Spring is for Painting

It was in the spring of last year that we finally painted our room and our master bathroom!  The rest of the year was busy with all our traveling and having a new baby, and I'm actually more surprised than not that we've gotten any painting done this spring.  I guess it helps that John did most of it.  ;)

John, especially, has been wanting to give the living room a little deeper color, and since it flows into the entry, stairway and upstairs landing, it seemed that we had to paint those, as well.  The walls were also pretty badly marked in places, so it looks much better (though, to be honest, we still haven't filled in all the little dings on the way up the stairs). The straw that broke the camel's back was our new thermostat.  When we replaced our heating system and thermostat last winter, we discovered a square of plum-colored paint hiding behind the old thermostat. The new one didn't cover the dark square, so we had a large paint chip sitting on top of our new thermostat to camoflage it while we waited to paint. (I can't imagine painting such a large room such a dark color!)

    Upstairs hall before

    Upstairs hall after

How do you choose paint colors?  I usually pick out a few marked "historical" in the general colors I'm leaning toward.  We settled pretty quickly on "Homestead Resort Parlor Taupe," but it was a Valspar color, and I asked the people in Lowe's to color-match it to Olympic paint.  I didn't realize painting could be happily low VOC and practically odorless until I tried Olympic!

Well, that is the beginning of a bit of a saga . . . 

One Monday evening while the girlies were in bed and John was at choral society, I decided to surprise him by getting started on the entryway. I tried to use a paint machine we'd been given but hadn't used yet, but I couldn't get it to work and ended up rolling the old-fashioned way.  I was hesitant about how dark the color looked! But it was what we had chosen, right? A day or two later, John got started on some touch-ups and even after they had dried, the touch-ups were lighter than th rest of the walls. Argh! John had gotten the paint machine working and concluded that the apparent mis-tint must have been due to water backing up into the can from the paint machine. He went out to get two new gallons of fresh paint. He even called me from the store to ask what sheen I had chosen (eggshell, by the way). 

Much to our dismay, the new paint didn't match either of the two tones in the walls! And then we realized that John had bought the actual Valspar instead of having it color-matched to Olympic. As it dried, we realized that it was exactly the same color as the paint chip obscuring that plum square over the thermostat, and the man behind the counter at Lowe's had just done a poor job at the color-matching. So, beware of color-matching to a different brand! And we just had to deal with smelly paint. We opened lots of windows and I took the babies out for a while.

The finished product is subtly different, but it looks much cleaner!

     View of Living Room after

Here's the entry before, looking in from the green front door (which I'd love to paint black!). You can see the laundry room straight ahead and the stairs down to the living room on the left. 

Here's the entry after, looking up from the living room stairs. I found that tall mirror in Gemma's closet after stashing it there when we did the nursery and forgetting about it. John hung it a few weeks ago and it's just perfect for the space! It brings in some light to a dark corner and lends some presence to the entry. It kind of reminds me of those mirror/hatstand combinations you see in old Victorian homes.

And guess what! We replaced the boring brass light fixture, too!  Several months ago, Mom asked me if I had a place for a chandelier, and I said "Yes! I have places for about THREE chandeliers!" One man's trash is another man's treasure...this one came out of an apartment she was helping to redo. The previous fixture left a too-large hole in the ceiling, but we found the little medallion at Lowe's which saved us from having to patch it. 

I'd also really love to hang a collage of frames on the walls up and down the stairs, but one thing at a time! It is great fun to see little changes which you've been picturing actually happening!

Have you been painting anything lately?

Garden-Bed Christmas Tree, Number 3

It's ok if you laugh . . . I don't know of any other suburban family who habitually cut their Christmas tree from their garden bed!  We also have no idea how two fast-growing pines were growing in this garden bed to begin with, but they have been very convenient!  Here's John cutting our first Christmas tree in 2009.  In 2010 we didn't put up a tree because Gemma had just been born and then we left town for New York.  Last year, we cut the second tree, and I thought that it would be our last free tree . . . but branches from the 2009 tree grew back quite splendidly, and so the tradition continues!

Sizing it up . . . 

Hmm, this little piece?

Daddy's little helper . . . 

The tree, and its conqueror!  

(and I think there's a smudge on our camera lens!)

(Yes, definitely a smudge . . . )

As it turns out, it's our tallest tree yet!  It works wonderfully with our very high ceilings in the living room!

Thanks to our families, we have many pretty and special ornaments now.  

Six of our nest wedding favors made it home with us, so I stuck them in the tree.  They need candy or something . . . hmm.

