Living Room Face Lift

Its funny how you live with something for so long and in one week it changes so dramatically. Well, that was my living room a week ago. I started putting up my Christmas decoration and they blended into the wall…and I said, that’s it! I’m done with this turquoise color! And so it began. The world wind of renovation that came just days before my family Christmas party – at my house! Lol

I’m sure my husband thought I was crazy, but bless his heart he went with it. And believe it or not, we got it all done and the place looks fantastic!

So back to the beginning. I’ve known I wanted to get rid of the turquoise in the living room for some time. It looks great downstairs in the small bathroom, but it just doesn’t work up in the living room. And that’s not to say I don’t like bold colors, I do! See my red bedroom for example…but this one just didn’t work, plus its such a big room I needed more flexibility in decorating…so a month or so ago I decided I wanted to just paint it the same blue/gray as the rest of the house. And after seeing how my Christmas stuff looked next to it, I decided now was the time. So a couple Sundays ago my husband and I laid down drop cloths and went to work. I painted the mantel a glossy white to go with the trim and the end result looked perfect. We were able to fill in all the holes left by the previous owners, and we even filled in the seams of the wood paneling above the fireplace to make it a little less wood paneling looking.

The bonus, it didn’t cost us a cent! We had all the paint and materials…one day of labor and poof, a beautiful new living room.

In addition I decided I didn’t want a bunch of frames in that room since we had our little frame gallery in the hallway. And I definitely could use a bit more display area, so we decided to put up two shelves above the buffet. I also wanted a new look above the fireplace and I liked the idea of a round mirror to curve off all the square we have going on in that room. Luckily I found a great mirror at Ross for only $30 and we already had one of those floating shelves from IKEA, so we really only needed one more to complete the look we wanted – to me $60 and a whole new look couldn’t be better, so a quick trip down there brought home a matching one to go with it. Unfortunately that quick trip had me running into the table of my dreams for half off! Yep…the Bjursta table was in the as is section, their old floor model, in perfect condition! For only $150!!! Of course I saw it with 10 minutes till store closing, and I had our tiny little scion with me…but my husband and brother grabbed the truck in the morning and went down there the very next day and got it for me! so happy!!

Since our roommate will be moving out soon, and the table we had upstairs was his, this was perfect timing! I’ve been wanting a big table with leaves in it so I could make it bigger in case we ever want to host Thanksgiving dinner or something…and now we have it! It also goes with the buffet, shelves and general look of upstairs perfectly – once it was put in it looked amazing! And its much bigger than I thought – it fits 8 chairs around it easily, without the leaves! And it fits in the space perfectly too, nice and slim so you can walk around, and the perfect length. And for super cheap too. Now we just have to find chairs….since my $60 living room remake turned into a $225 remake, we obviously did not have a budget for chairs. So I’ll be scouring craigslist for the next month or more till I find the perfect ones! We’re thinking since we have so much black/brown in the room that we may buy some modern looking old chairs with a padded seat for cheap, paint them white and reupholster the seat with some fun fabric. Another future project that I hope we can complete. Untill then my mom brought over some stacking chairs they had and we’ll be using them till we find something better.

So here are the before and after pic’s, note all the christmas decor in both!







looking pretty good huh?

Master Bedroom Update!

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I have a TON of updates to tell you about my master bedroom redo! The last time I posted we had just finished painting and I had picked a bed. Well – the bed came and it is beautiful! But I’ll save that for a moment…

Redoing the ceiling required us to move all our furniture out of the room, and when we moved it back in we didn’t necessarily move the same stuff back in. A couple weeks before the redo I found a screaming deal on the Hemnes Ikea dresser that I have wanted for a long time. $50! The only thing wrong with it was that one of the wooden pieces between the drawers had broken in half….$5 at Lowes for a piece of wood and touch up paint and poof! It was good as new. See finished product here:



So that went on the wall by the door. Then our big chest returned as well as nightstands. And of course the frameless bed….until our new one came in!

When Jeremy first put the bed frame up I walked into the room and about had a heart attack – although it was beautiful it looked WAY too big for the room. I almost cried. Then we spent the next weekend putting the rest of the room together. Up went the curtains again, in came my oversized mirror, we mounted my new flat panel TV on the wall, I put up the round mirror that had been left by the previous owners above the headboard and I bought new lamps to go on the Ikea dresser. All of a sudden…the bed looked perfect! I don’t know if the added height of the curtains, mirrors and TV did something but suddenly the bed wasn’t the only thing you noticed in the room…and I was ecstatic!

I also bought a new nightstand for my side of the bed. You can see that in the very last picture. I bought it at Ross and to be honest I'm not 100% sold. I'm starting to think a white paint job might brighten it up a bit. The previous night stands were WAY too low for the height of the new bed, so this definitely helps with that. And I love the storage and shelves. But I'm not 100% sure if its fitting what I want.

