Fall nesting

Hello everybody! Hope you had a lovely fall weekend! In between some fun I was able to get a few little things done around the house and get a bit of fall decor out as well.

I’ve actually been tackling some little projects over the past week or so – including a LOT of cleaning and organizing. Our home has felt like a mess even weeks after the construction in the family room was completed. So I’ve been addressing the piles o’ crap everywhere and finishing up small projects along the way.

I’ve been planning to paint this mirror frame for weeks now:

I went back and forth on a color and actually started painting it a brick red color – which would look GREAT for fall. But I quickly realized come spring and summer that the color would feel really off in this room.

I don’t want to add too much more gray to this room but I felt like it needed some balancing out – so I went with gray. ;) It really feels right with that color on the fireplace across the room too.

I LOVE how it looks with the finish on that table, the white walls and the green lamps:

It’s cloudy and dark here today, hence the darker photos. You’ll see I also finished up that little bit of trim on the board and batten. The trim that’s still not painted. :) But at least it’s all done and ready for paint.

By the way, I framed out that mirror myself years ago. It used to live in the chocolate brown dining room and you can see how I made it here.

A wall in the old office has been without the top trim since July – I finally got that replaced (we saved a lot of the old trim so I just reused what I had for most of it). It still needs painting as well – do you sense a pattern here? But I got some art up on one wall that is done:

Which totally makes me feel like I’m getting to the home stretch in this room! Hanging stuff signifies (almost) completion to me. :)

I focused on the upstairs too and changed up the decor on the bedroom mantel to warm it up a bit:

Those walls STILL haven’t been painted to go with the new dark gray wall – but I do love that gray/green color for fall. It feels very cozy! I also cleaned the gas fireplace glass in preparation for the colder months. Today we’re supposed to have an unusually warm day but after that it’s going to get chilly for good.

And speaking of fireplaces – when I shared the new completed one in the family room a couple weeks ago some of you suggested painting the crown molding at the top. You were so right and I seriously stared at it every. single. day. wanting that white gone.

It finally bugged me so much I got up on the ladder late last night while I watched Revenge and got it painted to match the rest of the fireplace:

Ahhhh. SO much better. Now I can quit twitching. :)

Today my goal is to get the garage cleaned out so I can actually reach the rest of our fall decor. The boy is begging for some Halloween so I must comply.

It feels SO good to get little projects like these done! I’m really wanting to focus on some other areas of the house but my goal is to get the family room done this week – I’m going to make it happen!! I LOVE this time of year – fluffing, cleaning, getting ready to host family and friends and warming up the house. I’m one of those weirdos that actually enjoys the colder months. (Until about February or so.)

Have you done anything around the house to prep for fall and winter? I can’t believe it but I’m already starting to think about the holidays – every year I’m determined not to be rushing around and every year I’m rushing around. We’ll see if this year is any different. :)

Easy art knock off

Hey hey! Happy Friday! I have a quick and easy knock off for you today! I’ve been thinking more about what I’ll be hanging on the walls in our master bedroom…after I finish painting all of them. Who knows how long that will be. Could be years. But whatever.

It’s the one room in our house with a TON of wall space – and it’s hard to figure out what to put everywhere. I struggle with making all the walls work together.

Lately I’ve seen a lot of this art at HomeGoods and it always catches my eye:

Over the past few months I’ve seen a bunch of these at two different locations and I love them. I picked up some coral art for the room at Target months back and these would look great with it. But I didn’t want to $40 on one, especially when I knew it would be so easy to recreate. :)

So that I did! I picked up a square frame at HG for $8:

The look was exactly the same, it’s just about eight inches smaller on each side.

I wanted to pull in some color so I cut navy blue scrapbook paper and taped it to the back of the mat:

I’ve had some shells for years that I knew would work in the middle. I tried out a few and liked both of these:

 

But ended up with one a little simpler – a sweet little starfish. :)

I ended up spray painting the frame white, but then changed direction and threw some more color on there with a navy blue again. (I blogged about my blue spray paint taste test here.)

It was quick and easy and cost me $8. Not too shabby!:

Once I get the walls painted (a light gray) and get that small gallery wall going I think it will be a great little addition! My version doesn’t have the glass on top, but I have a plan in mind to make it look more like the inspiration art. (More of a shadow box look.)

