Girls Bedroom

This afternoon I’m working on my blog and updating some pages and things on here when I realized I never blogged about the girls bedroom in the Colonial. When we first purchased the Colonial we had three beautiful girls and we were pretty sure we were done. We figured that two girls could share a room and one would have their own room until we moved the Master Bedroom to the main floor in a few years. This worked out well for us until we found out we were pregnant. Then we just knew it would be another girl so no big deal, two kids in each room for a while. Well that all changed at the ultrasound when we saw something between the legs that didn’t belong to a girl. So for a while the bubs hung out in our bedroom but that was getting old after about six months so we finally broke down, bought some bunk beds and made all three girls share a room. This room was a beautiful pale green and pale pink color scheme to match their shabby chic bedding. They didn’t like it and so we found some bright and ugly interesting duvet covers at IKEA so I let them repaint their bedroom. They picked out a loud pink color that took three coats on the wall. Here it is, the bedroom that three girls lived in for a year and half!

The closet was pretty small so we added another bar on the bottom half of one side for E’s clothes and then we ended up purchasing an adjustable clothes rack on wheels for the other side because as you can see in the next picture, it was blocking the door to the attic. So this way, we could easily wheel the clothes in and out of the way when we needed to get up to the attic.

I’m not sure how much longer the girls would have lasted in that bedroom, maybe another year or so before it was just too hard with our oldest wanting her own space, different bedtimes, friend’s sleeping over, etc.  I’m sure we would’ve figured it all out but now we don’t have to.  Everyone has their own room at the new place yet they still sleep together at least once a week!  I love that they can have their own space yet still choose to sleep together sometimes.  This room was in no way done and I was kind of just letting it hang in this stage until we knew what we were doing with rooms and well, our life! And on a side note, I did offer to repaint the pink room for the new owner but his daughter loved it so I didn’t have to.  So far everyone here has neutral walls and it’s staying that way, for a long time!

The Colonial

When we originally looked at the colonial, she needed a new roof and the price was ok but not what we were looking to pay.  When we finally did sell our home, the colonial had a new roof and the price had dropped $20,000!
A lot of people thought we were crazy to buy an old home that quite frankly was not the cutest but we didn’t care.  We live in an AWESOME neighborhood where the neighbors have become great friends, the kid’s are within walking distance to their school and the street is not busy with traffic at all.   We have been able to redo the kitchen, we put new siding on and the great thing is, financially we are much better off!  

Here are all the rooms we have remodeled and some we didn’t in the Colonial.  Just click on the picture to take you to the posting(s) regarding that room. Enjoy!

Well that’s the tour! I hope you enjoyed it and stay tuned for posts about the New Place.

Siding Project

Good Morning friends! I am planning on doing a few more posts on the old colonial and even adding a few recipes in the next few weeks as we continue to unpack, organize and start to decorate the new home! I am hoping to post some stuff on the new house in about two weeks or so. Although I won’t be posting anything too dramatic because the hubs and I promised the kids no house projects for at least 6 months! I did remove a few prickly bushes out of the front walkway, does that count as a project? So I thought I’d take a walk down memory lane and share with you the BIG siding project from last summer.   This is what the colonial looked like before we started:

When we bought the colonial we knew that eventually the exterior was going to need some help. We liked the cedar shake siding but the previous owners had used a lot of caulk to fill in the cracks and the caulk actually was turning gray while the shakes were still white. The shakes were in rough shape and some were rotting, chipped off or had an alligator skin look going on. The shakes were supposed to be stained and not painted but they were painted and we really didn’t have the money to replace them. One of our options was vinyl siding, it’s affordable, pretty maintenance free and we he could do it himself! WOO HOO! We briefly considered doing vinyl shakes but the cost went up significantly and that just wasn’t in the budget, maybe in 15 years it will be.   The hubs  is quite handy and has done many wonderful projects in our houses but he has never touched a vinyl siding project well that is until this one.
The first part was easy, removal of the cedar shakes.  Well easy until my hubby  had to get on a ladder, he eventually conquered his fear of the ladder which was a bonus to the siding project.  We have a wonderful neighbor that loved the peaks of our house and would come and do all the work up high so my handsome hubby didn’t have to.

