Loft Reveal

The upstairs is progressing with only a few rooms left to do- the master bedroom, the master bath and the boys bath. Meanwhile we've been working on a smaller project...the loft. It will be used primary as a play area while the boys are little, and perhaps a study area when they are older.

Here is the picture of the loft on move in day. There is a small, but deep closet to the right. A cheap white fan was mounted near the window, off center and close to the corner. A very unusual location. The wall color was a mint green. 

In this photo you can see how the fan was oddly placed. Very weird. 

The final product! We removed the oddly placed ceiling fan and patched the ceiling. Added recessed lighting. Painted with Sherwin Williams Magnetic Gray. We also replaced the broken window blinds and painted the window trim. The whole upstairs got new carpeting last fall. 

The boys spend a lot more time at the train table than they did at the old house. I think it's because it's in a convenient location- upstairs near me so they can play while I get ready in the morning versus in the (finished but quiet) basement. In this view you can see my homemade photo canvases. I saved upwards of $100 dollars by getting large poster prints made of my two favorite little peanuts and using modpodge to adhere them to the canvas (an idea found on Pinterest). I used the same lettering around the photos as I did with my gallery wall in the hallway (more on that in a bit).

Closer view of my canvases. 

Much better...wouldn't you agree?

While I'm posting photos, I should show you the rest of the hallway. It also got a facelift with recessed lighting (and an increase in the actual number of lights), new paint and new white six panel doors. Turns out I took the before and after photos from opposite ends of the hallway, 

but I think you get the general idea. 

View from the master bedroom, laundry doors on the left. 

View towards the master bedroom, laundry on the right.

At the top of the stairs I added a black and white photo wall of my favorite little people- my boys and our nieces and nephews. It fits perfectly on the small wall beside the boys' bathroom and makes me smile every time I get to the top of the stairs. The sayings are wall stickers that came in a preset arrangement which I cut apart to make my own design. I put several in the loft area around the canvas prints as well. 

Well, that's it for the upstairs for now. The last few areas (bathrooms, master bedroom) will be longer projects with more demo. It will not surprise you to hear that we have already begun demolition on our main floor powder room. D had a few days off from work and when we got home from vacation, he was in the mood to demo. I'll post photos of the mess soon...we're in no hurry because we want to enjoy the beautiful summer weather while we can!

Fireplace: So Close To Completion

We've been working on the fireplace for a while now and it's almost...almost....almost done. Since it's our main room and since the scope of the project has expanded, it's taken a while to complete. But I looks so good I can't wait a minute longer to post. If you'd like to refresh your memory about our fireplace progress, you can find my other posts here and here.

A quick view of the room on move-in day. We saw potential. 

Our family room: June 2015.

It's so pretty, I almost can't believe it was all DIY. 

You almost don't notice the blue carpet...almost. 

Now for a few close up photos and some more before & after's. 

With the hearth tile removed during the gas line installation

Our final stone choice

I am very pleased with our stone choice. It did take more time, energy and prep-work to install than other products on the market but I love the authentic look. It has weight and varied shapes that I love. We painted over the brass accents on the fireplace with black heat paint and switched the handles to a brushed nickel. 

Side view on move-in day

Here you can check out the new paint color- Sherwin Williams Versatile Gray. It's a nice mix of tan and gray. When wet it's reminiscent of a melting Wendy's Frosty. Yum! 





I purchased this mirror off Overstock for the space over the couch. I was looking for something to reflect the light coming in from the windows on the opposite wall but I didn't want a solid mirror. When we finish the touch ups on the wall, we'll be able to hang it up. That sucker is heavy!

We were able to salvage the ceiling fan by purchasing a new light insert and new fan blades in a walnut color. 

The shelves took a long time to complete. D measured and built them. I did several coats of paint and several coats of polyurethane. With dry time in between coats plus limited work time, the shelves alone took several weeks. They're so beautiful...completely worth it! 

Little fact: the cabinets we used on the built-ins and not base cabinets but upper cabinets. D added a small platform to turn them into base cabinets. We didn't want the cabinets to dwarf the fireplace hearth or make it appear recessed, so the depth of an upper cabinet was a better fit. :) 

Still to do: paint and install the crown molding which will cover the surround sound speaker wire; install the cabinet door pulls; second coats of paint around all the windows and 

in the dining area (not able to be seen in these pictures). 

We're looking at new couches to better fit the scale of this room and we'll 

decorate the shelves with books and photos. 

So far the room looks larger and more modern. I LOVE IT. Is this even the same house??!!

Can't wait to post the final final reveal. 