With family coming to us this year, it does feel a bit more like Christmas and less like we're just pretending.  :)

His Projects, Her Projects

Besides painting, we've been doing several little house projects here and there lately.

John's been wiring the house for speakers (and chopping holes in the ceiling when necessary!)

And, as you can see if you look at the windows, a few weeks ago I spray-painted the brassy dining room curtain rods dark brown, as part of my goal for the whole house.  :)

Thankfully, the holes in the ceiling got patched up in time for a bridal shower we hosted on Saturday!  That's what the tiered stands on the table are from!  Hopefully you'll hear some more about that soon!

The living room got an entirely new curtain rod which I found for a little less than normal at Big Lots several months ago now, and some of the same Simply Shabby Chic panels from Target which we have (and love) in our bedroom.

We left the middle of the rod bare for a few days, but agreed that it needed something, so we put the homemade valance back up in the middle for now.  I'm still not sure about it.  While I like the fabric of the valance, it came out a little too 90's-country-clutter-looking, I think.  

I am sure that I like the combination of white curtains with dark brown curtain rods, though!  And, pretty soon, the whole house should be alive with the sound of music.  ;-)

Our Room

Wow.  It was almost two full years ago that we were deciding what color to paint our bedroom!

Well, we finally did it.

After deciding that red was both too intense for our cottage-style home and wouldn't coordinate well with our lavender bath, and after John quickly vetoed yellow, we settled on green.

Then we had to decide which green to choose, which was quite an ordeal itself!  I was leaning toward a warmish grass green, but not too bright, and not too olive.  We had nearly a dozen different paint chips taped up on the wall for a few weeks until I finally came home with two paint samples.  We didn't like either of those, so I came home with two more . . .

We finally took the plunge and bought a gallon of a paint we hadn't tried as a sample!  It was just one shade darker than the sample on the lower right.  It wasn't intentional, but the result is actually quite similar to the shade of John's beloved green boyhood bedroom.  :)  

The room before:

The room now:

 I hung these pretty curtains from Target quite a while ago, but only recently did I actually take down the ugly mini blinds and spray paint the rods a dark brown.  I think it was my cousin, Missy, who suggested spray painting the rods in my dining room.  We actually took her suggestion for the nursery, since the rods we had on hand were not an attractive color.  I loved the result so much that I decided maybe we should have deep brown rods and clean white curtains in every room of the house, for some coherence.

I love how the curtains are a bit too long and drag their pretty edges on the floors.  :)

There's more to do, like hanging items on the walls.  I occasionally check Craigslist for four poster and canopy beds.  I have yet to find just the right one, but you never know!  Or maybe I'll just redo the headboard some day.  Sometimes I envision replacing the ceiling fan with a chandelier, or at least trying to spray paint the brass and faux wood away.  Oh, and I need to sew our bedskirt a bit.  It was a king size, and our bed is a queen, so it just needs a couple of pleats down the middle.  One step at a time.  :)

A Lavender Bath

Well, our master bath room is finally almost finished.  :)  When I looked through last year's posts to link up to this one when we first got our new pipes, I could hardly believe that it was back in August!  We were without that bathroom in working order for quite a while.

But, at length, the ceiling was patched, the tile work in the shower was fixed, and we could finally use the paint which I purchased for it, oh, back before we did Gemma's nursery.  Of course the bathroom hasn't been out of commission for quite that long, thankfully, but it felt good to finally work on it!  

I thought we had more "before" pictures, but apparently there's only this one.  Like most of the rooms in the house, the walls were sort of a nondescript off-white.  It's probably a good choice of color when you're putting a house up for sale, but we don't plan on doing that for a while . . . and since our shower curtain and all our linens are white, the room seemed like it needed more color.  

I love herbs, especially lavender.  :)  It was lavender that the flower girls in our wedding dropped on their way down the aisle, and lavender which our guests pelted at us as we ran off to our honeymoon.  We decided a couple of years ago that this would be our lavender room, and the paint color we chose was indeed called "Brushed Lavender" (by Valspar).

This is a wider view of the same sink!  It actually looks better now because John has put the light fixture back, though!

Panning left, here is the shower!  All the expense of this room was in the plumbing and tiling fixes.  The shower curtain came from my hope chest (and originally from a garage sale!) and the bath mat was a wedding shower gift from Target's Simply Shabby Chic line.

Continuing left, we have the second sink!  The lighting in these photos probably isn't the best, but there are no windows in this room, so daylight is no help.  Thankfully there are two beautifully big mirrors!  The hamper was also a wedding gift.

