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House Progress

House Progress

Our Exterior Design Plans

If you’ve been following along with our house progress, we’ve talked on and off about painting the exterior of our home for quite a while. It was second on a list of larger projects, and so after some foundation work that we had done last fall, we were ready to turn our attention to the exterior. We’ve known since we first bought the house that it would need some fresh paint. The yellow is not my favorite, but more importantly than that, it hasn’t been even touched in over fifteen years, and I’m not sure when this coat was put on to begin with.

A year ago, I was thinking and dreaming up ideas for the colors, and wrote about it here. Now that we’ve had some time to think it through (I’d say a year to mull it over is a good amount of time!), we’ve decided to go with….. black on black monochrome!

The work is scheduled to begin in just a few weeks! I’ll share the exact colors we’ve landed on when it’s finished, which I’m hoping will be early spring when everything is turning green. It’s all dependent on weather though, so fingers crossed everything works out.

I know it’s a very bold color choice and certainly very trendy at the moment. This is the type of project that I think it’s okay to be trendy with. Hear me out. The act of painting a wood siding house in itself is not contentious, like painting antique brick or painting quality hardwood floors. Exterior siding needs to be painted, and it has a pretty short shelf life because of its exposure to the elements. It’s not something that you can do once and leave for fifty years. During the course of this project we will be repairing a lot of rotted trim, replacing decorative trim pieces that have been removed, and tidying up some remnants of old renovations that don’t quite make sense (For example: why is there drywall on the ceiling of a porch? Drywall doesn’t belong outside!). So while the color itself is trendy now, the work and care that are going to go into the outside of the house will leave it in better condition than it is currently in. And, in ten to fifteen years if we decide we don’t like it anymore, that’s okay, because it’ll be time for fresh paint anyway.

Over the course of the last couple of years, I have had people ask if we’re planning on doing the work ourselves. While that’s maybe a compliment to our abilities, we’re hiring this out completely. We technically could do the work ourselves, but we aren’t really interested. Ethan has a full time job, plus a job at the church, so he works six days a week. I am home with little snippets of free time during naps and after bedtime, so while it might technically be possible for us to do it, it honestly would take the better part of a year to complete it (not to mention constantly renting a lift…our house is very tall!), and I just am not interested in doing it.

I hope to share more about it soon once things are rolling. I can’t wait to show you all the end result! That’s all for today, Have a fabulous day!

February 4, 2022 by
House Progress

Exterior Color Inspiration and Ideas

You guys have seen the outside of our house by now. When I share a photo of our exterior on Instagram, it’s always a favorite. When we bought the house, we knew we would be painting it eventually. We still aren’t ready to paint (we have a couple other things on the list ahead of painting), but I’m having fun thinking of ideas and looking for inspiration! I have four different directions I’m thinking of, and I wanted to walk you through each idea. There are some pros and cons to each one, so I wanted to get them all out in one place, if nothing more than for me to reference later on.

Classic White

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My love for white houses runs deep. It’s the most classic, most timeless in my opinion. Had we painted the house immediately upon purchasing, I would have painted the house white with black trim immediately without question. Now that I’ve had time to think through our options, I have the opinion that white with black trim can look a bit harsh, so I’d probably stick with white on white. The downsides are the frequent powerwashing needed to keep it looking fresh, as well as the fact that several houses in our neighborhood have recently been painted white. I don’t want it to be just another white house. In some sections of the exterior where we can see previous layers of paint, white is the oldest layer. That’s not to say that white was the original color, but it was white sometime a long time ago, so that’s something to consider.

Cream with White Trim

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This kind of goes along with the light and bright vibe, but I feel that it would hide dirt better. This color option is born of sheer practicality. I would do a white trim with it, so there would be some contrast, but overall, it would be a light colored look. I can’t think of a ton of other houses near us that have this scheme going on either, so that’s a plus.

Blue with White Trim

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Okay, so this one can look really classic as well. I think we would go with a fairly dark, greyish blue, so all of our detail trimwork would really pop in white. And, when looking at a cross section of paint layers on some of our siding, there’s proof that the house was blue at one time (after it was white)! I can’t think of any other houses in town that have this scheme, it would hide dirt really well, and blue is my favorite color! The downside is that a lot of our interiors lean blue, so I’m worried that it might be too much blue? Is there such a thing? I’m not really sure, but it something to think about.

