Half Bath Makeover

There's not a whole lot to say about this post.  We ripped down wallpaper, took out that weird divider, replaced the over sized hardware and mirror and added a chair rail.  Here's the before and after:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

guest room to dining room

One of the main problems with our house (on a long list of problems) was that it lacked a dining room.  Soooooo many bedrooms but no dining room!  Well, my amazing hubby made my vision come to life with a simple ceiling medallion for the chandelier I bought and another archway!  Check out the before and after on this one!

BEFORE!!!

AFTER:

Here is our lovely new archway that leads you into the dining room.

This is a goodwill find!  Once an ugly brass lamp, now a lovely centerpiece in my dining room due to a can of metallic bronzed spray paint!

I love this gallery wall!  I loved it soooooo much that I took the frames from my guest room to recreate it in my dining room so I could see it every day!  I took a few old book pages and printed Christmas silhouettes on to them from the computer for the holidays. 

Here's a close up of the Santa silhouette. 

I love this silhouette because it reminds me of my sister and brother growing up.

All the furniture in the dining room are antiques passed down from generation to generation through my family.  Even though I'm not necessarily a fan of light wood or round tables, there's no way I will be painting or re-staining these pieces.  I do plan on changing out the fabric on the seats to coordinate with the gray and gold I have used in this room though.

Can you believe I got this Spode China at Goodwill for .59 a piece?!?!?  The Spode cookies for Santa and milk for Santa cup were also a Goodwill find for $1 new in the box at Goodwill!

Wthl all the Spode for Christmas, I had to purchase this new Spode Christmas table cloth for $20 at Home Goods.  Still a deal since it was listed on Ebay for $60.

I bought a plain card board house from Hobby Lobby to make this gingerbread house.  I added a coat of brown paint and put mod podge on it after it dried.  The sheen came from the glitter I sprinkled on the glue.

To make the icing around the doors and windows, I just stole my hubby's caulk gun.  Some simple candy left over from Halloween and a real graham cracker for the door and I had myself a realistic decoration I can use year after year! 

In-law suite master bedroom to family room

This has been our biggest transformation yet!  We turned the in-law suite master bedroom into a cozy family room.  Here is a before shot of the bedroom when we first moved in:

I still have to paint the back of the fireplace opening black, but can you believe it?  Notice the archway to the right of the mantle.  That wasn't there before and J knocked that wall out to open it into the main living area.  Man my hubby is crafty!!!  He built the fireplace and bookshelf from some pictures I drew and I did the mantle myself.  It was very therapeutic beating the crap out of that wood to get the old distressed look I was going for.

These trees are all made out of old boxes and cardboard and paper I had laying around the house.

Here's a close up of my decor and the mantle.

Below is a pillow I made out of a pretty place mat.  I just painted a "Q" on it because I can never find things monogrammed with our last name.

I have the shelves decorated with Christmas frames and pictures with Santa right now.

I made this "noel" out of scraps of paper and cardboard as well after an inspiring post I saw on Pinterest.

The pillows in the background I made out of some old curtains.  They are simply easy slip covers for my existing pillows and acrylic paint lettered on to say "merry christmas".

To dress up my french doors, I hung red curtains and wrapped garland and candy canes around the top.

Exterior paint

The thing I really did not like about this house when we bought it was the weird orange-ish trim they had around all the windows and the eve of the roof.  It was ugly.  But the landscaping was so bad and over grown that it wasn't hardly noticeable until after I spent all Summer chopping bushes down and moving plants.  One of the projects I did this fall was paint the trim around the windows and I picked a different color for all the front door, back doors and balcony doors.  Hopefully next summer we will be able to repaint the stucco a different color to complete the look.  Here's the before and after:

I got excited when I bought the paint and started in before I realized I didn't have a picture of the front door. The color I chose for this project was Behr cracked pepper.

The existing porch lights got lost with all the beige going on with the house.  Here's whet they looked like before a simple coat of black spray paint.

Beautiful!!!

The chair pictured below was a $3 Goodwill find and a can of apple red glossy spray paint.  I'm going to distress the chair after Christmas to tone it down a bit but for the holidays, I love how bright it is.

In this photo, you can see the orange color of the trim surrounding the windows and on the eves.  YUCK!!!

