Letting a home evolve

Creating a home that you love takes thought, time, and effort.  Sometimes things come together quickly and easily, but a lot of times, probably most of the time, it’s a process that involves starts and stops and lots of tweaking and re-arranging things along the way.  You have to be patient with that process and let a space evolve over time, collecting things you love, re-arranging what works, and letting go of what doesn’t. I’m not the most patient person, so being patient with this home as it evolves into a home I love is something I’m definitely learning how to do.  But I’ve made enough mistakes in the past to know that trying to force a space to evolve quickly or rushing out to buy things that you don’t love just to fill up a space usually doesn’t work out so well in the end.
There are things from our previous home that I still haven’t found the perfect spot for in this home.  These are things that I really like, so I’ve been holding on to them, storing them away, just waiting until inspiration hits me.
One of those things, was my “Coffee House” sign that I made.  For the past six months, it’s just been sitting in the guest room, propped up against the wall. I’ve looked at it many times and been clueless where to put it.  Then all of a sudden, a few weeks ago, it just hit me and I knew exactly where I wanted it. 


I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this one out! It seems so completely obvious now that above the coffee bar is exactly where it belongs.


I loved my old farmhouse style kitchen table, but there just wasn’t any extra space at that table for when we have guests over.  Over the next few months, we have lots of family coming to visit and we want them to have a place to sit, so we decided it was time to replace our small table with something a little larger.  After much searching, I found an old Pottery Barn table on Craigslist that has two removable leaves so we can expand it when we have company over and then shorten it when it’s just us. 

Originally, in an effort to quickly get window coverings up in the kitchen for privacy reasons, we put white faux wood blinds in the there.  But after painting the bricks white, re-modeling the kitchen, and living with it all for a while, I realized that there was just a lot of white going on, especially along that brick wall.
See. Aside from those tulips, it was just blah.


And as much as I love white, I wanted to break it up a little bit and bring in something that added some more warmth.  So we switched the white blinds out for bamboo blinds.  It took two tries to find the right bamboo shades.  The first ones were just two thick and bulky for our windows. Poor Tim has hung three different sets of blinds in these windows.  He says I better like these for a long time, because he’s done hanging blinds in here. Ha!


I’ve been wanting a chalkboard for a while, but had been holding out because I didn’t want to pay and arm and a leg for one.  I knew we could make one, but that takes time and it would be a job mostly for Tim to do (and his to-do list is already too long!), so it just wasn’t happening. Then I came across this one at a thrift store for $10. A total deal!  We got it home and then found out it was also magnetic. So fun!
Love.   


I’ve also done a little bit of tweaking in the living room.  I replaced the plain white lamp shades with some fun colorful ones from Target. And we hung white curtains from Ikea. I always have the hardest time settling on curtains.  Although I love bold patterned curtains, they still make me nervous and I never bite the bullet when it comes to buying them.  Maybe one day I’ll be brave and go for it.  But with the turquoise lamp and colorful lamp shade right next to the curtains, I felt like white would be best for now. And since these Ikea curtains are only $20 for the pair, I won’t feel bad if I decide to switch them out later.  I’m super proud of myself because I used my new sewing machine to hem them.  Oh wait, I think I forgot to mention on the blog that we got a sewing machine recently.  Anyway, we got a sewing machine about a month ago and I’m teaching the kids (and myself) to sew now. The hardest part is winding the bobbin and threading the needle. It’s all down hill after that!


And last but not least, we are in the process of re-doing the kids bathroom. It’s not going to be a major renovation, but it is in desperate need of an update and a new look.  The tile, tub and toilet will all be staying for now.  
This is how it looked when we moved in. 

The shower doors are now gone (we did that immediately when we moved in) and we just recently removed the wallpaper. We plan to paint, replace the light fixture, replace the mirror, and hopefully replace the sink and vanity, as well as add in some fun pops of color. This bathroom is teeny tiny and it doesn’t have a window (no natural light), so I’m hoping to lighten and brighten it up quite a bit.
This is what I’ve been dreaming up.  

I’m ready to get started!

Update: See the bathroom update here

Numbered Stairs

When we first moved into our house, our stairs from the basement up to the main living area looked like this. 

 

Not completely terrible, I guess, but I had bigger dreams for them.  Back when we walked through this house during our house hunt, we had tried to carefully peak under the carpet on the stairs to see if there was hardwood underneath.  We couldn’t really get a good look though and so we assumed it was just going to be plywood.  I told Tim that eventually I would want to rip up the carpet on the stairs and paint them or do something pinteresting to them.

One of the first things I did after we moved in was paint the hand rails white, but other than that, a stair makeover ranked pretty low on the priority list.

