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Parkside Twin: 9 Years and Counting
Happy almost May everyone! Between the pandemic and parenting, renovation things here have been paused or put in slow-mo for the past couple of years. But we’re still here and still kicking! We’ve deliberately put on hold anything that would take more than a day or two, as well as the things we felt couldn’t be delayed any further. (I’ll tell you all about our dishwasher experience from H-E-double hockey sticks later.) Here’s a quick rundown of our project list from the last two years We bought a new light for our dining room from Wayfair. Our previous fixture – which I swore I had a picture of but after…
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We Have Walls: More news from the construction front
We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! This is the first year in a few that we’ve spent at home due to the construction. It was worth it though, not only for the quiet holiday (although we missed family and friends) but also because so much is happening around here and each day it looks a little more complete. They’re shooting to be finished early next week (since we had a delayed start, they’re trying to get things finished up as efficiently as possible so as to try and stay within the original 3-week project timeline as well as get us back to having livable spaces again.) Our new lights…
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Board & Batten – Grid Wall
Morning friends! A few months ago the Mr and I determined it was time for a change of pace and listed our home on the market (more on that to come). Now, despite all of the improvements we’d managed over the past year, I couldn’t help but feel hopelessly underwhelmed with reviewing our living room space. When we first moved in, the entirety of the main level was wall to wall, floor to ceiling, every nook and cranny in a harsh and very unflattering yellow. It felt busy and not in a good way. More like a slept through your alarm, rushed out to your car, and realized halfway to…
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Board and Batten
When we first moved into our home we found that the dining room’s previous “look” offered little in the way of charm. Initially, I armed myself with a roller and set to painting over the saturated yellow with my favorite neutral, Grey Owl by Benjamin Moore. It’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do and we were left with how we wanted to inject our personality into the space. In our dining room, we found that we had one actual wall, a shared wall to the living room, and two partial walls where the walls had been opened with wide-set archways. Going for a feature wall seemed the…
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A Fresh Take on the Master Bedroom – pt. 1
It’s no secret that our new home was extremely busy when it came to ‘the bold and the outrageous’ color scheme throughout. Managing to be both unflattering and non-complementary in one fell swoop we felt as though each room had been sealed away from the whole. That left us with a myriad of odd and questionable taste within the confusion of color as far as the eye could see. To be fair, despite the menagerie of colors it still held a punch of personality (not ours) versus that of the numerous ’50 Shades of Beige’ we’d seen while touring homes for sale. However, disjointed chaos is the best way I…
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The Living Room: Finally Finished
We finished the living room with barely 2 days to spare before my family arrived. Of course, finished is a relative term since there was still so much to do. The room was painted of course with the not-as-overwhelming-as-I-first-thought blue, but baseboard and crown molding needed to be purchased and hung yet, and the light fixture I had ordered 2-day shipping was, of course, delayed. Panic started to set in but I kept reminding myself to keep pushing through as I channeled my inner Dory from Finding Nemo singing ‘Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming’ as I worked. We did manage to get the baseboard hung and caulked the day…
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The Living Room: Pushing Through
So, there we were – in the living room where we bit off more than we could chew – with new floors and a renewed drive to finish the work we had started (at that point in time) over a year and a half ago. Of course, we should have realized then that our plans never seem to pan out in the time span we hope or expect them to. (I guess we’re slow learners?) The floors may have been finished but there was still SO. MUCH. WORK. left for us to do. In the meantime, we learned how to attach and mud over corner beading, layering spackle on…
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Painting Wood Paneling
When we bought our house 5 years ago, I was 100% certain the last time it had a makeover was sometime in the ’70s. It’s horrible really. There is dark, wood-veneer paneling all over the second and third floor and really it pains me to look at it. I don’t know about you but I am not into the whole ‘retro but not in a good way’ vibe. After discussion and a bit of research, we decided that painting would be the best and most cost-effective way to update the rooms without having to remove the paneling and then drywall after. The bedroom was the easiest starting point as there…
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The Bedroom Chronicles Pt. 3 – It’s Finally Finished!
With our new drywalled ceiling and (some of) the ugly paneling gone, we pushed ahead with our bedroom remodel. A new bedroom set with actual nightstands was first on the list. After years of cramming together on a full-size bed, I was desperate for an upgrade. Giddy with the thrill of our new purchase, we both set into full work mode. There was not going to be any slacking on this remodel, not with a deadline in place. My husband was even kind enough to plan out our week, making sure we got the most out of each day. But as is usually the case with our home remodel projects,…
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Planking – what NOT to-do
It is no secret that I am an avid admirer of just how clean planking looks and how it has the power to transform a small misshapen nook of a dining room into a light and open space. Four years ago, we decided to embark upon our first DIY-Planking escapade and two years later, with a lot of breaks in between, we were finally able to enjoy our success. Was it perfect? Far from it but from the picture below, it’s hard to see the imperfections as they just added to the charm. Despite the unexpected issues we came across, after thinking ourselves newfound experts thanks to endless blog tutorials…
