Before and After -- Toy Room/Office Edition

There seems to be something about starring at paint samples that unleashes my inner overachiever. It's never enough to paint just one room at a time, I have to go ahead and turn half the house upside down when paintbrushes are pulled out. So in the spirit of all things chaotic I decided to redo the toy room/office at the same time as the downstairs bathroom. It's not like I had anything else to do. (Except get ready for a yard sale and pack for a family of 7 for a week and laundry and cleaning and serve meals and do homework and give baths and whatever else the world threw at me.)

The rest of my downstairs is all painted the same and will always remain neutral colors since it's kind of an open floor plan so I wanted to add some color to this room. I know, I know, all things neutral is where it's at these days but I really like some color in my life, especially if it's of the bright and cheery effect. So sorry 'style experts' I'm not following your advice this time. The good news is I probably won't get it painted again before bright and colored comes back around so then I'll be ahead of the game, right?

The {what were they thinking} BEFORE:

I like red, I really do, but this was a bit too orange-y, fire truck red. Not to mention it was a sad paint job to begin with and then my kids beat the tar out of it too.

We actually tore out the shelve pictured above. It seemed sort of foolish but with two windows and three doors and all those shelves (there is another set to the right of the door) there was no where left to put any furniture in there. We had a shelf with doors that close (think--hide the junk) in storage so we moved that in here instead.

Just for a few hours we had a really cool "Christmas Room."

O the chaos that we live with in between. Somehow in my head I always envision that it'll only take a day or two for these projects. One day I will learn that a month or two is more realistic.

And AFTER....

{the above picture is a more accurate color than the below}

I found this "fabric" in the shower curtain aisle at Target and fell in love. It matches my "Grapes Leaves" paint perfectly.

This comfy {but ugly} chair was a yard sale find. I {mistakenly} thought it would be no big deal to make a little slip cover for it. Let's just say it rarely looks this neat but it does make a great cozy reading corner. The pillow fabric I found at Hobby Lobby and then created a need for it. :)

If you remember this free-by-the-roadside chair ...

she cleaned up nicely!

For now we're just pretending not to notice that ugly old brown shag carpet. Truthfully, it's usually covered with an assortment of scattered toys and besides, I never have to worry about the kids spilling something on it.

Before & After Bathroom Edition

This is what she looked like before. She got the job done but she sure wasn't pretty. These pictures are not the best, I know. They don't show the plentiful nail holes and cracks in the wall. I tried hanging numerous things above the toilet in a desperate attempt to cover the whole mess but it never really worked. I almost forgot to take before pictures so that stuff had already come down.

That *ahem* lovely blue flowered stuff is fake tile paneling. Nice, I know.

I figured the walls underneath must be pretty bad if someone thought that stuff was a good idea. I was right! A lot more right than I expected. Good thing there are some good looking, handy, little helpers around here...this was actually one of the nicer walls.

I covered the bottom of the walls with leftover bead board wall paper from Kyra's room. It's not perfect but I find it to be a better option than the fake-y flower-y stuff. I kept the colors simple. The top is Behr's 'toasted marshmallow' and the bottom 'toffee crunch.' It really wasn't supposed to sound like a fattening dessert, it just turned out that way.

 

I debated for a while if I wanted to add any color to it. There is just something about the simple look that I really liked. I think it might have been that it somehow gave me the illusion of clean, not something my bathroom gets bragging rights on. I only wish....But I knew when I spotted this shower curtain that it was perfect. It adds just a touch of light teal, which I love.

clock -- yard sale $1

candle holder -- yard sale $1

blue candle -- Christmas Tree Shops $1.99

basket -- can't remember, it's been floating around here for years

bicycle canvas (below) -- Ollie's $7.99

shopping your own house -- priceless :)

We ended up replacing the sink. The old one was scratched and nasty and once the hubs took it out to paint behind it I just couldn't bear to put it back in. Yuck! That more than doubled the cost of the project but maybe now the bathroom will get cleaned more regularly if it actually shines a little when it's been scrubbed. Maybe.

The issue of curtains for the windows still remains. The old ones were just something I had around but never really liked, they're not going back up. Any suggestions?

One room at a time we'll get this old house whipped into shape. Up next, the toy room.

from Rural to Redneck

This is my view out the window from my favorite cozy spot where I drink my coffee every morning. I love it. The rural mailboxes. The sun peaking over the hill. The inviting porch (well, at least on warmer days than this one.) I can see a bit of what/who's  passing by outside but not enough to feel intruded upon.

(I've been thinking for awhile that I should snap a picture or two. I finally did it last week while the windows were sparkly clean. I had about 30 seconds to work with.)

And then last Friday evening, we came home late. It was dark. We were exhausted.

This....

