I still kick myself every time I wish I had taken more “before” photo’s of our home.  I have a bazillion “progress” pictures, but if I would have just pulled the camera out a few times during the first 2 years in our home.  I’ll just have to change everything again…

We had this hole at the bottom of the original front doors, big enough for the mice to join us over the winter and keep themselves warm and their bellies full. I remember saving for the new front door, it was a big purchase for us. Diesel had jumped through the screen doors several months back when the neighbor lady showed up with treats in her pocket.  Diesel always knows she’s the holder of the good stuff.  Shortly there after I took down the screen doors and our entrance actually looked much more inviting, I just didn’t care for the extra critters.

If you look REALLY hard you can see our old front doors through the big bushes.

If someone really wanted in they would simply need to lean against these bad boys and in they would go.

A inside view.  Dark, fuzzy photo, I know.  You can see where I re-purposed the doors HERE.

So I was pretty pumped when these bad boys arrived.  They shut, locked, there was no longer a draft and my little mice friends could no longer sneak in.  What I didn’t expect was the daylight that streamed through these into our front entryway, nice surprise.

Any big changed in your house lately, any small critters sneaking in your front door?

If I were to name my least favorite room in the house it would have to be our basement TV room.  It’s decked out in cedar all the way around, it has the fanciest little bar (complete with a few mice in the deep dark corners), the worlds most awkward fireplace set up making for a even more awkward room set up.

Here’s what it looked like the day we moved in.

Here’s the Moved In version, TV check, Couch Check – Everything a man needs.

And I almost forgot, dirty, dirty carpet even after a hundred carpet cleanings.

I’ve wanted to redo this room since we moved in but had other plans for the budget.  So to tune things up a bit I tore a lot out and only spent money on paint and new carpet.  Since we have plenty of natural light upstairs and through out most of the basement I wanted to create a Theater like room so I used this as a opportunity.  I had to use words like “Mans Room” and “Theater Room” to really sell my husband on the idea of painting the cedar he loved so very much.

So I tore out the bar area and the brick/fireplace opening the room up more and making for a better layout.  I also went with dark paint colors for the walls (Sherwin Williams Malarca) and ceiling (Sherwin Williams Bronze Tone).

Let’s not forget my favorite part – New carpet, I’ve waited to replace this carpet since we bought our house 4 years ago.  I finally feel like I can sit on the floor, just in time for out little one

I’ve got plans to put a new bar in the future.  I’ll be working on the tile first and then install cabinets.  We also just scored a Electrolux Beverage Center at a fundraiser for an amazing deal so I can check of the appliance purchase early.

What’s your least favorite room in your home?  What are your remodeling wishes for it?

Husband said I nested through my entire pregnancy, realistically I nest everyday.  I’m a neat freak on the surface (not a germ freak) and love having everything in it’s place.  I had our whole house unpacked and put together in a couple of days if you don’t count the laundry room which seems to be the dumping ground for things that don’t have a home.  If you remember back when we moved in Husband didn’t really pack very well, if at all.  He also needs to get a library card since we don’t have a room we can dedicate to his books.  Here’s our embarrassing room that I usually leave out of our house tour when guests come over:

I don’t remember how it all went down but I made a trip to Ikea to buy new book shelves 7.5 months pregnant and was not able to lift the boxes.    So I had to enlist Husband (who greatly dislikes projects) to haul the worlds heaviest boxes through the house and down to the basement.  But like he says, he can bring the muscle just don’t ask him to put anything together.

Most of the mess really was just a matter of putting back in it’s place, I had put up the long metal shelves when we first moved in and now we needed a better place for Brad’s books.

So I had everything all organized and then Husband needed to reorganize to his specifications, hence room a mess again.

Have you ever used the metal shelving units you can find at Home Improvement stores like Home Depot?  They are a must have in all my closets, easy to install and pretty affordable in comparison to the California Closets of the world.  This awkward space quickly became functional.

With just a few tools you can multiply your storage space.  I also hung a few curtains to hide the clutter (stole the idea from an awesome blog – Young House Love)

Hoping we can keep this room presentable.  What room in the house is your go to room for things that don’t have a home?

This post is a little deceiving as I continue to back track chronically as best as I can.  Somewhere after my first 43 gallons of paint we managed to get all the weeds killed and yard prepped for sod.

