Snow Day Obsessions

As a result of another snow day, I got to tackle my stack of unread magazines. Guess what I get to be obsessed with now?

Ballard Designs

Yep, a pom pom quilt. Tell me, even when my house is finished (yes, I know that never happens) will I stop wanting everything? No, I didn't think so. Because it doesn't work like that in terms of my closet. 

Also, this snow storm has delayed a living room delivery. And I'm STILL waiting on my cabinet hardware. I ordered it on December 28. They said the package should ship out the last week of January due to back-order but I checked this morning and they still haven't shipped. I'm a patient person now so I'm coping okay. 

So my actual plan for the day is to paint my new coffee table that I showed you yesterday. This will be an experiment between paints that I already own. Could be a good thing, could be a complete disaster. When I was looking for inspiration pictures (and still thinking about painting my hallway wall navy) this image hit me in the face. How cool is that?

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Hopefully I'm back with a successful coffee table paint job for you soon. As in tomorrow, because after all, I am a patient person these days. 

Stay safe and warm!

Monday fun

So rewind to last Friday. Snow day! Since I have a job in a school, I was off! However, J had work. With the beauty of old houses, I could hear that after about 20 minutes the car hadn't left yet. So I rolled out of bed and peeked out of the bathroom window. This is what I see. Scraping ice with a credit card. Definition of southerners' unpreparedness for "snow days"! 

Friday night rolls around and I'm already stir crazy. And technically, I could've gone outside if I wanted to. On a serious note though, we had over 200 accidents Friday. Interstates were shut down and bridges were closed. The interstate looked like a scene from walking dead. Minus the zombies. Anyway, we decided to get out and have a lemon drop or two and some tapas. Fried jambalaya ball, anyone? 

Saturday we got to SHOP! Is this what people do on weekends? We browsed lots of furniture and nick knacks. Next up we have a little inspiration piece. I love X furniture. Is there a name for it? 

And here I am fussing because the store workers are staring at us J for taking too many pictures. 

Well, it wasn't all house shopping... You can never have too many bracelets.

Remember that X piece? J made this for me out of wood scraps from the ceiling and built ins. Love how it turned out. Love even more that it only took a few hours to build on Saturday and it's free... In a sense. What color are we thinking for paint? Jury is still out. 

Our weekend ended with some family time on Sunday and a king cake. Ohhh king cake. Crossing my fingers for another snow day this week. Crossing my toes that we don't have to make up the school days we miss! Did anyone watch The Bachelor wedding last night? How many times did they show the honeymoon suite?!? Geez. Anyway, my plan for this afternoon is to go buy some art supplies to do a couple paintings for the living room - and maybe even go buy some paint for the hallway. Time to start on that project! Hope everyone has a fab Monday!

Goals

It's almost February and I just realized I didn't set out to list any goals for the year. House goals, that is. What else am I doing with my life anyway? This is really hard for me to write down because I know in my mind I have a magic wand in one hand and a realistic slap in the face in the other hand. So, let's be ambitious. That's the only way to get things done, right?

1.  Get this main downstairs bathroom gutted/renovated. This project will be creeping up on us shortly. It will force Josh and I to share a bathroom as the result and there will be no shower. I only have a tub in my tiny finished bathroom. Ought to be interesting to say the least. Don't worry the blue carpet is long gone, now there's nice contractor paper down. And I never took a "before" of this bathroom. It really is quite large, but I guess the idea of an entire picture of it scared me. It's still got wallpaper on the ceiling. 

2.   Complete our hallway makeover. I talked a little bit about this yesterday and I should be moving forward with this early next week after I do nothing all weekend.

3.   Make our front bedroom (the last of the 3 on the downstairs level that need a makeover) an actual bedroom and completely redo the closet. So, I want to make that little vanity area an entire walk-in dream closet. Dream is obviously relative. Fun fact: that closet/vanity area used to be a porch. Maybe this can be a One Room Challenge room?

4.  Speaking of closets, we want to give all the closets in our house a complete overhaul. They aren't       functional. Picture the closets where you walk in to them and then you get hit by clothes. And get hit in the face with the smell of mothballs. 

5. With the bathroom renovation completion, the hole in the floor in the hallway shall disappear. At least that's what I'm told.

6. Landscaping. Won't our house be even more adorable with a little embellishment?

I asked Josh last night if he had any goals for our house this year and he pretty much listed all the same goals as me. Basically because we talk about our house goals every other hour. He did mention that he may want to start on the upstairs - while if there is extra time, I definitely want to start on the hire someone to do our kitchen. Ideally, the would happen this summer when I'm on a break from work. We shall see where this year takes us!

