MB: The After!

Ta-da! The after...we love it! I have to say it was really fun going back and looking at what we had done. Sometimes it doesn't seem like that much but then I remember it really was a lot. Just in this room alone we stripped the carpet, sanded and stained the floors, painted all of the molding white, painted the room and changed out the light fixture. In my very humble opinion the results were well worth the sweat and tears! We still have a few things to do, but they will come in time. C wanted to pose in all the picture so you can see him eating teddy grahams on the bed there! I tried to get some different angles, but I just couldn't there was always one of the posters in the way. Over the summer my sweet Aunt came and helped me paint our room and Connor's room while my cousins watched Connor Man. They were wonderful and I don't think I would have been able to finish it without there help! Everything in the room (except for our bed, the chairs and end table on the other side) are from our old house, and the mirror and armoire. The paint color is from Benjamin Moore and I just love it, it's the second room we have painted this color and I had no doubts about using it again. I just love how soft it is and how well it works with the color of the wood and the bedding.

 We took the bed from The Johnson's basement, it was from an old display home and I just love it. I love a good four poster bed and I just love how perfectly this one fits in the room, with the end tables on either side. I love the windows behind us, I know it's my room but I just love it. And, I guess that's the point right? The bedding was a wedding gift from my NeNe and I still love it. It's from Pottery Barn and I just don't want to change it anytime soon -it fits us. I do really want to get a new sheet set and monogram the pillows. I also wouldn't mind trying to hunt down some euro shams on ebay to monogram - I think that would complete the look. I had been dreading putting that bed skirt together. The way the bed is designed you can't put a regular bed skirt on, and to buy one it would have been too expensive. So, I bought one from Target, cut it up and stapled it to the bed. It ended up being so much easier than I thought and now it hides all of the dog hair that collects under the bed :)

 Across from our bed, our little dresser - the mirror is new, this is the first house we have been able to use it in and I love it! I think I will eventually put some pictures in the frames instead of C's hand and foot prints, but I think they work for now :) See that fan in the mirror? We took down a lovely white and brass one, I love the way this one looks :)

 Have I mentioned how much C loves Shrek? Seriously he watches Shrekkie ALL the time! We have seen them all now and we love them too! This lovely little piece we also stole from my in-laws basement and I love how perfectly it fits in our little corner!! The movers didn't want to move it up the stairs because they said it wouldn't fit, when I was near tears Bj and Greg figured out they could take the top piece off and it was all the room the movers needed! I am so glad because we would have just put the tv on some cheap little thing in the corner that wouldn't have looked nearly as nice. I need to remember to hide that electrical cord in the corner though...

 Just a different angle, to the left of the bed is our little sitting area. Another bonus to the room - we use it all the time! We read books to Connor, play on the ottoman - I love it. When Bj's grandpa passed away over the summer we were getting his house ready for an estate sale and my mother-in-law thought these would look perfect in our room (instead of the couch we were going to put there) and I couldn't agree more. I love them! I may not love the fabric, but as soon as I save up the money I am going to recover them. I don't know what I want to do - something that will work with a different bedding set down the road, but maybe a little pattern to it? Any ideas?

You have to "ooh and ahh" over the floors for me for a moment, we were so excited with how they turned out. I was also pretty proud of myself for staining them by myself, by hand! For a novice "stainer" I thought they looked pretty darn good! That is it, our little bedroom from start to finish! As soon as I get it together, Connor's room is up next on the tour. I laughed the other day when I was chasing C around the house trying to take his picture that it worked out well that I started "revealing" the house finally as C is totally boycotting the camera these days. Little sinker! :) 

MB: The During...

I am not sure that I rememberd to mention in the last post that one of the previous homeowners (actually we heard this was quite common back in the day) painted the floors a lovely almost marroonish brown color. We weren't deterred, and the outcome was SO worth it, but it was a LOT of work restoring these 100 year old beauties to their former self.

