Just down the hall...

*** 2 posts today folks... after this one... keep reading!***

Can't say I didn't warn you about the color...

Whenever people come over to our house and are taken on a tour for the first time they want to know how it's changed.  It's difficult to explain how interesting the color palette was before we moved in.  I've finally come up with the term "condiment colors".  The main rooms of the house were done in shades of mustard yellow, relish green, and as you will soon see, ketchup red/orange-- a BBQ nightmare.  Thankfully we had lots of helping hands when it came time to paint!

Paint made a huge improvement-- as did removing the mirrored bifold that didn't quite close all the way.  That closet door drove me crazy-- it was next to impossible to close, and if you managed to succeed... it was ridiculously difficult to open.  Not so efficient.  Like the rest of the house, flooring was next on the agenda.

Once the flooring was in, the real work began-- the finishing!  When it came to this step-- Doug and I spent more time in the hallway than any other room in the house because there are so many doorways-- meaning lots of cutting, lots of filling and sanding, and lots of painting!  But I think the finished product looks amazing-- I wasn't going to put the hallway in the tour, but sometimes I think it's my favorite part of the house because of all the long hours we spent putting it together last fall!  So, here it is!

When I saw how great the closet looked all trimmed out, I decided that I couldn't put doors back on.  It kind of looks like built in shelves.  Believe it or not, this is my linen closet.  I do keep extra pillows and duvets in one of the basement closets, but all of my bed linens are stored in here.  We did purchase a new bifold door for the closet-- so the day I can't keep it looking like this... the door goes back on.

I'll admit, sometimes I choose aesthetics over practicality.  I guess I'm a sucker for pretty things.

Amazingly... Caleb hasn't bothered to touch my neatly folded linens... and the closet has survived many bouts of hallway hockey.

Here's a few pictures that show off the amazing finishing Doug pulled off.  When we were selecting the mouldings for the house, we decided to go with a mix of modern and traditional-- flat modern baseboards and plinth blocks with more traditional architrave headers and crown moulding.  Whoa-- how's that terminology for you?  All of those art history classes have really pulled through for me!

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I made a trip to Ikea to pick up a few things for a project I was working on (see this post).  Here's the finished project... a family photo wall for the hallway!

I don't have a lot of family pictures on display in my house since there aren't many places to display them in my house.  The hallway is the perfect place for my pictures.

I am usually a fan of gallery walls that mix and match frames of different colors and textures, but the hall is pretty narrow and I wanted the pictures to blend in more so that I wouldn't be too prominent.  Ikea's Ribba frames worked out perfectly for me-- they come in lots of different sizes and they're cheap!  We had some of our favorite family photos printed in a variety of sizes, came up with an arrangement that worked for the space, and put them up!  Doug is the master when it comes to hanging pictures.

You'll notice that the big frame doesn't have a family picture... yet.  I decided to keep the boat picture in there until we have a family picture where Emerson is a bit older.

And that's my hallway!  Is it weird that it could be my favorite room of the house?

Let's continue... shall we?

The next stop on the tour leads to our room.  It was ugly, it was dark, and it was painted  a strange shade of purplish brown-- which when combined with blue/grey stained carpet, was... interesting.

All three upstairs bedroom are not very big-- when selecting which room would be ours we simply chose the one that felt biggest and had the nicest closet, which unfortunately is now NOT the nicest closet-- check this one out.  Trust me, I've got big plans for my closet-- one day we'll get around to it.  The room gets very little natural light which made it feel pretty dark and depressing... not exactly what I was going for.  So, as we began to renovate and redecorate the room, I tried to make selections that would help the room to feel bright, clean, and fresh.