   I think 3 weeks of the summer were devoted to the removal of the double layers of cedar shakes.  The shakes had about 20 nails in each piece, they would splinter into many small pieces and didn’t come off very easily. We have some very awesome friends and people from church that would just show up and lend a hand! THANK YOU!
We rented a dumpster that took up most of our driveway and made for an interesting conversation piece.

After ripping off the shakes the tar paper was the only thing protecting our house from the elements.  This was one of the rainiest summers on record where we live and I like to think it’s because we had an exterior project.  The wind ripped  some of the tar paper off and it made exterior of our house look like it had recently been on fire and the inside of our house felt like a fire because black and sunshine=hot!  We didn’t have central air because that went kaput during the kitchen remodel when Mr. A hooked it up, oops!  (He really is handy, that was just one oops.)   After a few weeks of people asking if our house had been on fire and taking the kids to the grocery store to cool off, the house wrap and  pink insulation panels went up.  Progress!!!!

When we started this project towards the end of June I don’t think we had any clue that in the middle of September we would still be working on it! Although we did take two weeks of vacation in August, Mr. A did not touch the siding once during those two weeks!  He deserved a vacation,  he worked almost every night after work until dark and on weekends, all summer while the kids and I were off at the grocery store park or getting ice cream. We also had many friends, neighbors and some family who contributed time and energy on our project.   I hate to think where we would be without there help!

We finally finished the vinyl on the house in early October, thank goodness we still had nice warm and sunny days.  Sometimes we’ve had snow in October, you never know what you’re going to get in the Midwest!  The garage had two sides that needed to be completed and those were done a few weeks ago, just in time to sell our house!  The final project is the pediment and sides around the front door. In the next few pictures they are not painted but it’s the best I could do for this post.

I am hoping that our neighbors will send us a picture of our house when the front is painted so we can update this post!  So that’s it, the really super long and intense siding project that would not have been possible without our neighbors, family and church friends helping us out! I was hoping to add shutters this summer and repaint the front door but we moved before I could do that. 

One more time, the before and after:

House Goals 2011 Revised

Back in January the Nester posted her house goals for 2011 here and encouraged us to do the same. I posted about that here.

After reviewing my goals, I think we did pretty good! We did redo the dining room, sold the corner cabinets, painted over the brown and added board and batten.   I did repaint my dining room table and chairs, along with recovering the seat cushions.

We made the cloffice in January which also led to the playroom remodel.

We turned the playroom into a playroom again instead of the catch all it was. We added shelving, redid the floor, painted the walls, threw the couch out to the curb, painted the closet doors white, finished the trim around the windows and ripped out the desk.

We also tried refinishing the front entry floor, it looks better now but a rug really works wonders for covering that up.

I also rocked the outside landscaping and even stained the playset last weekend.

Add to all that the bub’s room,which wasn’t even on the list and I feel pretty accomplished and it’s only June!

 Now I have the second half of the year to come up with new house goals at the new house!  I already have a few things in mind but I’m hoping to start projects after August when the kids head back to school. 
I also found this from my post in January and it’s funny to read it now.
“I love my home but sometimes I feel like I’m always trying to improve it without stopping and just letting things be for a while. I don’t have a Country Living worthy house nor will I probably ever. What I want most is a home that is safe, comfortable, inviting, warm, welcoming and inspiring. A place for my family to think back on fondly when they are grown. A place where they bring their teenage friends to hang out, their children to visit in and where they will always call HOME! Unless of course I get the bug to move in a few years. ;)  Oh that is funny, isn’t it?  Who knew I was a prophetess? 

