Second floor improvements

For some reason, I didn't take any before photos of the upstairs. There wasn't much to see. Same blue-gray walls and dirty white carpet, but upstairs instead of down. We have a vaulted ceiling in the master bedroom which helps make the small room feel a little bigger. Painting it this brown we used at the gallery too helped warm it up quite a bit. Neil surprised me with a newly painted room and bathroom while I was off skiing. That was a good trick. I should leave him to go skiing every couple months.


The bedroom still needs a lot of fine tuning. We've added storage where we could with antique dressers and a custom bookcase Neil built for our t.v. and some pottery. Space is an issue since we share the room with 2-3 dogs depending on when you catch us. I have lots of ideas, but keep this room low on my priority list since it's not seen by others. On the list are new bedding (maybe something like ones from here, here, or here) and curtains and building an upholstered bench for the end of the bed. I'm gathering ideas (and money) for the moment.


The master bathroom is teeny-tiny. I mean REALLY small. We don't even have room for a towel bar. On the up side, there's less to clean. We spent next to nothing in here and it looks better already. We painted the vanity black and Neil made some knobs for the doors. There was a wall sized mirror above the sink and toilet that just looked tacky, so we took it down and replaced it with this framed one and a small medicine cabinet from Target that we added our own knob to. I'd eventually like to replace the light fixture with something nicer (we found this one for around $30-40 and switched out the shades). And in my wild idea file I have plans to rip out the tub and build a full sized tile shower and then re-tile the floor in something not blue. We'll see if that ever happens.

Basement to-do list

Project Basement is officially underway. The walls have been painted.... "cookie crumb" by Glidden. The giant wall chalkboard is painted too and looks pretty cool. Now we just have 5 million more steps til completion.

1. build shelving unit for tv, toys, cd's, and games on far wall
   
2. build frame for chalkboard and ledge for chalk and eraser
   
3. art for walls
4. make pillows for floor and couch
   
5. new shades for windows
6. replace fluorescent lights with can lights
7. built-in shelves and desk for computer area
8. figure out a furniture lay-out that doesn't annoy me
9. fill with toys and let the little guy go crazy!

Next step is a trip to the lumber yard for a load of MDF. I'm still trying to sort through all of the junk down here and pare it down to only the most necessary crap. It's amazing how much mis-matched furniture we have down here. Hopefully someone else will want some of it, because it can't all continue to live here!

Our next project is underway....

Time to flash to the present for a while.... We've moved from the seemingly unending "pre-planning"stage (when we say "we really need to work on the basement", "the basement is next", "what will we do with the basement?" and stand around down there making said comments, then returning upstairs to forget about it) into the actual "beginning the project" stage. This is the stage when we actually start some aspect of the project. This in no way indicates that this project will be completed anytime in the next few years or has any connection to the actual completion of previous project(s). Just to give you an idea of how projects go around here, our last 2 projects are still technically in-progress. "Project fireplace surround" is 98% complete after 14 months (just needs knobs on the cabinet doors) and "project new countertops" is 80% complete (after only 1 short month!). So it seems like a good time to move on to something else rather than finish what we've started.


That's what we're starting with. Yikes, I know. It's amazing how much crap can fit into a basement. We need to transform this trainwreck into a cool playroom for the little guy before his toys overtake the entire house. Unfortunately, we have lots of problems to solve in order to use this room. First off, it's freezing cold down there all winter and we don't want to turn the little one into a kidsicle. Apparently, when they finished the basement, they didn't insulate at all or hook up the cold air return properly (or at all...they just cut a hole in the wall that goes nowhere). Neil rigged up a cold air return vent last week and now I can feel my hands. At least I can't see my breath down here. The second problem is the lovely shade of sanitarium gray on the walls. That's easy enough to fix. I think we'll go neutral so we can do some fun art on the walls. And the third issue, as you can see from all the lovely junk in the photo, is we need STORAGE!!
The plan is to build some type of shelving for toys, books, games, and the tv at the end of the room. I've been having trouble visualizing just what I want. It has to be something easy to build (i.e. fast, and therefore, likely unpainted), cheap (read= MDF), and really functional. And I still want it to look nice somehow. We've had some luck staining MDF and having it look ok, so we'll likely try that. Painting MDF shelves takes forever and I would like this room usable before the boy goes to college. I finally came up with this general idea for the shelving unit, with cabinets on each end for big awkward toys and a spot for cubbies with baskets where the boy can reach them.