Mailbox Part Deux

With the weather warming up, the house progress has moved toward outside projects. The first was replacing our mailbox...again. I really loved our salvaged and re-painted mailbox but the winter was hard on it. The paint started to chip, especially around my Michigan sticker. If you'd like to refresh your memory and check out what the blue mailbox looked like, you can find my post here. Our mail carrier seems pretty reliable at this house, and I was feeling bad that the mailbox post was so low. Actually, I checked the postal guidelines and measured the height of the box...it was a good 12 inches lower than the standard.  I felt bad that our carrier had to lean way out of her truck to use our box. Plus she wrote us the nicest thank you note at Christmas after we left her some treats, so I felt good about fixing the dumb mailbox.  We decided on a plastic post cover, and a plastic box. No maintenance! D was able to trim the existing wood post so that the new plastic sleeve would slide over the top. The house numbers cracked in my hand when I tried to remove the screws, so there was no re-using them. New house numbers and a different Michigan sticker....done!

New box and post  (address edited)

Our happy little post was in place for about 3 weeks when it was hit by a car...or maybe a golf cart...we're not sure which. (Some people in our neighborhood use golf carts to get down to the beach).  *Heavy Sigh* That ugly box was there for years without a problem. We get 3 weeks. The neighbors were really nice about the whole thing (since it was their guests' fault) and they bought us a new post. Hopefully that will go in this weekend....and be there a long time!!

Speaking of set backs...we had another. Remember our beautiful garage floor? 

 

And the week that D put into scrubbing, washing, painting, sealing....?

It's not so beautiful now. NOT HAPPY. These are the photos I submitted to Rust-Oleum to get our "money back guarantee."

I read the reviews and I saw that a few other people had complained about the same thing...the finish just rubbing right off with minimal use. But poor reviews can not always be trusted- who knows if the people followed the proper steps or did all the prep work. We had such success at the old house with the product- even after 10 years of use- that we decided to purchase it again. As you can see from the photos, they must have changed the formula because my hubby did all the prep work and followed all the steps. Even in the areas with no car traffic, like in front of the door, the floor is just rubbing right off! Soooooo not happy. After submitting photos to Rust-Oleum they gave us the choice of refunding our money or trying a new product. It was a toss up...even if we got our money back, we'd still need to repair the floor. So they sent a new kit. Not sure when we'll have a week to work on the garage floor again. I don't see that task being high on either of our priority lists.  :(

But onward to progress! Playing outside in the summer, I spend a lot of time looking at the exterior of our house. I got so I could not stand the color of our shutters. We would love to have the whole house painted in more of an updated color scheme, but that's another job for another time. For now I'm happy with small updates. 

My helpers cleaning the shutters

Final product. Perhaps a little too light in color, but overall I'm happy. Time to power wash the bricks. 

We've also been working on small projects that make a difference in the overall feel of the house. The first is burying the gutter down spouts and getting rid of the eye sore plastic drains. Not only will this help the appearance of the house but it should help with the soil erosion. 

Front yard "before." Note the green gutter extender. 

Front porch gutter "after."  Still working on the landscaping/edging. 

A few other photos of our progress. D and his father put up our new shed. It's so wonderful to have someplace to store our life jackets, toys, kayak paddles, etc. 

D also made this great kayak rack. Check our the boys' mini kayaks! 

I also cleaned up the side of the house and made room for a small veggie garden. There's room for expansion if we want it.

Now I'm trying to decide on changes to the front porch. The front door is being switched out. I don't prefer the style with the glass for privacy reasons. I'm open to suggestions on what to do with the eye sore of a utility box....got any ideas? 

Front porch today

Perhaps some sort of trellis?

I added the finishing touches (color) to this inexpensive outdoor rug and got my flower boxes planted. So, for now I'll just be enjoying the view from the deck :) Happy Summer! 

Fireplace Stones Installed

I haven't had much time to update the post here, but the projects continue to move forward. The loft painting is 80% complete (and often moved to the bottom of the project list because it's adjacent to the boys' bedrooms and we are mostly painting at night), furniture has been moved around in the front room, and the fireplace/built-ins are coming along.

Over the course of the past month or two, we installed the 8 base cabinets for the built ins. Then D made a shelf to sit atop the cabinets and added the bookcase side walls. He added trim to the top and sides and finished the top of the bookcase with drywall. He also decided to run speaker wire through the crown molding to allow for surround sound, and mounted the small speakers we had from our old house. He removed the old hearth and made a new, reinforced box. 

Cabinets installed. Hearth removed. 

The manufactured stones are heavy-- although we are using a stacked stone that does not require grouting, it still needs lath and a mortar backer. A few days before the stone installation, D added a skim coat of mortar to the lath per the instructions from the stone manufacturer. I also used high heat paint on the gold trim of the fireplace to give it a consistent black exterior, and bought new brushed nickel door pulls from Lowe's.

