things to keep

i don't know if you can tell in previous pics, but we've really procrastinated in pulling together a nice living room (& any dining area whatsoever).  the excuse is that "we should start from the bottom up" - meaning we need to get the wood floors down before we can really think about doing anything else.  well... since we've made quite a bit of progress with the wood floors, i guess the time to pull it together is fast approaching - eek!

it's not that we err i haven't been thinking about it... in fact, i have all kinds of ideas jotted down, pictures saved & websites bookmarked - hello designsponge.  it's just... making a final decision on what approach to take it so difficult!   i definitely have commitment issues ;D

so yesterday i made a list of 'things to keep' - which are things we already have (that will go in either the living or dining room) & 'thing's i'd love to own' - which are things that i'd like to incorporate or use as inspiration.  

on the list of 'things to keep':

yellow chair.  i reupholstered this chair last year & - as dj constantly reminds me - it still needs a cushion

fancy chair.  another reupholstery project from last year that is a couple hours shy of being finished...

the credenza we built (project courtesy of the fantastic ReadyMade magazine)

ah... sophia - so beautiful.  she will always be my favorite.  the breakfast sign i found in the scary basement of a diner i worked at in college.  

this beauty may be introduced to a can of spray paint in the near future.  we bought it at Grandview Mercantile for a steal.  it surprisingly gives off a lot of light & is just lovely to look at overall.  

next up... 'things i'd love to own' ;)

1 room down...

wow.... check out the progress on our new living room floor below :D

floors prepped & ready to go...

my job was to stack all the wood slats...

starting to get an idea of what it will look like...

dj hard at work...

& taking a much deserved rest ;)

hello new living room floor... only 3 more rooms to go!

oh - & our make-shift couch - haha

the start of our hardwood floors!

can you believe dj did this in 1 afternoon!  i think it looks freakin' fantastic.  it gives us a good idea of what the rest of the rooms will look like.  of course... this means i'll have to hustle on my part -  which is painting walls/trim & figuring out how to decorate the living & dining rooms  :D

less destruction, more building

the walls are all down now.  so... we have a much better view of our junk room ;D

our temporary stairs... 

& our newly built permanent ones :)

check out the awesome ceiling support... courtesy of my resident handyman, dj ;D

the ceiling from another view... 

oh... & this is our 2nd bathroom (or was)

tearing stuff down is the most fun

& the destruction begins....

here's a decent picture of most of the wall.. as you can see, some of it is already missing.  oh, & please ignore the mess behind it.  since that room has no specific function right now, it's kind of become our biggest junk drawer  :)

a picture of the wall from the other side...

the biggest piece is now gone...

as you can see, the living room side of the house is a couple of feet higher than the entryway.  those steps... we'll need to tear out & rebuild to be as deep as the new entryway.  they'll be hardwood too.  actually, when we're ready to put down the hardwood floors, we'll start with the steps!

our 2nd bathroom (behind the wall)... probably won't be able to use this much longer

the wall on the 'living room side' is a load bearing wall, so dj built this huge beam/header to support it.  it's great for pull ups (or it would be if i could actually pull myself up) ;D 

look for more to come soon!

reprioritizing

click on image to view larger

i know i said we were going to have hardwood floors down by now... but we decided - after careful contemplation - if we wanted to do it the "right" way, we'd need to do one more thing on our list first... tear down & rebuild the wall in the entryway. 

a little history on our house... back in the day it was a smaller house with a little general store attached (which i think is kind of cool).  one of the previous owners turned the side that was once the general store into an efficiency apartment to rent out.  when we bought the house it was separated into 2 living spaces.  So when you opened the front door, you were immediately greeted by a wall (right in your face) - with a door to your left & a door to your right.  it was horrible & awkward & really difficult to maneuver if we were carrying bags into the house (or even if more than 1 person wanted to come into the house at a time). *sighs with frustration*  

but we have vision :D  all along we've been planning to push the wall back a few feet to open up our layout & create more space... & we're finally to the point where we get to do that!  i'm super excited.  you can check out the changes in the picture above.  

ps. yes we realize this also means we'll be renovating the bathroom behind the wall (eventually).  it's a good thing we have this really nice other one to use in the meantime ;D

closet overhaul

wow… it was an uncharacteristic 85 degrees on sunday.  combine that with a super messy room & no clean clothes & you have the perfect day for swapping out sweaters for sundresses. here’s the result of my endeavor.  my ‘rainbow’ makes me smile every time i change my clothes. i’m hoping it also motivates me to stay tidy  :D

what happens when dj gets bored...

so i came home from my pilates class on monday to this (see below).  the good news is that the prep work for the dining room floors is complete.  the not so good news… it will be about 2 weeks before we can lay the new floors - oh, & we have family staying with us this weekend.  we’ll have to be careful to keep our shoes on.  sweet.   

bedroom curtains

i meant to post this a while back.  i would say this is my first successful independent sewing project!  yeah.. i know.  how difficult is it to sew 4 straight lines?  it doesn't matter... i sewed a pair of curtains from scratch!!!  it's very exciting for me.  i think they're so beautiful.  they're in our 2nd bedroom, which we call the green room - mostly bc it's the room i get ready in & also because it's green :)

ps... i can't remember who the fabric designer is, but i got it at my favorite local fabric shop, sew to speak.  i sure love that place!

still working on the bathroom...

we're so close! sometimes i get so excited to complete a project, that i exaggerate - or over simplify - how little is left.  in this case, when i said "all we have left to do is hang the doors", what i really meant was "all we have left to do is: hang the doors, select the molding that goes around the doors, put up the molding, prime & paint the molding, finish tiling around the door (to the molding), finish grouting the tile around the door, paint the ceiling, purchase/make the accessories & move everything else in!