In addition to all those changes we got a new duvet cover as well! And that I LOVE! Jeremy took a trip down to Portland and swung by the West Elm store and bought it for me. Its perfect! Gives the room some texture and color and really brightens it up! It also goes perfect with the new lamps we purchased as well! I'm really loving the blue that we're bringing into the room. We did order King shams as well, but they are on backorder...so I'll post pictures of those when they finally come in.

So without further ado, here are the updated pictures:











So…its coming along. I still have a few things we need to get to complete it:

A chair – I’d like to put a chair on the wall near the window, something cozy so I can spend time in there reading.
A tall dresser – I’m thinking an old French style chest painted light blue to match the new duvet and lamps
Art – I’d like to put up something small by the tv in redish tones and some larger art above the nightstands.
Lighting next to the bed – I have not decided on this yet. Could be swag lights hanging above the nightstands, or floor lamps or possibly even wall lighting. Its hard to figure out exactly what will look good there and with no overhead lighting in the room this is the light that turns on with the switch which I would like to be bright.

Hope all of this was worth the wait!

Play Games. Save Lives.

Jeremy is participating in a fundraiser in a week and a half to raise money for Seattle Children’s Hospital. It’s an event called Extra Life and their motto is “Play Games. Save Lives.” Hence the title of this post.



If you would like to sponsor him, or even participate yourself, go to his site linked here:

http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&eventID=501&participantID=18214

Thanks! and Good Luck J!!! :)

I'm Back!

Yes that’s right, I’m back!

It’s been an extremely busy summer and I’ve kind of neglected my poor site…but I plan on fixing that! I have a TON of stuff to post about so in the coming weeks look forward to hearing about:

• My adventures in Cake Pops! Yes that’s right – I made cake pops, twice! It was fun and messy and if you have kids a great thing to do!

• Our master bedroom redo. Wow has it changed since May, we got a new bed, a new comforter set, a new dresser….and its really coming along. Still have more things to do, but my list is shrinking.

• The single best gift I’ve ever received for my birthday! Yep, its house related – and its great! That is coming from someone who has received some really GREAT gifts (yes tivo I still love you).

• The single best house modification for cats!

• New appliances, think clean.

• My outdoor struggles, pains and just plain old dirtiness.

• And more...


In no particular order...now, all I need to do is upload lots of pictures, how hard can that be? ...stay tuned!

Under a Canopy

So now that the bedroom ceiling is done and the whole room has a fresh new paint job I’m back to obsessing over bedroom furniture, specifically a Canopy bed. I’ve always wanted one since I was a little girl, at the time that meant ruffles and lace, but now I’m in love with the more modern look to them. And when I say in love, I mean total gushyness. Yes, I was at Pottery barn not too long ago with my mom and I saw this one, and I couldn’t help but go over and pet it, and stroke it and make little baby sounds at it, put my head against the rail and look at it endearingly. And I’m sure I got strange looks, but I just couldn’t help myself! Isn’t she beautiful?



But at $1700 she’s a bit out of my price range. Not to mention I’m not so sure how a big canopy bed is going to look in my smaller bedroom with 93” ceilings. So at one point I nixed the canopy bed and told myself “I’m going to make a fabric headboard”. Since that is my 2nd favorite bed in rooms. But my heart keeps drifting back to that canopy bed…and it swells and without even trying I get a deep sigh come from within. Which leads me to believe that maybe I should follow my heart and get the canopy bed? Obviously not the Pottery Barn one though.

So I started searching and I found this similar canopy bed, but it’s more of a dark brown/cherry finish vs an espresso finish which I think would go better with the red walls. Only $630 though! So that’s a savings…



And then there is this one from Crate and Barrel for $1300, love the black finish and modern look, even the nightstands fit my criteria although WAY to expensive.



My ultimate goal for my room is to try to avoid the matchy matchy décor. I want my room to be unique and interesting, but also comfortable and inviting. I basically need all new furniture for the room. And with both of us storing clothes, one dresser is not enough so two is definitely needed. And I need a nightstand on my side of the bed, and I’m very particular on my nightstand. I want something like this:

Two drawers with a shelf on top. On top is key as I tend to keep books, my kindle and other random stuff that I want easily accessible to me in bed. But back to my bed dilemma…

After searching and searching, and finding very limited options, I finally found one that fit all my criteria…and after even more searching I found it for only $780! For a piece of furniture that is going to MAKE the room, I thought for this one item…I can splurge! So I did! Yes, you heard me, I BOUGHT A CANOPY BED! If you can't feel the excitement through the computer screen I would be surprised, cause I'm radiating it at the moment.



Pretty huh? Similar to both the Pottery Barn one and the Crate and Barrel one, but half the price! So hopefully I’ll be able to show you pictures of it in the room soon! Or in 4-6 weeks when it gets delivered! Keep your fingers crossed that it will look good in my room, here’s to hoping!

Popcorn belongs in a bowl!

And not on my ceilings! And so the process begins, we are slowly over time going to be taking down all of the popcorn from our ceilings. Hallelujah! To see something go from this:


To this:


Is an amazing site…and something that even days later still makes me smile every time I walk in the room. Aaahhhh…smooooth….