I’ll let you know if it works when the wall is put together! First up…painting the room! Good times.

Have a great weekend my friends!

Updated 80’s light fixture

Hey hey! I’m back with a project that I let sit around for nearly two years. It’s been moved around the house – the garage for a while, then it’s future home (the dining room/library) for the past year or so. Just sitting there. For a year.

It was time. I found this light fixture at the Habitat Restore almost two years ago, even before I finished up the bookcases in the dining room:

It was $20 and I loved the shape so I snagged it up!

I think the main reason I let it sit so long was the work that I knew would go into transforming it. Meaning taping all that off to paint it. Bleh. Not fun.

I pulled out my rub n buff first, thinking I may be able to get away with no taping off and spray paint. But the dark color I had was dried as hard as a rock, I couldn’t get any out of the tube. Wah wahh. So I knew I’d have to spray paint it. I did consider just leaving it – the brass didn’t horrify me. :) But I wanted it to stand out more and I knew a darker color would make that happen. And the brass looked fine in some areas and horrible in others, so it needed to be covered.

It came apart into two pieces and I cleaned it well:

This one helped:

Then it was time to tape all that off. I came up with an idea that helped though! I just laid the painter’s tape down over the glass and then used my razor to “cut out” each one:

It worked GREAT. I timed myself and it took one hour and 15 minutes to tape off the whole thing:

That’s 64 sections in one hour and fifteen minutes, so not too shabby! And when you’re sitting in front of the TV watching Flipping Out the whole time it’s really not too bad. :)

About half way through I realized the inside would still be brass, but you pick your battles. No way was I going to try to do the inside. So it’s still brass, but you can’t even tell.

I took it and the smaller pieces outside (YAY for spray paint weather!!) and primed them with black primer, then sprayed them in oil rubbed bronze spray paint (I’ve tried them all and all look great). Then I hung the light part in the garage and sprayed it the same way:

Those white sleeves were brittle and falling apart so I just kept them on to protect the electrical stuff while I painted.

By the way, I don’t always prime my metal light fixtures – it’s not something that’s going to get wear and tear. But I was almost out of my ORB spray paint so I wanted to make sure it had a dark base.

When the parts were dry to the touch (about an hour later), I installed it inside:

The chandelier we’ve had in here has looked odd to me since we started the transition to a library instead of a dining room. (Read more about that here.) Our old kitchen table still sits in here, only because we haven’t made the new furniture a priority. (Four matching chairs isn’t going to be cheap!)

Anyway, the old light was too detailed for this space and I wanted something a bit simpler. I think the darker paint makes this light look a million times better!:

Eventually I may get something else (I’ve had my eye on another light for a long time now) but for now the $20 one that’s been laying around for years works GREAT. :) I won’t do anything until we get the furniture for this space anyway.

Part of the reason I finally got this done is because I’ve been wanting to move the chandelier that was in dining room to the bedroom:

I’ve had another Habitat light up there for years but I wasn’t loving it anymore – and it was just a place holder till I could get a chandelier in there. :) This worked out perfectly!

The chandelier was from Home Depot and I got it because it was so similar to the Pottery Barn version, for about $200 less:

(PB: source, HD: source)

I LOVE this light! It is gorgeous in the master bedroom:

I’ve been planning to use this one in there since I finished up the bookcases in the library, so it’s nice to finally get it installed!

So there you go – a $20 light, spray paint season is BACK and a little light switcharoo! I feel like I got two lights for less than $25 – I had to get new white sleeves for the dining room light so that added a few bucks. And when you buy the light two years ago, does that even count? :)

Have you spray painted a light fixture lately? It’s amazing what paint will do to help update them!

Dark gray accent wall

Hello everybody! It is beautiful outside and I’m SO excited about the project I finished up this weekend! I’ve been planning it for some time now and I finally bit the bullet and got it done over Saturday and Sunday.

This one was all about the long wall behind our bed in the master. It’s looked like this for some time now, about nine months:

I painted it before we got our new bed and I installed the DIY headboard last summer. I was in such a rush to get it done I didn’t even cut in at the ceiling or the baseboards. And it sat.

