House Tour Day #4

Our family room is where we spend 90% of our time. It was absolutely one of the reasons we bought this home. We actually did the least amount of reno in this room, we only had to paint and touch up some of the stain. When we bought the home it was painted a bright -- and I mean BRIGHT -- peach/pink. It was almost florescent.



We toned down the peach and decided to go with a neutral creme. I felt this allowed the fireplace and ceiling to be the star instead of trying to compete. The only other challenge in this room was the space planning. It is a large, wide open room, so we had to figure out how to make the best use of the space. Since we decided to make the former dining room into our living room, we put our dining table here as well as our sectional from our old home. In the back corner we created an office area for Luke, and adjacent to that we created a little reading niche with two chairs.











This concludes our house tour for now. We are almost finished with our kitchen -- just a couple of projects to finish up -- so we'll share that as soon as we get it done.

Veteran's Day

I hope everyone has had a great Veteran's Day. I think it is so fitting that Veteran's Day is in November -- the month of Thanksgiving. I am so grateful for all of the men and women that have served our country and fought for the freedoms and opportunities that we enjoy every day. Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of how lucky we are to live in this great country. I love America and I am deeply grateful to all of our Veterans.

P.S. My "house tour" got interrupted by the fact that my power cord died this week. A new one is on the way, so hopefully I'll have my computer up and running soon. (I had no idea how dependent I am on my laptop!)

House Tour Day #3

I don't have any "before" pics for this project, but just imagine it, because it was called the "duck bathroom". It had duck wallpaper, a brown laminate countertop, yellowish sink, 80's medicine cabinet, 80's track lighting and a light brown toilet. It was pretty drab and VERY dated.

Again, we kept what we could, so the floor was in good shape and so was the vanity after I touched up the stain on the doors. Everything else had to go though.

Here's the result (sorry for the quality of pics -- this tiny bathroom was hard to photograph):

House Tour Day #2

The first room(s) we tackled in our house were the entryway and living room. When we bought the house, the previous owners used this room as a formal dining room, but we thought that was a little strange walking right into the dining room, so we decided it made more sense as a living room.
It was all decked out with popcorn ceilings, gaudy chandeliers, skinny mirrors and all the walls were covered in peach and teal floral wallpaper. HELLO 80's!


(This picture doesn't even do it justice. It was pretty bad...)

These next pictures are during the process. Our first job was to redo the ceilings to get rid of the popcorn ceilings. We also decided to paint out the trim in this room because we wanted the room to be bright and inviting.

We had to tape off all the windows, doors, floors and fixtures for the ceiling process. This project took SO long because we had a steep learning curve and it was all trial and error. So our front room and entryway looked like this for about a month:

This is the adjoining hallway -- with MORE wallpaper. JOY!

More "befores"

This was the entryway during this process -- doesn't this look inviting? :)

Our next job was to remove all that wallpaper. Wow, that is so not a fun job. But, we eventually got it down to the bare bones and we were able to start painting, installing the crown molding and baseboards. Once we got all that finished, it was the fun part -- bringing in the pretty.

Entryway progress now:

Living Room:

Before and After again:

I think our favorite thing about this room is that it is bright, sunny and cheerful. We spend a lot of time in here reading, playing guitar (Luke) and watching cars go by (Seth).

What we've been up to...

We didn't post much in September or October, but that's mostly because we were super busy working on our bathroom renovation and finishing up other projects. We bought our 1970's ranch house about 2 1/2 years ago and slowly but surely, have been renovating and updating it room by room. This week, because of requests from my family, we're going to post the progress we've made so far -- starting with the bathroom. So, if you aren't interested in house pics, just skip the next few posts...

The hall bathroom we affectionately dubbed "the blue bathroom", and it's pretty obvious why:





My handy hubby and I started to tear out most of that blue. We took off the wall tile, tore out the blue toilet, countertop and ripped up the floor.





In the middle of a renovation, we always have to take a deep breath and remind ourselves that it gets worse before it gets better.

And finally done! After all the messy demolition, it was time to put it all back together. The walls were pretty damaged after removing the wall tile, so we decided to install beadboard wainscotting.

One of the things we've done as we've renovated our entire house is to be discriminating about what to tear out and what to keep. Not everything has to be new. We both really liked this blue, sort of retro tile on the back wall, so we decided to keep it. Also, the vanity was in pretty good shape, so I just gave it a light sand and re-stained the doors to give it a brand new look. New sleek hardware also helps. We also continued the beadboard panel across the side of the tub to give it a built-in look.

We went with a large format tile - 12" x 24" - and we both really like it. (It was also quicker to install and has fewer grout lines to clean!)

I chose to go with hooks in this bathroom instead of the traditional towel bar because you always need somewhere to hang wet towels -- not dry ones.

We added a shelf above the toilet for the fresh towels and a few bathroom necessities.



Luke and I took some photographs while in Chicago and I just had them printed in black and white and used simple white frames.

Overall, we are pleased with how this low budget renovation turned out. It was a lot of work, but there is something so rewarding about having a vision and seeing it through to the end. We scored the granite countertop, lighting, faucet and a few other things over a year ago because they were on uber clearance -- so we've had the vision for a while. It's nice to finally have it come to fruition.

Happy Halloween

Hope everyone had a SUPER Halloween!

All ready for church --- what a cutie.

Seth's Party

For Seth's 1st birthday party, I decided to do a "You are my Sunshine" theme, because it's one of my favorite songs to sing to him, and it just seems to fit our happy little guy.







I made the traditional "smash cake" and we stripped him down and let him dig in. Once I put the cake on his tray, he was pretty interested, but he got a little overwhelmed with everyone looking at him and the kids standing right next to him trying to "help". :) Seth definitely has "personal space" issues...



After we got the kids backed up and Luke and I both took a turn taking a little piece off the cake and eating it, he decided it was fun again.









And tasty!



It was such a fun day and we had a really good time enjoying our friends and celebrating this year we've had as parents.

Loving the swing he got for his birthday...

Our Special Day

Yesterday was Luke and I's Sixth Anniversary. I know, six years already? I guess time flies when you're having fun. :)

Due to my loss earlier last month playing Wii Olympics (10 events on the Wii), Luke got to choose what we did for our anniversary this year. He's always wanted to see the Blue Man Group, so he surprised me with a babysitter and tickets and we headed into the city.
We had dinner at a nice restaurant just off of Lakeshore Drive, within walking distance of the theater. It was a good meal, finished off with some pretty awesome creme brulee. (I've got to invest in a kitchen torch so I can make my own!)

The show was pretty cool! It was different than I was expecting, but it was very entertaining, and we had some good laughs. There was some audience participation (randomly picked people dragged up on stage) and I was glad I wasn't sitting in an aisle seat!

After the show, we both got pictures with one of the group members:




It was super fun and on the way home, we vowed to make date night more regular! I love our little Seth to pieces, but it sure was nice to spend a night with my handsome guy! ;)