We started with what I consider the hardest room; although that is still debatable and I’m guessing will continue to be debated until both are complete. Since our living room is by far twice as big as the master bedroom and in some areas it spans over our entry stairs making it easily 12 feet high or higher in places my assumption is that in practice it will be much harder and much more time consuming. However, I can live without that room for a time…whereas living without your master bedroom is a huge inconvenience and headache, making the process that much harder. I mean imagine having no bed, your dressers crammed into another room, your closet on the other side of pure disaster and the shower you always use almost inaccessible. So to me, it was and will be the hardest. But its done! And oh does it feel good.

We followed this guys blog post on how to remove it almost to the T: http://jasongraphix.com/journal/popcorn-ceiling-removal/ We bought all the supplies, we used plastic on the floor instead of the paper though, we wetted it down and scrapped. It took us about an hour and a half and we were down to the drywall.



But that’s where our process ended, and we found ourselves lost and confused at what to do AFTER the popcorn came down. We made some mistakes but in the end, we got it done, wasted probably an entire day but now I can say next time, we can easily complete this project in 2-3 days with amazing results.

So, we’ll start with our biggest mistake. If you look closely at the ceilings of both our bathrooms and our kitchen, you’ll notice that the texture there is similar to our walls, a soft orange peel texture if you will. So we thought we’d try that in the bedroom, so we bought a can of wall texture and after letting the ceiling dry from the wetting and scraping process we went to work…BAD IDEA! Wall texture does NOT stick to ceilings…it left us with a bunch of bumps and an entire can wasted, and the smell…oh god! We had to let the room air out for the rest of the day…so I advice against doing that lol. We’re obviously amateurs at this….live and learn.

So here is what to do (as opposed to what not to do above)…once that popcorn comes down, and before you clean up the floor you want to sand and sand and sand. The blog above actually mentions that, but we had thought we were doing something different…but go with that. Sand your little heart out until you get the ceiling as smooth as possible. Then take your mud and fill in as best you can. Its an easy process, find the rough patches drop some mud in there and scrape till its smooth like the rest of the ceiling. After you get the ceiling as smooth as possible clean up. We rolled up our plastic and dropped it in the garbage…we had already tested for asbestos and didn’t have any so we didn’t have to worry about any of that.

At this point leave it overnight to dry. Both the drywall is a bit wet from the scrapping process and your compound needs to dry as well. The next morning lay a fresh layer of plastic sheeting down…this is now for the painting, you want to clean up the night before so you don’t track it all over your house…and since sheeting is so cheap ($1 or $2?) it makes an already messy project a bit easier to handle. You’ll need to do some last minute sanding in places that the mud didn’t get totally smooth, but hopefully that will be minimal and you’ll be good to go. One coat of primer, wait an hour or 2 and then a coat of paint and you should have a nice smooth and painted ceiling! Congratulations.

Now, if you’re anything like us…you made a mess on your walls as you went, water dripping down them, paint flying everywhere, nicks and scratches…and yes, I’m kicking myself for not taking any pictures at this point! But we had to repaint all the walls. 3 of which we were already planning to repaint, color change and all, but the 4th we had to touch up as well…and it was easier just to roll on new paint and it also made the whole room nice and crisp. This was day 3. But if you get up early, unlike us, you could probably do both the ceiling and the walls in one day, but we had limited light and wanted to tape the ceiling, so leaving it to dry longer was in our best interest.

We had accent walls so I had to trim the corners myself, I used the brush recommended by my favorite blog: http://www.younghouselove.com/2009/06/how-to-paint-trim-like-a-pro/ and it worked like a charm! By the end I was trimming like a pro, I didn’t need tape for the corners or the trim…and the tape on the ceilings did such a bad job I had to go back by hand anyway…check out my finished product:

Pretty good huh?

Like I said, for multiple reasons I smile when I walk in the room now. And I can’t wait to do the others…well, yes I can, I’m exhausted. But we will get to them…slowly but surely I promise!

Seeing past my makeup!

Yes, that wonderful little thing that ends up all over the counter, tucked into drawers and if you were anything like me before…it was kind of hard to see past my makeup. But not anymore!

I found the simplest, most wonderful way to store my makeup. On the counter – so it’s still accessible. Organized so I can actually find stuff. And looking pretty dang good if I do say so myself! And let me tell you…that’s a lot coming from me, cause I LOVE eye shadow, Mac eye shadow to be specific…and they come in a zillion little individual containers. It used to take me forever to find the one I wanted IF I could find it. Now…so so easy.

What is my new found secret? Jewelry!

I had been looking for some sort of nice looking makeup case for what seems like an eternity. Caboodles work, but they are sooo ugly! And then one day, I was walking through target, and was stopped in my tracks…there on their shelves was a beautiful, sleek jewelry case. I pulled out the drawers and they were the perfect depth for my Mac makeup…and although the price tag was a bit more than I wanted to spend ($40) for something I use every day I splurged, and have been so happy since. I had to pull out a few of the dividers, but it worked like a charm! And looks good on the counter too!

I wish I had before pic’s…but here are the after…nice and clean! Thanks Target!