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.

I love House Beautiful’s March 2011 issue, well I LOVE all issues but I couldn’t wait to flip through the issue that arrived in my mail box on Friday (thank you post man for not driving by this time and leaving my mail!!!).  I knew I wanted to skip around a bit and share this bedroom in the upper level of our house.  I used to call it the first floor master, as it once once the master bedroom for the house until previous owners added on.  Remember this before picture from when we moved in.

I painted this bedroom to coordinate with a set of bedding that I had, it’s usually easier to paint around objects, bedding, or decor you already have as opposed to painting and then finding everything else for that room to coordinate around your paint color.  The bedding below is from Pottery Barn, one of my favorite ways for new bedding is to buy just the duvet (sometimes shams too) on sale.  If you find the right piece you can easily and pocket book friendly update an existing bed set without having to spend a few hundred dollars on an entire new bed set.  Example below, I found that duvet on Pottery Barn a couple years back for around $50.

So I went with green.  Yup…. what in the world does that have to do with House Beautiful and the all about Pink issue?  Nothing really except I repainted it this fall, and yes the color is pink.  I’m going to save those pictures for tomorrow and leave you with some of these awesome images from House Beautiful for today.

Enjoy.

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

Picking out the colors for the living room was a little difficult because I also had to consider what I would like in the front entryway, sitting room and kitchen while considering the colors.  All four of these rooms/areas are open to each other with a small wall between the sitting room and living room yet you can still see into both at the same time.  I’ll have to put together a layout of the house soon to help you visualize.

Here is where I started.

Big room with lots of eye sores – dirty carpet check, wall paper border check, sliding doors that don’t work or lock check, check.

It still had good bones though, big space, tall ceilings and I can’t complain about that only get excited opportunities are endless.

This would be our primary gathering place in the home, it is upstairs, right off the kitchen and the fireplace makes for the perfect family room.  The previous owners put the television in the corner but I wanted it on the wall so I could also see it while in the kitchen.  The wall was off center and would have pushed the tv way off to the left side (probably why they put the TV in the corner, no body puts baby in the corner) making the room forced and unbalanced.

That was a pretty easy fix, see that back 4 season porch area… well Brad, my husband claimed that would be his office so a little more wall space and a couple of doors would help him (and me) out.

I closed of a small portion of the doorway to make it a standard double door size and put in glass doors so we could all still enjoy the view through the porch (yes, view yet to come but we are making some progress).

Check out the space after some paint and new doors.

I washed the carpets knowing they would be staying for awhile, painted all the trim white and lastly had to replace the doors with some that worked and locked.  I changed the paint less than one month after this picture was taken.  The dark color on the back wall was looking dark navy with my stone and other colors, I was hoping closer to black in stead of country Red, White and Blue.  I kept the Sherwin Williams Rembrant Ruby and changed the dark blue out for SW Library Pewter.  I love the pallet above and this is what I would be working with in the next three rooms.  It’s coming together one gallon at a time.

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

So I’ve been contemplating a new mail box to go with the house (coming soon I promise) since we finished it up out side.  I never splurged on one this fall cause I couldn’t justify the price tag of the ones I like.  Then, low and behold last week the snow plow blew ours off.  So out I went to reattach and it and thought to myself how grateful I was that I didn’t buy a new one.

But today brought another snow storm and Mr. Snow Plow went by again.  Arg!!!

There will be no fixing this time, this calls for a replacement (of course when the ground thaws this spring).  I can’t decide how I feel, maybe it’s a sign for a new mail box or probably for a pole that can withstand the snow plow.  So here’s what I have so far, let me know which are your favorites.

Clockwise Top to Bottom

1.  Chiasso

2 & 3.  Neutra Box

4.  Mailboxes.co.nz

I’ve been eying the last one and after my research it’s not as expensive as the rest, still not ready to place my order but going to keep it on my wish list.  First I need to DIY a heavy duty poll for safe keeping.

Speaking of research here are some other options if you really like to make a statement.