whew... so, although we're still working on the bathroom, we're finally to the point where we just have to finish decorating,  yay!!  

here's the molding around the door...  

also...a super cute catchall i picked up in berlin, ohio (amish country).  i'm thinking it will be a nice place to drop my rings when i'm washing my face + the orange is a nice pop against the blue-green walls  :)

oh... & we finally picked out a shower curtain!!  personally i could have easily continued vacillating on the perfect shower curtain for months.  i really like this one though... the grey flowers are the same color as our pigeon grey towels  :)

 

wood floors

one of our upcoming projects – as you may remember from the 2009 resolution list – is installing hardwood floors in the dining & living rooms.  i’m super psyched for this one.  i feel like it will give the house much more charm, character & warmth… plus, we’ll have to move the horrible in-your-face wall back in the process!!

although i love the idea of reclaimed wood floors, our budget just won’t allow that.  lucky for us, we have a backup  J  i remember last summer - when we were remodeling our kitchen - finding a local distributor with really reasonably priced beautiful hard wood floors.   ironically it was the same place we ended up getting our granite countertops from (also very reasonably priced).  dj recently stopped in to pick up flooring samples... all the samples below are acacia walnut (with different stains).  Although they’re all beautiful, we’re leaning towards the "natural".  we like the contrast of light & dark + think it's more traditional & characteristic of the time period our house was built in (1920s).  

(port)

 

(natural)

(royal)

drafty doors

wow it's been cold outside!  cold enough to freeze our kitchen pipes ;)  a couple of weeks ago, as i sat on the floor trying to thaw the pipes with my hairdryer, i noticed we had a major draft under the back door.   i don't know how we missed this last winter.  

it reminded me of this project (posted on the paper pony last year).  filled with the motivation of not only a new project, but one i actually had a chance of completing, i decided to make a "draft blocker" of my own.   

although the paper pony version is so lovely with it's mismatch of beautiful fabrics, since mine would be laying on a dirty floor (where people constantly track in snow & mush), i thought i should use a more substantial (& less dirt revealing) fabric.  i found a really pretty soft grey corduroy & went to work.  below is the end product. 

it was so easy, i ended up making another for the front door.  at the end of the day i was beaming with pride (mostly because i finished a 1-day project in 1 day - & dj mentioned he was impressed with my sewing craftiness) - hahaha

note:  

• afterward i realized i could have used an old pair of corduroys (either a crazy color via jcrew clearance or a thrift store score).
• our doors are 35 inches wide so my fabric measured 37 inches long x 8 inches wide, which gave me a 1 inch seam allowance.
• each pillow used about 3 lbs of rice - fyi, the rice cost more than the fabric!
• i feel the need to mention that we are planning to paint the back door the same color as the trim (once a final trim color is picked)  :D

new bathroom pics

check out the bathroom!  isn't it beautiful?? i'm so proud of the work dj did (you know... building the walls, dry walling, tiling, grouting, etc).  of course, i'm proud of my own work & assistance too.  i don't think the pictures do it justice.  for some reason i had difficulty getting the lighting to look right.  

also- it's still missing a door.  after we fix up the new door, we'll have it professionally framed & hung.  next time we post pics, it will be decorated & ready to use (eeks with excitement)!

(this wall is where we'll put our cheddar silhouette)

bathroom doors

we bought doors for the bathroom (& closet) today!!  old ones from columbus architectural salvage.  i'm in love with these doors!

dj & i are perpetually in a state of give & take between the old & the new.  i love the idea of vintage, salvaged or re-purposed goods, while dj is more keen on being the first owner  ;)   so... we agreed to used salvaged doors inside the house and buy a new exterior door when we re-do the front of the house.  a smart exchange in my opinion :D

bathroom design board

(click on image to enlarge)

so this is my amateur attempt at creating a design board for the bathroom  :)   i thought it would be a nice way to "picture" what all the different design elements will look like once complete...  & in the process, be a good test for mixing styles, patterns, colors, shapes, & what-not.  

obviously we already have the floor & sink.  we also have a pottery barn light fixture similar to the mercer style shown (& i  bought the floral hand towels from basic french months ago when the co. was featured on design sponge).   

it's really exciting to be at the point where we get to decorate the room... plus i think it will be really fun to make silhouettes of cheddar, dj & i  - maybe use printed paper - & put in ornate thrift frames painted glossy black.  all-in-all it's nice to be this close to being finished.  the only renovation part left is to buy & frame a door (which we're working on).  yay!! 

bathroom progression!

the last time i posted bathroom pics we had just finished framing the walls.  look how far we have come!  here's a look at our progression.  you'll see my husband has mad skills in the tiling department (regardless of how much he hates it)  :D

(bathtub is in)

(walls are up)

(how cute is this floor?)

(tiling begins - how cute is my husband?)

(tiling is finished!)

(dj's fancy grout manicure)

(a snapshot of the paint color - i'll get a better shot of it once we get some more light in this room - haha)

bathroom color

 below is the color we chose for the bathroom (vintage map blue - martha stewart for valspar). it's a more muted version of the teal wallpaper in the kitchen (right off the bathroom - see layout).  i'm super excited... i think it will look great against the off-white subway tile.

i usually like to use sherwin williams duration interior paint (due to it's low voc content, clean-ability, coverage & awesome pour spout - not shown online), but the last person i know to have them match a color went through some terrible ordeals... so we'll give martha a try :)

you'll get to see the results soon, because i'm painting today!

  

(vintage map blue - martha stewart for valspar)

(wall paper in the kitchen)