Time to Rest

So, first off, I have to say.... THE LIVING ROOM IS COMPLETE! Not completely decorated, but it is built, painted, caulked, all light fixtures are hung, curtains are hung (and trimmed in fabric), all furniture brought in, etc. Excitement isn't even the word for it. But, I don't have anything to show for it today. Womp womp. Truth is, my Mom and Dad are in Costa Rica right now (I know, I'm at work sigh) and I'm waiting on her to come home and see it first in person and help me with all the last minute decorations. Sweet little daughter alert. There is no way I can style TWO bookshelves without my mama. She has the knack. Expect that reveal to be coming your way pretty soon.

So now, Josh and I have declared a month of rest. We're taking a break from renovating. That's not to say that we don't have tons of little jobs that we want to accomplish all over the house in the mean time. Like for one, I have a hot date with my wood floors this afternoon. Because they have accumulated so much stinking dust in the grooves that it will take me lots of time to undo the damage - and that was with a floor covering. But my really big "month of rest project" will be that I want to paint an accent wall in our hallway - paint the ceiling in the hallway - andddd do some type of artwork to go up the length of the stairs. I don't do resting very well.

With that, here are a few of my starting images and a few inspiration images. I'm thinking navy accent wall with mint colored art and a barely there blue ceiling. The hallway is in some serious need of some pizzazz. What are your thoughts on accent walls and painted ceilings? Let's face it, we have to draw some eyes away from that hole in my floor.

Hole in the floor. Doesn't everyone have one?

This is the wall that's getting the accent. 

 This is how things are looking at the moment. And you may remember that we just finished giving this room a face-lift not too terribly long ago (in October) here. 

On to much prettier things... This first picture speaks to me because of that paneled wall. Good grief I love that. My wall is already paneled in the old fashioned paneling so I'm kinda channeling it. 

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And a little snippet of mint.

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The biggest conundrum of all is what is the perfect color navy? I guess I can rest on my sofa and think about that for a while.

Built In Update Seven

Since I can hardly stand it for one more second, I'm sharing a picture of what our built ins look like - you know with a ladder and a towel on one of the shelves. The photo is crooked (so are the floors and walls) and the shelves don't have their final coat of paint on them, but sometimes you just have to go with it.

Reminder of the beginning. 

Good, right? I'm also happy to report that the bead board ceiling is 80% complete and the walls are painted.  Only thing left on our construction to do list is install baseboards and crown including the crown and trim that will attach to the bookshelves. Can anyone say FINISH LINE!?

Here's a few snippets of the weekend:

Paint colors are Quarry Rock (left - for mantle) and Stingray (right - for walls) both by Benjamin Moore. 

Josh was building up the top of the mantle. I never understood how this would work but I really love how the trim came out. 

And a little bit of the beginning of the ceiling process... 

And one last little photo of admiration once we had the TV up and I was relaxing while Josh continued working on the ceiling. Night time will look more like this in my future... minus the football and unpainted front door. 

Happy Wednesday!

Built In Update Six

This is the point in the project where I am more antsy than ever. Everything is almost there and I'm ready to just move my sofa back in already. That wouldn't be smart because we still have tons to paint. I get my impatience from my Mom, right Mom? But the good news is that, not only do I have a tiled fireplace to show you, I also have PRIMED bookshelves and a complete mantle AND I have textured walls AND primed textured walls. Yep, the piece for our texture gun came in super fast and we are back on track. The entire room is one big white canvas ready for personality! Although, I am enjoying the plain white for a moment (it's a far cry from the pink wallcovering). Told you it'd be a happy day! I can brag because technically, I live in a dump (for the moment). Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty to do in the bookshelf department as far as trim goes, but let's savor this moment. Something we did accomplish is getting this bookshelf and mantle caulked, wood-puttied/sanded, and primed. Here we go...

Looks like a cloud right? Minus the dirty dirty disgusting floors. Here's an upclose shot. See my little mail coming through the slot? You can see a little bit more of my mantle detail. Of course, it'll all be dark charcoal. These pictures were taken before school (aka my workplace) one day so it's still dark outside. You get what you get. Snaps for me for taking a few before rushing out the door.

Let's take a little walk down memory lane to this past weekend. Here we are just starting to put the frame up, I guess you could call it, for the mantle. Everything was taped off for the texture gun. Texture gets everywhere when you spray it! I learned that lesson from when we textured our bathroom walls. 

Hehe :)  Josh is ready to put the tiles up. And I'm even more anxious. 

Anyone like our technique for keeping those tiles in place? How do you keep them from falling down?

Check out how dark our grout was.

Grout is finished and the tiles are super cloudy. Josh had many rounds of wiping down the tile.

The design for the mantle just kind of evolved as we put up different pieces of trim and said "do we like this?" or this or this. And there you have it. 

This little baby will be all finished up and ready for your viewing pleasure in a post next week. Can't wait to share. Happy Thursday!

Fireplace Tile

We all know by now that our loose interpretation of how this fireplace will come out is based off of this picture for many reasons. One reason is I love how the bookshelves have a layer of sheet rock at the very top and they don't take away from the mantle/fireplace feature. Now look at the tile around the fireplace. Instinctively, I loved the dark tile - but kinda thought it didn't really meet my taste.