As a reminder since April of our first summer (2008) till end of September (2008) we have conquered:

- removing about 50 trees
- removing about ½ an acre of 7-foot tall cockle-burs
- removing 360+ 4-inch diameter / 120lb railroad ties
- removing more underbrush

A lot more before pictures can be found here and here.

So spring is not officially here for 20 days (Yay!, just 20 days) but in honor of that great event later this month let’s celebrate with a little green grass.  Oh, I can smell it now after a fresh lawn mowing.

In late August we had both patios and front steps prepped and ready for cement.  We did not pour the cement ourselves but prepared the patios and front steps order to save some dough.  Using my trusty (I wish it was mine) bobcat brought in class 5 and sand.  This allowed us to negotiate the price of the cement significantly lower, they would just need to pull up and pour.

As you can see we instantly had grass to, not really we had over 20 truckloads of dirt to haul in and prep the yard prior to laying the sod.

So late September after laying 23 pallets of sod we could finally walk through the yard and enjoy a good grilling out.  It was definitely heaven though, instant grass!!!  It was a big day in the Nelson household, I had been cleaning muddy paws off Diesel and Penelope for almost a year.  So in honor of Spring around the corner I hope you enjoyed our new yard.

I’m going to dive in to the before and afters since I already gave you a sneak peek of the room yesterday.  Here’s a quick reminder of what it look liked when I got started.

Remember those glass closet doors?  Brad did not want me to take them down, I think because he didn’t want to have to carry them upstairs.  But I did it anyways, sold them on craigslist and replaced with curtains.  I even managed to use my sewing machine to hem them as well as the panels on the windows, big step for suzy homemaker.

I’ve manged to put together all the big ticket items over the past few months.  I also just added more storage with some Ikea cubies a couple of weekends ago knowing you can never have enough storage.

I had my eye on the owl bedding from dwell for a couple months and was super pumped when I found a brand new package on Ebay for almost have the retail price.  I moved the artwork in from our unused sitting room, you can see better pictures of it in this post. The prints are done by Matte Stephens and you can buy his prints here on Etsy.

I love the brightness of the new paint in fact I painted this room almost a year ago already and have been decorating around the colors, not something I normally recommend or practice.  Here’s the info on the paint: Sherwin Williams Honeydew on the walls, Slow Green on the ceiling and painted the trim in Greek Villa like I have been in the rest of the house… So much trimming!

Leave your comments below, I’ve off to snow plow the driveway.

If you read the post last week with a quick house tour of the rooms I didn’t get a chance to snap a picture of before I lathered them in paint you will probably recognize this room.  This is the bedroom closest to our room that seemed like the most obvious to transform for our new little boy.  Since little boy is not here yet and a name has not been decided I’ll have to stick with “baby boy” or something appropriate until then.  Promise to share as soon as he enters this world.

Back to the sneak peek though, I had painted this room early on in 2008.  I had to whip every bedroom into a livable space asap, we were like a Bed & Breakfast at least one weekend out of every month with every room filled with a guest.

We have taken several trips to Africa and this room was the go to with the memorabilia.  Doesn’t really seem appropriate for a newborn and I had become very bored with the neutral paint color.  So I’m not going to share much today, but here’s some odd angled photo’s of the new paint color.

What do you think about those lovely glass closet doors with the worlds largest crack through them.  A little 80’s maybe?  Consider them gone.

I’m waiting on a delivery for the room today and if all goes as planned I will share a finished project tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

I’m going to dive into a current project, Baby Boy #1 is due in April so I’ve been working on the bedroom and adjoining bathroom.  I’ve got a big wish list for the lower level bathrooms so I didn’t want to stick a lot of money into it but wanted to freshen it up.  These before pictures are not as raw as I had started when we bought the place, the walls were white and I had those famous gold shower doors that have since been removed.

The counter top simply could not be changed, it is not a standard size.  If it was I would be off to Home Depot so fast and back with a new (CLEAN) fabricated counter top my husband wouldn’t even know it happened.  Instead I applied some clean white paint to the cabinets to freshen and brighten up the room.

Paint I already had, but bought a new mirror at Home Goods and a new faucet & drawer pulls at Home Depot.  The faucet was the kicker in the budget but decided on a trendier one knowing I could still use it when I got down to tearing out the bathroom someday.

