After almost 3 years....

Our guest room is finally not purple anymore...

Here's that awful purple being painted over...

Revere Pewter for the win!

Now on to figuring out how to make a headboard...

It's been awhile....

I apologize for the 4 month silence period but we've been busy with life (and vacations) so have really just taken on small weekend projects. Nonetheless, I'll try to be better... I promise.

Okay, where did we leave off.... The backsplash is done and it is swoon worthy. I can't believe we lived without it for so long, it makes such a difference.

Finishing up!

Final product!

I also did a quick update on the bathroom as I wait for the big renovation.

Before:

These shelves were left by the previous owners and were rather horrible.

Once I took the shelves out, the yellow walls drove me insane so I found some white paint in the basement and spent a Monday night painting away. I also decided to build some shelves to look like those that I had seen at West Elm. I bought wood that Home Depot cut for me (I love that they do that) and then just stained and applied polyurethane. Ryan hung them with some sturdy brackets (along with a new overheard light).

And some towel hooks and wallah!

It's the little things...

Sneak Peak

Squeal!!

Our weekend

Our kitchen disheveled brings me back to the good old days.... #sarcasm.

On the positive side, by this weekend all of the subway tiles will be up... #swoon.

While Ryan was busy with the subway tiles, I classy-ed up our bedroom and dining "room" with some new curtains! I had the hardest time finding curtains that were long enough and ended up finding them at Ikea... who knew?!

Bedroom

Bedroom

Dining "room"

We have also begun talks with an architect about finishing the basement and the back room project. Exciting things... especially since we'll be hiring the work out this time around ;)

Backsplash Excitement

We started on the backsplash this weekend which was rather exciting. We have had 4 or 5 boxes of tiles down the basement for the past year and a half so it was nice to finally put them up. Ryan blames my awful supply chain skills on the rather large lag between ordering and executing but I like to think of it as optimistic thinking... plus, it's like a free project when you have forgotten about the original cost :) We won't talk about how I may or may not have measured wrong because we did one whole side of the kitchen and it took less than a box.... #wecantwinthemall

ANYWAY, here are the before pictures:

Ryan put up the thinset while I put up the tiles and spacers.

After a day of letting it set, Ryan filled in the tile with the grout.

Leo was obviously a HUGE help.

After some sponging and wiping it down, our backsplash now looks like this:

Swoon. We'll see how long it takes to do the other two walls but for now, I'm prettttty happy with how it turned out. #greytilewin

Slacker

I know, I'm the worst blogger ever. We actually have been getting some things done around the house but it has been crazy town with the holidays and some little vacations. I haven't had a chance to take pictures of the awesome clean up job Ryan did in the basement or the laundry room FINALLY painted but I did take a picture of the second ottoman finished.

Here's a reminder of the old coffee table.

Clearly not the same angle but I think a definite improvement. 

This weekend we're hoping to start the backsplash in the kitchen and I want to paint the inside of our glass kitchen cabinets a light blue. I'm trying my hand at chalk paint so hopefully it isn't a disaster... I'll let you know.

Let there be LIGHT!

I ordered lights for the back room quite some time ago but it was never really a priority since we had a ghetto light from the previous owners already up back there. I guess the motivation of having people over helped "us" out and along with getting the door stained, most of the trim painted, we also got some fancy lights up. 

Before

During

After

After

And here's a better picture of the stained bathroom door:

 Ryan also put up the molding around this back door and it is such an improvement. Maybe I'll start enjoying doing laundry.... #whoamikidding

Christmas Spirit

Sorry it's been so long, I can think of a million excuses but they're all pretty lame (especially the grad school one) so, all that really matters is that I'm back! We've been dabbling in a few things over the past few weeks so I'll do a quick catch up.

We tried our hand at re-upholstering the ottomans in the family room. My Mom and I had actually done one a couple of years back in dark fabric and I wanted to re-do it with a lighter fabric as well as do the second one. I did have to call in the "expert" (Ryan) but it sure does look good and quite functional!

Before

Taking it apart

Hammering in the staples

Oh hey there Leo!

Done!

So, I started on the second one only to find the top was a moldy mess so we're going to have to rebuild the top which might take a little while but hey, one is better than none. #justanotherday

We also got our first Christmas tree and crazily enough, it is still standing. I kept the decorations simple around the house since we're still working on it.

Tree

Stockings

AND last night I got home from school to Ryan working on the molding for the back door.

Swoon!

And just for fun, I looked back on two years ago and what this doorway looked like (warning: not pretty)...

After Ryan had started taking down the plaster....

Hideous back door...

Looking back at my pictures to find one of this back door really made me stop and think about how much we have to be thankful for this year and how lucky I am to have found such a talented hubby who willingly tackles these crazy projects.

New Shelf

My second Ana White project was a shelf for over the toilet in our half bathroom. I had Ryan help me with cutting down the wood (I'm rather terrified of the table saw) but besides that it was a super easy afternoon project. I went with the rustic look again but I got a darker stain since it was going up on dark grey walls. I then put the three pieces of wood together with the nails that I've become obsessed with (and I only had one casualty) and it was ready to hang. I've learned that hanging things is just not my thing (as evidenced by the nail holes behind the mirror I put up last week) so Ryan helped me with that step too #thankgoodnessIhaveahandyhubby.

Before

After

I love it and it was such a quick project (take that Pottery barn overpriced ledges). I'm thinking of making more for my family room as an easy way to display pictures. Maybe it will motivate me to actually order my wedding pictures....

Sandy Project

Over the long, hurricane weekend I built my first piece of furniture via my new book and I am now hooked. Let me rewind, for a long while I had decided that our entryway needed more organization so when I came across plans for entry storage with cubbies I was sold.

Before

So, I took my handy book to Home Depot picked out the wood that I needed (I decided on pine) and had the Home Depot guy make 95% of my cuts for me. The only cut I had to do myself (note:Ryan did this cut) was the decorative cut at the bottom of the piece.

Once all my cuts were done, we set out to distress the wood (although later I would find that me + hammer+ nails= distressing enough).

We found the best way was to hammer chains in to the pieces of wood.

 We used some stain that we had laying around the house to give it a coat before assembling.

A couple of days of drying later, we were ready to put it together with some nails and wood glue. 

Apparently I am terrible at nailing straight so there were quite a few incidents where the nails came through the wood and had to be pushed out and nailed back in... like I said, distressed. BUT in the end, it came together quite nicely.

Starting to come together. Note the wood on the bottom is actually our joists from the kitchen.

Once it was all put together, I found some baskets at Home Goods that fit in to the cubbies (Ryan immediately claimed two).

Pre hooks

Fast forward to our hooks arriving and putting the whole piece up on the wall and here is the finished project:

Swoon.

So much more functional. It is so nice to be able to keep our hats/gloves/scarves in the cubbies. On another note, I really want a nail gun :)

I finished my second (much easier) project from the book last night so once I put it up, I'll share pictures. Meanwhile, Ryan has been working on his plumbing skills and we now have our radiator installed in the kitchen #warmthwin.