(photo courtesy of  Mr. Hubs)

 ....is what we found in the morning.

(My heart  softened  somewhat when we found the note from the older lady who apologize and offered to make restitution. We had assumed it was a crazy, not very smart drunk kid.)

Since we host the mailboxes for all of our close neighbors on our property, the men in a joint effort fixed us up "for now" with 

this arrangement.

The title says it all.

And while this may not be my idea of "home improvement" we may actually "fit in" to the neighborhood a little better now. :)

Apparently she's pretty sturdy. She stood up well to "Sandy."

*********************

 We are very blessed. We have some minor clean up to do (mostly leaves) but no real damage here. We never even lost power. I think my children were almost disappointed. They were just so fascinated with the collecting of candles and the flashlight battery checking regime. And oh the questions a bucket of extra water can bring on.

I used to say I like one or two good snowstorms in a year but I've decided I don't think I even really like the snow that much. I think what I really like is the way it stops the world. In this case rain did the same trick for us and we didn't have to do any shoveling. School was closed and we had a great 2 days with everybody hanging out together here at home. Nowhere we had to go, nothing we had to do. I think, it was even more peaceful than a snowstorm because everybody knew we were staying indoors. The relaxing together during snowstorms has been known to get lost under the pile of hats, gloves, boots, snow pants, coats and wet socks, here.

 We are thankful! 

There are lots of people dealing with much bigger issues than a broken mailbox post right now!

Paint Project - Part 2

At last there are "after" pictures of the little girl's room. But we of course need the "before" first to add proper perspective. Except, I forgot to take pictures before the hubs tore it all apart and started painting the ceiling. So I only have

 this.....

 

...but it tells you everything you need to know. 1970's flowered wallpaper and nasty brown carpet has become

 this...

I wanted to do two colors on the walls and I was a little worried about getting the paper stripped off and what the old plaster walls would look like underneath if/when I did. I priced bead board for the bottom half, but I really didn't want to spend that much and I knew that that would mean I'd need a lot more help from the hubs. My perfect solution.....paint-able bead board wallpaper. Awesome stuff!!! The hubs was skeptical at first but by the time it was all up even he admitted that it looked pretty much like the real stuff. I've already made a list of other places in the house I want to use it.

The whole color scheme of the room was based on these pillows, which I made from skirts that I found at the thrift store. Ruffles and pink are sort of fun. A-hem, yeah, just a little bit! :)

This little table is from a yard sale with a skirt made from a netting  canopy, also from the thrift store. Project total $3.

I haven't really fallen for the "owl trend" lately but since this one was the perfect color I thought he added a nice touch. I found the fabric flowers for a buck each in perfect shades of pink and brown. I pretty much scarfed up all the ones they had. They have a pin and a clip on the back. Pillows, curtains,shelves, corners.....the possibilities are many....love them!

The floor is still a work in progress. I decided that most anything was better than the ancient-ugly-who-knows-what's-been-living-in-there carpet. So we tore it out.

We pulled up a little corner first and it seemed like the boards underneath were pretty nice, but we had a back-up plan. There is a large bound carpet in the attic from a former house that would work just fine, I thought. Maybe in the future we'll remember to measure it first. It's a couple of feet to big for the room. And when we got the old carpet out we found that yes, the boards underneath were in decent shape but someone had painted the edges gold. Nice! I am not ready to begin a sanding/stripping project anytime soon. Maybe one day I will repaint the whole floor or we will put new carpet back in but for now we have the stripey look with a $5 yard sale throw rug in the middle. No, it's not ideal, but am I sorry we took the carpet out?? Not for a minute!

Yes, that door goes out to a charming little balcony/porch. It's one of the "character" parts of my old house that I love. But, we have already decided that there will be barbed wire and padlocks up there before she turns 16. A daddy's got to do what a daddy's got to do you know! :)

And the new  look includes a nice clear dresser top. We packed away the diapers today. Somebody is growing up way to fast!

In case you're wondering, winter weather has not arrived here, but it's important to be fashionable at all times you know!

Paint Project - Part 1

Today I  declared the boy's rooms finished.  F.i.n.a.l.l.y. after 6 weeks of mess and stress which included 10 cans of paint, way too many trips to Home Depot, brushes, rollers, sheets of plastic, rolls of tape and a couple more brushes, 2 major paint spills (did I mention that we weren't replacing the carpet?) a couple of living room sleepovers, plenty of sweat and sore shoulder muscles, and a bit of nagging sweetly reminding my husband that I needed his help for a few things and one grand trip to Hobby Lobby! (my first)

Of course we have to start with the before(s).......

This is Tyler's room. It was probably the nicest  bedroom when we moved in. Actually I probably wouldn't have bothered to paint it except for one thing. You see those stripes on the orange wall? They look nice from a distance but apparently they used cheap tape to do those. Ugh!