I did not repaint, it was already blue and choose to work with what I had.  So throw in a new shower curtain from Dwell Studio and some custom artwork and call her him good.

I could have done this for much less without that fancy faucet I had to have, but still my budget under $200.  Here’s the rundown:

Paint: Sherwin Williams, Interesting Aqua, Studio Blue Green, Greek Villa

Shower Curtain: Dwell Studios

Hardware & Faucet: Home Depot

Mirror: Home Goods

Do you have a bathroom makeover you would like to share?  If so leave a comment and I will contact you for information.

Remember back when I gave a quick tour of the house before we moved in and before I owned half of Sherwin Williams.  Well I only posted pictures of the ones I had of rooms with no paint yet, does that make sense?  I only had pictures of half the house unpainted, shame on me for getting so excited.  So today I’m going to give you a quick run down of the rest of the rooms before I dive into more before and afters for each of them, yeah more projects to come.

Our house has 4 bedrooms and a ridiculous 6 bathrooms.  Here is the second bedroom on the main floor.  Nope, I don’t own two of that Pottery Barn duvet this was before I moved it into the first floor master bedroom.

And here is the 4th bedroom situated on the lower level.

The Den looks similar to its before picture, we just managed to get rid of said husbands dirty craigslist couch and set our selves up with something a little more adult like.

Here’s the adjoining sitting room until I find something else to do with this walk through room.  I’ve actually posted on this room way back, I painted the ceilings to match the wall and added some wall clings, check out the afters here.

And the famous husbands office, don’t mind the mess it’s the cleanest it has ever been.  His office is the 3 season porch that I had shown you earlier how we added a couple french doors for a little privacy.

And last but not least our beautiful kitchen, don’t get me wrong it’s a great size and has lot’s of potential but several of the cabinet doors are missing, I would paint them if I could but they are laminate and several of the appliances don’t work.   And lets be honest, 80’s laminate cream isn’t my style.

So I will leave you with that today, I skipped the six bathrooms and will save for another post before I dig into the fun stuff.  Have a great day, leave your comments below.

Getting back on schedule after that House Beautiful detour, I’m back to the sitting room which is directly beside the living room.  So it may look familiar to my post last Thursday. Since the sitting room below and the living room from last week post share a small dividing wall and ceiling I continued the paint colors through out.  Here’s a reminder of our bare walls before, you can see a little bit how all the rooms are connected and open to each other.

Yup, all white.  The only thing I changed below is the wall color.

It’s pretty amazing what a few gallons of paint can do to a room.  I want to get all the trim painted white but in due time.

Colors:  Sherwin Williams, Library Pewter, Rembrant Ruby.

I also scored on the furniture, I wasn’t planning on getting any for this room for awhile but I happened to walk into Pottery Barn on the right day at the right time.  I got the white sectional, coffee table, side tables and zebra rug for $720.  They were floor samples and didn’t have a mark on them.  Can you say double bonus?!?!?

Looking forward to removing the banisters, painting the trim and new carpet sooner than later…fingers crossed.

Leave your comments below.

Did you enjoy those inspiring photo’s from House Beautiful yesterday?  Have they inspired you to paint, even if pink is not your color?  I’m sure you have heard/seen the color of the year is Honeysuckle and I would have to say that’s in the pink family to.  I’m not really a pink person myself, but the room below is PINK.  So here goes, my pink bedroom.

This project took me a couple of days, lots of small spaces, in fact crawling up and laying on my back to paint the section above the closet has to be my favorite .  Plus I painted all the trim white or to be more specific Greek Villa from Sherwin Williams.

Here is a run down on paint colors and some of my favorite artwork.

Sherwin Williams Juneberry, Marigold, Greek Villa & Verdant

Bedding:  Pottery Barn again but like I mentioned in yesterday’s post I only bought the duvet and pillow shams.

The painted canvases are from Paypaya, they have great room decor, stationery products and gifts.

Everything else I had, which isn’t much in terms of accessories but those can be added over time.  I’d also like to give that bathroom a small overhaul someday and find a way to change up those 80’s mirrors that stretch across a entire wall.  For now though, I’ll enjoy my little pink feminine room.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.  Cheers.