As we did in all of the other rooms, the first step was to paint when we moved in.  This tour has already taken us on quite a journey of color-- first purple, then orange, now brown.  Wait till' you see what's next-- it will knock your socks off :)  Now, it's not that I don't like color-- I actually love it!  I just felt that painting this house in more subtle colors would allow it to feel brighter, bigger, and give it a more cohesive look from room to room.  Instead I've added accessories in bright and fun colors that can be changed and edited with the season.  I chose to paint this room a really pale, subtle, shade of blue that has grey/green undertones that make it almost feel like a warm color.  Not that you'd be able to tell from the terrible picture below...

Let me tell you... pulling carpet up in an older house is like going on an archeology dig-- you never know what you're going to discover... and sometimes it makes you love your house just a little bit less.  Once again in this room, we ripped up the carpet to discover more lino!  If we were just putting laminate into one room, it wouldn't be necessary to rip it out.  But since we were installing it throughout the main floor, we had to make sure that we had one even, level surface to work with (which led to many nights of scraping /peeling up lino and spreading a leveling agent from room to room... so much fun).

Enough of these ugly pictures!  Let's get to the fun ones!  After painting, installing new flooring, and trim, the room looks so much better...

It's a pretty small room... as you can see (there's not really even enough room for two bedside tables) but it still works!  I love how light and bright it feels with the light walls and white bedding.

Now let me tell you about some of my favorite things in this room!  First up... the one bedside table.  This was an old schoolhouse desk from my parent's house.  It was really beat up and the only drawer was missing-- so I sanded it down and stained it really dark while Doug made a new drawer for the desk that matches perfectly-- now there's an inexpensive bedside table for y'all :)

Second favorite part of the room-- the pair of lamps.  I LOVE shopping for lamps.  It could be one of my favorite stops on a trip to Home Sense.  I managed to score this pair on sale at Tarjay... (aka... Target).

And my third favorite thing-- the blue and white print blanket on my bed found in the clearance bin at the Bay.  I randomly found it one day, and as I made my way to the checkout I decided that I wouldn't buy it unless it was under 20 bucks... it was... so it got to come home with me :)  Doug hates "extras" on the bed, so it's my job to fold up the blanket and remove the throw pillows each night.  If not, they end up on the floor.

And finally... my most favorite thing in the room-- the full length mirror that Doug built for the other side of the room!  (Recognize it?  It's already made an appearance on the blog in my pregnancy photos)  When we moved into the house, this mirror (minus the trim around it) was hanging in the upstairs bathroom.  It was a bit chipped around the edges and didn't really fit the space very well.  I took it off immediately and replaced it with another one from a different bathroom in the house when we moved in.  the mirror sat in our garage for almost a year before Doug came up with the bright idea to put it in our room and frame it with some left over architrave moulding from the trim we put up around the doors in our house.  In our home Doug's in charge of the installation while I focus on the details-- filling, sanding, painting.  Doug finished his part several months ago.  My part of this project was only completed a few weeks ago :)

It looks amazing... if I do say so myself!  Great job honey!  The mirror was free (it came with the house) and Doug figures the moulding used to frame it out probably cost between 15 and 20 bucks.  So much cheaper than buying a ready made mirror from the store :)

A close up of the mirror-- please take note of my impressive paint job.  Not an easy task with a large pregnant belly in the way :)

And finally a view out the door into the baby's room.  I expect to be making the trek back and forth between the two rooms quite often in the near future.  A few weeks ago Doug made sure to put WD40 on the hinges of the upstairs bedroom doors to eliminate all potential squeaks-- we're not taking any chances around here with two sleeping kids (hopeful on the sleeping part).  How's that for being prepared!

So there you have it!  A complete tour of room number three.  I can't say it's finished yet-- I've got a few more projects up my sleeve.  Just need to find some time to execute them.  Maybe this weekend?

There are many more rooms to come on the tour of our house, but I can't promise that I'll have time to post about them anytime soon... but you never know... if they let me get to 10 days overdue I may be bored!

