living room gallery wall

In our old house it took me about 5 years to hang anything up, including our gallery wall, so considering we've only owned this house 5 MONTHS I am pretty damn proud of myself for getting this one done.

I kept with the black frames (to avoid having to start over), and I kept some of the photos the same as well. I also painted some old frames that weren't black because I needed more more more. Added some new photos. Put up half of the wall, took about a month long break, then re-did the first half. Started on the other half, tweaked both. Waited another week or so knowing I still needed MORE.

And so, this is how it sits now. Eventually I may continue photos above the TV as well, but for now I'm calling it good.

I hung that TV up all by myself one day while Chris was out of town.

Next I probably need to hang some shiz up over here?
That big ol' D I made. I might blog about it someday. But I bet you could figure it out yourself. (Hint, buy a big ol' letter and then spray paint it).
The piano was a trade for some tax prep I did a while back (from family).
The bar cart is from Target.

Our sofa was custom made but not for us. Ha!
(We bought it from my in-laws who bought it from the people who they bought their condo from. I never ever would have picked it out, but I seriously LOVE it).
The ottoman is from Target.
The gallery wall and fireplace wall are Benjamin Moore Rockport Gray.
The rest of the upstairs is Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter.

master suite: before and after

One thing we didn't love when we bought this house was the master bedroom situation. On the main floor there were two bedrooms right next to each other. The one that was on the view side of the house didn't have a master bathroom. The other bedroom did have a walk in closet and a small bathroom attached, but it faced the street. When we made our offer we factored into our budget that we were going to have to reconfigure the two bedrooms into one huge master suite. And that's just what we did!

My cousin Hilary helped with the drawings, and we used my dad's construction background to help us figure out what would work and what wouldn't. We wanted to work with the existing window placement, and we tried to keep the plumbing as close to where it was as possible. We reused everything that we could, and craigslisted and facebooked a lot of the rest. 

The beauty about working with family is that you don't feel (as) bad changing things up mid-construction. Which we did a couple of times or twelve. Overall it ended up pretty damn sweet. Don'tcha think?

BEFORE

Looking at bathroom left and walk in closet right in "master":

Panoramic shot of "bedroom". You can see the two reach on closets to the left, and the sun room towards the back:

The "master" was used by previous owners as dressing room maybe?:

DURING

This was when things started getting fun:

AFTER

The hallway to our master was shortened (we moved the entrance door farther out into the hallway):

This is a similar view of the before bedroom shot above. I love my dad's idea to widen the opening to the sitting room and put those cut outs on either side so that when I'm sitting in bed I can still see the view outside, (made even easier because of the NEW WINDOWS!!):

The master bath!  The shower is basically where the walk in closet was before and the "big ass toilet room" is where the small master bath was:

We purchased the double vanity with marble top, mirror, sinks, and faucets through overstock.com. It looks great, but if I had to do it again I probably wouldn't buy it. We've had a few problems with it and by the time we got it installed it was past 30 days and not returnable. We have no door on the shower. Less glass to clean! SCORE!

We call this the "big ass toilet room":

I'm pretty sure this is Chris' favorite part of our whole house. I bought the marble mosaic tile from a fellow blogger/instagram friend and then found the large format tile to coordinate. (The mosaic is on the floor as well):

Looking back towards the bedroom. The full length mirror on the right is from Ikea. And our walk in closet is off to the right:

The former sun room which we use as a sitting room/office:

Standing in sitting room looking back towards master bedroom and bathroom:

I know you're curious about paint colors, right? The bedroom and sitting room are Benjamin Moore | Revere Pewter. Bathroom is Benjamin Moore | Coventry Gray and the ceilings and trim are Benjamin Moore | Chantilly Lace.

If you have any questions about where I got stuff don't hesitate to ask! I LOVE this kind of stuff.

kitchen: before and after

Grace got a new lens. I'm pretty jealous of it, so while she is at school today I decided to borrow it. Don't tell her, OK? It's super wide and fabulous for shooting interior shots. Which is what I did. So I can share with you my newish kitchen.

Remember way back when I showed you how we took out the upper cabinets? They totally closed off the space and removing them was easy for any DIYer (we had my dad do it because we ain't no Petersiks). Removing the cabinets took about 5 minutes. We also lowered that wall to the left of the dining room, which took about another 5 minutes. Trimming everything out afterwards took a couple of months because we did lots of other stuff in the meantime, and we still need to caulk and putty and paint all the trim, but here's what it looks like now:

Remember what it looked like before? Here's a refresher:

I loved that this kitchen really was move in ready. I have wanted white cabinets FOREVA, and now I have them. Other than removing those cabinets, and buying a new microwave (after Camden broke the ancient one), we painted. 

Walls are Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter and kitchen nook is Benjamin Moore Boothbay Gray.

 

I'm sharing at Thrifty Decor Chick today. 

laundry room: before and after

I realize it's kind of weird that I'm sharing the laundry room at our new house before I'm sharing any other rooms, but it's because it has been one of the biggest transformations to date! This is what the laundry room looked like before:

1972 called and wants their laundry room back.