I had a 3 hour long wild plan to build this crazy "house" shelving unit, but I'm over it now for many reasons. Maybe one day we'll go crazy like this...


As you can see, I had some coloring assistance from my 16 month old design associate. He was NOT into sharing his crayons and spent most of his time pushing me away from the paper and yelling "NO! NO!" at me. Good ole toddlers!

Kitchen presto-chango

The kitchen was our home's most glaring example of "contractor-grade" tract home blah. It came complete with original lighting, appliances, scratched-up counters, ugly cheap faucet, and those horribly bland cabinets. It needed lots of help and we were on our usual budget of no dollars and 00 cents. So we saved and planned for a while and got a cheap, but much nicer, faucet and bargain light fixtures. Our big splurge was a new gas range and dishwasher. It was nice to feel a little more up-to-date and not have rust on our dishes after we'd washed them. Ideally, we would have loved to rip out all the cabinets and redesign the kitchen with all new cabinets and counters.... there's a million new cabinet designs out there that would look great in here. But, as I mentioned, we are working on a budget- a VERY tight budget ($0.00) - so we had to be creative.


We decided to paint all the cabinets white with a contrasting color on the doors. Strangely, I got the idea from the kitchen on "Two and 1/2 Men". We had the typical plain cabinet doors with a narrow trim around the edge that just seemed very boring. So Neil added a small half-round about an inch inside the original trim to give the appearance of a wider trim.


We spent forever priming and painting and then added a light burnt umber glaze to give the cabinets a more worn look and a little dimension. We then added a clear varnish to help protect it from the elements.


We added nickel knobs and drawer pulls, as our cabinets originally had none and we didn't think that functioned well.


Overall, the kitchen turned out quite well and really has a big impact for very little cost (just lots of labor). We enjoy cooking and eating much more now that we are no longer nauseated by the look of our cabinets.


Of course, there's still the ugly worn counter-tops, but that's going to take a little more than our current budget allows, so we'll have to wait.

Light fixture update

As you can see from some of the early photos, the house came with lovely contractor-grade light fixtures throughout. Most were brass colored (not my favorite), gaudy, and just plain ugly. My favorite was the florescent box in the kitchen. Ick. So right away we found some new kitchen fixtures for a low low price of $45 bucks for the pair (awesome clearance sale at Target!). They are the same style as the "optic pendant light" at Restoration Hardware, but in our price-range.


We splurged a little on our entryway light because we wanted something unique and loved this one from Schoolhouse Electric. We went cheap with the hallway fixtures and used some stock lights from Home Depot in a similar style. New lights sure make a huge difference in the feel of a place. Well worth the effort!

Chickens on a settee

My parents found this cool settee at an antique store in Spirit Lake, Iowa. All our favorite pieces came from Iowa! It was in rough shape when they bought it so they tore it completely apart and rebuilt it- restained the wood and rebuilt the cushions. My dad even hand-tied the springs himself. After all that work, they realized it didn't fit where they had planned on using it, so it came to live with us (lucky us!). It still needed fabric, so my mom and I spent a weekend recovering it. I think we spent 2 or 3 hours at Loomcraft fabric trying to decide which to choose. After that long wandering through bolts of fabric, we were a little delirious and decided why not cover the settee in chickens? The color was good, and hey- who doesn't like chickens? So here it is.....


It sits in the front window and is a favorite spot for the dogs to sit when we're not home. (We like to pretend that the dogs know that they are not allowed on the furniture) So, it's a bit worn now and is usually covered in a blanket to protect it from all the dog hair. I recently bought some black and white fabric to make a slip-cover, so hopefully the blanket can retire.

Barren backyard

Our backyard really was a shining example of cookie-cutter housing. We had the typical concrete steps to nowhere out our back door and a tiny, plain and empty backyard. The house was 12 years old already when we moved in, yet there was virtually nothing in the backyard. One tiny square raised planter that I assume was a garden because some chives grew in it. And 2 small shrubs planted to "block" the ugly cable box in the corner. They were completely dead which made the yard look even more pathetic.


