Martha Martha Martha!

Martha Stewart is painting our walls.  Ok, well, not THE MS, but her paint is going to be on our walls, close enough, right?  At our condo, we used some Martha colors from Lowe's a few years ago to jazz up a wall in our kitchen (No.2 Pencil Yellow), half bath (Wading Pond-a deep blue/green), and master bath (Vintage Map-a very light Tiffany Blue/Green).  I was saddened when Martha left Lowe's for Home Despot, but decided I could venture in since I really had no choice.

One Sunday afternoon, I dragged Ben to HD to gather paint chips. This is pretty much any guy's worst nightmare.  I made sure to time my trip on a Sunday when Ben wasn't interested in the 1:00 or 4:00 NFL game, but it was still difficult to get him to go.  I may have bribed him with Qdoba...

Anyway, we pulled a ton of chips and one of the brochures including smaller chips of all the colors. Martha is so clever, she included little icons on each chip so you know which ones go together.  I'm hoping this will give a rough idea of how the house is coming together.

Kitchen Walls:

Goose Down- A very light gray in person.

Laundry Area (which will be curtained off but is in the kitchen)-wait for it...-

Bergamot-It is much redder in real life. The kitchen chairs are also going to get a coat of this.

Cabinets and all trim in the house:

White with a little bit of 'life'. Obviously I have watched entirely too much HGTV.

Hallway to dining room and dining room above chair rail (bottom will be talc):


Living Room:


Family Room Walls:

Fossil

Beams and Fireplace:


Whew...that's half the house....bedrooms and baths are still slightly up for debate. We have to try to match some paint to the existing tile and that is proving difficult.

Guest room:

Morning Fog-hopefully not what you would experience as a guest at our home.

Office:


Master Bedroom:

Yellow Gerbera

And there you have it. Our complete house in paint chips (except bathrooms). Let me know if you're willing to wield a paint brush!

Groove On

Consider this the musical interlude in our house renovation progress...right now we can't get up the driveway to do work there...so we wait until this weekend's rumored 45 degree temps to thaw everything out.  So far, we have all the walls and ceilings ready to be primed and I'm very ready to paint.  Everything is out of the house except for what we're keeping there.  We are looking forward to getting our drywall repair guy in there to patch up a few spots, and after that is the furnace/duct cleaning, and THEN we can paint. Paint colors to come!

The Rest of the Story

Beds and baths! We've got three of the former and 2.5 of the latter.  I'm so ready to paint and pull up the carpet in the smaller bedrooms. The master bedroom will remain carpeted for awhile (we'll get new carpet) because some of the floor was damaged by a leak and was not replaced.  

Above is the room that will be our office.  The wallpaper is now history and so is the antique clown doll...creepy! You can see a peek of the cedar lined closets in this one.

I loved staying in this room when I was younger because of the frilly curtains and pink and green wallpaper but umm...my tastes have changed since then. I'd like to have this room be a nice light green or keep it fairly neutral since this will eventually convert to a bedroom for a  mini-person ahem...nursery.

This is the master bedroom.  No more wallpaper in here either. There are two windows and this room is nice and bright. I think I'd like a nice greige in here to keep it tranquil and relaxing.  There's only one closet in here which I am claiming as all mine.  Ben's things will go in the office.  There is also a bathroom with a shower which will be Ben's bathroom, so I figure that's an even trade. I'll be taking the hall bath which has more counter space and more storage for all my beauty goodies.

There is one additional bedroom and I don't have very good shots of that so you'll have to be patient.  None of the bathroom shots turned out well either, so you'll just have to wait for the afters!

Blog? What blog?

Right...so a month ago, things were a little less busy. Since then, I've had a few interviews, my BFF's wedding, an anniversary (three years!), and accepted a new job. But, we've continued working on the house and have made quite a bit of progress, but since we haven't even completed the tour of the before pics, let's get on with it! 

Here is the dining room, just down the hall from the family room, on the kitchen/garage end of the house.  My grandmother is generously giving us the table, chairs, and china cabinet.  I'm excited to put all of her china back in the china cabinet.  It is a simple timeless pattern and I'm looking forward to having some proper dinner parties! 

