Tis The Season

Christmas is just a couple days a way, so I thought it would be fun to do a Christmas decorations post! Since this is our first Christmas in the new house, we don't have a lot of decorations yet, but we were able to gather some new and old things to create a "festive" look in our home!

The most obvious thing we did was place lights on the outside of the house.  We compromised since Matt loves colored twinkling lights, and I like solid white ones, so we have the twinkling color lights along the roof, and white on the bushes.  I have to say, I kind of like it! It gives an added flare without being too gaudy. 

When you first walk in the house, we have this bare corner, so I put this little standing Santa in it! He's so creepy that he's adorable! Sometimes I jump when I walk in at night and forget he's there, but I love him! 

We then have our Christmas tree, which I would like to have full of sentimental ornaments eventually, but right now we have a few meaningful ones and a lot of silver glitter balls! Matt and I also like to put candy canes on the tree for an added little something.  Finally, I have this cute silver bow on the top of the tree that I cannot get enough of! I love it. 

Since we don't have a mantle to hang our stockings, so my mom bought me these mantle hangers that I hung on the windowsill to hang the stockings.  We also lined up all of our Christmas cards on the windowsill,  and they ended up looking really nice!

Finally, my FAVORITE piece of decoration is this lantern from IKEA.  Normally I have a candle in it, but for the holidays, I put in some ornaments, and I think it looks really cute! I'm a little sad to have to take the ornaments out!

 

That is it for my decorations! I hope this showed you a little bit more on how we decorated this year, and gave some ideas! 

If you have any cool ideas you think I would like, let me know!

Curtain Mission

We recently bought curtains for our living room at Ikea and we thought we found what we were looking for.  We wanted a white curtain that looked a medium thickness that we could close when needed, but would normally keep open.  Instantly, I knew they weren't exactly what I wanted.  I was hoping they would be a crisp white, that would make our light gray walls pop.  Instead, they are a light cream color that do nothing.  They do add some dimension to the room, but it's not me... 

(On a side note, disregard those horrible paper curtains... we are figuring out something else there)

As you can see, the curtains don't do much.  So what is a girl to do? Go on Pinterest, of course! I was able to find an awesome tutorials on how to stencil curtains, and I love it!

An inspiration photo from pinterest, not my own.

Tutorial for this picture

I am hoping if I can stencil these Ikea curtains, I will love them more!  I am thinking of doing a blue/gray to go with the walls as well as our accent color of blue!

So this is the project for the week! I will post back on the results!

Also, let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas!

 

Palette Knife Art

Now that we are a bit more settled into this house, we are working on making it more "homey".  We are still in need of some more furniture pieces and shelving, so in the mean time, I figured a piece of art will work well to add something to look at! 

I found this idea on BowerPowerBlog http://www.bowerpowerblog.com/2012/07/knife-art/ and loved it.  I loved the simplicity and dimension to it.  I loved the colors she used and had already planned on using a similar color scheme, so I changed it up a little bit to go with what I wanted, and I couldnt be happier with how it turned out!

I bought a canvas from Michael's for about $16, which I was happy with. I went into this thinking it would look horrible and be a waste!  I bought a variety of paint (All Martha Stewart brand) in colors ranging from green to navy blue.  I wanted to have a lot of dimension and a very "beachy" look.

 
I didn't have a real palette knife, so I used a putty knife that we already had, and it worked out great!  The process was really, really easy.  I just dipped the knife into each of the colors and the slapped it onto the canvas and pulled it down a bit.  It was pretty easy to eyeball the length and since the knife was an inch wide, I knew it would always be the same width.  I tried to vary up the swatches so they wouldn't all look the same, and I love the result! 

This was really the easiest thing ever.  I am no painter- I am the person that has trouble making a symmetrical stick figure! So if I can do this, anyone can!  It was actually really fun!    

The Halfway Bathroom Fail

Well,  I should probably admit that I am not perfect, despite popular belief (kidding!) and I sometimes have bad ideas.  In the beginning of the bathroom remodeling idea, I knew what I wanted, but thought it would be a good idea to save some money and do things the cheap fix way.  Boy do I regret that. It ended up costing us way more money. 

It was my genius idea to simply paint the pink tiles white, which I thought would be a good temporary fix until we were able to save up more money.  I'm sure this would have been a MUCH better idea if we had ceramic tile in there instead of plastic tiles from the 1950's.  I did do my research and learned that a good primer would keep the paint on the plastic, so we bought Kilz primer and Rust-oleum white paint .  It looked so good! 