I was telling a friend the other day that know when I’m not sure about a project when I let it sit for months. I’m talking six months to a year, or even years, like the powder room. If I’m loving the direction it’s going I’m pretty good at making it happen fairly quickly. (Granted, quickly in my time is still pretty slow.)

So I knew within a few months that I wasn’t feeling the light color on that wall, or I would have finished it up. I told you here how I was waffling between a dark or light bedroom – I love both! And I finally figured out how to make both happen. :)

I had been thinking of how to make that wall a little more dramatic and had a plan in mind. Then it was solidified when I saw Sarah’s wall in her office. Her dark wall was so striking, I loved it!

So that’s what I did. I was at the fancy mall a few months ago and the wall behind the cashier at Pottery Barn was a beautiful dark gray – I asked what it was and that’s when I knew Peppercorn was the color I would use:

I got the swatch a couple months ago and checked it in the room – it matched the dark gray in the rug perfectly and the new mirror over the fireplace too. It was meant to be!

I started by painting the wall Saturday – no cutting in needed, my favorite!:

I had this mixed in an eggshell finish – I love a dark color in a matte finish but I wouldn’t recommend it. You’ll see every little scuff and want to be able to wipe it easily.

After the wall was painted I moved on to the trim work. I used simple mdf boards from Lowe’s – they come primed white. I got 13 boards so the total cost was around $80. I go back and forth on painting before installation and this time I did:

But I’ve decided I still think it’s easier to just paint it all after the fact. You have to spackle all the holes and gaps and even though I tint it with the paint color, you still have to sand/wipe it down and then do at least one more coat after that:

And eventually I’ll probably caulk this whole wall (I haven’t yet) and I’ll have to paint over that too. So, I think I’ll always be a paint-after-install girl. :)

I did a “frame” around the whole wall – mitering the corners like you see above. Then I did a board and batten look on the rest of the wall:

And I LOVE IT.

Like, stand in the room and stare at it, LOVE. My husband can't stop talking about it too, that’s when I know it’s a home run for us. :)

It is just perfect as an accent in this room. The headboard pops off of it even more than with the lighter color and even the navy blue lamps still look good:

I never ever take pictures at night but I couldn’t resist – it looks so good during the day but I think I love it even more at night:

You can see above that the other three walls are still their original color – that’s the next step. They will be that light gray that was on the bed wall soon – as soon as I get the ladder and extender paint pole out. :) I’m SO excited about how this room is coming together now, I’m thrilled with it.

This is how it looks during the day:

I still have to touch up smudges on the ceiling too, so ignore those. :) I couldn’t decide if I wanted to paint the base the same color as the wall, but I like it as is.

I planned the two segments on the wall so I could clear the headboard. I’m considering adding another line of the boards to make a third (bottom) segment – but I’m not sure. If I do it will mess with the headboard so I think I’m just leaving it:

It truly makes that wall a focal point now, which is what I think the room needed. Love it so much.

This room is really coming together now but there’s still a lot I want to do! The priority is to finally get the rest of those walls done – two coats on each wall which is going to be SUPER FUN. :)

Do you prefer a light or dark bedroom? I think when I’m done this will be a good mix of both. I especially love the board and batten look in this dark color – have you ever done something similar in a dark paint?

We’re off for spring break this week so I’ll be taking a few days to be with my family – I’ll be back Friday with a quick little DIY project for the closet! That’s another space I’m excited about! Have a lovely, warm(?), safe week!

My love, chunky trim

I’m on a mission in our house. A mission to remove all wimpy, skinny trim. I’m talking baseboards and door trim and I haven’t even started with the window trim. We’ve lived hear almost ten years and I’ve barely just begun.

It’s going to be a long, hard fight. So far the wimpy trim is still winning. :)

I’ve completed two rooms – TWO. The mud room and the powder room are done. Small victories. Wait! Three rooms are done, the whole point of this post – the master!

I shared a bit of the new door trim with you a couple weeks ago when I shared the new beefy baseboards I installed over the old ones. But I finally got to finishing it up by filling holes, painting two more coats of white paint and caulking (almost) everything.

Here’s the completed door to our bathroom:

I’ve blogged about this process before but I thought I’d share a little more detail this time. The doors are all trimmed out in pine wood and I use five pieces to make up the final look.