Caleb's Room

Caleb's room is the next stop on the tour.  What did I tell you-- selecting paint colors was not the previous owner's forte.  Maybe I'm just a little bit picky since I used to mix paint in a former job years ago-- or maybe color blindness was an issue.  Anyhow, here's what we had to work with for Caleb's room-- intense orange walls and stained worn out carpet (was it blue?  grey?  who knows! who cares!  It's gone...)

Here's what we did...

STEP 1: Time to repaint.  Out of all bedrooms upstairs, this room actually gets the most natural light (causing Caleb to wake up around 6 am each morning during the summer :)  but it still felt so dark.  After several coats of primer followed by new paint, things were starting to improve in this dark and depressing room.  

A before shot of Caleb's Room

STEP 2: Get rid of that nasty carpet.  We ripped it up only to discover that we had old lino that needed to be removed as well.  That definitely was a fun and joyful moment for Doug and I.

The moment we discovered old lino that needed to come out-- wish I had a picture of Doug's face...

STEP 3:  Lino's been removed, new flooring installed.  Now time to put in the baseboards and casings.  (As you can see-- this part of the process took place last fall-- Caleb sure looks little in this picture!!)

Flooring in... now the finishing begins

And now... a room for my little man.

Some of you may be wondering why we opted to put laminate in the bedrooms, not carpet.  The main reason was Caleb's asthma.  Health care professionals we have encountered all recommend that we keep his environment as dust-free as possible.  Carpet is a big no-no. I also prefer laminate and hardwood over carpet since I grew up in a house that did not have a stitch of carpet-- hardwood throughout.  It always feels so much cleaner to me.   Actually let me rephrase-- it IS cleaner.  If you could only see what my mop looks like after cleaning the floor you would understand why I prefer it over carpet.  And... it's also cheaper!  Purchasing decent carpet is usually more per square foot than laminate, and then you have to pay for installation.  We can install laminate ourselves.  So that's why we chose laminate-- it's healthier for our family, cleaner, cheaper, and I like it!

I do have a small woven cotton rug in his room, but it's super easy to keep clean and dust free.  I just throw it into the washing machine every few weeks and it comes out looking like new-- thank you Ikea!

One thing I love about this room is all of the storage space available for Caleb's toys, clothes, bedding, and anything else a 3 year old boy needs!  When I got rid of his change table and needed to buy him a dresser, instead of purchasing one large dresser, I decided to buy 2 identical Ikea dressers and put them side by side.  One day-- if needed-- they can be split up and used in two different rooms.  The shelves also provide additional storage-- out of the reach of small hands storage...

Wanna know what's stored in those baskets?

Caleb's best friends-- all are needed for nap time and bed time.  If one is missing... he knows.

One of my favorite things in Caleb's room is this Bus Roll Poster I bought for him off Etsy from a shop called MySweetPrints.  Check them out... they've got a really cute customized eye chart poster you can have made with your own message-- I've been "eyeing" that one too!  Maybe I'll order it for Child number 2...

A few other pictures of Caleb on Papa's farm-- driving the garden tractor and skid steer...

And his "big boy" bed-- Doug would love to make a bed frame for it eventually-- but that will have to wait until his back feels better :)  In the meantime, I tried to dress it up a bit by buying an extra fitted bed sheet to cover the ugly box spring instead of using a bedskirt (much to girly for a little boy's room)  Turned out great and it only cost me $9.99 from Superstore-- a great deal if you ask me!

And there's room number two!  Like the nursery, this room was done as cheap as possible.  My sources include Ikea, Craigslist, Superstore, Target, Etsy, MCC, Pier One, and the closets of my own home.  If anyone would like a more specific source guide, just let me know!  Hope you like it!

Oh, and one more thing... Week 38 officially arrived!!!

The Reveal begins...