And here it is in 2013:

We replaced the gorgeous textured amber glass in the window with a window that opens (and that is not textured OR amber). We reused the upper cabinets that we removed from the kitchen. Purchased base cabinets stock at Home Depot. Extra deep laundry sink and white laminate counter top are from Ikea. Faucet is from Home Depot. Drywalled over that fancy "wood" paneling. Paint color is Benjamin Moore Boothbay Gray. Beer fridge is from our old house gay-raj. And the floor is the cheapest ceramic tile I could find at Home Depot. (68 cents each. Boom.)

The only thing left to do is paint the window trim white and install a hanging bar above the sink. And find a spot for my ironing board to live.

in the closet

Our master suite is THIS close to being completely done. Like for realz. We ran out of grout for the shower floor with about 2 square feet left to do which caused an extension of close to a week to order more. So in the meantime I decided to get our my dream closet operational. Since we moved in we had all of our clothes first in the family room downstairs, until our bedroom was fucntional, then on wire shelves in our bedroom. And on a borrowed hanging rack, and in Camden's closet, and...you get the idea, and it was literally driving me nuts. I knew I wanted a high end closet organizer system so I got a bid from California Closets. Um, hello? Over $3,000 was the lowest option, up to over $4,000. I don't know if you know this about me but I am hella cheap thrifty. I knew I simply could NOT spend that much money on our closet so I started looking at other options. Ikea seemed like a good choice (I'd seen them used by other blogger friends Petit Elefant AND Discovery Street), but I didn't end up pricing them out because their components were either too tall for our closet (our ceilings are 91" in there), or short enough but too deep (we don't have room for two walls of 24" deep shelves).

LONG story short(er), I went with Martha Stewart Closets from Home Depot. I paid around $650 for almost exactly what my California Closets bid was for. I did the work myself. And? I. Love. It.

Exhibit A:

Yeah, those are my shoes.

I know, right?

The rest didn't turn out too bad either.
I present to you,
HERS:

and HIS:

Excuse the iphone photos. Apparently I forgot how to use my real camera. But you get the idea, right?

The entire system is totally customizable, and everything "hangs" on one horizontal support bar. At first I was skeptical, but once you get everything attached it is really sturdy. There are two different sizes of shelves (24" or 35"), there are long vertical pieces (72") or short ones (48"), and the hanging rods are adjustable. You can buy the pieces individually or in "kits" to save a little money. I started with two "4 ft-8ft Deluxe Starter Closets" and a "Hanging Starter Closet". Then I just added a bunch more shelves. They also have other accessories like drawers, valet rods, belt/tie racks, and hampers.

The single most difficult part of installation (aside from fitting them in your car) is if you need to trim the support bar (as I did for "HIS" side and for my shoe section). The directions say to use a hack saw, but since I have workers here practically 24/7 I asked one of them to please cut them for me. Other than that it was easy peasy. I used standard sized shelves and then adjusted the hanging sections to fit, so that I didn't need to cut any shelves to fit.

HER side has a long hanging section (for dresses) with 2-35" shelves above. HER middle section is double hanging, and HER right section is all 24" shelves.

HIS side has a long hanging section (for my tall man's tall things), with 24" shelves above for HIS shoes. HIS middle section is also double hanging, and HIS left section is all 24" shelves.

My shoe section is simply two long vertical pieces with all 35" shelves. I got lucky in that the section I put them was 40" wide so I don't have much wasted space.

We definitely have room for all of our clothes, and then some. There's even room in there to have a little chat and a glass of wine. (Not that I'd know anything about that of course).

What do you think? Pretty awesome, huh? 

This post is totally not sponsored. Martha Stewart has absolutely no idea who I am, although Home Depot totally SHOULD considering how much we've spent there in the past couple of months.

demo day one

So our new house has an amazing view. And we decided to take full advantage of it.

Before, if you were standing in the kitchen you had to duck to see the view, or your friends in the dining and living rooms.

A couple minutes later and ta-da! No more upper cabinets in the way! (We saved them to use in the laundry room when we get to that). This was seriously the BEST impact. And it was immediate. Doesn't my dad look like he's having fun?

And this is looking back into the kitchen from the dining room. I love it. We're going to open it up a little bit more so that "hole" will be the same height as the walkway into the kitchen. And hopefully, we'll get the drywall patched and repainted. ; )

While we were at it we decided that this half wall really served no purpose other than blocking the view when you enter the house (it's between the entry way and the dining room). So we made it shorter. Which was better, but then we made it shorter still. And that's the height it's going to stay. (48" if you're the curious type). I do want to remove that post on the right hand side...but we have to make sure the wall isn't going to wobble without it. If it has to stay I think we'll wrap it with some wood and trim to make it look more like a beam and less like, well, less like it looks now.

What do you think? I think the sledgehammer totally opened up the whole space.