Then a few weeks ago, I was cleaning up some broken glass in the basement near the bottom of the stairs with the vacuum cleaner (after a vase had an unfortunate incident with a boy and a soccer ball) and I noticed that the stairs were way overdue for a good vacuum.  As I was down there sucking up dog hair with the vacuum cleaner hose, I decided to pull back some carpet and really get a good look at what was underneath.  And much to my surprise and delight there were finished hardwoods under the carpet!

I am not much of a planner when it comes to household projects.  I am a doer.  When the urge hits me, I just start and then I figure it out as I go.  Sometimes this works out well and other times (like with the kitchen linoleum floors) it doesn’t.  But either way, it’s typically how I do things, so less than ten minutes later, I was ripping that carpet off the stairs (with a little help from the kiddos). 

Why do people cover hardwoods with carpet? It baffles me.

Anyway…

Removing carpet is a big job, with lots of nails and staples involved and one that’s probably better done without little kids around.  But if I waited for that to happen, I’d never get anything done, so I just do it and consider it part of their home education. 

 

Eventually the stairs looked like this. 

Granted, they still needed some work, but it was already an upgrade in my opinion and it was free.

I spent the next few days searching Pinterest for ideas and thinking about what I wanted to do to them.

So many options…

here

here

here

In the end, I decided to paint the risers white and put numbers on the stairs.  My inspiration came from this picture below.  I had pinned it months ago and I was still very much in love with it.   

here

Instead of sanding them, I wiped them down with Klean-Strip Easy Liquid Sander DeGlosser.  And then after priming and painting the risers (two coats of each), it was time to put numbers on them. I looked for stencils, but couldn’t find any that I liked, so I settled for printing out the numbers in the font I liked and then I used tracing/transfer paper to trace the numbers on the risers.  I also made sure to measure and center each number on the riser.  It was a slow, tedious process for sure.

 

Originally, I planned to paint the numbers black, but since I didn’t have any black paint on hand (and didn’t want to load up three kids to go buy any),  I decided to use a color that we already had, Whispering Spring by Benjamin Moore.

 

I decided I liked that idea better anyway because it kind of gave the stairs an old beachy, cottagey feel, which I love.

 

And because I love a good Before and After side by side:

So. Much. Better.

Painting and Re-arranging

Do ya’ll love to see pictures of the inside of people’s houses as much as I do?  How they decorate.  What colors they paint their walls.  Furniture style and arrangement.  What they hang on their walls.  Colorful accents.  Lamps.  Pillows. Rugs.  Throws. Curtains. Patterns and textures and how it’s mixed and matched to coordinate.  I love it all so much and I get so much inspiration from seeing what other people do and how they put it all together to make their house a home for their family.  
I hope you guys like seeing those things as much as I do because I’m about to overload you with pictures of my freshly painted and newly rearranged living room. 
So come on in!

But first, let me rewind just for a minute.
Since moving in to our house a few months ago, the living room furniture arrangement that we originally settled on has continuously bugged me.  This living room has been a real challenge because it only has one complete wall.  And naturally, we thought we should put the t.v. there.  So we did.  But that meant that the only place to put the couch was then straight across from the t.v., in the middle of the room.  And then there wasn’t enough room for side tables (because the room is so small cozy), so I stuck them behind the couch.  Kinda weird, but it worked out okay. I didn’t like how the entire room was centered around the t.v though.  And overall, the room just felt off to me and I felt unsettled with it.  I kept looking at it and trying to re-think it. In my mind, I would move everything around and try to brainstorm better ways to make the room work for us.  I’ve found that it often takes time living in a home to figure out what furniture works best where. And you kind of have to be patient with the process and keep trying until you get it.
Some before pics from my iphone: 

This picture was taken back at Christmas time.



After taking a few weeks off to recover from all the kitchen renovating madness, we finally worked up enough energy to paint the living room. (And when I say we, I really mean me. Tim doesn’t paint. I fired him from that job years ago. I’m a perfectionist and He’s not, so I do all the painting so it will meet my standards in the end. He does spackle all the holes for me though and he also takes over full-time kid-duty when I paint. So he gets kudos for that.)
So since we already had the room in disarray that day from painting and everything was already pulled out away from the walls, Tim agreed to help me try out some different furniture arrangements.  I just had to see if there was a better way to do it.  In the end, every piece of furniture was relocated to a different spot in our living room/dining room, except for the coffee table.  And the room looks and feels so much better to me now.
I always know when something is right in my home because my mind stops thinking about it and I can just relax and enjoy the space. 