Black on Black Monochrome

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Okay, so this is the most bold and dramatic of my ideas. Black is definitely having a moment, and I really like the possibility of being the only house in town painted this way. It’s a bold choice for sure, and it would certainly be a talking point around town (some people would love it, others would hate it, and that’d be okay with me). My concern with this would be heat/energy. We do live in Texas, and summers are long and hot. I don’t know if having a black house would make it hotter inside in the summer? Also, would the color fade quickly? We would probably go with a deep deep grey, but it would be close enough to make it look black. Another concern is that this option is too trendy? The house’s current paint job is about a decade older than I am, so it’s something that will be with the house for a while. I don’t want to be tired of it in five years, you know?

In a way, I’m glad we haven’t painted yet, because it’s given me some time to think on the decision. But the more time that passes, the more options I think of, so I’m further away from making a decision. I want to do something that suits the house, and the neighborhood. Sure, we technically own this house right now (and plan to for a very long time), but this house belongs to everyone who has ever lived here, to everyone who uses our sidewalks to walk their dogs, to everyone who uses our house as a marker for where to turn to make the shortcut to the next signal, to everyone past and future who enter the front door, or just admire from the street. It’s a big decision, and I want it to be the right one. Unfortunately I just don’t know what that is yet. What do you think?

That’s all for today, have a fabulous day!

February 5, 2021 by
House Progress

Status Update: Year Two

Today marks the official two year anniversary of owning this old house of ours. Today I wanted to look back at this past year, year two, and see all of the things we accomplished. I’m going to share a few (not all) of the big projects we’ve done in the last 365 days.

If you’ve never seen the before pictures of our house, you might want to start there, just for fun. This last year kind of unintentionally became the year of getting the upstairs more livable. One year ago, our master bedroom was downstairs and the only thing we had done upstairs was our son’s room. In the fall, we updated one of the bedrooms upstairs and moved the master up there.

Then, over my winter break from school, I decided to do a bit of work on our upstairs bathroom.

We also worked on finishing the third bedroom upstairs this year when we found out we were expecting our second child. The nursery is one of my favorite rooms in the house, and I cannot wait to get to use it very soon!

During Spring Break (are we sensing a pattern here? it seems like every time there was a break from school, I did a project!) I painted the porch floors on all three of our porches. That ended up being a lot of work over an extended period of time, but made a huge impact.

In a spur of the moment decision late last summer, I decided to paint some dalmatian spots on the wall between our living room and dining room. Best decision ever!

We’ve also done tons of work in the yard, and countless small projects around the house to help move the progress along. It’s crazy to see how far we’ve come. They say that people overestimate how much they can get done in a day, but underestimate how much they can get done in a year, and it’s so true! Last summer I could not have imagined the progress we have made. I can’t wait to see where we are by the end of year three! Hopefully some work in the downstairs areas… I’m getting real sick of looking at a few things downstairs. LOL! Well, that’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

July 31, 2020 by
House Progress, Room Tours

Baby Girl Nursery REVEAL

It’s finally finished! The room we’ve been working on for months is done and I can’t wait to share with you all the details. If you haven’t been following along, you may want to catch up with some of the older posts pertaining to the nursery. First, I shared the original moodboard, how I did the DIY wall stencil, how I stripped the painted doors in the room, and the updated list of what projects were still left as of a month ago. Now that all those things are crossed off my to-do list, I’m finally ready to share.

Before we have a look at the photos though, let’s take it wayyyyy back to early April when I was in the planning stages of the room. This was the moodboard I came up with, mostly based on a few things I already had found (art) and furniture I knew I would be reusing from our son’s room (crib and rocker).

Now the whole thing has come to life and I could not be more excited.

The artwork over the crib was purchased at a flea market before I even knew I was having a girl back in… February? March? I snagged it because it was only ten dollars and I knew if I had a girl it would be perfect for above a crib. Luckily I am actually having a girl, otherwise I would just have this painting with no place to put it. It came without a frame, so it took me a while to track down a frame that fit, but I did eventually. I bought some random ugly artwork just for the frame, threw away the print inside, and used Rub ‘n Buff in the color Gold Leaf on the frame to make it look a little more aged. Here’s what it looked like before:

It’s so 2002 chic, am I right? Anyway, our crib is the same one I used in our son’s room, I just dyed the crib skirt with some RIT dye to change it up a bit.