 Love the chandelier and ceiling medallion!

I plan to recover the seats of the chairs with an updated fabric, my first choice was a brown and tan zebra-ish pattern but Ben vetoed that.  The wallpaper is coming down and we'll get some new curtains as well. I'm planning to keep the walls simple since the chair rail adds some interest, we'll probably do a darker neutral above the chair rail and maybe a tone on tone stripe on the bottom. Maybe...

 This is the formal living room. I'm excited about the built ins to have more room for books and knick knacks. Good thing I love to dust.  We'll probably remove all the spindles except for the ends and make those into more square columns.  This will end up being our tv room since the family room has so many doorways.  Since we don't yet have furniture for this space, I like to think of it as the dance party room.

 Looking from the front door towards the dining room.

This is the front entry.  I'd love to add a huge statement entry light, like this one from Pottery Barn. 

The floor just inside the door is brick, which I'm thinking of painting (shocker!!) white with some floor paint. There is also a large closet for all of our coats.  I never thought of myself as an outerwear aficionado, but I did realize the other day I have three fleece jackets, three long dress coats, two short jackets...I may have a problem. More of the house to come!

The Cave/Library/Den/Family Room

On the second stop of our tour, I'd like to show you the darkest room in the house.  As you can see...this room has a lot of brown going on.  We could have an almost entirely wood paneled room if the floors under the carpet were wood, but alas, they're linoleum. Let's see...wood on walls-check! Wood on ceiling-check! Wood on crazy closet door-check! Wood on windows-check! Wood on floors- no check. Bummer.

We'll be removing all this extraneous stuff once we move in, but that plastic bottle of whiskey is kinda growing on me.  This shot (above) shows the view from near the french doors that lead to the backyard....you'll never guess, but they're also wood.

Oh, there are the doors. And the lovely window shutters. It was the peak of chic in the 60s I guess. For the record, my grandparents used this room as their TV/comfortable chair room. We are thinking of using as more of a library because frankly, there's no good place to put our TV. This room has three doorways/hallways, the French doors, a closet door, and the fireplace. It's enough to give Nate Berkus a double hernia, and I'd hate to do that to cute little Nate.

So what's the plan in here? PAINT and lots of it. But first, we'll be priming. We have a five gallon bucket of Killz primer just waiting in the garage for this room.  I think we'll do a light gray/beige with the fireplace white and the beams a slightly darker gray/beige? Not entirely sure yet, I'll make it a surprise.

Show Me What You're Working With

Welcome to our bloggity blog! We hope that this will help our friends and family follow our progress as we work on our new home.  Consider this the tour of the 'before' stage. We've been working on taking down wallpaper for a few weekends now, so we'll have some updated progress shots soon. We are very excited to move into this house and can't wait to put our personal touches on the rooms and make it our home.  We are looking forward to having celebrations, guests, and a family (eventually!) at our new place.

The Kitchen

Looking towards the laundry and eating area, we'll put our table and chairs here. The wallpaper is no longer up on these walls.

If I did a 180 from where I was in the above picture, this is what I'd see.  We've already taken off the scallop-y part above the sink and have sanded and primed all the cabinets (inside and out). Our next step in here is to start painting the cabinets.

Another view of the working side of the kitchen.  I'm going to have to adjust to using the wall oven, but I'll like not having to bend over to check on whatever goodies I'm baking! 

To finish off this post, here is my inspiration board for the kitchen.  We already have the bentwood chairs and pedestal table (Salvation Army for the table and Craigslist for the chairs). I'm planning on painting the exposed side of the oven wall, shown above, in chalkboard paint and replacing the doors to the laundry area with curtains made from drop cloths.  I'll be displaying my new collection of enamel teapots and bundt pans on the wall, and making a shade for the window out of a yet to be determined fabric. We'll also be replacing the carpeting with some laminate flooring or linoleum and possibly swapping out the counter tops with some Ikea butcher block. Not exactly sure what color the walls will be, but the cabinets and trim will be bright and shiny white!