Half Bath Reveal

Today, I am sharing photos of our half bath. It wasn't given an exciting makeover, but it did receive a fresh coat of paint and a new piece of artwork. I chose a pretty greish-blue for the walls. The photo is one that Casey took while he was still living in MT.  Now it has a nice home in a new frame I picked up from Michaels (when the were 50% off + I had a 20% off coupon) a couple of weeks ago.  For warmth under foot, I added a white and blue striped rug that came from Target a couple of years ago.
I think this room will get a relatively large amount of traffic, so I'm happy to have at least one room in our house done.

Spring Has Come...and a home update

So sorry for the delay between posts. If you've been paying attention, you may have realized that we sort of fell off the face of the planet mid-renovation (at least as far as updating the blog). We've been so busy lately! Time has just gotten away from us. In the meantime, spring has come to Indiana and our yard is full of tree a'bloom with white flowers.

This past weekend our entire neighborhood was bustling with yard sales, kids playing and people out enjoying the beautiful weather. It was wonderful to be outdoors after such a long, awful winter. Not only did we host our our yard sale, but we came home with a few treasures. Here you can see the cute pair of wood adirondack chairs that were FREE at a neighbors home. Without much hesitation, Casey loaded them into the pickup, brought them home and plopped them into the backyard. With just a little TLC, they will be perfect!

Now for the inside of the house...First, let's start with the stairwell.

The banister has been given a makeover:

First, Casey removed the old handrail from the stairwell and built a beautiful new handrail to match the banister below. Once this was done, I applied the same technique as I previously used to update our bathroom vanity. This meant wiping the stained bannister with a deglazer/deglosser, lightly sanding down the entire bannister, and then cleaning it again. I gave both the new handrail and the bannister several coats of General Finishes Gel Stain in Java and about four coats of Polyacrylic. The result was well worth the effort.

We've also been moving along beautifully in the kitchen. First, Casey built a frame above the microwave (pictured here) which would support the cabinet and push it away from the wall by a few inches. Then he added crown molding to all of the cabinets.

After this, I deep cleaned all of the cabinets with TSP, the cabinet doors and hardware were removed, and we stripped the existing stain and gave the cabinets a good sanding. Next, we cleaned the cabinets again with Mineral Spirits to prepare for the primer.

Once this was finished, the cabinet frames were given two coats of oil-based primer and three coats of Benjamin Moore ADVANCE in White Dove (semi-gloss). Benjamin Moore ADVANCE is a waterborne alkyd paint that offers the unique application properties and durability of an oil paint in a low VOC formula that cleans up with soap and water. I would recommend it over and over again!

You can see that the kitchen is still in progress. The cabinet doors are taking over the garage while Casey gives them a daily bath in their new bright white paint. It's a kitchen miracle. I'm just giddy! It's bright, cheerful and most importantly, everything we envisioned. I can't wait to share more photos with ya'll. 

Until then...  

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Happy (Spring) Friday

Happy Spring from Indianapolis! It is absolutely beautiful here. The sun is shining, the flowers are popping up, grass is green and it's FRIDAY!

Unfortunately, I do not have a house update for you yet :( We are hard at work and should make some more progress on our kitchen this coming weekend.

As an aside, I wanted to share a little tidbit of excitement from my week. The 10th of the month may now be one of my favorite days, because my Birchbox is revealed...AND I actually recieved my first Birchbox yesterday.

Birchbox is a startup company that is incredibly HOT right now! It’s targeted to those who “enjoy using the best beauty products” but who “don’t want to have to work too hard to find them”. Every month you spend $10 to get a box filled with about 5 samples (mostly things that make a girl feel pretty), that will vary depending upon your beauty profile.

For all of you a ladies that are curious, I recommend you give it a try. You can use this link to get you started. It also makes a great gift!

 

For those of you who have already subscribed: Log on to Birchbox. Click “Box” and then “Women’s Box”. You’ll be able to see the contents of your April 2014 Box right there!

Here is what I got this month:

It came in this cute brown paper box...
  wrapped up in pretty blue tissue! What a lovely surprise to come home to after a long work day.    
Have a great weekend and I hope to update you soon with more photos of the house!
  

We are inching forward: progress report

This past week, we knocked a few things off our to-do list! While I would prefer to be a speedy hare who gets the entire home in magazine-ready form on her lunch break, I have to settle for being the tortoise who makes teeny tiny steps towards the finish line. At any rate, I'm super excited to show you a couple of tiny updates that we've made recently.

TV (Family Room):

First, we finished the built-ins and hung curtains in the TV room. 

Kitchen:

Recently, the kitchen has also come a long way. Here is what the kitchen looked like before. 

From the moment we stepped into the kitchen, we knew we wanted to rid the walls of the "interesting" minty green paint, paint the cabinets and add crown molding. Then, we had this great idea to raise the height of the cabinet above the microwave to create visual interest and give me a bit more work space at the stove. 

However, we first noticed that moisture had caused the texture to separate from the sheetrock. So, Casey dug into the problem…literally “dug” some holes in our kitchen ceiling. Poor guy! It was such a mess. 

To make matters worse, this part of the country employs a style of ceiling texture known as "slap brush" or stomp". To those who are more familiar with "knockdown", stomping seems like a lazy-man's solution to getting texture on ceiling drywall. Also, it is nearly impossible to repair: enter my patient husband to save the day! 

While the ceiling is patched an pretty again, the kitchen is still a hot mess. For the past couple of days, we have been living off of pizza and struggling to stay sane amidst the mess and dust. Despite this, I'm so excited, and we're definitely making progress. 

Yesterday, Casey painted the walls and trim. Belissimo! They were an interesting minty green color. We used Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter color matched in Valspar Signature. 

The current kitchen cabinets had already been stained sometime in the recent past. However, it was the worst refinishing job ever. EVAH. They must not have prepped them properly, because the finish is literally peeling and flaking off. It is a mess. You can see one of the streaky, flaking cabinet doors below. 

Why can't we just wrinkle our nose (i.e Samantha Stevens from Bewitched) and our kitchen could be done? Fortunately, we are only days away from making this huge change.  

Fortunately, Pinterest has been extremely helpful for providing inspiration and I have learned that I loved bright white cabinetry. I have also learned that a go-to kitchen cabinet paint color is Benjamin Moore's White Dove. Here are a few inspiration photos with kitchens that pair Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter on the walls and White Dove on the cabinets. 

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and another with Revere Pewter on the walls and Simply White on the cabinets (a similar BM white with slightly green undertones).

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I love the White Dove color. If there were such a thing as a paint celebrity, White Dove might be it. And if you have a paint research obsession anything like mine, you know that White Dove is an industry best-selling white. Here's what Doty Horn, Benjamin Moore's director of color and design, says about White Dove:

"The one color that people consistently pick for moldings and windows is White Dove. It has the softness of alabaster, with a little gray and a little yellow. For long-term livability, what helps is that yellow cast. Put it up against other colors and you'll see how well it works. It's practically universal."

Can you tell how excited I am about this kitchen update? I get giddy ever time I think about it! For now, it is time to sign off. I can barely hear myself think over the sound of nails being shot into our new crown molding. 

Note: It's looking so great. I can't wait to share photos of the completed project!

Have a lovely SPRING weekend!