As soon as it warmed up, we planted a pear tree in the yard and Neil got started on the deck. We wanted something simple and low, so we didn't have to put up a railing. It's rare that I see a deck railing that I think looks good, so it was much easier not to deal with it. We had thought of building in a low bench around the outside, but then decided 1. it would take too much time and 2. it would take away precious floor space, so that idea was abandoned. The design had to cover the old concrete steps and meet with the back door while staying low, so we ended up putting a large low step at the back door. That design has so far only led to one serious injury and many minor trips, but it looks good.


Neil spent a few weeks digging the post holes by hand. Our yard is too rocky for an auger. I don't think he enjoyed it, but the finished product turned out great. We had a small misadventure with staining, but are slowly correcting it as the deck weathers these last 3 years. We use our deck more than any previous house's outdoor space.... grilling many times a week, dining outside when the weather is nice enough, and growing a little potted garden in the summer. The dogs appreciate the sunning area and spend lots of time sprawled out there. The only drawback is our neighbor's house blocks the evening sun, so it gets chilly fast in the spring. The upside is there's an amazing view of the sunset over the Piggly Wiggly across the street. Ahhhh, suburban living!

Painting our blues away, part 2

After we conquered the family room and kitchen, we moved on to the living room and front entry. We wanted to do green but had a hard time finding the right one. I think we bought 6 or 8 quarts of different greens by the time we were done (too bad they weren't making paint samples yet!). They were either too sage or too forest, so eventually we took a dark shade and toned it down with our ceiling white until we got a shade we liked.


It somehow took many months to actually complete this painting project. We have a special knack for getting a project 90% finished and then leaving it for months (or in one case, 3 years). We really think it just adds to the "charm" of our little contractor-grade house to have sloppily 1/2 finished projects everywhere.


So we lived with the living room done, but not the front entry. Mostly because of this...


Stairwells are not fun! We likely won't repaint the hall ever. Notice the ugly hallway light fixture... more on that later.

Gray be gone

Our entire house was blue when we bought it. Blue outside, blue inside. And very sad, gray institutional blue inside. When we looked at the house with our realtor, it was night and the previous owners had moved out, taking with them all the lights (there's only a few overhead lights in the whole house), so the house looked really depressing. We bought it anyway since we hadn't seen anything better and if we didn't choose something by then end of the month we'd lose the buyers for our current house. Turns out it looked better in daylight, but still-- that blue had to go!


We started in the family room and kitchen since they are open to each other. The previous owners had put in hardwood floors on the first floor except for the living room (which still has the original stained gray carpet). The floor color is not what I would have picked (I'd rather go darker.... and maybe one day we'll re-do them?) but at least we have wood. We tested out a million shades of yellow and gold for a week and then settled on this one. We thought we were going pretty beige, but it looked a lot different once it covered the walls. It's a little too green for my taste but you can only tell at night so I try to ignore it. I think when we finally get the white trim done the room won't look so super-yellow. And obviously something has to be done about that fireplace, but more on that later...

The Backstory...

I'm one of those crazy home-obsessed types. You know, the kind that spends most evenings scanning decorating magazines, has a huge file system full of clippings relating to all things home, and draws out floor-plans on cocktail napkins. It's gotten so bad that after I visit someone else's home, I spend the next week redecorating and remodeling it in my head.
We love old homes, and like most design nuts we could never even imagine living in a cookie-cutter suburban home. The kind of home you can't tell from your neighbor's, the ones with absolutely no style or personality, the home we joked about and ridiculed. And yet, here we are living in and slowly developing a little respect (and possibly even some love) for our little generic tract home.
Where did it all go wrong, you ask? It's hard to say. We sure had a good start. Our first home was an adorable little 1920's 1 1/2 story with original hardwood floors and charming rounded doorways. Next, we moved to a great 100-year-old farmhouse that had been "uniquely" remodeled by its previous owners. We spent 3 years undoing their mark on the house and bringing back it's charm. It was the perfect house, but it was in a very un-perfect location (busy road, 'cross from a biker bar, in Kenosha of all places) so it was clear we could not stay.
When the time came to move closer to work we were excited to look at all the adorable older homes in the 'burb I work in. Our excitement quickly faded when we realized that to get one (even the lowliest fixer-upper), we would have to spend 3-4 times what we were selling our current home for and would be getting 1/4 of the space. So economics forced us into our current situation, but we are finding out there actually are some benefits to a 1990's tract home and maybe, if we work really hard, we could actually come to love this place.