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Sunday, June 7, 2015

House Update : Two Months Later

To see the house before we moved in, click here.

To see the one-month update, click here.

Coming into this post, I actually felt like we've basically gotten nothing done, but when I started writing the list out I realized there was more than I anticipated. Not a lot of HUGE things and no changes as drastic as the last update post, but there have been things done. Work on the current house kind of stalled out while we focused our efforts on updating the old house to get it on the market (yes, it's taken this long. yes, I want to cry. yes, I just want it gone. yes, I'm going to cry when it's gone. yes, it's a lot of emotions, I'm sorry.).

Sniff. Old house. Sniff.


The sunroom is virtually complete for phase one. I'd like to get a big indoor/outdoor rug for the area, and a few of the windows have broken seals that need replacing, but it's done otherwise.

As a reminder, here's what the sunroom looked like before:


It's kind of hard to tell just how blue it was in this picture. Blue/tan tile, blue walls and trim, blue ceiling, blue window shades. Very blue.

You can see in the picture above some vertical lines in the beadboard were pieces of the board met - I caulked those, then painted the walls with Sherwin Williams Requisite Gray (chosen because I'd liked it when I had the swatches for the rest of the house, but it was too warm/brown for what I wanted in the main area). Normally, I'd have painted the trim first, but in this case, the trim was pretty straightforward with no curves, while the beadboard had lots of grooves that needed paint splooshed/squashed/smashed into them (technical terms there), so I did the walls first this time.




Once the walls were painted, I taped everything off and painted the trim Cotton White by Sherwin Williams, which has just the tiniest yellow/beige twinge that's not really visible unless it's next to stark white. I carefully considered hundreds of swatches to find the best white to match the Requisite Gray and to bring a bit of warmth to the room due to the coolness of the tiles yeah no I just grabbed a white that was in the garage and didn't even realize it wasn't white white until halfway into painting. But it's fine and works perfectly.


THREE COATS!! Three coats! later, the trim was done. Then I began the tedious process of scraping the paint off the French door windows. The doors were actually painted over a month ago but have been sitting there with paint just covering the window panes since then. 

There were 15 panes of glass in each door, with two sides that needed to be scraped, so 60 areas in all (look at me doing basic math!). Scraping the paint took an assload of time mostly because I was using a super rusty old razorblade that basically gave me tetanus just touching it. And it broke about 1/3 of the way into the first window so it wouldn't stay locked in the 'blade out' position. And then after like four more windows the blade broke off, but not along a scored line, so then it was worthless. And then courtesy of my husband, I got an actual paint scraper (novel concept - use the right tool!) and the rest of the windows went about 200x faster. 

One door done, one to go.
Pajama bottoms with a dress. It's how we roll.

I love the room now. It's crisp and bright and contemporary. And the greige walls really pull out the browns and tans in the tile and minimize the blues, so even with the blue shades remaining, the color blue hardly registers any more. And it really feels connected to the rest of the house now, so it feels more like an additional room rather than an add-on.


Man, whoever painted that wire to camouflage it did a BANG UP job. (Hint: it was me.)



And for all you before-and-after fiends:


So that room is basically done, at least for phase one.

Shit, wait. No, I take that back. I still need to do the (blue) ceiling. I was actually hoping to see if my cousin could do it for me with his extend-a-roller thing so I didn't have to break out the ladder. But he's been working on the old house. I should probably just suck it up and do it.

Phase two for the sunroom involves replacing some or all of the windows with ones that open. Right now, only one window in the entire room opens, so it gets absolutely no ventilation even when the window is open. I'd love to be able to open almost all of the windows in the room so it can be more of a screened-in porch on nice days.

The upstairs shared bathroom is another room that had a big change. As a reminder, here's where we started and left off:


This month I painted the lower walls and the trim.



I still have a few things there I want to do in there, but I'm not even really sure where phase one with the bathroom ends and where phase two starts. Like, I know I want to update the cabinets, but I have no idea into where on the overall timeline doing that fits. And I'm not 100% sure whether I want to paint them white or gray or black or stain them darker.  However, Phase One definitely includes new cabinet hardware and the mirror framed out and some shelves/decor (suggestions?? I have no idea what to put in there!). Then I'll figure out the cabinets down the road. And possibly the wave tiles removed or painted over and the upper blue walls painted and the floors replaced, depending on how long I feel like I can live with all that blue and whether we come into a shit ton of money anytime soon. It's not bad, it's just not me. Which is a little weird because this blue is basically like the exact same color as the master bedroom at our old house but apparently living with a room that color for ten years made me sick of it.

