Progress!

My parents came to visit this weekend and my mom and I made quite a bit of progress in my office and our master bedroom!  There is still quite a bit to be done in both rooms, but progress feels good.  

Master Bedroom Progress:  
There is paint on the walls!  What used to be a light lavender is now two beautiful shades of gray.  Picking out a gray color has been the single hardest task since moving in.  I think it took me 10 samples to get it right!  After all the samples, I narrowed it down to a couple options and Dan picked the final paint colors.  The dark gray is Glidden Granite Gray and the lighter gray is Glidden Pebble Gray.  Three of the walls are the lighter gray and the last wall is the dark gray.  The first picture was taken at night, so the color is a bit off, but the second photo was taken during daylight (blizzard style daylight, ugh!)

Office Progress:
Like the bedroom, we also painted my office.  I was going for a gray with the slightest bit of a blue undertone - but I ended up with more blue than I had hoped for.   When the paint first went on the walls, I was getting a bit nervous, but after a couple days I've decided I love it!  

The second project we took on for the office during my parent's short stay was starting the curtains!  I had been trying to brainstorm an idea for a curtain rod since the windows go right to the corner of the room- and my genius mom came up with the winning idea!  I ended up getting a corner PVC pipe, 2 wooden dowels and two wooden balls - all spray painted black.  I ordered fabric for the curtains some time ago and it has been sitting waiting to be made in to curtains.  We just cut the panels, sewed on black edging and hemmed one end.  I still have to hem the bottoms....but until then, here they are:

Both rooms still have a ways to go, but progress feels great!

Still to do....
Bedroom:

- make artwork for the walls

- get lamps for the nightstands
- get large floor mirror

- paint trays on nightstands

- paint and maybe recover the chair

- paint the side table by the chair

- paint the dresser

- accessorize
- paint the trim white

Office:
- finish curtains
- hang artwork on the walls
- hang cork board
- paint chair & recover
- paint printer stand
- paint the trim white

Lights!

Ahhhh, much better, no explanation needed

Dan's Office

We have another room we can add to the "complete" list - Dan's office.  For now, we both have our own office, so I get to decorate mine and he decorated his.  He is a basic needs/minimalist type decorator - aren't most guys?  I offered words of advice, but I'm not sure he followed any of it...but that is ok, it is his office after all :) 

As you can see by the before picture, we had a lovely wall paper border to remove first before we could do any painting.  Dan's sister helped me tackle this room in a few hours one night, she removed the border and we painted the room.  The only choice I got to make in the entire room was the paint color, but I was instructed that it needed to be almost white.  I picked Polar Star by Valspar and Dan gave it the approval before it went on the walls.  Here is the finished product:

And here he is, hard at work in his new office :) 

My Closet!

This is the first "room" that is complete.  It actually isn't complete, but it is as close as it is going to get for awhile so I'm labeling it complete for now.  It's also not an actual room, it is my closet, the master bedroom closet.  The previous owners had built a closet system that didn't look finished.  It featured unpainted, unstained, rough looking wood, too long for the shelf - shelf holders, lots of visible screws and it wasn't very sturdy. 

The plan was to make it pretty and make it sturdy, but on a small budget.  So we very carefully disassembled the previous shelving system, as we wanted to use some of the same materials. We saved the shelving sides, rods, top shelves & rod holders.  The rest was unusable, for this project atleast, so down to storage it went. 

Once everything was removed, I painted the walls a fun aqua color.  

 

I also painted the previous shelves, rods & rod holders.  The rod holders I used the same nickle spray paint I used to paint our bathroom hardware.  The wooden pieces all got a couple coats of white paint that I had on hand already. 

The only thing besides the wall paint that I purchased was some additional shelves and the wood to hold to create shelf ledges.  While at Home Depot, I spotted the shelving planks that were pre-drilled to have adjustable shelves, but for the sake of our budget I utilized the materials we had and bought the 94cents wood for shelf ledges instead.  Thanks to the guy at Home Depot, I left with 8 perfectly cut shelves & 16 shelf ledges.  

