Going Green

In early March we ended up with a random Saturday with nothing planned.  This doesn't happen very often so we decided to finally get around to tackling the guest bedroom.  We bought the paint probably almost a year ago and it had just sat in the corner of the room waiting to be used.  So with no other plans we jumped in and started clearing out the room and got to painting.
A reminder of what it looked like before:

Up until this point all we had done in this room is hang some stuff on the wall, replace the door and install blinds and a light fixture.  

Organic Garden

Yes, I am aware that in the pictures it looks a little like baby poop green.  I was a little worried about this after we started but I tried to be patient and hope for the best and as you will see in the final pictures it looks much much better with furniture and things on the wall.

We also decided that if we were going to paint we would replace all the old floor boards and try our hand at some crown molding.  This part was less than fun but the end result looks pretty good.

Then it was time to move all the furniture back in.  The room sat like that for almost a month because our weekends returned to their normal state of craziness.  Finally this past weekend we found some time to hang things on the wall and finally get the room to almost finished.

Nick and I have both been blessed with the opportunity to travel abroad to several pretty cool places: Thailand, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Ecuador, and Chile.  We both have a bunch of souvenirs from our travels and we thought this room would be a great place to display them.  With such an eclectic bunch of stuff I was worried it would look cluttered and random, but we are pretty pleased with how it turned out:

We still have a few things left to do: put pictures in that frame above, paint and rehang the closet doors, build and hang a few floating shelves on the wall opposite the bed but it has come a long way from its boring old self.

Pretty in Blue

I am officially a delinquent blogger.  I just realized I never blogged about a pretty significant house update that took place this summer- oh in like JUNE!!!  We completely updated the master bedroom and bathroom including doors, closet, vanity, furniture, window treatments etc.  Again by we I mean Nick did it all while I was out of town for the week and it was fabulous to come home to.  Because I wasn't home for most of it I tasked Nick with taking pictures and I also don't have a lot of details to share so enjoy some before and after pictures of the rooms.

Bathroom Before:

 Bathroom After:

Bedroom Before:

Bedroom After:

We still have a little bit of work to do in terms of adding art, etc to the walls and we also want to build a more substantial bed with drawers for storage (which I will do my best to update you on when they happen), but I think this is a huge improvement and just feels so darn cozy!

We Painted!

So we moved in almost 5 months ago and we finally decided to take the plunge and paint a room.  We decided when we first moved that we wanted to wait until we lived in the house for a little while before we began painting or decorating so we could get a real sense of lighting, functionality, etc.  Well a couple months ago we finally decided to paint the living room.

We decided on a khaki brown color that we could accent with pops of black, green and blue.  We already had several elements in the room that were those colors that we wanted to keep so we thought a nice neutral color was the way to go.

We also decided we needed to take off the baseboards and sand them down.  Before we moved in the house was completely repainted including the trim.  Which we really appreciated because it allowed for us to wait to jump into the projects.  However, if you recall our house was carpeted when we moved it, so when they painted the baseboards they obviously only painted to the carpet which left them in a less than beautiful state when we pulled up the carpet.  It took a little bit of work but in the end we ended up salvaging all the current baseboards so we didn't have to buy any new.  The work was definitely worth it.

removing baseboards

sanding them down

Repainting them

I actually did most of the baseboard sanding and painting while Nick did the trim upstairs but I was the only one taking pictures so it looks like Nick did all the work.  

Here is what was happening upstairs: 

Living Room in Ciaos 

Again I promise I really did help paint; I was just the only one taking pictures as well.  

I also only have one decent after pictures on my camera for some reason, but I promise more of those soon.  

In the end it isn't a huge difference but the brown definitely warms the room up and our black furniture really pops on the wall.  It has also motivated to get some other things taken care of in that room like buy a new couch, chair, rug, side table, window treatments and refinish and upholster the coffee table.  We have been working hard on these the last couple weekends without much outcome but hopefully we will have some things to report soon.