short, after looking at the samples, considering colors, and giving them all a "scratch and dent" test, and considering pros/cons of hardwood vs engineered, we opted for this maple coffee flooring from BuildDirect.

I never actually took any pictures of the sample we ended up choosing but did snap this pic once night after the flooring was here, acclimating and we were still prepping the surface:

If you look at the link to the flooring, you can also see beautiful variation in it, even though the overall color is quite dark.  

Next up, install!  

loooooonnnnnngggg break

Wow!  Did I drop off the face of the planet or what?  Meanwhile the pageviews on the blog have been crazy!  It turns out IKEA built-ins and painting a basement floor are popular projects.

SO much is going on here. I had a baby!

Isn't she lovely?  Harper Sage.  Born 4 hours after my water broke and was (surprise!) breech.  That was fun - though I strongly credit the fact that I do CrossFit with not having to push for very long.  Of course she's 5 months now and still sweet as can be.

And we're also going crazy with house projects.  I'll pick back up here but leave you with this teaser:

Yep, the carpet's coming out and floors are going in!  What a long process from start to finish - from picking the flooring to install (yes, we're doing them ourselves).  We're currently on day 52 of the install, but who's counting....

Back with details on how we picked the flooring next!

post party and living room update!

Well, here we are.  July 8th already and the party is obviously over.  It was awesome and we all had a blast.  It was so great to have all our family and friends over and celebrate with the kids and make them feel so special and loved.  I'll share pics from the party soon (I went with a rainbow theme and made a rainbow cake!).


In the meantime, I'll quickly address the birthday list.  Of the 18 items on that list, I made it through 9 of them.  Wop wop....  Oh well, what can you do?  Chalk it up to the usual for me, slightly overzealous with my list-making, but underestimating the time for each and time available for projects.  At the time I was coaching 4 days a week (currently back down to 3) and that coupled with my regular duties of full-time mom, the Etsy shop, etc. just made the rest hard.  But, I'm making my way through the rest and a few new items as well!  I'll post a few of those items soon (new sun shade anyone?).


In the meantime, here's some updated pics of the living room!  Finally you get to see the transformation of the new paint color, as well as the new mirror I added to the space!

Hello kitty! 

the new mirror!

notice this side doesn't have the back painted?

I've since made some changes to this, and it obviously wasn't' filled back in yet also.

I love love *love* the new color.  It's everything I've been wanting - it is a fresh look, it's still neutral, it's a cool color but definitely has warmth to it, and it really seemed to brighten up the space.  This was also my first time painting with Benjamin Moore paints and they are *totally* worth the extra cost in my opinion.  Everything went on in one coat even around the trim work, which almost always needs a second coat.  We'll definitely be using it again!

I also LOVE the new mirror.  I totally broke down and splurged on that one.  I had seen the mirror in Centsational Girls living room.  It was a mirror she had picked up from Lamps Plus and then painted white, which was my plan all along.  Once the mirror arrived and I saw how perfectly it went with the tile on the fireplace I decided to leave it.  

So, where am I in this room?  I need to:

• finish painting the other bookcase (this is actually done already!)
• finish the curtains (oh boy, do I have a story on that one for ya!)
• finish styling the bookcases
• move the family photo to another wall and add a gallery of frames
• add a new piece of art in the old photo space
• add some personal touches to the foyer
• add some color!

Other than the splurge for the mirror, I'm really trying to do this room on the cheap, so I'm working with what I have and as much as it would be nice to buy new furniture pieces, etc, it's just not part of my plan, so it might happen slowly and will surely evolve over time.  I'll talk about the financial aspect of our spending/decisions in a post soon!  

the birthday list

It's been a few weeks.  Summer....the time of relaxation and more flexible schedules, right?  Ha!  Around here summer hit and things went crazy!  Between out of town trips for the hubs, and just juggling our already crazy schedule (my coaching, Noah's Tball and gymnastics, etc.) time for blogging just got away from me.

Another reason?  It's now June.  What is perpetually the craziest month of our year.  Both kids' birthdays, friend birthday parties, garden prep, house projects galore (that we're always trying to get done before the party, etc.).  So, without further ado, I thought I'd share the "pre-birthday party" list with you.  We've actually been crossing stuff off the list - I just haven't blogged about them yet!  Good news is that I do have stuff to share!

The Pre-Birthday Party List:

1. Deck - clean and scrub down
2. Gazebo sun shade (mostly done - a little clean-up to do)
3. Flowers outside
4. AC/Mulch area (just needs to be de-weeded and cleaned up a bit)
5. Carpets cleaned (appt scheduled!)
6. Paint family room
7. Paint back of bookshelves
8. Curtains (fabric samples ordered...decided to go another route)
9. Deep cleaning
10. Pictures hung and updated
11. Lilah's dresser (might get pushed to the back burner because I had to add #14 thanks to miss Lilah)
12. Baby clothes (we have bags given to us from friends since we got rid of a lot of our infant stuff)
13. Rearrange attic (closely tied to #12)
14. Lilah's nightstand (um, she decided to draw all over it with non-washable red marker. Did I mention that it's white?)
15. Laundry room curtain
16. Touch up playroom paint
17. Touch up kitchen paint
18. Touch up trim work

Some of these might be a miracle, to be honest, but this is typically how DIY goes, doesn't it?  Big lists and dreams and schedules that always take longer than we thought.  :-)  Back soon with some finished projects!