Also I want to give myself FULL credit because I did the sunroom and bathroom completely solo without one single brush stroke of help from anyone. #masterpainter #orsomething

I also finished a bunch of small, random shit.

- Finished Carys's room and got some stuff up on the wall and hung curtains (still to do: paint trees on the blue wall, hang the rest of the decor, eventually paint trim)

Shortly after painting, while trying to figure out the configuration of her furniture. 


Final-for-now furniture placement.

- Finished painting Emmeline's room and hung black-out shade liners and curtains (still to do: hang decor, paint trim eventually)

Do you love the pile of clothes on her closet floor? Those are her winter clothes that I pulled off the hangers to put away when it started getting nice, but then the weather decided to be a COMPLETE bastard and be cold and rainy all fricking month so I left them there for now. 

I need to re-position the alphabet plaque. I hung it before the curtains so it was centered on the wall between the corner and the window, but now that the curtains are hung it looks off-center. :/

SHE LOVES IT! Or the bouncy bull, but I'm choosing to believe she loves her room.

- Hung a mirror and clock in entryway (ISN'T THIS LIST SO FASCINATING)

- Tried to update the chandelier by replacing the lightbulbs with round clear ones and removing the glass to give it a more modern look (still to do: decide whether to live with it as-is in this deconstructed state [in which case I want to get wire cutters and cut off the hangers] or replace entirely or DIY an orb around it?)

Before and after removing the smoked glass and as I was replacing the lightbulbs. Somehow I don't have a pic of the bulbs all replaced, just this mid-change one.  Also look at all those moving boxes in the background! I wish I could tell you they have all been unpacked and cleared out, but....no.

- Got rid of too-big couch, replaced with too-small temporary Craigslist couch (but $100! Leather!)

- Put covers on all light fixtures/outlets! NO MORE HOLES!

- Got the shelves up and put things on them (just temporarily styled like this...it need more STUFF! Don't tell Chris!) in living room. Whatever final thing is going to be above the fireplace needs to be MUCH bigger. I want to do something like this or this or this or this on the top shelves going all the way across (the same on both sides). And actually I'm looking at the shelves in these pictures and they look pretty terrible but I SWEAR that they look pretty nice in person. Is this how bloggers post hideous projects that get them featured on sites like GOMI and everyone hates them and questions their style and the blogger is at home like, "Yeah, looks good!"???? (Still to do in this area: spray paint brass parts of fireplace)


Oh hai Carys and Chris watching You Tube videos together. 
Yes, my husband wears cargo shorts. Don't judge him. He's lovely and has nice legs.

- Started priming dining room (still to do: ENTIRE DINING ROOM BASICALLY)

- Put door knobs on all the doors in the upstairs hall! We have doors that close!! WHOA!

- Hung up some decor in the playroom, continued to organize it (still to do: eventually paint trim. get craft area - not pictured for good reason - organized.)



- Painted the door of the playroom with magnetic and chalkboard paint


- Spent 100 hours pruning bushes and pulling weeds outside (still to do: pull 100000000 more weeds)

There's still so much to do for phase one - from giant things like painting entire rooms (dining room, sitting room) and replacing the flooring (goodbye tile!!!), to smaller things like installing new switches and getting covers for a few of the outlets still that were oddly-shaped.  And then we still have a ton of practical things like getting a new permanent couch (and moving the Craigslist couch to the basement) so that more than 3 people can have a seat in the living room. And, you know, actually finishing the unpacking and organizing which is NEVER GOING TO END. Much like the unending saga of the PAINT ALL THE PAINT.

Oh, and after all the paint-color-picking drama, I don't think I ever mentioned which color we went with for the entryway and halls and family room: Smoke Embers. After not liking it initially, after worrying it was first too dark and then worrying that it was too light, after trying to sell it on Craigslist only to get a hit 15 minutes after we started painting....we kept it and I absolutely LOVE it. It's the perfect light gray with just the tiniest bit of warmth.  Basically this paint color was my white whale. Which I have now found so take that, Moby Dick.

Focus on the wall color and not the adorably eccentric girl in this picture. 

You can see how it varies from warmer to cooler here, but it always has just the tiniest smidge of warmth.
*yes that's a repeat picture, I'm sorry. But if you noticed, you're really reading 
and paying attention, for which I commend you. 

I don't even want to think about phase two.  What I'd really love is to win the lottery so I can just hire it all out. I think that's a safe plan. Sure to work out!

2 comments:

  1. I love all the house updates!! Looking good! (Long time reader and horrible commenter)

    ReplyDelete