The footstool, curtains, rug, and curtain rods were all new purchases for this room. The rocker was one we already had from our son’s nursery. You can see in these photos some shelves both with artwork and with books. Ethan built the book display shelves with a lip on the front to keep books from falling over. I stained them with my favorite stain color, Varathane Early American.

The pillow was something I whipped up in 30 minutes on a sewing machine on a whim after an unplanned Hobby Lobby trip. I used a pillow I already had and made a new cover for it with $3 worth of fabric. I used some leftover trim from another project.

The lamp was a Facebook Marketplace find, the table was a flea market find a few years ago, and the picnic basket was something I’ve had forever (it’s full of baby toys). The little doll quilt sticking out was made for me by my Great Grandmother when I was young.

Moving to the other side of the room, the dresser was Ethan’s when he was younger and I repainted it. The basket was a thrift store find, and the tassel on the doorknob was an estate sale find. The tree was found randomly on clearance one day just after I had started browsing Facebook Marketplace for faux trees. It was meant to be!

The artwork and decor on both shelves are a combination of thing I had and repainted, or things that were picked up at flea markets and estate sales. The actual art prints are from a source I recently discovered and am currently obsessed with. The Smithsonian Museum has something called Open Access which is an online catalog of millions of photographs, paintings, pictures of sculptures, etc. They’re all free and available to download without copyright infringement, so I like to search for different art prints and have them printed as posters. It’s a super affordable way to get high quality prints that aren’t just the same thing everyone has from the same box store!

The nursery is a such a happy room, and I absolutely love it! Although, it’s now time for it to be filled with the ugly but necessary baby accessories that aren’t pictured in these photos…

I love that just like the rest of our home, this room encompasses a little bit of old, a little bit of new, a whole lot of DIY, and a whooooooole lot of thrifted and secondhand finds. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now we just need a baby sleeping in the crib!

And, just for fun, let’s throw this waaaaaay back to two years ago when we first bought the house (and let’s be honest, also a year ago because we did nothing in here for a long time).

Now that’s crazy, right? So, what do you think? Do you see what I saw with the original moodboard? I am so glad you stopped by to see our baby girl’s nursery! That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

*This post may contain affiliate links.

July 3, 2020 by
House Progress

Nursery Status: What’s Done, and What’s Next?

My big project as of late has been the nursery. of course. The big accent wall was a huge undertaking, and will definitely be the focal point of the room. Since then, we’ve done a few things, but still have a lot to do.

We moved the crib and rocker (ours isn’t sold anymore!) from our son’s room into the new nursery. I used some fabric dye to dye the crib skirt that we already had on hand.

I also painted the dresser that was previously in our room and gave it some fresh knobs from Hobby Lobby. For the dresser, I used a satin finish paint from Home Depot in the color Gentle Sea. This was a quick, slap a coat of paint on kind of project, not the kind where I did a step by step tutorial. I didn’t use very much of the paint that I bought for the dresser, so I ended up painting the inside of the closet with the same paint. It’s a fun little pop of color, and it makes the tiny closet special.

So, I still have a lot to do in this space before it feels “ready.” I have a bunch of projects, things to buy, and a few things I want to make.

Things to Do:

  • Paint the window frames
  • Finish stripping the door to the closet and bathroom
  • Reinstall the closet and bathroom doors
  • Deep clean the windows and floors

Things to Buy:

This is the big one, as I feel like I need to collect a ton of little things to make the room put together. Some things are specifics I have in mind, others are things I’d like to find thrifting (hopefully I can do that soon!).

  • Curtains (I just placed an order for these, but the shipping is going to take a while. I’m not even sure they’ll work, so I may end up returning.)
  • Curtain rods
  • Footstool (I’m loving this one.)
  • Crib sheets I like basic white ones for easy washing.
  • Small art work (I don’t have anything in particular in mind just yet. I’d love to find something vintage.)
  • A frame for the over-the-crib painting. I bought the painting at a flea market sans-frame. I’m hoping to find the right gold frame in the right size for the right price. Not too much to ask for, right? (If you have a 36x24in frame without glass or matting, let me know. I’m scouring FB Marketplace daily.)
  • An accent pillow for the rocker. I put the one from my son’s room in here, I’m not sure if I love it.
  • A lamp (nothing specific in mind, not sure if I’ll go thrifted or new)
  • Tall plant?? (I need something with some height in one particular corner to disguise an awkward wall length. I like the look of olive trees, but we’ll see.)