 

All the garland I made myself from the trees in our backyard.  It took a significant amount of time but was quite easy and well worth my effort I think.  There's nothing quite like real pine garland and it smells amazing!  The urns are just stuffed with various branches and then topped with fake poinsettia stems and pine cones from the backyard as well.

Christmas Entry

In the last post, you saw the NOrth side of our entry so here is what I have hanging on the South wall!
That sign is a little something I whipped up while I was waiting on J to put a second coat of paint on the cabinets.  I simply nailed three pieces of pallet wood together and sanded it lightly on one side for a smooth paintable surface.  Nothing crazy because I hate sanding.
Then I took a regular old paint brush and white acrylic paint and slapped just enough paint on the wood that I didn't have enough to take it to the ends so it looked distressed.

The lettering was relatively easy to do.  In college, I learned this trick where you rub your pencil on the backside of whatever you want to trace.  Then you place the paper, right side up, on the board and trace over the image in pen and it will transfer the pencil onto the white paint.  I free handed "merry"  and the holly but cheated with some simple font off microsoft word.  I painted the letters on with black acrylic paint but you could use a sharpie I'm sure.  I used gray paint for the shadowing then mixed glue and glitter together and went over the paint after it dried because I believe glitter makes everything better!!!!

Here is a close up of my finished project that cost me $0 and looks stunning!  I received several compliments on this at the party I had over the weekend.

My stairway to heaven

We also managed to finish the steps and get the spindles painted.  Here is what the steps looked like before we moved in:

And here are the steps to date and dressed up for the Christmas holiday.  All the pine is real and taken from my trees outside.  I purchase 2 stems of red berries and shiny green stuff and divided them into 6 pairs of "stuff".  I just used wire to fasten it to the white pine and blue fir bundles and zip tied them on the spindles and added a green bow.  It smells great and looks charming too!

Eventually, I'll get around to re-staining the hardwood steps a darker color....

Back from my Hiatus

I know it's been quite a while since I've posted anything, but I've been working my butt off and I finally have time to load all the pictures and projects!  We are done with the remodeling downstairs!  Well, we are done with 90% of the remodeling downstairs!  We have a few walls to take out and openings to rearrange yet and paint touch ups here and there but we are done for the most part!
Let's get on with the pictures....

This is the photo taken from the first time we saw the house.  Again, these are not our decorations!

This is supposed to say"this is how our kitchen looked the first day we moved in" but I'm lazy and was in a hurry typing it!

This picture is from this Summer after we replaced the island:

AND THIS, is the kitchen as is today!!!

This is the only photo I could find that shows the pantry door, the guest bedroom door and the basement door together.  Let me tell you how confusing this was for me!!!  So many times I would walk into the guest room when I wanted to get in the pantry and vice versa.  We decided that a guest room right off the kitchen was dumb and we already had enough guest rooms in this house so we turned in into a formal dining area.

Here is the area now.  J did an amazing job adding a second archway and I no longer mix up my doors and guest aren't puzzled when they are trying to find the bathroom!

Here's the breakfast nook before we moved in:

 Here's the breakfast nook while we were trying to clean this disater up!

And here is the kitchen to date!

Ten months later, we finally got the kitchen painted!  We had some hang ups along the way that slowed us down but at last.... the kitchen is painted!  We had to buy a new oven unexpectedly right before Thanksgiving so you might notice that is different.  And if you go back and follow the progress of the kitchen, you will remember we replaced the island this summer and the fridge was the first thing I changed for an energy efficient one in the first few weeks of moving in.  All we did was repaint the cabinets and I still have new hardware to get for them.  I'm taking my sweet time getting hardware because J and I plan to buy all new cabinets in the next few years.  We hate the existing cabinets but can live with these now that they are white.  The paint color we chose for this area is Behr dolphin fin and the accent color is Behr wet cement.  We already purchased tin tiles for a back splash behind the stove.  Not sure when J will feel like installing them but hopefully soon.  Both of us are pretty burnt out right now.  Oh, and all we did to paint the cabinets was use J's spray painter.  I had previously stripped them all down with an amazing liquid sandpaper and he just sprayed on two coats of gripper followed by two coats of white.