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!

bookcase shuffle

The family room bookcase before:

And now after:

Meanwhile, all the books, pictures, etc were transferred to the basement shelves (which have finally been installed).  Nothing is permanent, because I now need to go through everything and get things better organized, displayed, etc.  And the painting of the family room will resume this week, so we'll get to see the two new colors together, instead of the one new color (bookcase) and the one old color (beige).  

upstairs hallway: before

Short post today, but just a couple of pics of the upstairs hallway before it was painted, so you can see how filthy the walls were.  Four little hands touch these walls every.single.time they go up and down these stairs.  I've scrubbed them, and while the dirt would come off, the flat paint the builder used was so cheap it would always still look "greasy".  As opposed to the trimwork, done in a nice glossy sheen, which wipes right clean.  Sigh....

The upside is that it's DONE though!  So happy!  

Back with after pictures soon!

room by room: family room

Now that progress has started on the family room, it certainly seems fitting that I would show you what the room looks like *before* we make too much progress.  I'm putting it all out there - the room is clean (well, clean enough...) but I'm keepin' it real - so yes, you'll see my messy bookshelves and all. :-)

Here is the back fireplace wall - looking into the room from the kitchen/eat in area.   

Main fireplace wall.  Plans for new mirror above fireplace (we've had that print for a long time.  I love it, but it's time for something new). 

Built-ins for television and components.  Need to remove pots above (can you say dusty?) because they don't fit the space at all (came with us from Arizona), and there are more plans for the built-ins.

Built-in bookshelves.  Plans for these similar to the television built-ins.

This is the view of the room looking towards the front of the house/foyer.  If you look closely, you can see the new paint job extending down from the upstairs hallway, and the hallway patch job for repairs.  :-)

Room facing the back of the house (west) and the large windows.  The mirror will come down and get moved, and there will be new curtains.  There will also be a new furniture layout, and possibly refinish the end/coffee/console tables.

So there you go!  Next up are some *before* pics of the upstairs hallway before we painted it.  I swear my kids touch the wall every single time they climb up or down those stairs.  So they were filthy!  Keepin' it real....keepin' it real....  

Stay tuned!

family room moodboard

I went ahead and put together a mood board for the family room plans.  Here it is!

The paint color (BM's Camouflage - large paint chip) will be going on all the walls.  The complementary color Smoky Ash (smaller paint chip) will be used in another place or two.  I have plans for wide-stripe horizontal curtains flanking the very large set of windows we have in the space.  We also may use some roman bamboo shades, but the jury is still out on that one (we can't do blinds inside the window because of the extensive moulding).


The sofa we have isn't nearly as "traditional" looking as the one on the board, but at some point in the future we hope to purchase new furniture for the family room and move this stuff to the basement.  If that happens, I hope to purchase a sectional in a more neutral tone.  For now, we're using what we have.  The wood floors are definitely a little ways off.  Because we pay cash for everything we do (and are on plan to have our new Highlander paid off in just a few months) we wouldn't be purchasing flooring until we save up the money for it.  But we will eventually be getting it.


The coffee and side tables we have will be used as well - very craftsman in style and rustic.  So, a nice mix of styles in the space.  We've had them for almost 8 or 9 years now, and I've been thinking about refinishing them somehow (I have an idea in mind!) and I know Derrick would love me to refinish existing furniture rather than consider purchasing new.  The slipper chairs would also be a down-the-line purchase with a new sofa, and thus a new furniture arrangement that I already have in mind.


The mirror is one of my favorite parts so far (well, maybe a tie with the curtains!).  It's actually not the one pictures, but similar in style.  NOT similar in color, but there are plans for that!


UPDATE:  The mirror arrived yesterday and I LOVE it!  I may leave it as is for now, knowing I can always change it later.


The blue and yellow work well with the wall color we've chosen.  In fact, the color in the zig zag pillow is probably the closest in shade to a color that the BM site said works very well with the Camouflage, so it's the color I'm leaning towards for the kitchen.....someday.  :-)  And the yellow *could* change to green.  This is just a plan so far, but we'll see how closely I can stick to it.  It's been fun putting it together, but we'll see how it evolves!


How about you?  Have you ever done a mood board or design plan?  How closely did you stick to it?

new family room color is a GO!