Things to Make:

  • Shelves for book and art displays

There is still so much to do in here, and with stores being closed and shipping being delayed, it seems like I’ve been unable to get moving in here. Hopefully soon I can get things moving! I have been working feverishly on the door refinishing, and I will share a full tutorial of that process once it’s finished. That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

This post may contain affiliate links.

May 27, 2020 by
House Progress

Backyard Updates

Backyards are a tricky thing, aren’t they? I don’t have a green thumb, I have a giant dog who ruins grass, and I have never particularly enjoyed being “outdoors.” But, part of being a homeowner and making improvements to your home includes the outdoors as well. My toddler loves to be outside. Now that the weather is nice, he would rather be outside playing with the hose and some trucks than doing anything inside. So, I’ve been spending more time than ever in the backyard lately.

After painting the porches, I had a lot of paint left over. I accidentally overbought. Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I had extra paint for projects on a whim. Since spending so much time in the backyard, I’ve been able to dream up more things I wanted to do with the space, and it’s been nice to have supplies on hand. We have this swing and arbor in the backyard that came with the house. It was pretty sad looking, and we thought about taking the swing down and making some kind of grilling station, but the more we sat in it, the more we thought it should stay. I was swinging one day when I realized I had extra white paint from the porch railings, I might as well just paint the thing.

So I did. I used my paint sprayer and sprayed the whole thing.

As for the pea gravel firepit to the right, you may remember my early stages of this from last summer. Well, we bought pea gravel last summer, but it wasn’t enough, so we just sat around with a half pea graveled firepit for a year. I told Ethan I wanted to finish off the firepit for Mother’s Day, so my Mother’s Day present was literally a truckload of pea gravel and a wheelbarrow. Some people get perfume, I got literal rocks.

But we sat out here on Mother’s Day and made s’mores for dinner and it was wonderful. It’s already a much used space. My son is also loving the fresh pea gravel for his shovels and dump trucks.

We (and by we, I totally mean I, with Ethan just along for the ride) also decided to build our son a playhouse. We used all scrapwood we had in the garage and leftover paint from the porches. We don’t have plans for this, but basically it went something like this: I looked at the piles of wood in the garage, drew a picture of what I thought could work, and Ethan built it two days later.

It is definitely a more family friendly backyard now, and we enjoy spending time out here so much now that things are fresher and nicer to look at. 🙂 Now we just have to do something about the dead grass…

My favorite thing about this yard is what it looked like just a year ago. Everything we’ve done in the last two months has been one project leading into another as far as supplies go, and I love the way one thing inspired another.

I wish I had photos of when we first bought the house two summers ago…there was no fence, there were awful metal garden bed edgers that were just full of weeds, there was a broken chimnea in the middle of the yard. It was in rough shape. I’ve heard it said that with outdoor spaces, you just do a little more each year, and soon enough you have a space you can really be proud of. I have so many more plans for next year already. I’m already focusing on learning more about gardening and have big, green plans. Maybe next year! Well, that’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

May 13, 2020 by
House Progress

Plans for a Baby Girl Nursery

Hello! I am so glad you stopped by! Today I am sharing something that I’ve been planning for a while, and I absolutely can’t wait to get started. We’ve known we were having a baby girl for a couple of weeks now, but with Social Distancing, we haven’t been able to get out and do much yet as far as planning and buying things for the nursery goes. Lucky for me, I have a garage full of supplies, so I have some things I can be doing while I’m unable to go to the hardware store.

First, I want to show you the mood board I put together for the space, then talk you through the plans.

As you know, my favorite color is blue and I can’t stand the thought of not having blue in a room in my house, so I wanted the focal points of the room to be blue. I’m planning on painting the dresser that’s currently in our bedroom a light blue (we’ll be buying a new dresser for us), and the artwork I’ve picked up from flea markets is also in the blue family.

