Master Reboot

Have you guys officially given up on me?

While I haven't blogged much about our house lately, we have still been working on things. The jobs are not nearly as die hard as they were when we first moved in, but they are still fun and exciting changes. Plus we have some bigger projects that we are saving up for.

Sometimes I walk into a room and it feels good. I guess the best way to explain it would be; if I don't want buy anything for that room, or want to move items around, then it is good. If I look at Pinterest and all I can think is this room could use *incert whatever item here* then I know that I am not done.

The living room has been the same for awhile now, and the spare room is still one that when I walk into it I smile.

The spare room is bright and happy and I really wanted that same feeling in our room. Not necessarily as colorful, but bright and fun.

I have had some stumbling blocks with our house before. Our bedrooms are small and tend to be shaped a little weird. Our master bedroom, while it has a master bathroom (which is nearly unheard of in our neighborhood for an un-remodeled house) is still very small. Our room can fit a queen bed, but would never be able to fit a king, and even a queen is a pinch.

I have tried different furniture configurations,

in hopes of maybe finding a better setup, but I always go back to the original.

When we originally bought the house we had two side tables and a large dresser. We sold the dresser and two side tables and exchanged them for a small dresser as a side table, and a dresser for me.

That is how it has been.

Not awful. But not great either.

I look at pictures of bedrooms all the time, and when I started really pinpointing what I loved about the rooms, it was that the majority of them were white. They looked clean and uncluttered.

Along with working on our house, I have also been trying to actively get rid of items that we don't use or need.

For years I have told Blake that I would like a bed with no foot board. It is a strange request, but I do have some sound reasoning for wanting to change.

Our room is tiny. I am OK with it's tinyness...I don't spend a ton of time in there, so I would rather have that space somewhere else. With a foot board, our room looked even smaller. It feels like you are walking into a bed the moment you walk in the room.

So I went searching for a new bed frame.

I found this picture on Pinterest

and after some super sleuthing I found out that the bed frame was from Ikea. Of course they had painted it, but it was just the simple shape that I wanted. I was originally going to buy a white frame, but since I knew I was going to paint the walls white, I went with black.

The next step was getting rid of the unwanted bulk, in the form of dressers.

Then I started the painting.

When we moved into the house, I painted our bedroom a grey color. It was light, and I still like the color, just not in our bedroom. So the walls got painted a bright clean white.

I knew I wanted to hang a picture that I got from my great grandma on the wall since it had been stored under my bed since we moved into this house.

The picture is old and I didn't want to make our room look old.

So in order to counter the oldness of the picture I painted the wall with the most immature shape I could think of. Polka dots.

My decorating methods are very scientific.

I kid.

Most of the time I just cross my fingers and hope it looks OK.

Painting the dots took two grueling days.

Then it was time to hang the picture and put everything back into place. Until I realized that our baseboards could use a touch up.

At this point, our walls were white, our curtains were white, and we had white bedding. Sure, we had a black bed and black polka dots. But, our room needed a smidgen of color. 

So, I did what any insane person would do.

I painted the baseboards a dark turquoise color.

Surprisingly, I enjoy them quite a bit.

Blake managed to clean out a big three drawer dresser in exchange for a small one drawer side table.

Our bedroom now feels uncluttered and clean. I hope to at some point get a rug, but I am no hurry.

Quickness of Change

Blake and I were discussing the other day the speed at which I change things. Not because I grow tired of them, but mostly because I find something I like better. Thankfully, Blake doesn't seem to mind that I am constantly moving stuff around.

Nothing major has happened lately on the house, but stuff has changed. Mostly decor. We have gotten all of the downstairs doors up and some of the baseboards...more on that another time.

I figured that a good update was in order.

When we first moved into the house our bedroom was, well,...putting it nicely...leaving something to be desired.

We painted the walls grey, pulled up the carpet, pulled down the curtains and switched out the fan. Then proceeded to move our furniture in.

I need to stress here, that our room is NOT big. If we had a king size bed, it wouldn't fit. We are ok with it. But, our furniture was just too big for our bedroom so we decided that we would use two dressers as night stands and I got new bedding in hopes that it would brighten up the space.

We sold off our side tables and long dresser in lieu of the two dressers.

It felt better with the two dressers and we surprisingly had more storage space (which we desperately need).

Imagine Blake's surprise **insert sarcastic tone** when he came home one day and I told him I wanted to move around the bedroom.

Moving around the bedroom to make everything fit, and still get access to our closet, required me to not have a nightstand. It felt so much better to not have the window blocked, so I was OK with that.

I also decided to paint the wall above our bed instead of hanging art.

I decided to go with a triangle design and I am pretty happy with it.

Our room is still lacking "something" I am just not quite sure what that is yet.

The nice thing is, I am not in a super rush to figure out what IT is.
I am just please that our room doesn't look like a dirty motel anymore.
Before:

After:

I am hoping that now that we have figured out what was wrong with Penny, I can update a little more frequently. There are definitely things that have changed. 

The Little Things

I have been sick. Coughing up a lung sick.

Not awesome.

I have also been a bit busy with my shop. Nothing horrific, it just takes up extra time that I could spend doing other things.

But there is something about sitting at home and seeing all of the little things that are not getting done. Things that no one else probably thinks twice about, but bug you endlessly.

My list:

1. The paint on the wall going down the stairs. The paint didn't go all the way down to the new stairs because there used to be carpet there. With the carpet gone there was still part of the wall that needed to be touched up. I finally did it this last week. Woot!

2. The main bathroom has a "window" at the top of the wall. It lets in light from the master bathroom and gives the bathroom daylight that it otherwise wouldn't have, because it is in the center of the house. Around the edges of the window was paint.

The previous painter was not especially careful. It bothers me every time that I look at it....and yet...here it is 7 months later.