  

The above pictures are our room and Connor's room - pre sanding. It took Bj a long time and two different machines in order to get them sanded down to just the wood. The steps were a bit of a challenge and unfortunately they are still a bit of a challenge :) We thought we would just sand and stain them, but once we realized how much the sander ate them up we decided it would be best to carpet. We have the steps going down and a a "t" landing with steps on either side. We are going to put a runner on the "t" and wall to wall carpeting on the steps and landing upstairs. That is lovely looking, isn't it?!

Once everything was sanded down it was time to pick out a stain and poly. I quickly realized that was the easy part! :) I knew that I would be brushing each stroke of stain on and wiping it off, but I didn't realize just how much time it would take me! I think I was a little high on the fumes as I was going through - Bj kept laughing at me when I would come downstairs to take a break :)

Starting the process, don't they look nice? I realized when I looked at this picture that it probably took me so long to post because I look atrocious! Ha! I unfortunately realized that I didn't take an "after" of the floors before we moved the furniture in. Oh well - you can see them in the "after photos" with furniture! We LOVE the way they turned out. We inherited dark wood furniture from The Johnson's and it just compliments everything in the room so well. They may have taken a lot of time (and maybe a year off my life) but it was SO worth it in the end!



Master Bedroom: The Before...

I have been terrible about posting pictures of the house. To be completely honest it's never clean long enough for me to take a picture :) After working all week, making dinner, playing with Connor, and being a wife I really only reserve one day a week to clean...and sometimes I am just too tired to pick up on a daily basis. With that said, I finally took some pictures and I am slowly going to get them up for the world (my 3 followers) to see. As I said, we bought an old house, 96 years old to be exact and we love it. The minute we drove up, I knew I was home. We had three other appointments the day we looked at our house, but never left this one. I knew I wanted something that we could fix up and make our own. That is the thrill to me, not buying something move-in ready, there is nothing at all wrong with move-in ready, it's just not what we were looking for. I know that's not how everyone thinks and after moving in/working on this little place - I see the value of "move-in" ready! Ha!! In all seriousness, this house has been A LOT of work, stress and sweat, but we wouldn't have it any other way. I have learned so much along the way and we just love this little house!

The very first thing we did after signing the papers and getting the keys (seriously we went straight from the closing to the house) was rip up all the carpet upstairs. It wasn't in bad shape, we are just not very carpet friendly in our house. The dogs tend to destroy it - and I only vacuum once a week so we knew it was coming up. We knew the floors were in good shape (when going through the house I "accidentally" pulled a corner of the carpet up!). The floors were original and had been painted a lovely almost maroon color, so they need a lot of sanding before they were ready for stain. 

The master bedroom is at the front of the house and we love it! It has a lot of light and it is big enough for our bed and a little sitting area. We were able to find two perfect chairs and an ottoman from Bj's Grandpa's house that work perfect in the corner. Do you see the old heating vent in the corner? I love all of the black metal grates around the house :) The outlets are funny to, they are not up and down like modern outlets, they are on the side in the molding, it's kind of funny. Next up are the "during" pictures.

What we did: pulled up the carpet, sanded the floors, stained the floors, poly'd the floors, painted the walls, a fresh coat of white paint for the moldings, and a new ceiling fan.

Puddles!

We have had the most amazing weather here the last few days, a wonderful change from the harsh winter weather we were experiencing. We couldn't resist getting outside, opening and windows and enjoying ourselves.

C pretty much thought he had died and gone to heaven when he was allowed to run around and splash in the puddles! He was so stinkin cute, he just kept running back and forth, back and forth! We have a bad case of spring fever around here and we are so looking forward to this long, gorgeous weekend ahead!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We had a lovely low-key Valentine's Day at home with this cutie. We ate dinner, gave C his goodies and snuggled in bed watching tv, and we were asleep by 9! It was perfect for this old married couple, ha! We hope everyone had a wonderful day!! 