Thankfully, since this is our second child, we already have most of the big stuff. We will be reusing the rocker (no longer sold) and crib from our son’s room. Having a second child is SO much easier. 🙂

I’ve already ordered the rug pictured, and if you follow @rumfieldhomestead on Instagram, you’ve likely already seen it rolled out in the space. I’m not completely decided on curtains yet, I have these IKEA ones as a possibility. I don’t like to buy things from IKEA without seeing them in person first, and since I can’t go there right now with all the Shelter in Place ordinances right now, I’ll have to wait and see. I do want something of a dusty pink color though. Not too in your face baby pink, but something to tie in some of the colors from the large painting I have.

And then lastly, the walls. I knew right away that I wanted some blue floral wallpaper in this room, and I fell in love with this one from a small Etsy shop. I quickly realized I did not want to blow the majority of my nursery budget on wallpaper, so I came up with a plan that miiiiiight be a massive fail. Here’s what I’m thinking:

I am going to try to use a projector to project a floral design on the wall, and then trace and paint myself. I’m not super great at free hand drawing (and by not super great I mean actually terrible), so I don’t trust myself to draw my own pattern. I’m not entirely sure the projecting and tracing thing is going to work, so you’ll have to stay tuned. But, if it does work, I will save myself a lot of money on wallpaper! I’ll also be able to get started right away, because I have the perfect shade of paint already in my garage.

Things are a little weird with everything that’s going on, but I’m excited to be working on this project! That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

April 8, 2020 by
Furniture Makeover, House Progress

Plans for the Playroom/Office + A Furniture Makeover

About five months ago, we moved our bedroom upstairs with the intention of turning the downstairs room into a playroom/office. It’s been pretty slow going. Drywall removal, wallpaper removal, and nail-in-shiplap removal has taken some time, and it’s not really fun work that keeps you motivated to do more.

But with our impending nursery project coming up, and the general house re-shuffling that comes with preparing for a new baby, I feel inclined to get moving on this playroom. I bought a set of chairs for five dollars a while back from a thrift store, and I knew they would be perfect in our playroom when we eventually got around to finishing it. The chairs didn’t come with a table though, so I searched Facebook Marketplace until I found one for ten dollars. So for my total price, I was at fifteen dollars. I knew however, that it was going to need a lot of work so I just stuck them in my garage and ignored them for a while.

Because of our current social distancing situation, I wanted to paint the table and chairs without going to the store to purchase anything. Luckily for me, I have a hoard of supplies in my garage, so I found a leftover sample we had used to test colors and got to work. The table was in the roughest shape. It needed to be sanded, stripped a bit, wood filled, glued back together, and clamped overnight. The painting was actually the easy part!

It’s not 100% done yet, but someone is already enjoying it!

So now that the table is almost done, I figured it would be time to work on a mood board for the space. I always find it helpful to visualize everything together in a space when I’m planning a room. I used everything I already had that I knew would go in the space, and then worked from there. So here’s what I came up with:

Obviously my table and chairs are a second hand DIY version, but I wanted to visualize what it might look like, so I included something similar. Here are a few similar options that I love: option 1, option 2, or option 3.

Our couch is the Sven Sofa from Article in the Grass Green color. It’s currently in our living room while we work on the playroom, and it’s the perfect sofa for littles. The long bench cushion comes off, and our son loves taking it down and climbing all over it.

As far as wall colors, I’m not 100% certain on what I want in the space, but I think I want to go in a beige direction. Gasp! The color on the background is Benjamin Moore Athena, but it’s just an example for now. Once we can safely leave our house again, I’ll get around to testing some actual colors.

I think the beige wall color will look really good with this rug, which I totally have my eye on. I think it’ll be just the right amount of fun for a playroom, but also the right amount of sophistication for an office.

The desk is a picture of our current desk, as we plan on putting our desktop computer in the playroom as well. It’s painted in Behr’s America’s Cup Navy. I need some new hardware, as you can see. 🙂

Other ideas for the room include built in shelves around the french doors for toy storage, and large framed fabric panels to tie the blue and green furniture together. Although I have some ideas in my mind, I just included some inspiration photos, not necessarily the exact thing I will end up going with. If you’re wondering, the fabric is here, and the built in photo I used for inspiration comes from this blog.

And just for good measure, I included some photos of actual toys that we have. You know, to make it more realistic. Most of our son’s toys come from IKEA, because they have the cutest toys.

So that’s the plan! I’m not exactly sure when we will get to finish this because of social isolation and all, but we definitely are going to get started on getting the last of the wallpaper residue off the walls. Baby steps. What projects are you planning during this time?