The same day I picked up the yellow paint for the basement bookcases I picked up a 2 ounce sample jar of the Camouflage color I've picked for the family room.  I painted it in a few places in the family room (right next to the fireplace, close to the windows, and on a wall opposite the window that receives direct light).  And, unlike the basement bookcase color - I LOVE it!   Love - seriously.

I'll admit - at first glance, it doesn't seem *that* different than what's on the walls.  But, it feels a bit more sophisticated to me (or maybe I'm just so sick of that builder beige), it feels a bit lighter and softer, and I do love the two-tone feel it has to it like Censational Girl mentioned (a tad gray looking in indirect light, more greenish in direct light).


I'm also hugely looking forward to having anything other than flat walls that I can clean with a damp cloth again!


And in other news, I've purchased something for over the fireplace which I'm super excited about! I think it's all coming together and I'm thinking about doing a mood board before we get started.


So, what do you think of the paint color?  Would you like to see a mood board of the future room?

painted bookshelves

Progress?  I chose a coordinating color for the bookshelves, thanks in part to the Benjamin Moore website and the coordinating color choices they provide when you look up a single color.  I entered the blue we used for the basement, and a yellow choice, called Desert Tan is what was provided.  Derrick thought it was too dark, and since he's pretty much giving me full reign of the decorating decisions these days I'm appeasing him where I can.  :-)  So, I found another very similar color called Summer Harvest and bought a quart.

I did the first coat and it was obvious I would need a second.  I painted the second coat and while I like the color and am happy it is done, I will admit.....I don't LOVE the color.  Thoughts?  I'm starting to wonder if maybe a more orange color - such as a pale coral - might be a better choice.  Or, I might just leave it and see how it works once it's all styled.

Decisions, decisions.....

playroom picture frames

We have a bit of a problem in the playroom.  Well, in all fairness it's only a "playroom" problem because that's where I store said items, but I think it's something many parents struggle with.  

Art work overload.  

Yep, being the parent of two kids that go to preschool a few days a week as well as love to do art projects pretty much anywhere, the art projects pile up.  Big time.  I purge as best as I can when they aren't looking (let's be honest, not every thing my kids create is a Picasso) and save the stuff that is really special or unique, but it still piles up like mad.  

I've seen a few ideas on pinterest which I'd like to incorporate sometime down the line.  

From here.

Now, this is shown with photographs, but I've seen this idea of photographing all the artwork and displaying as one large collage.  That also suggests that I have the time to go through all the art work, photograph it and organize them, find a way to have it printed (not that I would go that large), etc.  But it's still something I'm thinking of down the line.  

I also like the idea of, and this is a bit more practical for me, to make a yearly book with the artwork from that year in it (by photographing, but still saving special pieces).    

In the meantime, I still wanted a special way to display their artwork and encourage them to continue making such beautiful pieces. 

I had seen this display on Pinterest and loved it, and thought frames in a bright fun color would be perfect in the playroom.  I especially love the mix of different sizes and frames, but for now, I went the uniform route.  

Enter, IKEA frames.  And enter, picture placement.  

We bought the frames on our last trip to IKEA (it's a good 2.5-3 hours from us) when we were also buying the BESTA bookcases.  I bought 2 of each in four different sizes.  then I traced each size onto paper the kids had on a roll so I could play with hanging the frames that way instead of trying to actually do it with the frames and putting needless holes in the wall.  It worked really well, and this was the placement I settled on, but I think I changed it twice before landing on this one.  

I then got to work, as I didn't want the white frames - I was thinking orange or yellow, and at our last trip to Lowe's I asked Noah and he voted yellow.  Sold!  

I thought maybe I could just paint them since they are wood, after all, but they almost seem to be covered with a plastic-like coating, so had to go the prime route after all (and really, painting these was just a big huge PITA, to be honest).  

After a few coats of primer, I did the yellow (but forgot to take a picture of that part of the process).  

After putting a sawtooth hanger in the back of each frame, I also used those Command poster strips to keep the frames from getting knocked back and forth on the nail.  I hung them all up, secured the strips, and stepped back to enjoy!

I'll reveal with full artwork when I show you the entire playroom, hopefully soon!  I also still might put some cork into the center of each so that we could just use thumbtacks to secure the artwork....still deciding on that one!