Black paint completed. Skim coat applied. 

D made a template of the fireplace surround and we laid out the stones in the basement. We moved the pieces around until we had a look that appealed to us. With some manufactured stone you need to watch out for "repeats" of the stone blocks but we really didn't find any in our batch.

Stone puzzle in the basement. 

We brought the stones upstairs in sets, applied mortar to the stones and literally stacked them up. D trimmed some of the stones to fit with a mason blade. We used some old flooring to provide a "spacer" under the hearth for the eventual addition of new hardwood flooring.

We completed the hearth portion one evening, and the wall portion the second evening. This allowed us to still have family time during the day and get the projects competed in one weekend. 

D made the mantle out of oak pieces and I used stain to bring out the grain. The mantle portion took several days. The first time I did the stain, I wasn't sure of the color. I tried another (darker) color on top of the original color and I really loved the look. Unfortunately, being new to using stain, I didn't realize that leaving extra stain on top really makes your project sticky. I was able to remove the sticky portion but still wasn't satisfied with the color. I re-sanded the entire mantle and re-applied 2 different colors of darker stain. It was difficult to decide on colors-- I wanted to see the wood grain (so didn't want to go too dark) but wanted to have it match the dark floors I want to eventually install. After several days of staining, I completed the mantle. It's probably the same color as the first time I stained it....oh well. 

Next up are the shelves for each side (prime, paint, install), adding the cabinet hardware and finishing trim, painting the wall over the mantle and re-installing the crown molding. Can't wait to post that "final" reveal, but this will do for now.

Move in day

Fireplace progress April 2015

Front Window Side Project

Between painting all the new doors and working on the fireplace, we managed to squeeze in a side project....the bay window in the front room. While the rest of the house has white trim, this window was the only one in the maple/oak color. The color mismatch was bugging me and the drapes were falling down. To be fair, the boys did pull on the sheers accidentally but they weren't mounted well to begin with. Once I decided to tackle the window, the drapes went down. Ahhhh...a sigh of relief. To my eye the room felt instantly lighter. 

On move-in day

With the sheer curtains removed you can see the oak trim. The dark green is painters tape and the snowflakes were still up from our winter wonderland birthday party. But with the drapes removed we had to make a choice on the window treatments. Since it's the front of the house and I want to maintain privacy, I choose a honeycomb blind with the top down-bottom up feature. This way we can still have the privacy yet enjoy the sunlight. They definitely were a more pricey option but I am very pleased with their function.

The final result looks clean and polished to me. We also purchased the same blinds for the side window in this room (I didn't think to take a picture since no painting was required). We haven't decided on the final wall colors for the main floor so the light green will stay for now. I started digging out the frames and wall decorations from the old house and have hung some things up just to make it feel a little more "homey." 

The main first floor project is nearing completion (the fireplace and built ins). We're hoping to complete the stone work next weekend...that is, if I don't distract the team with these side projects!

Fireplace Progress Jan/Feb

After a brief hiatus for a big 5th birthday party, we're back at work on the fireplace/family room renovation. The stones have arrived and are taking up real estate in the garage since they are too heavy to drag to the basement. The special order cabinets are making their way up from the basement storage.

The blue tile has been removed completely. After removing the hearth piece it didn't take D long to remove the rest because he simply cut the drywall out.

While he was at it, D also added overhead lights near the mantle area. Now we have some accent lighting that illuminates the fireplace and mantle. He also needed to move some switches slightly to the right to accommodate the new bookcases. 

Watching TV and wiring lights on the weekend. 

Here D is removing the old tile and adding cement backer board in preparation for the new stone. 

The blue lines signal where the bookcases will go

This is where we are at right now. The cabinets are in, but the baseboards need to be painted. The top of the cabinets are waiting for the final edges to be routed and painted. (Hooray for new tools!) The hearth will be expanded slightly to sit tight against the cabinets once the stone is installed. The walls are mudded and need a coat of paint. I'm usually not a fan of white walls, but in this case I am loving the change from the dingy yellow we currently have. D has the wood for the shelving, but they need to be painted and assembled in place. The last piece will be the stone. Meanwhile I am painting, painting, painting. We are changing (nearly) every single door in this house including the closets and they all need multiple coats of white paint.  I have an assembly line in the basement and the shelves/bookcases will be added to that queue. Luckily I find that kind of painting relaxing. Maybe it's the quiet basement. Or maybe its the wine. 

Family room on move in day, August 2014

Fireplace progression, early February 2015