Transformation

Last fall I was driving down the road, minding my own business when I saw a garage sale.  And out of the whole garage sale I saw this piece of furniture.  It called to me, yes, it did.  I turned around and went to the sale and they had $5 on it.  It was MINE!  I took it home and quickly realized it was going to be quite a project to get the nasty thick crackle paint off.  It sat in the garage over the winter and it was just recently I decided to tackle finishing it.  

I didn't get ALL of the crackle off (there are a few recessed corners that I wasn't diligent on finishing) but regardless, I think it turned out beautifully.   I painted it a spring green, the same color as the playroom.  I wanted to get antique replica glass knobs but at Menards I found these oil rubbed bronze ones with china in the middle and loved them.  This has quickly become one of my favorite pieces.  If... if... we ever have a daughter, this will be in her room.  

I'm not sure where I'm going to put it.  Right now I just tucked it in this corner in the kitchen.  I love looking at it and can't bear to put it away in a room where I can't see it.  So... maybe it'll find a new home in the living room?? Hmm.  

Playroom: Finished!

Well, except maybe curtains, but other than that... ta da! I'm not sure this can count as an OPAM as I started the wallpaper stripping project in October and I literally just finished putting together the cork board frames today. I am SOOO happy with how it turned out and it is now one of my favorite rooms in the house.

The frames on the ledges are just frames I had and I painted them with acrylic paint. The large ones (8x10 and up) I put 5/8" cork board in (purchased at JoAnn in the painting/fine art department on a 4'x2' roll and staple gunned the back.

Before: View from living room


After:
Before: View of left side of room from living room
After:
Rug from Ikea
Paint Color: Seedling Green by Martha Stewart

Before:
After:

Before:
After:

Black magnet strips from Ikea

The Wall: Finished. (Augusts' OPAM)

Well, I'm only 2 months late for finishing this project but it's DONE and I love how it turned out. I'm really glad I went with 12x12's as they seem to be the perfect size for this wall.

And a bonus... when I decide to switch out the photos for new ones, I can add the 'old' images into my scrapbooks in a 12x12 page protector!




****EDITED TO ADD****
The frames are from Quadro Frames... thank you Jamie for telling me about them!

August OPAM... its about time! {AFTER}

It seems like ages ago I posted our BEFORE pictures of our bathroom. Our bathroom has been finished for awhile, but we've been doing all the finishing touches (like toilet paper roll and towel rack... way overpriced but a gift from Ryan's Uncle Vince when he came to visit... THANK YOU Uncle Vince!) and matching towels etc.

We still have the trim to put up (but there's so little of it that you barely notice) and Ryan is going to put up crown molding (yes!). I also need to do something above the toilet... I was thinking a black/espresso shelf (Target has them on sale this week... ) and maybe a vase or picture or something? What do you think?





Our light... *sigh*... we had a different light picked out and purchased but when we went to put it up, it was too large for the space above the medicine cabinet. I'm not sure if I went with an exceptionally large medicine cabinet or what, but if we installed it we pretty much wouldn't have been able to change the light bulbs. So, after searching extensively online and finding nothing that I loved and that was below $150, I found this at Lowe's and decided it was *ok*. Its just a light... right?

It's coming along...

We still need to put up the mirror and light above the mirror, grout the tile, put in the trim around the door and the baseboards and I need to do some touch up work on the paint. We're getting there!

August OPAM... here we go! {BEFORE}

At 8:30pm last night our bathroom, disgustingly, looked like this....






A hole in the water damaged linoleum; nasty cream colored wallpaper with green diamonds; water damaged wall with peeling wallpaper and mold behind it; an old vanity and mirror with drawers that don't like to open smoothly and one side of the mirror doesn't close all the way; a missing vent fan cover; and an ivory toilet with a white toilet seat. Beautiful.


And just 3 hours later it looked like this:


Here is a little glimpse into the future bathroom..