Source Unknown

Soooo I very well could've gone this route...

Source

Which is beautiful too. I love light colored marble as you saw in my finished bathroom. However, I KNOW that I want to do this white & grey marble for my kitchen - so I thought let me explore the dark option a little bit more. What I'm starting to find about myself is that I like to go into each room in my house and feel like it's not one big run-on sentence but each room is an exclamation point all by itself. That should be on a poster. Then when I saw this post from Little Green Notebook - I was totally hooked. Even though she painted her fireplace mantle black, we have the same vibe going, I like to think.

Not surprisingly, I ended up going the darker route with these tiles from Home Depot. It's kinda shimmery in person. We also went with charcoal colored grout.

I can't wait to see these little suckers go in & that paint to go up. Oh what a happy day that will be! In fact, that happy day will be tomorrow! Anyone else have a bold fireplace mantle?

Sconces

Is everyone tired of hearing me go on and on about my sconce dilemma? Or is it just me (and Josh)? Probably just Josh. In a nutshell, I wasn't going to pay $300 a pop for a sconce in a house - let's face it - that I probably won't live in forever. So while I drooled over these...

and these (especially these)

and these 

oh there's more

and finally.. 

One - Molly Sconce

Two - Delilah Sconce

Three - Hannah

Four - Twig - this one is anything but a twig of a price. $950! But really, you only need one :) There's my justification.

Five

So number five was where I was leaning initially. And, at $130 a piece, it really wasn't priced terribly. But I struggled at first with whether or not I would get tired of the look so if I have an inkling of a doubt I know that it isn't the one for me. I even battled whether or not I needed to have an electrical sconce. Because plain ole candle sconces are so much cheaper, but we really want to be able to turn the overhead light off at night and just have lamps and the sconces and the fireplace as light. Sounds enticing, right?

So what did I end up choosing? 

A $29.99 a pop sconce from Home Depot. I know, it isn't as beautiful as the Delilah sconce above, but I think it'll get the job done. I'm obviously going to paint them gold to match everything else in the room as well. Haven't decided if I will spray them or gold leaf them just yet. Do you notice how they have the long skinny shape like the ones above? 

Maybe one day Santa will bring me those Delilah sconces, but until then, I'll just have to cherish the fact that I spent $60 total on sconces and I will get the same effect as before. And, there will be so much stuff to look at now in the room - that I wouldn't want anything to steal the show from my mantle, or at least that's what I'm telling myself :) 

What do you think? What would you have done?

Built In Update Five

Did everyone have a nice weekend? I'm back at work today after two weeks being off. I see lots of coffee in my future.

Truth be told, we thought we'd be a little further along in the built in department. And, we are. The mantle is now built! So I guess I shouldn't call it delayed in the built in department - more or less, overall department. So I guess we got delayed in one area and advanced  in another. So, we had a little snag in our plan. The snag being this - we finished all 3 layers of drywall and they are all sanded - woo hoo let's bust out the texture gun! Yay everything is ready to go and - "We're missing a piece to the texture gun". 30 minutes of rummaging through EVERYTHING and it's no where to be found. Hop on the internet and order a new piece that won't be in until (hopefully) this week - we ordered it last week. Obviously, it was easiest to spray the texture on the wall before we moved forward with other elements in the room - mantle & ceiling - but we didn't want to be pushed back even further. I guess this is one of those things where the heavens start laughing at you and remind you that we are, in fact, not in control. They must've been laughing really hard after I taped off every thing in the room to get ready for the texture which I am NOT taking down to paint in the meantime. Foot down.

Let's jump back on the positive train! After all, you haven't even seen the bookshelves! Last off I left you here. Here's a little picture refreshment of last week.

And now, things are looking like this. Yes I know, don't even look at all that dust on the floor. 

So, it still is missing a few things - such as all the trim work. Along the top of each bookcase will be some type of crown molding and all along the bottom is going to be some trim work as well. Notice all that sheetrock just screaming for some attention? I'm hoping to get that addressed as soon as our piece comes in.  Eeek I can't wait to show you the mantle. More on that later this week! Before we get to that, here's a few more pictures of the built in building process. First thing we had to do, was put up the backer board.

We couldn't forget about the little mail slot. We chopped out a little spot to make sure all our mail still comes through. Anyone else have a mail slot like this? Thinking of putting a little tray underneath to "catch" the mail. Here we go, I'm rambling about mail. 

Time to build the shelves. Yes all the sawing happened right in the living room. There is dust everywhere you hear me. But its rainy and cold. Pretty sure I win wife points for this one... that I've probably already spent. 

Next up the sides and top piece went up followed by all the bookshelves. Underneath all those supports is a piece of wood to hide it all and make it look crisp and uniform. 

Another little cubby area for our internet/cable/outlets. I promise I won't babble about these. 

And there you have it! Now there's a whole lotta bookshelves and fireplace for me to prime and paint. Stay tuned this week for plenty more updates!