I HAD TO PAINT!!! I couldn’t wait to get color on every single wall of our house, in fact I didn’t put a lot of thought into some rooms just went for it.  I am not afraid of color, you’ll see if the following posts. In fact color is the easiest and most affordable way to give any room a make over.  Like our master below, painted it right away no worries.

But 3 months later, didn’t really like it.  It felt cold and I wanted something more cozy.  So painted it again and got something much more relaxing.

Darker walls in bedrooms don’t always work, I had a couple of things going for me though.  Our bedroom isn’t exactly small plus the lofted ceilings prevent you from feeling closed in.  We are also lucky enough to have almost 3 walls of windows in our bedroom, even though its in the basement like I described here.

I have a lot of things I’d still like to change.  Furniture for starters would be great, you know like a head board.  More on that later, hoping to make a DIY bed frame from my list of to do’s.

Here’s a run down of decor so far:

Paint: Sherwin Williams Sable & Gingery.

Rug: West Elm

Curtains:  Big time sale at Pier One.

Bedding: Restoration Hardware

Happy painting to you, feel free to leave your questions or comments below.

Best part of tearing something up is putting it back together, as you read in the post earlier this week we got a really good section of the yard cleared up in a long weekend.  Of course a few things were not originally a part of that plan but thankfully my father was thinking ahead.  Another prime example, moving on front up to the driveway and rotting retaining wall.

It’s a little hard to tell but the retaining wall went right up beside the garage with a tight little space to squeeze through on the side to reach the back yard.  It also curved in towards the other stalls making the third stall a little difficult to use but necessary because the first stall is 100% unusable for a car (more on that at a later date).  So down the old wooden retaining wall comes, yes a few trees too but for a couple of good reasons.  One, we wanted to move the retaining wall over a entire vehicles width making it easier to pull in and out of the garage stall.  We also found out later that would increase the amount of snow we would get to remove in the winter. Second reason being we are considered a “blind driveway” and wanted to see if pushing the wall out would give us a little more room to see cars coming even if they couldn’t see us.

So let’s get to the fun part, building it back up.  It was difficult to decide on a color not knowing what we would someday like to do to the exterior of the house.  So putting that aside went with a safe gray tone, hoping it would work out later.  Truthfully I wanted huge boulders the would blend into the woodsy lot but that didn’t work with the budget nor did we have the proper equipment.

Speaking of budget, here’s where we saved some big $.

1. Doing it ourselves and a few buddies on the cheap.
2. Found fill dirt and rock at a quarry, our project as you will see a little bit later required trucks loads of each and several pallet’s of wall block.
3.  Speaking of wall block, tried to order direct from a manufacturer but that didn’t work out in my favor so we went with a Versa Lock block from Patio Town.

I love DIY’ing but I still believe in working smart not hard, you’ll see that friendly skid loader in a yard on several occasions for the next summer or two.  It adds to the project total but I don’t think we would have ever gotten anything done with out our friendly Bob Cat.  Here’s what I am talking about, we managed to whip out all of these retaining walls in a couple weekends, clearing and prep included.

From top in clockwise fashion; the front wall finished up you can see where we will have to add some black top to finish off the driveway.  Bottom right, I couple smaller retaining walls to help the slope of the landscaping and the septic system.  Lastly, remember that deck we tore off earlier?  We replaced it with this round wall and stairs in preparation for a cement patio some day soon.

At 82 lbs a piece, it was pretty fulfilling and hoping we don’t have the need to build another wall for several years.

Do you remember those spectacular views of our yard from the post last Monday?  A little rough around the edges you might say, or one big can of worms.  I have to thank my parents for all the help that first summer, anytime it was a holiday weekend they would make the drive up to help us clear the way.  It started like this.

The yard wasn’t really a yard, it was covered in rocks, weeds, 30+ tree stumps, 400+ railroad ties and loads of work.

Yup it was raining in fact it poured later on that day but that didn’t stop us from clear out the brush and starting fresh.

I didn’t know tearing the deck off was part of the plan that weekend, I remember running inside to get something and and came out to my father pulling it off (or it fell off).  Into the burn pile and went and that’s how we cleared a acre in one weekend, at first we were disappointed it was raining but in the end it controlled our fire over night.