We bought an espresso colored vanity with a white sink; an espresso mirrored medicine cabinet; satin nickel faucet, hardware, and lighting; a new white toilet; sandy colored tile; and the wall color will be the middle one.... Smoke Infusion by Valspar.

I can't WAIT to have it finished.

August OPAM?

I'm thinking of doing this in my upstairs hallway. What do you think?

The images on her site are 20x20 (roughly).... I put up 12x12 sheets thinking I'd do 12x12 because doing 20x20's would cost me about $200 in prints alone, and 12x12's would be roughly 1/5th of that cost. And also I'm not sure about them being so... LARGE (20x20 that is). I love large pics, but NINE 20x20's? Not sure how that'd look in a hallway (although I love how it looks in her room!)

What do you think? Are the 12x12's going to look too dinky?


I know I said I was going to STOP on the house projects for awhile. I. CAN. NOT. STOP. All day all I think about is the 500 billion different projects I *could* be working on (if I had an unlimited supply of time and money, right?). And then I get overwhelmed because I can't stay on track and get one single one finished! I need to just slow down... baby steps. And this hallway is a perfect baby step. Paint it (find paint color!) and put up pictures. Simple enough, right?

Upcoming projects (big ones):
Demo of the upstairs bathroom! YAY! This will probably be started this month, but who knows how long it'll take to get finished with 2 kids running around. Ry is getting a bonus next week so we're going to gut the bathroom: toilet, vanity, mirror, floor, wallpaper, towel and toilet paper holders.... the only thing that is staying is the tub. This should be cool!

Tearing down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. We plan to host Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve at our house this year (its our year for Xmas eve to be at our house with Ry's family, and now that we have a big enough house we plan to invite both sides of our families over for Thanksgiving so we don't have to split up our day anymore), so I would like to have the wall tore down to a half wall with a bar before Thanksgiving.

We'll see if those actually get finished. This weekend we *started* clearing out overgrown weeds/bushes from our landscaping and I had wanted to get some perennials planted so that they'd have a good growing start next spring, but like I said before... we keep starting and stopping projects because we both apparently have ADD (and two kids that only give us a couple hours a day to work on these projects in between nap and awake time!).

House Updates: July

I think I'm ready to show a few before/after pictures of the house. I still feel like I have so many little things to get done- lots of little accessories to buy/add, paint to touch up, things to organize... but for now there are a few rooms in the house that are almost there.

I'll start with the foyer. I have Heather to thank for it being mostly done right now. She motivated me and helped me strip wallpaper and rip up carpet and scrap and spackle walls and pull up staples from the stairs. What an awesome friend, huh! Ryan Morrison, MyRy and LeeAnn also pitched in a bit too- so thank you guys as well!

Anyhow... this started out as a dining room project but somehow we moved onto the foyer and never looked back. We even put the kids to work stripping a bit of the vinyl surface of the wallpaper.

And... the Before and After:
I'm still a little unsure of the color. I'm afraid with the black and white decorations it looks too... "modern" or "contemporary" even though the table is antique. I wish wish wish we didn't have those icky marble floors (although I'm thankful its a neutral color and not something awful hideous) and that it was a nice dark wood floor (which is what is under the marble). I'm not sure of what kind of rug to put in there. I plan on painting the stair risers white and putting a coat of Dark Walnut stain on the top of the steps. I'll probalby put different decorations on the table- I just threw those there for the time being.

On to the living room.... (please don't mind the awfully messy playroom!)





The guest room.. which is nowhere near done... but you can see the difference in having the old pastel wallpaper stripped!
Hudson's room... the ceiling was a grayish tan and the walls were sage green. Painted them both and I *love* the color of Hudson's room (Sublime Lime from Pittsburgh Paints). The color isn't as neon as it looks in the first few pictures. Its more true to the last picture of his crib and paintings.



I didn't take any pictures of Porter's room- he's in full on destruction mode 24/7 so the toy room and his room are trashed most of the time. I swear, the kid dumps toys just for the hell of it.