Wow, when I look at these now the walls all look a little naked. I didn't even attempt to do any decorating because I was hoping this whole project would be done a long time ago.

He wanted his room to be orange. He's all about the Flyers right now and everything in his world should be black, orange and white. I told him he could have orange but I would not buy orange paint. I figured it's a lot easier to change curtains and sheets when he gets tired of it (or changes teams!) than to repaint. That's not happening till he moves to college! So, (drum roll, please!) This is what we came up with.

We're both happy. I caved on my "no orange paint" promise when I remembered the lamp stuffed up in the attic. Yup, the orange one in the corner there, thanks to my trusty friend the spray bomb for making me "the best mom ever" for at least a few minutes. For a few bucks I think it adds a fun look to the room. Still not much decorating going on on these walls. I'm having a little trouble finding cool boy stuff. All my "look isn't this a pretty flowered picture?" suggestions, whether orange or not, have been turned down. There are a couple of Flyers posters ordered and beyond that we'll just keep looking and working on it I guess. We also on the lookout for an orange chair of some kind for the corner. Anyone have any more great ideas??

I found this fabric online and made these curtains in about 20 minutes. Fold and hem, that's it! The gray in the back  is actually single energy efficient curtain panels. They make it much darker than regular blinds and they seem to help a lot when the sun is beating in there in the mornings. Hopefully they'll work just as well when the winter winds start blowing!


And the little boy's room, these 2 rooms used to be one big room. Someone installed a flimsy, kind of make shift, wall in the middle to make it 2. It works okay but you have to go through the one to get to the other. That means that we really have no choice but to put 3 little boys in the smallest of all the bedrooms. I'm not sure how that is going to work in 10 years but I guess we'll fix it then. Anyway, I was trying to decide how to paint them so they sort of coordinate. I ended up painting the walls the same color in both of them and then using different accent colors. If I were doing it over I would go a shade lighter on the gray but it didn't bother me enough to waste a gallon of paint or run back to the store and try to change it. It makes the rooms a tad bit dark but most of the time when they're in there they are sleeping anyway so it's all good.

So, before....

Hand painted clouds anyone? Don't be jealous! :)

And After.....

I had a little too much fun decorating this one! I've been scheming the truck/mechanic/road theme for a long time. I picked up the wooden license plate boxes a couple of years ago. They are finally in their happy place.

Yard-Sale-Free-Pile-Shelf plus (you guessed it!) a couple cans of spray paint = 1. a perfect splash of yellow fun and 2. a place for little boys to keep their many Lego creations. Score!

Old frames laying around the house plus a few pages from a free calender. Easy, Peasy!

Super fun and cheery, chevron curtains. Those took a whole hour since I decided to get all fancy and add the ribbon on the bottom. And, my perfect Hobby Lobby find, an old metal truck and road sign.

It's just so perfect! I nearly danced out of the store. And did I mention it was half price?

And someone thinks he's pretty big stuff, moving into a big boy bed. I thought I had 4 little boys, he tells me I have none!

Projects: Trash to Treasure

Well, at least trash to useful.

I always yard sale with the promise of what a little paint can do for my bargains, on my mind. Only problem is sometimes those bargains end up stored in the attic or the barn for quite awhile before I get to them with my paint brush/can. I finally got inspired  (or more accurately, took the time) this spring to tackle them. I'm having so much fun with my little projects and it doesn't hurt that my house is finally receiving a bit more of the TLC it was hoping for back in the fall when we moved in. Most of these projects have been finished for a month or more so don't go gettin' all impressed that I did all this yesterday. I'm just a little slow about getting the pictures taken and posted.

Project A: Take this 

(found in a stash in the barn, Free with the purchase of a property :)

and turn it into THIS.

A little sandpaper and paint was all she needed. 

 Project B: Desk from somebodies yard sale leftovers free pile. (Remove a gazillion Spongebob and Diego stickers with razor blade. Paint chair with leftover paint from the basement stash. Free projects are my favorite kind!)

Project 3: Another yard sale find and some more leftover paint.

But how did this get there?

(sorry for the bad picture quality)

This

 is what happened to the high chair for now. I'm still scheming and dreaming on that one though.

************

And we've made it to the middle of July with some life and color still present in the flower beds! So there not exactly prize winning gardens but we're making progress!

Plus this little ongoing project....

...messes to clean up.

...hugs and kisses to give.

...treats to share.

...little people to grow.

******

The big painting project continues.

It's taking longer than planned thanks to

triple digit temperatures.

It was just too blasted hot up there.

But it's all better now that we're back in the 80's.

I'm super anxious to see it all finished!