Once I got home, we measured, assembled and painted the ledges & shelves to end up with this:

You'll noticed I decided to leave the left side as hanging room only.  We have enough drawers in our room, I didn't need the additional shelves they had installed before.  We ran in to one road block, which is the reason for the missing 3rd shelf (from the bottom) and hopefully that will be remedied soon! 

And here is the closet, full of my clothes, shoes & accessories:

(left side)

 

(right side)

Like I said at the beginning, it isn't quite complete, but close enough.  Ultimately, I'd like the trim to be white - but that won't happen for quite some time.  

Storage Chest

When I was a young girl, my grandparents gave me a storage chest (which I believe was hand built by my aunt's father) as a gift. It's special to me because it wasn't the typical store bought gift, so it is one piece of furniture that I have moved with me every step of the way. It has gone from my childhood home to college to apartment after apartment and finally to our new house. It works perfectly at the foot of the bed for some extra storage. The only problem was that the honey oak doesn't match our style, so it was due for a make-over.


Once again, I forgot to take before pictures. I dug through tons of digital pictures thinking I had to have a picture somewhere, but I couldn't find any with the whole chest pictured. O well, the below will have to do, you still get the idea:

(click on the picture to make it larger)

The chest still sits at the foot of our bed, and the new upholstered top matches our headboard perfectly! To complete the project I followed these steps:
- removed back rest & top
- sand, prime & paint the body of the chest
- got a new top cut at Home Depot so the lid would be the same size as the chest (previous top was hinged a few inches in from the back)
- upholstered the top, following the same steps as I did for our headboard
- attached hinges to the lid
- lined the lid with a fun fabric by simply folding the edges of the fabric under and stapling to the correct size
- attached the hinges/lid to the body of the chest


We love the new look! More pictures to come of the chest in the master bedroom as soon as we complete the room!

It's the small things

Over the past few weeks we have been unpacking, organizing, arranging and rearranging.  Everything is coming together nicely and the house is starting to feel like a home. We've also started to make a few updates here and there. 

I'm terrible at remembering to take before pictures.  I get so excited about the project, I just dive right in before snapping a picture. 

The larger picture of the bathroom shows the bathroom with the old owners' stuff and the old gold hardware.  Some spray paint and a small fraction of my time and we've made one minor update to the bathroom.  Buh-bye gold handles, hello nickle! 

We recently purchased 2 Ikea dressers to act as nightstands.  They fit our style and provided the extra drawer space we were looking for.  But the drawer fronts just didn't look complete to me.  With the addition of some hardware, they look much better and more complete. 

And a sneak peak of what I'm currently working on.....the closet:

Stay tuned for more, there is plenty to come! :)



We Are Homeowners!

We closed on our first house last Friday and couldn't be more excited that we are no longer property virgins! 

The whole process has been almost comical as we've had plenty of  "adventures" already, but are so overly excited that nothing is really bringing us down! Just to name a few:

- It was negative 26 the morning we woke up to close (and move into) on our house - so moving got pushed back a day.
- My car wouldn't start due to the extreme cold
- When we went to pick up our moving truck, the computers didn't work so what should have taken 5 minutes, took 45 minutes.
- When we tried to return the moving truck, the truck wouldn't start.
- The furnace stopped working the 2nd day we were here.  3 days & 5 repair guys later - our furnace is working!  Thank goodness we opted in to the MN Energy Service plan - whew!
- Internet was installed and 5 minutes later, it quit working
- I forgot all of our groceries in my brother's car on moving day - my brother doesn't live very close to us!

On the upside:
- We are homeowners of a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom walkout rambler with a nice sized yard!!
- We had awesome help over the weekend!!  We can not be thankful enough for all the people that helped us move, unpack, clean, assemble, etc.

Here are just a couple pictures of the house, with the old homeowners stuff:

Front of the house:

  

 Backyard:

Deck:

 
Kitchen: 
 
Master Bedroom:

 

Walk-through Master Bathroom: 

We have been busy unpacking and organizing.  Stay tuned for some "after" pictures!