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home restoration

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
DIY Projects, House Progress

House Progress – Our Front Stairs

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share a quick update on a section of our house that isn’t finished yet, but looks waaaaayyyyyy better than it did before, and I’m happy to live with it as-is for a while.

Our front staircase is one of the original features from 1895. It is tight, narrow, and has a very abrupt turn which makes moving furniture upstairs quite tricky. Just as a reminder, this is what it looked like when we moved in:

Looking at that photo is absolutely crazy to me because it looks nothing like this anymore! Within the first few days, we pulled out the carpet, and a few weeks later while we were working daily, we painted the walls. But for a couple months, we hadn’t done anything with the stairs themselves. And then our son was born, and we were a little slow to getting things done, so it took a while before I got around to painting.

I decided to paint the stairs, back in December, I believe, but I never really shared the full details. 

And now they’re black and white and I’m totally in love! They make the space feel so much bigger and brighter, even though it really is a tiny staircase.

Pardon the glaringly bright sun, I was just too excited to wait to take these pictures!

The color is Behr’s Totally Black, with Ultra Pure White (the color you get without any mixing – straight from the can) trim, and Polar Bear on the walls. We painted the staircase with a semigloss finish, which I would not normally recommend on a high traffic area, but we do plan on adding a runner down the stairs for comfort, so they will not be getting much foot traffic at all once the runner is installed.

Here you can see an unedited look (nope, I didn’t clean up for y’all) at the stairway into the rest of the house. So aside from the runner, we do plan on doing a few other things. The light fixture will be changed, of course, but we’re also thinking about a fun statement tile to replace the parquet flooring. For now though, it’s a small makeover to tide us over until we get to the real thing!

So, if you can pardon my photography skills, that’s the latest little update. Projects are going pretty slowly around here, but as soon as we get back at it, I’ll keep y’all updated. 🙂

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

 

March 18, 2019 by
DIY Projects, House Progress

Status Update: End of 2018

Hi friends! I’m so glad you’re here! If you’ve been following along on our house progress on Instagram then you probably have seen lots of little projects we’ve been working on as we’ve been doing them. These days, it’s a bit easier for me to do a quick update there than on here, just because life with a newborn is busy! In case you haven’t been following along, here’s the deal with this post. My  Status Updates (Check out the first one here or the second one here) are a series of unedited, real life photos rounding up the entire process of what we’ve accomplished thus far.

At the time of my last update, we had not yet moved into the house. We have since moved, had a baby, and continued working. To say things are a bit crazy would be an understatement. We are definitely still in “fixer upper mode,” when looking at any room in the house, there are at least five undone projects that come to mind. So, bearing all of that in mind, let’s have a look at what our house looks like right now.

The Foyer 

We lived with completely undone stairs for a little while before I went ahead and painted the stairs. This is the view from our front door, and it’s a very tight space. Painting the stairs and the walls made it look a little bit more open though. Still to do in this space: replace the light fixture, add trim along the ceiling going up the stairs, add a runner up the stairs, do something about the floors (we aren’t sure what the plan is…there are no original hardwoods, so we might lay a statement tile. We are still in the very early planning stages on that particular project), and lay a transition piece between this an the living room floor.

The Living Room

This room is mostly “done” with the exception of the transitions on the floor from one section to the next, and replacing the light fixture (we haven’t done that in any area of the house yet). If you look closely in the first picture, you can see a thin cable running along the floor. It’s something for the internet that needs to be run underneath the house. I also want to replace 99% of the furniture here, but that’s not necessarily considered a project.

The Dining Room

The dining room is the most embarrassing in its current state. It took me a month to clear the moving boxes from here, we had no table for two months, and Ethan still has a makeshift desk sitting in the corner (the room that will be the office upstairs is completely undone). We don’t have chairs or any other dining room furniture, but it’ll get there. The fireplace has been painted, and everything else is complete, with the exception of caulking along the ceiling trim.

The Bedroom

Our room has a ways to go, but since our son is still sleeping in here in the bassinet (not pictured), everything is temporarily out of place. The rocker will eventually go back into the nursery once he starts sleeping through the night, and once the extra furniture is out of there, I’ll feel more inspired to decorate and finish things in here. We need to add some trim pieces in here, and add a light fixture. This room doesn’t have an overhead fixture at all, so it’ll be a bit more labor intensive than fixtures in the other rooms.

The Bathroom 

The bathroom is small and hard to photograph, but the only thing completed in here is the cabinetry has been painted this emerald green color. As you can see, we need to replace the light switch box, which we will do in the entire house all at once. We replaced the outlets, but we haven’t done the light switches yet.

The Nursery 

I did a whole post about our son’s room, because it’s the only room that’s “done.” It actually still needs a new light fixture and light switch box, but other than that it is done. If you missed that post, you can check out more photos of it here.

We haven’t done anything else on the outside just yet, but we do have some major plans for that yellow house. (Hint – it won’t be yellow forever). We’re at a point now where we have to slowly plan things out. In part, because we spent all the money we had earmarked for house projects when we bought the house, but also because things move at a much slower pace with a newborn around. When I was 8 months pregnant, I was working 12 hour days in the house, and people thought that was crazy. It may have been, but now I can only work in one or two hour increments during naptime. So, in 2019, we’ll be moving a bit slower. Anywho, that’s the update for today. This house has come a looooooong way since our closing date, but she still has a long way to go before she is everything we envision. That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

December 27, 2018 by