Silly Business!

I had some orders to work on last weekend so I put Connor to sleep at my mom's house so I could work away. He is a good sleeper, but he was taking an extra long nap so I snuck in his room to see what was going on, and this is what I found :) The first thing I saw were his pants, then his diaper, then his sweet little feet hanging out of the bed...and my favorite, his little naked behind! Ha!! I have a feeling this is one of those pictures that will make me smile every time I look at it!

Weekend Fun!

 Do you feel like every time you stop by you see a picture of C in the snow with his snow boots on? I feel that way, it's probably because a.) he loves his snow boots and b.) I am pretty sure we are going to have snow on the ground until next winter, haha! I was trying to think of something exciting to blog about, but we really haven't done anything exciting around here lately! We tend to hibernate in the winter and as a homebody, I kind of like it that way :)

I took advantage of the Barnes and Noble Groupon this weekend and we went to get C some new books. He is totally into reading the same books over and over so we were all kind of looking for some new ones :) We picked out a great truck book, a train book, another Duck and Goose book, but our favorite new book has to be, Little Blue Truck. It is so precious and we have probably read it about 300 times since Sunday :) I treated myself to the Pioneer Woman's Black Heels to Tractor Wheels book for our upcoming trip...and I can't put it down! I seriously love her and I am pretty sure I will finish the book before March!

We had a little Super Bowl gathering at our house and I think Connor may have found his first older woman crush! Our friends came over with their five year old twins, and 13 month little girl. Connor and Annie kept disappearing upstairs to read books...PRECIOUS! Poor little thing though as they were getting ready to leave Connor sat on her lap and said "one more picture momma please". Um...this coming from the kid who SCREAMED and CRIED and carried on when I tried to take a picture of him earlier that afternoon with his cute little football shirt on. Silly little goose! By the way...I know I am a huge dork but I love GLEE. I am pretty sure that they know that I love the song "Thriller" so they played it just for me. C and I have seriously been dancing to it since Monday night. If I can get a picture of him lifting his arms and legs like the Thriller dance I will, it is hilarious and I almost passed out I was laughing so hard :)

Castlewood

 It has been so cold and snowy here this winter and we were feeling some cabin fever last weekend! We are outdoorsy people and feel like the outdoors have taken a back seat to moving, the winter, getting the house together, so we took advantage of the first "warmish" day and went to Castlewood park! Our intentions were to go snow shoeing but the previous day was warm so most of the snow melted (little did we know that more snow was coming, ha!) So we loaded everyone up and off we went!

 I seriously don't know who had more fun - the parents, the dogs or the child! We were all so happy to be out and about moving around, it was glorious! Connor found this "sola" of Bj's in the backseat (don't worry, we dumped the soda and put water in) and he would not let it go the whole hike! He would stop, take a drink and go "ah" - it was hilarious.

 I seriously took like 300 pictures that day - I just haven't really taken my camera out much recently and it felt nice to get some shots of my sweetie's! Also, I couldn't help but do my best to capture how cute he looked. Those boots? That hat - that kiddo totally has me wrapped around his little finger!

 Do you know how hard it is to get a "smiling" picture of this kid? Of a two year old in general!? It's pretty funny - Bj said I have scared him for life with all of the pictures I have taken - I think its just being "2"! :)

 He loved throwing the frisbee to the dogs and they were more than happy to catch it! He is going to have so much fun camping this summer - we seriously can't wait for warmer weather!!

 He could have cared less about taking a picture with his momma and daddy, but we still tried! :)

Before we left we had to stop at the playground and slide "one more time". I think this sweet boy is missing all of our nice weather trips to the park! He kept saying "one more time before connor goes home"! It was pretty cute and we of course gave in to about 15 "one more times". It was a wonderful day - just so much fun to hang out with our sweet little family. We are already planning our next adventure, hopefully we can snow shoe the next time!