We then decided that instead of buying a whole new vanity, we would just use the old one and repaint it a dark espresso color and buy a granite countertop.  I spent a TON of time sanding that stupid thing and priming it, only to have the tacky faux wood sticker on top to ruin my life.  I painted it all and overall it was acceptable, but not good.  In some areas that had the sticker, there were uneven patches and grooves in it, despite all of my sanding.  It was just a fail. 

We figured if the vanity was the only fail, we were doing okay! And then, the tiles all went downhill...  As we were painting, we noticed a few loose tiles, but thought it would have been okay using liquid nail on them.  As we were painting on the second coat, all of the tiles started popping off! Not just one or two, no, all of them!!!  I'm sure it was just the cheap tiles being screwed with and covered in chemicals, but holy cow! It was not a happy moment in my life.  Looking back, it sure made the tile removal process quite easy! 

Overall, this fail taught us that a temporary bandaid isn't worth it, and that if you are going to spend time fixing it, do it right.  I couldn't be happier with how the bathroom looks now, and maybe it is a good thing that we had a failure right off the bat! Now we know!

Hope this post teaches a lesson!  If you are going to do it- do it right!

Life Works in Mysterious Ways

I decided that I don't want this blog to be only about my house, but that since the house is a part of my life, this blog should be a bit about my life as well. 

This past week has totally thrown me for a loop, and there are some things I will never understand.  I am a firm believer in "everything happens for a reason", and hopefully that proves to be true.  I was in a job that I thought was going to be my dream career, but as of last week, I was laid off.  This completely came out of nowhere and I don't really know where to go from here.  I am so thankful that this didn't happen a few weeks earlier, as we wouldn't have been able to get the house.  But really, this was one hell of a housewarming present.  I am thankful that I still have a few part time job leads, but for now, things are going to be tricky.  Thankfully, Matt has a stable job and we will be fine, but things are certainly going to be different. 

I thought it would be nice to get this out here and talk about what is going on in my life, so I can save Matt's sanity!  I promise I won't start complaining about my life on here , and I still have some great home posts to show you all!

So to all 3 of you reading this, thank you for being such a huge part of my life! 

xoxo,
Em

The Finishing Touches!

Finally!! The bathroom is practically done! The only thing we have left to do is put up the trim, and get some artwork and curtains!

We painted the walls Benjamin Moore's Palladino Blue, which is a gorgeous minty blue green color. It was exactly what I was looking for.  It is the perfect fresh, crisp and clean color, and it matches the tiles perfectly.

To balance all of the white in the tiles and floor, we decided to go with a dark espresso color vanity and mirror.  I cannot get enough of this vanity! We snatched it up at HOBO (home owners bargain outlet) for about $299! I originally saw almost the same thing at Kohler which made me weak in the knees, and was THRILLED when I saw it's twin at HOBO!

To go with the vanity, I decided to shy away from a medicine cabinet, which I know would have been wise for our lack of space, but this mirror we picked up at Target for $50 matched the vanity perfectly.   It is a larger size, which I feel opens the space a bit more.

We bought this light fixture from Home Depot (they are by Hampton Bay), and I love it.  I feel like the shape of the lights match the shape of the sink perfectly! Love.

The white "waffle" shower curtain gives the perfect clean spa-like feel I was going for.  We then picked up some gray and white towels to compliment everything in the room.

Before I steamed the wrinkles out of the curtain, and before the trim

I love love love love how everything turned out!

Tile Style!

It's official! We have tile! I finally feel that this bathroom is an actual bathroom, not a construction site!  I have been showing off this amazing tile job to everyone who will look.  I am incredibly proud of Matt and his persistence with this.  He has a little bit of experience laying tile, so I wasn't worried about about the actual process of it.  I was terrified that the colors weren't going to go well together, and that it would look cheap or ugly.  I originally wanted a subway tile throughout the whole shower, but Matt really felt that I wasn't going to like it when it was done.  I am so happy he talked me out of it, because I really could not be happier with the way it looks!



He has the patience of a saint!




I cannot get over how pretty it looks!




The accent pieces look a lot darker here than they are in real life


We went with a basic white marble floor tile, a white marble wall tile, and a glass tile accent piece, all of which are from Home Depot

The floor is the Greecian White Marble in 12x12
The shower walls are White Marble by Daltile in  x12
Accent pieces are MS Keystone 12x12 Gray and White interlocking tile. 

