Home Decor - 12/32 - The Idea Room

My current reality…

I thought I would share a “real” aspect of my life right now. We are living in the middle of a construction zone…and it is making me CRAZY! I crave order and cleanliness…and right now things are a mess. Have you been there?

These are some pictures of my office/craft room, which is a very small room in my home (about 10 x 11 feet and I can only access about 4 x 5 feet of that space to work in now) that has reached the point of being completely insufficient for my needs. When I started this little blog, I had no idea it would grow into what it has. I am enjoying every second of it…but with growth comes change and my current office was no longer cutting it. I had “stuff” in several different places, closets and even in the garage and my organizational OCD was not dealing well with it.

I tried to keep it clean and organized but was quickly losing the battle. I had to start bringing my stuff into the kitchen to actually have room to work on things and then you know what happens when that starts…

So…we have this perfectly great room right next to the kitchen and the living room that did not get much use…at all…the dining room. I was already planning on ditching the red walls…which I was SO over…why not turn it into an office for me? Then I could have plenty of space to store and work on projects and work out of my home from. Perfect! So we sold our furniture and got to work.

We had also just decided to finally put in new flooring on the main floor to replace the 35 year old tile and wood floors that had seen better days. When we moved in here almost 9 years ago, we knew we would be replacing them…we just didn’t realize how long it would take us to save up for it to finally be able to get them done. Why not do it all at once? So in October we began the process of floor shopping. Due to the holidays and waiting on contractors and the wood to be delivered we finally got them put in…two weeks before Christmas! Who does that? Only crazy people.

So we ripped out the floors one weekend and then had someone put the new wood floors in for us. When we ripped up the floors, we found a hole underneath the toilet in our main floor bathroom where a leaky toilet had been slowly causing damage…GROSS!

The new sub floor was put in the first day by the contractors. Later that day after he had gone home, we could not find our cat. The kids looked everywhere. This cat rarely meows but has a collar with a little bell on it. We could hear the faint jingle of a bell but could not track him down. I realized that the sound was coming from UNDER the floor. The cat had been trapped under the new subfloor…screws and all. AND my husband was out of town! {of course he was…}

We were able to get a hold of our neighbor who came over and unscrewed a portion of the subfloor and freed our cat. We locked him away after that to keep him safe from another mishap!

This is what my living room has looked like for a couple of weeks. We finally got it all put back together just a few days before Christmas. There was no way I could have handled living with that during Christmas. Plus, the girls were worried that Santa would trip on something going from the chimney to our Christmas tree in the other room. I can’t imagine why they would worry about that in there…haha!

Right before Christmas we also painted some new and taller baseboards to replace the old ones we had taken out with the flooring for the entry way of our home. Here is a picture of part of the entry way now after we put them in.

We are still working on the entry way and will share it when we get it finished. We are putting the wood flooring down in two different phases. Phase one was the entry way, hallway, main bathroom and the new office. We are keeping the carpet in the living and family room. Then the second phase will be putting the wood flooring into the kitchen.

So right now we have a lovely transition area that we keep covered up with some throw rugs and old carpet padding. We had to do it this way so that we could keep the planks of wood running from the office into the kitchen in the same direction. Lovely….eh? haha! It is driving me crazy…see a theme here?

But I really am excited. It is going to be so worth it in the end…and it has been something we have been working for a long time to be able to do. The office is going to be getting some cabinets put in next week! Wahoo! I gave it a fresh coat of primer and paint and got rid of the red! Then in a couple of weeks they will come back out and put in our kitchen flooring.

And then…because big remodeling projects always have to have something go wrong…{am I right?} I noticed some water at the base of our BRAND NEW TOILET! And one of the new wood planks had a little bit of water damage to it…like the water had been there for a while. GAH!

Sure enough…the new toilet had a hairline fracture inside the base of it. And for two weeks had been slowly leaking out. So up and out the toilet went. The floor guys will be able to replace the damaged plank when they come out and finish the kitchen floor. And the store is happy to replace the toilet. So all is well!

Crazy much? Ha Ha! So that is what I have been up to! Despite all the craziness….with more to come when we tear apart the kitchen to add the flooring…I am REALLY excited for the new changes! We are almost there…I can feel it!

Have any of you lived amid construction and mayhem? How did you survive?

January 6, 2012 · Filed under: Home Decor, Home Remodeling, Personal Tagged with Home Tour--Kitchen, living with remodeling, remodeling chaos

Vinyl Wall Decals

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I am so excited to share with you this fun addition I recently added to my girls bathroom. My husband and I recently updated this bathroom but still had several little projects within the bathroom we wanted to complete. One of which was to add some fun decorative vinyl wall decals in boxes of our picture frame wainscoting wall boxes. I really love how it turned out and how it adds just a little bit of femininity, interest and color to the room.

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It is a white vinyl decorative decal that I got from my friend Shelley from House of Smith’s, who also has a fun shop, House of Smith’s Designs, in which she sells a lot of her great home décor items. We were able to take the measurements of my wall boxes and was able to design them to fit into my space. We came up with a fun design that I knew would be perfect for my room.