The two sides are regular 1x4’s, which aren’t 1x4 at all but whatever. One of life’s mysteries. The top is the three more trim pieces. Here’s a side view of the three pieces that make this one up:

There’s a 1x2 on top, then another 1x4 and a small trim piece called “stop” on the bottom. The stop part is what I’ve changed up since the first time I did this. In our powder room I used lattice wood and it felt too thin for me.

You can see here that the stop has a curved edge:

In this room I actually used taller wood for the header – in the pic above it's a 1x4 but because our room is large and the ceiling is high, I went with a 1x6:

LOVE it.

I avoided doing this for years because I thought it would be so complicated. It’s not at all. I assemble the header on the floor (with a nail gun) and then put it up after the two side trim pieces are installed:

SO dreamy.

Here’s a look at the double doors:

Ignore the sides of the trim – I decided not to caulk until I paint the rest of the room.

I like that the “stop” trim has a little bit of a curve to one side – I think it gives it a little more of a custom look:

This one isn’t as easy to appreciate though, since the doors are usually open: 

But the chunky header looks pretty darn good.

Just imagine how great they’ll look with sexy black doors – my other mission. :)

Obviously this is a splurge – it’s not a necessity but I love the look and I think it makes our home feel more “classic” and less “2004 build.” I’ve been doing this slowly over years now and I won’t do every doorway – I doubt I’ll touch the basement for instance. But overall it’s changing the feel of our home and I love it!

Have you tried a similar look in your home? Do you love the classic white craftsman trim as much as I do? It’s not nearly as hard as I thought it would be!

Hardwood floors in the bedroom

Hello my friends! Welcome to another (cold!) week! Hope you had a great weekend – my husband was out of town and I had finally recovered from the stomach flu, so my boy and I went out and took advantage of our beautiful weather here on Saturday. We did our Indy children’s museum, the zoo and the state museum all in one day. It was SO wonderful to get out without coats!

I’m super stoked about the new floors that were installed in our bedroom over the weekend! We are slowly moving this house over to hardwoods throughout – it started with a bum fridge that leaked all over our laminate floors years ago. Because of that insurance check we were able to pull out the carpet on the main floor and put in hardwoods throughout. We do finished on site wood and I explained why I love them and the pros and cons here. They do take longer to install than engineered floors, so there’s more patience needed. :)

We got a quote about a year ago to have them put in upstairs but it was more than we wanted to spend at the time, so we decided to break it up. We started with the master because the carpets were truly, truly gross. Four animals and ten years tend to do that.

On Friday they pulled the carpet and tact strips out and then laid the floor in a few hours:

We use white oak, three inch wide boards. Back when we had them put in downstairs I wanted wider planks but was warned against them with our Midwest climate (that sometimes changes 30 degrees in 24 hours) because of buckling. I quite love the three inch though – they are classic.

They use wood filler on the floor and then let that dry overnight.

The next day the meticulous sanding is done and then the first coat of stain goes down. Yesterday he came back and I’m pretty sure he buffs the floor again just a bit because that first coat of stain usually has some imperfections. Then the coat of poly goes on and by last night it was dry:

The poly doesn’t completely cure for a few days or even weeks but I may start moving a few things in later today. As long as you don’t drag items around it’s fine.

As always we went with the Jacobean stain by Minwax and a satin poly:

The satin poly makes my life SO much easier (instead of a glossy) – you don’t see foot prints on them at all. It makes a HUGE difference!

Our room is big, but it looks massive without any furniture! It makes me want to just put our bed back in and that’s it:

The floors will darken just a bit over time but this stain is a good color – not crazy dark but dark enough that it contrasts against the white trim. My very favorite thing. :)

So if I was a better planner and if I hadn’t been hit with the bug last week, I would have tried to do things like paint the walls in the room before the floors were installed and pull up the old baseboards as well. Our base is installed so dang well it makes me sweat and swear to get them out.