A different shot of the same sink.  I originally took down the two Norman Rockwell prints, thinking they were "old person's art," but John liked them, so they're back up.  I just spray painted the frames white first.  The funny circular thing on the wall is a candle holder I made in Interior Design class in college.  It's nice to finally use it somewhere!

Fun little details!  The clock was John's and the soap and dish were a gift from my college roommate (Sarah, of course!  We have the same taste!).  The vintage glass medicine bottle came from Grandma Smith when she was cleaning things out a couple of years before she was forced to leave her home.

The picture above was taken shortly before John purchased the house.  It came furnished and included all these kitchen things, in particular the wire basket in the corner below.  It looks like it was intended for milk bottles.  I finally found a place for it in the bathroom and an arrangement I'm happy with.

John had the Mason jars and the little package of soap is from Williamsburg.  :)  I'm thinking of adding some color or texture to the handle with a ribbon or bit of fabric, but I'm not sure yet.

So . . . that's our bathroom!  Finally almost done . . . the ceiling still needs painting.  But we're quite happy with it!

O, the Holly and the Rosemary

Thanksgiving came and went without me expressing publicly my gratitude for many other things . . . our home, our church family, our Savior, and my arms, to name a few.  I probably would have never thought to thank God for the use of my hands until this year. 

But now it's December!  It's time to put away the few autumnal decorations (which I never shared with you!) and decorate for Christmas!

Years ago, I remember admiring a little hand-twisted wreath in the window of one of my great aunt's apartments.  This year, I wanted to hang wreaths in all four of our dining room windows.  :)

So, when we were in NY for Thanksgiving, my dad cut down a big piece of grape vine, and, with Gemma on my back, I started twisting.  The first couple of trials failed, but the next four were satisfactory.  :)

And then, when we got home, I gave our holly bushes a hair cut . . . and our rosemary a haircut . . .

 . . . And with some time, and a bit of ribbon leftover from our wedding, we had four beautiful wreaths to hang in the window!

 I love them.  I love the old-fashioned feel our dining room has.  I love that they were free and that they're made of real materials.  I love that they represent the swamps and forests of my former home and our current home on Cottage Lane.  :)

There were enough leftover holly trimmings to make a little Christmas centerpiece from a crystal bowl full of oranges . . .

 . . . and to spruce up the mantel for Christmas . . .

Soon comes the tree . . . :)

The Nursery is Ready

So, baby, any time now . . .

Here are the "before" pictures.

Nursery Wall, Painted

No, I didn't quite get it done last week, but I finished up yesterday (all except for one cloud which needs some touching up! Can you spot it?).

Making "Old" Things New

Looking back at this old post, from before we started our office-to-nursery transformation was quite encouraging to me! We're making definite progress!

Today, I finished re-covering the red lamp shade (in this picture) in a pink toile printed with nursery rhyme scenes. It took some alternate trimming and hot glue-ing and not very much time, and if you don't look at the inside, it looks great!

And last week, I made a simple curtain from eyelet to cover the lower shelves of the green shelf in the same picture. We managed to find space for all the books and items on the top two shelves in the sunroom downstairs, so they can be decorated for baby and the rest can be hidden away.


It was just barely too short! And it sticks out kind of funny on one side because the photo albums behind it are so big. Still, I'm happy with how things are coming, and liking these girly touches to our otherwise neutral nursery quite a lot.

34 Weeks (and a half, by now!)

34 Weeks

How has it been over a week since the last post? I'm not quite sure, but time is going quickly.

In nursery news, the most exciting developments have been the acquisition of a rocking chair, changing table and baby swing, all from Craigslist. I guess once I got over the hump of having never used it before, I just took off! And now I'm going to have to refrain from even looking at anything for a while. But we did get some good deals!

The rocking chair we bought more for its beauty than its price (but it's something I'll love having in our home for years to come!)


This we bought more for its price than its beauty. I'm not crazy about the particle-board shelves, and I'm thinking of painting the whole thing white to give it a clean, fresh look and maybe seal in some of that particle board. John thinks we should leave it, since the color of the wood does basically match everything else in the room. We'll see who "wins" . . . :-)


This little swing made me happy by both its price and its beauty! Its neutral colors will look nice in our house, plus they'll work if we ever have a boy someday. And it even folds up a little bit.

The goal for the week is to finish the painting on the wall! I haven't done any more of that since the last update, but I have washed and sorted all the new baby things we were given at our showers and written all my thank you notes! Can you tell I like affirmation? :-)