I took this picture of me with my cell phone the day I went to her house to work on it with her. Can you tell which room of hers I am standing in front of? Haha! I couldn’t resist getting a picture of me in front of her “famous landmark”. And by the way, her house is just as fabulous in real life! Some of you already saw this picture when I shared it with you on Facebook!

I simply painted inside of the picture frame wainscoting the same color of paint we used on the bathroom walls. The paint color is Upward by Sherwin Williams in a semi-gloss finish. If you are interested in seeing how we made the picture frame wainscoting for these walls you can find the tutorial here:

Picture Frame Wainscoting Tutorial

Then I simply peeled the vinyl off of the backing and had my husband help me line it up just right so that it fit perfectly into the box. This was the hardest part. We did not take any pictures since it took both of us and I did not want to get it on there crooked. It did take the two of us too to make sure that we got it on there smoothly as well.

We started smoothing it on in the middle and then pushed outwards and up with a little flat scraper so that any air bubbles would be pushed up and out to the top, bottom and sides. Then after it was firmly attached, we peeled the backing off very carefully!

I am so happy with how it turned out. The bathroom is so fresh and clean feeling. Unfortunately right before I took this picture…I had to clean the big globs of toothpaste my girls had left in the sick this morning after brushing their teeth…*sigh*! Please tell me I am not the only one whose kids do that!

This large mirror was just a regular builder’s grade mirror that we framed in using some base boards. Isn’t that one of the longest bathroom mirrors? Good thing I guess since three teenage girls will be “sharing” it here in a few years…{pray for me}!!! If you are interested in seeing how we did that you can find the tutorial I shared here:

Framing in a Builder’s Grade Mirror

My husband and I also built the shelf that have hooks on it for the girl’s towels. We had a towel bar in there….but with three girls…that was not working out well. There was only room for 2 towels and for some reason the girls could never seem to hang the towels back up on the rack. So this new system is working out pretty well for us! For the Shelf Tutorial you can go here:

DIY Bathroom Shelf With Towel Hooks

We also painted the cabinets white. I am so happy that we did. It made such a difference in the overall appearance of the room. The 35 year old cabinets were pretty beat up. I will share some more on that at a later time. There are a few more little updates I plan to make in there shortly before this room officially gets the “finished” approval. And of course I will share them with you when I get to them. Baby steps….right? Oh…and since I am sure SOMEONE is going to ask…the shower curtain was from Target online…and I LOVE it!

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January 4, 2012 · Filed under: DIY Tutorials, Home Decor, Home Remodeling Tagged with decorative wall decor, DIY decor, girls bathroom decor ideas, how to frame a builder's grade mirror, picture frame wainscoting, vinyl wall decor, wall stickers

My Colortopia

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Let’s face it…picking the RIGHT paint color is hard…really hard. Choosing a great paint color for my walls has probably been one of the most difficult parts of decorating my home. Taping a paint chip of color to your wall is not a very effective way of determining your final outcome. The amount of natural and artificial light in your room can also greatly affect the overall look of the final outcome too.

I have been able to get to the point where I am pretty confident in picking up color tones in paint that I like but it has come with a lot of trial and error. Which means a lot of extra work and money when you get a paint up on the wall that you don’t love. Have you been there? I know I have!

Now, when I am looking for a new paint color for a room, I try to get an overall picture of what I would like the final outcome to be. Or an overall feeling. Do I want the room to be warm and cozy? or light, clean and fresh feeling? Do I want to go with a traditional feel or with a more modern feel? What colors are you attracted to? How do certain colors make you feel?

There is an entire science behind colors and their effects on our feelings and moods. So it is important to take all of these things into consideration.

One of the things I like to do is to find an object of inspiration. When I was looking for a color for our Master Bedroom recently I knew I wanted to go with a grey color. But there are so many different types of greys…beige tone greys, blue toned greys , etc. I had a grey Chevron pillow that I loved the tone of. So I used that pillow to find a paint color that had the same tones. I LOVE the final color we settled on. Which made me happy since nothing is worse than getting the entire room painted only to discover that you aren’t loving it.

Another piece of inspiration I used was this picture. When we first purchased our existing home, there was one item I knew I had to have in my kitchen. My husband gave it to me for Mother’s Day which is the weekend we moved into our home. I used some of the warm yellow tones in the background of the picture to pick the final kitchen paint color, and designed the rest of the kitchen around it. I still love the color to this day. It is so cheerful and happy for me.

Well, today I am excited to introduce you to a great new tool to help you pick the perfect color of paint for your next home DIY project…

My Colortopia.

This new and innovative site is designed to inspire readers with tips and tricks to decorating with color and help to inspire us all to live a colorful life!

My Colortopia has a team of experts that can give advice about finding your perfect colors, creating a mood for your room, learning paint techniques, adapting design trends and more.

My Colortopia has also created an amazing tool called My Life, My Colors in which you are asked several questions to help determine what colors suit you and your personality best.

I have added the My Colortopia widget here so that you can take the My Life, My Colors quiz and get you on your way to picking the perfect color for you and your home.

Be sure to stop on over to the My Colortopia site and see all the other great features and advice they have to offer you as well.

* I have partnered with Glidden/Akzo Nobel Paints to participate in the My Colortopia program. However, all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

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