So did you link up to the Nester in January or did you make a list of goals for your home for 2011?  How are you doing on your list?  I’d love to hear! 

Vintage Bathroom

I’ve been busy packing up this week, I’m hoping to have almost everything packed by next Friday so that when school lets out for the summer, I can hang out with my kids and enjoy all the fun places we went to while we lived here. Plus I think trying to pack with 3 extra children around will be a challenge. I love when the bubs is napping and I can just happily throw things out, put them in the giveaway/garage sale pile or pack them away and there is no one else following behind me complaining or pulling stuff out of piles. So while I’m busy doing that, I thought I’d share with you a few rooms in my house that I haven’t blogged about yet.
Welcome to my vintage bathroom. I actually don’t mind the tiles, they have a certain charm about them and are really in great shape. When we first moved in we replaced the vanity which allowed the door to open all the way. We also tore out the tub surround because we were tired of paint chips falling into the bath when we were using it. This bathroom is not very big and sometimes it gets a little crowded with three girls trying to get ready for school in the morning.  I will be looking forward to bigger bathrooms in the new house but I’m going to miss my vintage green and black tile and the fun slant of the ceiling in the shower area.

Hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend with family and friends.  We will be quite busy with two weddings, a grill out and birthday celebration plus some outside projects!   Next week I plan to feature the exterior of our house so stay tuned for that! 

Our Little Boy’s Bedroom Reveal

Ok, the wait is over, the window treatments have been found and this room is finished! I love this room, everytime I walk upstairs and catch a glimpse of the walls, I get a little giddy.

Here is what the room originally looked like, it was really a lovely sea glass green. Let’s just call it a bad paint color choice made while pregnant.

I only have two pictures of this room, I thought I had more but I can’t find them. I think I say that for every room reveal. I really need to organize my photos but that’s another project for another day or maybe another year.  Does anyone else throw their photos in a bin and quick shut the lid before they throw up all over the floor?  I know Jen at I Heart Organizing just did a photo organizing challenge a few months ago so if you are looking to organize your photos, head over and see her blog, it’s full of great stuff! Back to the room, I get easily sidetracked.  Maybe that’s why I have a hard time finishing projects.
Anyways, on to the finished project!

Here’s the before and after:

I didn’t want to spend a lot of cash on this room and I think I did a decent job of that. The lattice strips were $7.38 for a bundle and I didn’t even use them all for this room.  I primed and painted the strips before we nailed them to the wall.   Hubby also cut them all to uniform length so they would match up vertically with the chair rail.  We measured about every 11 inches apart on the wall for the strips.  After hubby used the air nailer to nail them to the wall, we used some chair rail leftover from the kitchen project and cut and nailed that to the wall above the strips.  We filled in holes and gaps with caulk but seeing as the strips are very narrow there wasn’t much of a gap between the wall and the lattice strips.  I then painted the wall white underneath the chair rail which helped fill in any gaps between the wall and the lattice as well.

The lamp I redid with some jute for $2.  I sprayed the shade with some adhesive spray, then wrapped the jute around the shade, spraying sections of the lamp as I went until it was done.

The pictures are flight maps that someone gifted to us, the frames for the flight maps were $1 each and are old black walnut door fronts from a store.  I cut the maps to size and fit them in the door front and cut pieces of cardboard to fit in the back to hold the maps in place.

The picture frames with his name were from the dollar section at Target.   I made the letters on Google docs and then printed them out on our printer and cut the paper to fit the frame, so total for that was $4.

I made the flag pennant/bunting thing with some material that cost about $6 total.  I made a diamond shape out of cardboard, traced the diamond pattern onto the fabric, sprayed adhesive on the backside of the diamond fabric and then folded it over the jute twine (leftover from the lamp) with the widest part of the diamond shape at the top.

I made the pillow for the bed for about $6, the rug was $17 on clearance at Target and the quilt was from TJ Maxx for $29. The dresser was gifted to us, the cubeicle I purchased for $50 and the fabric bins for that were $18. I purchased two gallons of paint for a total of $52 and the valances were $11 each from Shopko.