Because our kids just had spring break, and because I believe in slave labor, I made the kids clean the bathroom while I got to scrape old paint off of a window.

It probably took about an hour or two to scrape all the paint off, and my fingers were screaming by the end. Old paint does not come off gracefully. It is mean, and sticks around, and really puts up a fight.

Good thing I was determined. Now our window doesn't look like I don't know how to paint.

3. Our front windows next to our doors.

In all honesty they weren't horrible, and I feel bad covering them up because the previous owner was so proud about how he "got them professionally etched." But roses...they ain't my thing.

I knew I was taking a risk that might not work. Luckily, the paint that I was using was removable with paint thinner and only cost $4 for the can.

At Home Depot I found the frosted glass spray paint, taped up my windows and got to spraying.

About 30 minutes later, I had frosted glass windows that had stripes going down them.

Surprisingly, it worked much better then I had thought that it would. The upside is, if I get tired of it I can just remove it.

I also have a lot of projects half started right now. You should see my laundry room...it is nuts.

At one point last week our living room looked like a furniture store. It had two extra dressers sitting in it, a new chair, our green bench, two nightstands, my white cabinet, and all of the regular furniture that belongs in it.

Here is a really quick breakdown of the madness:

Our dresser and nightstands were just too big for our bedroom. I have been looking for small dressers online to act as nightstands, in order to get rid of our current dresser and nightstands.

I found this dresser online and was excited because we had a dresser exactly like it that would match, so I bought it.

The dresser that matched it was in the downstairs bathroom.

So I moved our nightstands and dresser out of our room and moved these two dressers in to act as nightstands.

(This is how it is, for the moment. Although, there is still tweaking to do.)

Then came the problem of our missing dresser in the downstairs bathroom. The dresser in the bathroom acts as storage, but also blocks the ugliness that is our fuse box and water softener.

Insert this $15 dollar dresser that I found at the DI.

So...right now I am working on...

Striping off the paint from the dresser and then redoing it.

I also need to paint our bedroom dressers, and the boys new dresser, and the new laundry cart that I bought.

Now you understand why our laundry room looks like a war zone. Removing paint is a messy business.

A Little Bit Fun, A Little Bit Function

I wouldn't say that I have a certain style, although if colorful was one...that would probably fit best. 

Buying what I like, and finding a place to put it, seem to be what works for me. Sometimes I don't even know that I want to change something...until I find just the right thing. When I was on the look out for knobs for the downstairs bathroom vanity, I happened to go into Hobby Lobby. They also happened to be having a 50% off all knobs sale. So, I grouped some together and sent a picture to Blake to see what he liked best.

Ultimately we ended up going with the second one from the top, although the first and third were big contenders.

The knobs (although they don't look like it in the photos) are crystal looking with only a hint of blue.

They are probably a little more fancy then what I would normally go with, but I really love them on the vanity now.

The problem is...I really loved the third ones down but couldn't figure out a reason to have them.

Then...my reason came.

Truth be told, this cabinet didn't really need new knobs but once they were on...there was no going back. 

They made the vanity seem a little less...I don't know...sad? Plus, I think the size helped too.

Wouldn't you know, a new shower curtain also helped out the bathroom situation.

In all honesty, finding things for our home is a long process. I typically start thinking that I want one thing and end up with something completely different. I tend to lean towards things that are vintage because it can give you a unique look....but not all vintage is good, and not all things "unique" end up working either. Take for example my chairs.

I bought the metal ones off of a local site, and the striped one I painted myself. I loved them. But...they just didn't work. No matter how much I willed myself to keep them, for the sake of loving them, I couldn't. In the end, I ended up selling the chairs and going back to our wood ones, and putting the striped chair in the kids Secret Laboratory.

Sure the chairs were cool, and very in style, they just weren't my style.

I have said it before and I will say it again, some things that are done in jest around our house end up sticking.

The wall in our dining room is off set from the other wall so it makes it hard to hang things on it. I had decided to do a gallery wall opposite the mirror in hopes that it wouldn't make it feel lopsided.

I laid out all of the frames that I had, and moved them around until I got a general shape that I liked.

All of the frames are ones that I had painted the same color as the wall, and I had planned to do the same with the horse print frame.

I figured that when the weather got warm I would paint it and fill it with a different picture.

Then night after night, as we ate dinner our kids would play "I spy." Without fail, there would normally be one of them saying, "I spy...something golden." To which someone would reply after a few guesses..."the horses?"

Unintentionally the horses have stayed. Sure, I get a couple "What is up with the horses?!" but I just shrug and normally tell the story and end with "They have grown on us. We kind of dig 'em."

Another frame got filled simply because this hook

reminded me of Tick-Tock from Return to Oz.

I figure at some point all of the frames will be filled, but I am not in a rush. Filling them is half the fun.

Luckily there are more shelves to fill and spaces to decorate, so it seems that the fun is never ending.

It happens to be especially gratifying when you start with a blank slate and it evolves into something unexpected.

As soon as we started on the bathroom I knew that I was going to put my antique bottles in there. They have moved places and been rearranged about a gazillion times, and I am sure that will continue.

If given the option of going with something normal or something a little fun, I will almost always choose fun. It is just a added bonus if it has some kind of function.

Insert our Hand hooks. Literal hands holding stuff. 

Sure, this hand is giving you a nice finger gun...

But you know what else it can do?! Hold your towel.

Winning!

Somethings that are purely for purpose can be cute too.

When it comes right down to it, changing things around happens to be my biggest hobby. It some how makes our house seem different with out really changing much.

A picture in the spare room that looked perfectly fine there,

ends up on top of the piano.

And a felt, string owl ends up in its place.

It is ever evolving. The owl may not be like that for long, but at least I got you caught up...for now.