So, how about you?  Do you have any clever ways to store/keep/display your children's artwork? 

growing

Seeing as how we're growing, not just as a family, but two kids aged 2 and 5 do some pretty nice growing on their own, we've always wanted a nice way to capture it.  Up until now, it's been on our master bath wall.  And as I've mentioned before, builder beige is very blah, as well as won't wipe down well at all, so the walls look filthy (yes, they painted the bathrooms in flat paint).

So, as much as I love this wall with all the markings of my kids' growth, it is time for it to go.  The bathroom needs to be painted, and I want something that could come with us (if we ever moved, but I don't foresee that at any time in the near to distant future).

So a while back, hubby made a white wooden one, but it had no measurement markings on it or anything.  I offered to add them, but never got around to it.  Truth is, I didn't really like the one he made.  He didn't really care for it either - but we were trying to fix a problem.  We knew where we wanted to put it, but yet it never was hung.  This wall is just off the kitchen and playroom and next to our powder room.  Everytime we go on a family trip, we pick up a memento from our travels.  We picked up this carved piece on a trip to Jamaica.  I have a lizard painted in aboriginal style from Australia. a wooden carved turtle from Mexico, and we have a Koa wooden paddle we bought in Hawaii.

This has been hanging here since we moved in, and I decided to evict it for the growth chart - if we ever got around to finishing it/making a new one.   

Then one day I was cruising around various blogs on the web, and found these gorgeous growth charts from Dear Lillie.  I saw that she sold them, but also saw that she followed the tutorial available on the blog 517 creations to make them, so I went ahead and did the same.  It was SUPER easy to make and came together quickly.  But then it sat waiting for a couple coats of poly for, well, a couple months. Sigh....

It's all done and hanging in the hallway where the Jamaica carving once was, and I absolutely love it.  I started the markings (spaced every inch) at 6" and hung it 6" from the ground.  Only thing left to do is take it into the bathroom to transfer all the old markings, and hopefully I'll get to that sooner rather than later.

What do you think?  Do you have a growth chart like this or similar in your home?  Or do you prefer to do it in a doorway/wall/casing of some kind?

my favorite kitchen gadgets

I have three that jump out at me.  I love them all for their beauty, simplicity and joy they bring to me in the kitchen.


The first is simple.  It's a couple of mugs that my son bought me for Christmas one year (picked them out himself!).  They are bright and cheerful colors, and are the perfect way to start the day with a hot cup of tea, which I do every morning.

cups of hot tea happen every morning.  cinnamon rolls - not so much.

The second gadget(s) are a couple of berry bowls I recently purchased at Anthropologie.  There's a bigger story here though.  First I owned this gorgeous berry bowl:

It was the most gorgeous berry bowl I'd ever seen.  Purchased from a seller on Etsy, it was small and petite, but perfect for rinsing berries and small bowls of grapes, and was used just about daily.  It was a beautiful robin's egg blue, complete with black specks and everything.  And after more than a year of owning it....it was broken by one of my kids, on accident.  After I loved this bowl so much (and before this one broke), I had purchased another green one from a different seller on Etsy.  This one went into daily rotation.  I was seriously crushed over this one, so I wrote to the seller I originally purchased it from, and begged her to make me another.  She suffers from pretty bad arthritis and doesn't make them anymore, but after a few months, she sent me another.  And then - within 2 weeks - it was broken again.  UGH!!!! The green one was broken within a few months of that.  Sigh...


After that, I was done buying one of a kind handmade items only to have them broken within months.  Do NOT get me wrong - I'm all about supporting handmade and filling your home with these lovely things, but in our case, I just can't purchase super functional items like berry bowls and expect my kids to never touch them.  It's just not practical.  So, I replaced them with these two new ones from Anthropologie, knowing that if they get broken, I won't suffer the same heartbreak I did with the others.  :-(  So, a large aqua and small yellow have a new home in my kitchen.

The third item is a gorgeous handmade maple cutting board made by an amazing seller on Etsy, Red Onion Woodworks.  It's thick, and has incredible graining which seems to glisten when well oiled and cared for.  One side is more solid, and that's our "use everyday" side, and the other has a bit of the natural bark side showing, and so we save that as the "serving" and "entertaining" side.

Mine is actually in need of a little TLC, so I just need to do a bit of sanding and another treatment of mineral oil and we're good to go!


What about you - what go-to kitchen gadgets make you smile in your kitchen?  Check out the Kitchen Gadgets Link Up Party over at Censational Girl to hear about lots more!