That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

*This post may contain affiliate links.

March 24, 2020 by
House Progress

The Power of Paint (A Phase One Bathroom Makeover)

Hi there! Thanks so much for stopping by today! Boy oh boy, do I have a before and after for you today! First, let’s get the backstory. We bought our home from a realtor who had purchased the house at auction following a foreclosure. That realtor listed it for sale, but went back and forth about whether he wanted to flip it himself. When we bought it, there were a few random half hearted attempts at restoration work. One random door frame stripped of paint, carpeting partially pulled up, wallpaper torn off in just a small section of a room. That was the case in the room I’m going to show you guys today.

So the upstairs of our house has three bedrooms and a full bathroom. When we did our first big amount of work in the months before we moved in, the only room we touched upstairs was the first bedroom for our son, leaving the bathroom and two bedrooms untouched. The house was built in 1895 with no indoor plumbing, and therefore no bathrooms. I’m not sure at what point it was added, but at sometime, a bathroom was poorly shoved into what would have once been a spacious hallway between the three upstairs bedrooms. This leaves us a bit perplexed as to what to even do with the bathroom, because the floorplan of the second story is a bit wonky. I’d love to someday see that turned back into a hallway, but alas, we need more than the outhouse that was originally here. Knowing that this bathroom was going to involve some structural changes, and that our needs in the house/bedrooms may change as we have more kids etc., the upstairs bathroom was literally at the bottom of the priority list. Out of sight, out of mind.

Until, that is, we moved the master bedroom upstairs. Then all of a sudden this upstairs bathroom was a little more on the forefront of my mind. I lovingly nicknamed this room “the dungeon bathroom,” because I was so scared to use it. Everything was fully functional, but the carpet (yep, this thing had carpet) that had been in there had been waterlogged and soaked through the subfloor. My brother actually pulled up the carpet and old subfloor and laid down new plywood. And that’s the extent of work we had done in the dungeon bathroom. But now our bedroom was right next to it, and it was a pain to go all the way down the creaky stairs right outside of our son’s room in the event that I needed to go to the restroom in the middle of the night. So I knew I needed to do something. But again, of all the “big projects” we have planned for the next couple years, this one is quite literally the last one on the list. So I decided to give it a little cosmetic facelift, a Phase One makeover to tide us over until we would eventually remodel this bathroom. So, without further ado, here is the dungeon bathroom.

For days, I worked during naptime and after my son went to bed to scrape wallpaper. Most of the wall had two layers of paper, but in some areas, I found four different papers laid on top of each other. It was grueling. I used a handheld steamer and a wallpaper scraper and would work in tiny six inch square sections. It took a long time, and my arms arched.

As I scraped the wallpaper, I found that some of the drywall had been damaged, and had simply been disguised by the paper. That meant we had to do some patch work on the walls. I had to sand it all down to get the gunky wallpaper paste completely gone. All of this was before I ever started painting!

I originally planned on only using products that I had on hand to do this bathroom, but I ended up purchasing the wall color because I didn’t have as much paint in the garage as I thought I did. The color is Behr French Colony, and I think it’s a lovely blue-grey.

A shower curtain over the shower stall helps disguise that whole lotta ugly.

I also painted the plywood subfloor using some paint I had on hand. The floor is painted with Behr Tanglewood.

As you can see, I didn’t change any of the fixtures, the only thing I changed was paint. Isn’t that crazy?! Paint is so powerful!

Because this room is directly next to our bedroom that’s painted such a bold color, I was really concerned about how these two colors would look when coming up the stairs and they were both visible. I think they go complement each other nicely. (Bedroom is Behr Thermal.)

The 1920’s light fixtures stayed, and I think they look so much more elegant now without the dated wallpaper.

All of this to say this: just don’t wait. I would have loathed this bathroom another two to three years until it finally was time to gut it. Instead, I can enjoy the space, and it doesn’t give me the heebee-jeebees every time I go in there! I think there is power in a can of paint, and so much power in doing a “Phase One” project, something that is just enough to tide you over while you’re waiting for the big project.

Before we go, here’s one more before and after from the same angle. I can’t even believe the only difference is paint.

Alright guys, that’s all for today. Have a fabulous day!