Now that my picture window is finally hanging up above the couch where it belongs, it feels more like home here.  Before hanging it back up, I switched out some of the pictures for more recent ones of the kiddos.  I still kept some of my long time favs in there though.


The t.v. got moved over to the corner.  Initially, we thought it wouldn’t work well here because of the half wall (and being able to see the back of the t.v.), so we never even tried it out. But after moving it over there ‘just to see’, we decided we really liked it there.  And since the stairs going down to the basement are on the other side of that half wall, the back of the t.v. is barely noticeable. Now the t.v. isn’t the main focus of the room, but it is still comfortably and easily viewed from our couch.


Here’s a peek at the other side of the room; directly across from the couch.  This entire layout feels much more open and spacious to me.  And by moving the chairs over directly across from the couch, it is also better set up for entertaining.
One of the main ways I want my home to feel, is bright and happy. It’s why I like turquoise and yellow.


I don’t think this vintage typewriter could be any happier.  It was a birthday gift from Tim last year.



Did I ever show you guys my lockers?  I got these months ago when we still lived in Alabama.  I took off a few rows of doors to make open shelves and then spray painted the whole thing glossy white.  It’s now one of my favorite pieces of furniture.  I use the open shelves to display things I really like and I keep things like the kids Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bear books behind the closed doors. 





I obviously have a thing for old books.  These (below) belonged to my Meema.


And although we have a real fireplace now downstairs in the basement, I still love my faux fireplace too much to get rid of it.  All winter long I turned that little space heater on to warm up our living room.  It always makes the room feel cozier.
Eventually, we plan to switch out that chandelier to something less “dining room-ish” (plus it’s a hazard to tall people’s heads).





And I still love my Katie Daisy print. It’s an especially good reminder to me when we’re having a rough day around here.  Because in reality, we have so many reasons to be filled with joy.

The Kitchen Reveal

The kitchen is done!  (Well, except for a few minor paint touch ups that I still have to do, but I’m not counting that!)


Before I give you the grand tour, let’s take a quick look back at where we came from so you can fully appreciate the transformation.
Looking in from the dining room.  Remember those dark red bricks and linoleum floors!?



And here’s the opposite direction with a look at the lovely wallpaper.



The sink side. More wallpaper.



The oven side. More red bricks.


As you probably remember, we initially attempted to do some of the renovating ourselves, but quickly realized we were in way over our heads.  So we waved the white flag of surrender and called in the professionals to get the job done.  Their part of the reno was the demolition and removal of everything (it was a complete gut job!), install new wood floors and baseboards, install new cabinets, and hook-up the appliances.  Our part was staining and applying Waterlox to the butcher block countertops, cutting and installing them, painting the walls and the ceiling, and putting up the subway tile backsplash.  They were done with their part in about 10 days.  It took Tim and I quite a bit longer to get our part finished.  But we’re finally done!
Here is the new view looking in from the dining room.  I love the white washed bricks.  It makes it so much lighter and brighter!



After much thought and deliberation, we decided to put the microwave at the coffee bar.  It’s especially convenient for heating up my coffee and the kid’s food at meal times and it keeps the microwave from taking up any of my very limited counter space.



Plenty of cups for company!






And here’s the view into the kitchen from the table and coffee bar area.



We’ll start with the sink side.
For the upper cabinets, I wanted some to have regular doors, some with glass doors, and some with just open shelves.  Down below, we moved the dishwasher to the right side of the sink (because I’m right handed) and we chose to have a few base three drawer cabinets instead of having all base door cabinets.


Pudge has claimed my new kitchen rug for himself.









Now on to the stove side. 
The day after we had settled on our renovation plan, signed the paperwork, and cut our first check, I read a blog on someone else’s kitchen renovation and she said that her favorite thing she did was enclose her refrigerator to give it a more built-in look.  And immediately I regretted not asking for ours to be enclosed.  So I made a few fast emails back and forth with our project coordinator and got that remedied.  And I’m so glad that I did.  It definitely changes the look and feel of the space.  Our refrigerator (that we inherited with the house) is a smaller/shorter refrigerator than normal, so we made sure to leave extra space around it for when we upgrade to a regular size fridge in the future.



It’s so nice to be finally done with the renovation and settled a little bit more into this house.  Slowly, but surely we are making this place feel more like home!

Farmhouse Sink : Ikea Domsjo Double Bowl
Butcher block counter tops : Ikea Numerar Oak
Countertop stain : Minwax Special Walnut #224
Faucet : Danze
Oven : NXR
Range Hood : Broan
Cabinet Pulls and Knobs : Restoration Hardware
Rug : Target
Paint : Behr Silver Drop