Grand total for this room: $199.00 Woo hoo!

I’m linking up here:

Stuff and Nonsense

 

A sneak peek of the bub’s room!

Ok, I’ve been working like a dog the past few days on two different rooms in our house and one is so close to being done, I can’t wait to show it to you!

So here is a sneak peek:

I’m off to finish cleaning my house, it’s in desperate need of a good picking up, scrubbing down and purging.  The purging will have to wait but let me tell you, doing 2 projects at once with 4 kids is not for the faint of heat!  Head on over to my facebook page to check out some more pictures from this week!  Stay tuned, hoping to have the big reveal of the bub’s room tomorrow!!!!

Hallway Gallery Wall

I made this gallery wall in our long front entrance hallway. The hallway is too small for a table and the wall is just really long and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I went shopping at Hobby Lobby in October and found this great vinyl saying that I really liked.
I decided to put this vinyl in the long hallway and then hang pictures of our children and family in black frames around the vinyl. So here is the hallway gallery wall. It’s kind of hard to photograph so sorry if the photos are all at an angle but the darn stairs are in the way!

Sorry for the giant sunburst of light in the bottom of this picture.  I had a stink of a time trying to get a decent picture.  I am hoping to add some type of board and batten to the bottom of the wall and up the stairs as well.  I’m linking up here:

The Playroom Makeover, FINALLY!

Just to refresh your memory, here are the most recent pictures of our playroom area.  There are two nice size closets in this room and in between the closets there is a built in desk.  The room has carpeting which our dog thinks is also her potty area, pleasant I know.  For some reason I only have a few pictures of this room, I either didn’t take anymore or the rest are hiding because even they are embarrassed of the state this room was in.

We are hoping to tear down the wall between the kitchen and the playroom next summer but we’ll see if I can bear to tear down the cloffice and the now fun and functional playroom.  Our goals for this makeover are to get rid of the carpeting and replace it with flooring that dog pee doesn’t ruin, organize the games and toys so that the kids can find them and might actually want to play with them, make it kid friendly, bright and fun all while not spending a lot of cash.  I think we did a decent job in accomplishing our goals.  We used black and white alternating peel and stick tiles because they were cheap, fairly easy to install, if the dog pees on it we can always peel it up and replace it and it was a fun pattern for the playroom.   Two years ago we paid $1200 for carpeting in the playroom and the hallway.  For the tile we spent $135 for the playroom and the hallway.

I really wanted my kitchen floor painted like this but I was too chicken to do it.  I love it and so far it’s held up really well.  It is cold on the feet but we bought a rug from Wal-mart for $20 to put in the middle of the floor so the bubs can sit somewhere and play cars without freezing his poor little piggies off.
I painted the closets a lime green color, installed shelving and organized their toys in bins.  You can read more about that in this post.  I painted the walls a fun Crayola Collection color called Shy Turquoise, it’s kind of bright but I love it with the flooring.  One closet is for the bubs and the three girls all have the other closet.

We did rip out the desk and for now I have my white dresser that used to be in the living room in here.  I have the crayons, coloring book, markers and various other art supplies in the two big drawers.  I like that the drawers aren’t easy to open so the bubs can’t be digging out the markers and coloring the walls, dolls and floors.  I don’t have a window treatment up in this window yet and I don’t  know if I will put one up.

I really wanted a colorful map for the wall and found this one at a local store for $17.  The kids love having a map and they often use it when playing American Girls.  They will pick a state or city that they are going to travel to and then talk about staying overnight in a place along the way.  So fun and a great way for them to learn some geography too!