January 5, 2020 by
House Progress

We’re Moving the Master Upstairs… What??

YEP. You read that right. And if it seems totally random, that’s because it is. So I figured I owed it to you guys to walk you through my thought process and plans before I take you along for the ride.

So, flash back to about two weeks ago. We were driving home from being out of town for several days, and we were going to be arriving very late. While we were gone, it had gotten cold for the first time in the season, so we were anticipating walking in to a cold house because the furnace had not yet been turned on for the season. Our house is two floors, and has two separate thermostats and HVAC systems (one for each floor). Our son’s room is upstairs, directly above our current room. And for whatever reason, although he has been sleeping in his own room since he was about two months, I started to freak out and panic that having a separate system upstairs was terrifying because something could happen upstairs and we would have no idea downstairs because the HVAC systems are completely independent from each other. So, in the car that night, I started talking to Ethan about the possibility of moving our room upstairs (we have two additional rooms up there we aren’t really using), the pros and cons of the situation, and the timeline of when it could happen if we decided to do it.

We got home that night, and had pretty much decided we were going to move our room up there, it was just a matter of getting some work done. The room we are talking about is one of the untouched spaces in our house, which have been completely neglected since purchasing.

So, this week we started working! It’s been slow going because we have a one year old and can basically only work during naptime or at night. Not to mention the fact that whoever lived in this home before had some weird love affair with wall texturing compound, and sprayed? dabbed? rolled? (I don’t even know how this could have been installed) the spikiest, sharpest wall texture known to mankind. So we have the absolute pleasure of sanding and scraping every surface of the room before we can do anything else.

So, y’all want to see some before pictures?

Keep in mind, this isn’t going to be a glamorous before and after renovation. This room has six doors. SIX! Plus a half door to house the HVAC unit. Because of all the doors, there’s no logical space to put the bed. Also, this is going to be a very much phase one renovation. Meaning, we have larger plans down the line, but it’ll take a bit to get there.

So, let’s walk through the pros of using this room. Obviously, safety. Biggest benefit hands down. Also, with our current master being in the front of the house downstairs, our “Christmas Tree Window” is where our bed is. I’m most excited that if we can get our room situated upstairs, we will have a tree visible from the street outside. Another benefit will be the proximity to the third bedroom (the one we will use as a nursery for our next child someday). The new nursery will open right into the master, which will be super helpful for those first months. (Phase Two renovation will eventually separate those rooms with a hallway and an additional staircase, but that will come later on.) Right now, we don’t have a closet in our room. Our room was the original parlor to the house, but was turned into a bedroom when the addition was made in the 1950’s. We have been using the downstairs coat closet as our main closet for a year. Which has been fine, but I can almost guarantee that a neighbor at some point has seen me run pantless through the living room to the hall closet to get dressed in the morning. The upstairs room has two closets!!!

The cons: need I say again..SIX DOORS. It’s an awkward layout for sure. It has a door the a lower level roof for goodness sake. I have some design plans to work with it for now, so we’ll see how that turns out. Also…the dungeon bathroom. It has graced my Instagram stories mayyyybe twice. Our upstairs bathroom is a scary place. And it’s low on the list of priorities. To be honest, I’m pretty scared to use it. So I’ll be using the bathroom downstairs still. Which I’m sure will be annoying in the night. Or on those cold mornings getting ready for work.

So, at the risk of getting too wordy already, let’s talk about the plan for the space. Y’all want to see my super sophisticated moodboard that I literally made on my lunch break? Well, you’re in luck:

When we bought the house, we bought ten gallons of the same white paint color and just went to town with it in every room. We don’t have any more of that paint, so I will have to buy more regardless. I’m really inspired by dark, saturated blues and greens right now, so I’m thinking something like this. None of the things in this photo are exact things I plan on purchasing (except the headboard, which is what we already have), but are more or less ideas for the space. I will likely thrift a lot of items, or try to source some on FB Marketplace. I plan on stripping some of the painted over doors, with a bright, crisp, white trim. Moody and dark, with brass accents. And don’t even get me started on a timeline, because who knows when it will be finished. But, I do plan on priming it and moving us up there this weekend. Everything else can be done after we are sleeping in the room.

So anyway, that’s the plan. I’ll keep you along for the ride! That’s all for today friends. Have a fabulous day!

October 29, 2019 by