Overall, I am very pleased with everything! The floor tile is a bit less gray and white than I was hoping for. I understood that going with a marble, there was going to be imperfections in the tile.  I just wish there was a bit more gray infused.  I can't really get a good picture of the floor, so I will have that in the next post. 

The wall tile in the shower looks amazing with the accent pieces.  Matt picked out the accent tile and it is the perfect match.  This tile really gives the exact look I was wanting.  We are going to be painting the walls Benjamin Moore "Palladian Blue" and I cannot wait!

The "finishing touches" post is next!

Walls!

We finally have walls again! I never thought I would be so happy to see drywall! The whole drywall process was such a pain.  If I never have to hang drywall again, I will be thrilled!

Since the bathroom was the original to the house, the walls were made of plaster, and we could not find a regular sheet of drywall that would be thick enough to blend in perfectly, so we had to put in a 1/2in sheet of drywall, with a 5/8ths inch green board drywall on the outer, which was a close to the thickness of the wall that we could get.  Since it wasn't perfect, we had to use a lot more mud than we were hoping to, but they blended together well!

 

We used the corner tape with mud to help blend the walls together, and it worked out well. This was obviously the before picture, but that was how big of a gap was left between the plaster walls and the drywall.  

 

 Here is another view of the walls with the tape in place, and how it came together.  We also got a new toilet put in place. It was a Glacier Bay duo flush energy efficient toilet that I couldn't get enough of! I loved the modern edge that this brought to the room. It's funny how something as simple as a toilet can make such a HUGE difference.  

                                                        Yes, the floor is disgusting! 

 

The electrical work was oddly enough, one of the easiest things for us to do.  We did not have an outlets in this room, as there was only one in the mirror before.  Luckily, Matt has a friend who has experience with electrical work and this was such an easy fix and makes a huge difference.  They are standard GFI outlets to stick with our village codes.  

Well this is where we are at in the process now, and things are really coming together! I cannot wait to show you all the tile and paint colors we have picked out, and see how it all comes together!

   

Bathroom Renovation Part 1

Well, it has officially started! We have started the bathroom renovation process! Lemme tell ya, I had this brilliant idea to save some money and paint the tiles and vanity, but that mess deserves it's own post! be on the lookout for that hot mess!


The first step was to shut off the water and disconnect the plumbing to make sure we didn't really screw anything up.

 

We then took off the vanity top to remove the actual vanity.  We then started to remove the glue off of the tiles (this was while I was still on my "Paint the tile" kick), so ultimately this step is unnecessary.  

After we removed the vanity, we starting taking off all of the tiles!  Hello, white tile spoiler!! I truly had an awesome time while removing the tile!   I'm a freak-what can I say!  I loved how such a minor thing was so "permanant".

I did have a total diva moment when a tile scratched my arm pretty bad and I started bleeding...

I tell ya, Matt is so amazing.  He worked a 12 hour day, and then came home to do the bathroom for another 4 hours.  I could never do it!  He never ceases to amaze me.  

 

This would be what the room looks like without all of that horrible tile.  We were really hoping that less glue was going to be stuck on the wall, and that we could remove it to simply sand and paint over... yeah. That isn't going to happen.  This glue is on there.  Like, forever.  This means we have to do all new drywall, which we were trying to avoid like the plague!

 And this, my friends, is what my bathroom ended up looking like! Wowzers... This is the moment I started panicking.  There was NO going back... What if my ideas backfire and I'm left with an ugly room? What if we screw something major up, and end up costing us a fortune! I mean, neither of us have done anything close to this before!  This picture scares me.

Now that we are at the point of no return, I am feeling the pressure.  I really doing my research to be sure that we are picking everything that is both cost effective and appealing.   Hopefully everything will turn out well!

Operation Bathroom

It's time to get this bathroom renovation started!  Before we move into the house, we need to have the bathroom done, since it's our only one! I have crazy visions for this bathroom.  It is my goal to take it from "grandma" salmon pink to a "spa like" oasis.  If there is one thing I love- it is a crisp, clean and fresh feel throughout a house, and I am starting here! 

This is our starting point and what we have to work with

Really bad lighting, but there is a beautiful arch in the shower!

I feel that this room has a ton of potential and can really be a beautiful place!  We are on a limited budget, but I am hopeful that we will be able to make this a really enjoyable place! 

Wish me luck!!! 

Emily