I was hoping to find a kid size table and chairs for the playroom but when one child is 10 years old and the baby is almost 2, it was hard to find something to fit everyone.  So we traveled to IKEA and ended up coming home with this table and chairs.  The little table and chairs were too little for the bigger kids and I figured everyone is only going to keep growing so we went with the big table and chairs.  I love that they can now use Play-Doh and it isn’t stuck in my rug under the kitchen table, they can use markers on here, they play school, restaurant and we have also occasionally used it with company for eating on!  Best investment by far was this set for $100.   I hung the chalkboard I made right near the table so they could play school, the post on how I made the chalkboard is here.  I found that cute little bucket in the dollar section at Target, I thought it would be perfect for holding chalk and the eraser.   I stuck a Command hook on the wall and voila!

I fell in love with the rain gutter bookshelves a few months ago and was hoping to be able to add them to our room.  This past weekend we managed to buy the gutter for $1 but the brackets and end caps were $15 total.  At least the gutter part was cheap!  All we did was measure the length we wanted for the gutters, hubs used a hacksaw to cut the gutters to the correct length.  He then just used the brackets to screw the gutters to the wall and placed the end caps on each end.  That easy!  The bubs has been loving his books in the new bookshelves, he is so cute, he’ll just pick out a book and sit and look at it.

I wanted a way to display the 20 million pieces of artwork we receive from our children each day.  I purchased the last three giant wooden clothespins at Hobby Lobby and have been on the lookout for a fourth one but they are sold out every time I go!  I was going to string them up but I thought they would look cute on a picture frame with some cute scrapping paper.  I think I might switch them out to bigger frames but for now it works.  I am also hoping to find giant letters that spell READ and put those above the bookshelves and move the artwork above the chalkboard.  Anyone have any big letters for me?

Finally, in November we decided to make a kitchen for our children, we found some furniture, a dog bowl, a board and various pieces of plumbing and came up with this.  Here is what it looked like originally:

I painted it white, added a cute little skirt made out of some fun material, a fun little rug and garbage can from the dollar section at Target and she looks so much better now!

I also managed to find some fun striped curtains for this window at Target on clearance for only $7.50 each.  They were originally shower curtains but after folding over the top part of the shower curtain and some curtain clips from IKEA, you would never know they were shower curtains!
I  also hung those three red mirrors for fun, another Target deal, only $1.24 each!  So there it is, the playroom makeover!  Here are a few before and afters of the playroom just in case you haven’t had enough!

And just to keep it real, here is what it looked like a few days ago when I was painting chairs and my children were making forts on Spring Break:

They were doing what this room was made for, Playing in!

Feel free to check out our Closet Turned Office or Cloffice and also Our Kitchen Remodel.
Thanks for stopping by!

I’m linking up at the following places:

Stuff and Nonsense

Living Room Then & Now

Back when we first moved into this house my main focus was redoing a horrible no good very bad kitchen, you can check out photos of the kitchen remodel here.  Back when we first moved in we didn’t have a rug for the living room, we had dark curtains and ugly flesh colored walls.  They don’t look to bad in these photos but I promise you, it was like Silence of the Lambs on the walls.

I finally painted the brown brick on the fireplace. I am also hoping to paint over the sassy brassy parts soon with high heat paint in black.

The back wall is not my least favorite part of this living room. It looks like someone forgot to finish the bookshelves. For now the TV is there but I am hoping to convince Mr.A to build some built-ins and move the TV over the fireplace to make one focal wall instead of two. Then we can tear down the half finished bookshelves and do something else, like board and batten so we don’t have to drywall.  Good thing we have Ms. A in the picture, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything cute about that picture above!

If I could paint my living room again I wouldn’t choose such a bright color,  I’d go for something softer but still an aqua/turquoise type color.  I think if I told my husband I wanted to paint the living room he would cry.  He read this last sentence and said it would be more like weeping. Good thing he thinks I’m so cute!
I am hoping to get our gallery wall over the couch done this week but with the kids on Spring Break it might just be too much for this week, seeing as I’m already redoing the dining room chairs and table.  have I ever mentioned that I think I have project ADD? Does anyone else do that?

I’m linking up at:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...