As you all know, Doug and I have been slowly renovating our house... we've been at it for just over a year now. I've had many people ask me to post some pictures of the transformation... so here it goes! Instead of doing a huge post to show all of the changes, I thought I'd do it one room at a time. I've decided to do it this way for two reasons-- one-- they're all not finished yet (rooms in my house are ever evolving and changing as I dream up a new project) and two-- I really don't have the energy to clean the entire house, photograph it, then write about it :)

So... I figured it would be fitting to start with the nursery! Let me start by showing you what we had to work with. What a beauty, eh?  I'm sure this room was well loved by it's previous owner... but I had something a little more sophisticated in mind.

Nursery Room Before

The people who lived here before us had quite an obsession with colour-- bright colour, in every shade, and lots of it (stay tuned for more images of shocking paint jobs).  When we first moved in a year ago, we knew that we couldn't tear the entire house apart all at once since we didn't have the time or money.  But I could not live in a rainbow house.  So we primed everything twice, and then repainted the main floor.  It took a week.

The nursery was a special case.  Not only was it painted in a shade of purple I could not live with, but the picket fence/garden mural was painted on so thick that even after covering it with a different colour, you could still see and feel the picket fence.  Thankfully we had a friend who was willing to spend several hours in that room with a palm sander (Go Brent!!) to get rid of the sun/butterflies/birds applied to the top half of the room.  The picket fence would have taken months to sand down-- so instead we had to find a different solution!

Nursery after demolition-- oops!  Forgot to take the pictures down...

Doug installing the wall panelling late into the night!

Fast forward to the fall-- Doug and I have now torn up all of the flooring on the main level of our house. Remember this post?  After installing laminate throughout the main floor, we decided to tackle the MASSIVE job of re-doing all of the baseboards, casings, and crown moulding.  As we didn't take any time off from work to do this project, we ended up spending every evening and weekend working in our house together till 11 or 12 each night.  Doug was in charge of cutting and installing, I did all of the filling, sanding, and most of the painting.  Took us weeks... no... make that months.  Some of you may be wondering how our marriage has survived projects such as this, but we actually have a blast working together.  Those late nights were hilarious at times...  

To solve the picket fence dilemma-- we opted to install style and rail panelling to the bottom half of the room.  As we were finishing up the panelling in the room, we discovered that room would soon become a nursery.  We figured that the panelling would look great in a nursery, but decided to repaint the top half of the room a beautiful blue (the right blue can be gender neutral, eh?)  After spraying the the room and doing some repainting the picket fence was a thing of the past, and the room looked beautiful.  

To make the room more conducive to housing a small child, we decided to tackle yet another project in this room-- the closet!!  This room has the smallest closet in the house.  

Before shot of the closet

While babies have small clothes, they also come with lots of other stuff!  How I managed to store and organize all of Caleb's baby stuff in our tiny condo still remains a mystery-- actually, it was more of a miracle.  We didn't want to spend a lot of money on this project.  Actually, we didn't want to spend any money on it-- we're a little bit cheap at times (blame it on the Mennonite heritage:)  So, Doug creatively managed to find pretty much all of the materials needed to build custom closet shelving lying around in our garage.  We had ripped a few cupboards off of one wall in the kitchen, so Doug was able to re-use one of the tall pantry boxes for the closet.  After cutting it down a bit and making a few modifications he installed it in the closet along with a few more shelves he built out of scraps of material.  After a good paint job and some new closet rods-- project completed!  For less than 10 bucks (we had to pick up the parts for the closet rods) we put custom shelving in the closet.  Here's the finished project!!  Don't I have a wonderfully creative and handy husband?

So, that's the miraculous transformation of the nursery!  Keep in mind... this did not happen overnight.  All of the major grunt work happened last fall, while the organizing and decorating was finally finished recently.

If I had a few more dollars to my name, I may have made a few changes.  But in the end, creatively using what you already have and searching for good deals (and I mean REALLY good deals-- the as-is section in Ikea, MCC Thrift store finds, or clearance section in Home Sense kind of deals) is more fun in the end.  Once the baby arrives I'll make a few more adjustments depending on whether we have a boy or a girl.  But as of now, it's ready to go...