Now that the floors are in they are going to be even harder to get out:

Grrr. I so should have done that before! I was just going to extend them using some molding but I am doing a wall treatment and really want to have a different base. So, we’ll see. As anxious as I am to sleep in our comfy bed again, I may try to do this while everything is out of the room. Makes most sense, it’s just hard for my impatient brain to accept. :)

So I have a ton of work to get this room back in order but I LOVE the floors! And I can’t wait for this to arrive tomorrow:

I hope it looks as good as I think it will! I got it 70 percent off last week and it looks like it’s 50 percent off right now!

So could you live with hardwoods in the bedroom? We’re not sure yet if we’ll do hard floors in the other bedrooms someday or just replace the carpet. After seeing what came out of our carpet the other day I’m leaning towards hardwoods. ;) It will be an adjustment to walk around on hard floors in there but I think the rug will help quite a bit (I’m planning on picking up some padding to put under it today.)

So far I’m happy with this change – I’ll let you know if I still love it in a few months! :)

Quick mantel redo

Hey hey! Well, the birthday week continues with a little something for a couple of you. From HomeGoods. Whaaaat? (Said in minion voice.)

Yes.

HomeGoods asked me and a few other bloggers to share how a few small changes can change up a space in our home. My challenge was in the bedroom – their survey found the bedroom is the No. 1 room in the home that negatively impacts people’s mood. Interesting! They challenged me to change up a spot in our bedroom just making small changes. This was hard for me – no spray paint, no tweaks. Just decorate.

Thing is, I love our bedding (from HomeGoods, shock) so I needed to focus on a different area in our master. I walked into the store and found my inspiration right away!

The space I wanted to focus on is the mantel – earlier this year I changed it up with some Goodwill art:

Soooo. I like it at first. It was dark and moody and it reminded me of a special place for my husband and I. But within a few weeks it just got…well, dark and moody. ;) And I love those floofy things off to the side but they were kind of weird up there.

Soooo. This is the spot I changed up. Instead of floofy things I went with classic candlesticks:

I saw that beautiful box with the navy blue accents and knew it was perfect. (You can see my navy blue lamps here.)

The other side is filled with items that were already up there – I just pulled in a navy blue book to bring some of that color to that side:

I changed out the orchid pot too to a darker one (just switched it with another orchid). By the way – see those blooms? Yes, I successfully grew an orchid that rebloomed. GOLD STAR for me. Although I have no idea how I did it, I just noticed one day it was blooming again. Soooo.

I’ve talked about my method for accessorizing a space before and I followed that here – variety in heights and pulling similar colors in throughout. It seems to work.

I also picked up a throw because I clearly don’t have enough throws as it is (that’s sarcasm if you can’t tell):

Isn’t that beautiful? It’s so soft! By the way, the settee and the pillow, both from the HG a while back.

Oh, and I almost forgot the most important part! The part that inspired the whole redo, the big mirror:

Ack! So much better! Eventually I’d like to place some DIY art above the settee but for now I just removed a few of the frames that were up there and love it simpler like this – it can breathe now. :)

By the way, a smart designer once told me not to use mirrors above fireplaces, (because they reflect the ceiling) and for years I fought hard to follow that advice. But I’ve since realized that they’re fine – quite lovely actually. It’s hard to fill that space above a mantel and sometimes a mirror is the very best thing for it. I take it all back – put a mirror up, it’s OK. :)

You’ll notice that these walls aren’t the new wall color yet. That’s because 1.) I’ve been lazy and painting the tall walls sounds as fun as walking on hot coals 2.) I’m still not 100 percent I’m going with the color I picked out.

So there’s my update with a few accessories – it took me all of 15 minutes to change it out. For me that’s a record.

The best part? Two of you get $50 to spend at HomeGoods. I’ve got them right here burning a hole in my desk. So to enter just comment here – have you been to HomeGoods? Did you hear singing the first time? (Every time?) What’s your favorite purchase? Answer any or all or none, just leave a comment (with your email address!). :)

AND if you are so inclined, you can repin from this link and if I get the most pins I’ll get another FIVE $50 cards to give to you all. YES. So there you go. HomeGoods happy, it’s a thing.

P.S. I am having issues with the photos on my blog – they are so crisp and clean for me and then I load them into Blogger and they get dark and blurry. Trying to figure out what the issue is, bear with me!

Disclaimer: I received a gift card to complete this redo. Love of the HG is my own.