The House on the Hill

One Room Challenge – Spring 2022

April 6, 2022

Today starts the One Room Challenge Spring 2022 Edition!

If you’re unfamiliar, the ORC is an event that happens twice a year as a way to promote community over competition. The challenge is doing a room makeover in 8 weeks! The last ORC that we completed was Spring 2020 when we made over our patio which you can see here.

I’ve had to sit out the last few since I have either been too sick or too busy wrangling babies but I want to try to jump back in now that the twins are (almost) 1 and we can manage things a little better. And if you follow me on Instagram, no, we are not doing our bathroom for the ORC; yes I am still also working on it and one day it might actually be finished.

Let’s talk about the space we’re actually going to be making over and why.

This is the listing photo of our smallest bedroom. If you are a long-time follower you might recognize this room as the one we turned into our closet.

It has served us well as a closet or most recently as a dumping ground for all things that don’t have a home but the time has come to give this room over to the kids. Ever since OG was born we’ve used the largest room in our downstairs as the playroom. This worked great for a while when the toys were minimal but as she has gotten older and the toys (and children) have multiplied, it has become overwhelming and I want to move it all to a room where I can close the door and pretend the mess doesn’t exist.

Could I just pick it up regularly? Yes. Will I? No. So upstairs it goes!

You might be wondering what’s going to happen with all of our clothes and the answer is, we’re going to be living out of bins and shelves in our room until we can get around to building wall to wall wardrobes. It’s not ideal but the need for a dedicated playroom upstairs is a higher priority for us right now.

OG is very excited about this and has already started talking about her new playroom and I’m excited to finally get started even with the bathroom project still looming overhead. Her only must have so far is a rainbow wall so that will definitely be making an appearance. We’re also planning on mounting a TV, possibly painting the ceiling a fun color, and building a window seat and hopefully a play kitchen.

We’ve already hit our first snag with a knock-off Nugget (basically a modular sofa for kids that can be turned into all sorts of fun stuff for playing) that has not decompressed fully even after leaving it out the required two weeks but hopefully we can return it and try again.

Actual work on the space won’t start until next week because this week is focused on party prep for the boys’ first birthday this weekend. Here’s hoping we can get this (and the bathroom) done!

Check out the other participants here.

Oliver James and Henry Lee – Twin Birth Story

October 8, 2021

A lot has changed since I last posted! A quick recap for anyone who doesn’t follow me on social media: a couple of months after we finished our patio we found out we were expecting twins. It was quite a shock (not so much the pregnancy part but the twin part) and has obviously been a major adjustment.

The week I gave birth we were desperately trying to get our en suite “functional” meaning a working toilet and sink. We had to gut the bathroom a while back due to water damage and just hadn’t gotten around to putting it fully back together. Anything we could get done after the toilet and sink would be a bonus. I wasn’t due until May 8th but because I was having twins I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to carry past 38 weeks (April 24th) and that they could really show up any time. We managed to get the vanity and sinks installed on April 4th and the toilet installed on April 6th.

My last “bump” photo taken April 6th:

The rest of this post is Oliver and Henry’s birth story. I’m going to throw up a warning for anyone who may need it: Henry’s delivery became an emergency situation and was a bit traumatic. He also had a short NICU stay and there will be photos of him in the NICU so if that is triggering to you, please avoid this post.

I’m terrible at leaving out unimportant details so this will be very long (like 3,800 words long) and wordy but I wanted to document it here.

Wednesday, April 7th, 2021

Just shy of 36 weeks, I was scheduled for a regular check up with my OB in the afternoon. My pregnancy was absolutely miserable to say the least; I was sick and in pain for pretty much the entire 9 months. At 1pm I sent this text to some girlfriends:

“I won’t lie part of me hopes when I go to my appointment today Dr. P is like ‘Get thee to a hospital!’”

Let me just paint a picture of how absolutely done with being pregnant I was. At this point I couldn’t move without being in pain and I was practically immobile 90% of the time. I couldn’t even sit or lie down without being in pain. My lower back was strained, I had hyperemesis (severe, unrelenting nausea), and I had SPD which is essentially when the ligaments between your pubic bones relax too much and cause pain when doing pretty much anything and especially things where you have to put more weight on one leg (you know like walking, putting on pants, etc.). Any time I wasn’t working at my desk I was either on the couch or in bed and I couldn’t even get into OG’s bed for her bedtime story at night. On top of that, I was still on Zofran for nausea and I had intense heartburn, restless leg syndrome, and insomnia. This pregnancy definitely made up for the lack of symptoms I had with OG.

At 3pm I went in for my weekly appointment. The appointment was supposed to consist of a blood pressure reading, bedside ultrasound, and GBS swab (if you’ve had a baby you probably know what this is and if not feel free to google it).

Side note: I love my OB and this time around we were both pregnant with twins. She had twin girls about halfway through my pregnancy so she gave me a heads up on what was coming and she understood what I was going through. She also happened to be the OB on the schedule at the hospital when I delivered which was comforting to me and with all that happened I was very thankful it worked out that way. I feel like I would not have handled the situation quite as well without her.

When I went in for my appointment my blood pressure was a little elevated but not alarmingly so. My OB decided that we would just check it again at the end of the appointment. I had a history of random high BP readings near the end of both pregnancies where it was slightly elevated at the beginning of my appointments but by the end of the it was always back in normal range.

After the nurse took my BP I had a bedside ultrasound to check the boys’ heart rates. I had these bedside ultrasounds at every appointment so that the heart rates could be accurately tracked for each baby. Their hearts rates were great but my OB could see that Baby A (at this point we hadn’t chosen which baby was which) was super low. I wasn’t very surprised because I had definitely felt more pressure the day or two leading up to the appointment and had assumed he had dropped but as she put it “If you cough too hard this baby is going to fall out.”

After my ultrasound she did my swab and asked if I wanted her to go ahead and do a cervical check to which I said yes. Here’s where things started to get a little unexpected. As it turned out, I was already 4cm dilated and 50% effaced. For anyone unfamiliar, hospitals typically admit you for labor and delivery at 5cm. Between the fact that I was already 4cm, Baby A’s position, and my initial blood pressure reading, my OB decided that she was going to keep me for monitoring either at the office or at the hospital depending on my final BP reading. The nurse came back in and my BP was even higher Not surprising. I mean, she had just told me my baby was about to free fall from my womb after all. She told me to go straight to the hospital to be monitored for 24 hours. She didn’t even want me going home and told me to call Kyle and have him pack a bag and meet me there. The problem there was that we had just sold Kyle’s car and hadn’t bought a new one yet so I had our only vehicle. So, she told me to go as quickly (and safely) as I could back home but that he needed to basically be waiting in the driveway and then we needed to get to the hospital ASAP. She also told me to stop by the check out desk to make a “just in case” appointment for Friday but that she’d be surprised if I left the hospital without the babies; I didn’t even end up checking out on my own because all of the clerks were busy so the nurse had me go ahead and leave and she took care of scheduling for me. Spoiler alert: I didn’t need that appointment.

I called Kyle to fill him in and to let him know that he needed to make arrangements for OG to be picked up from school and for our dog to be boarded and then I called my friend at work to ask her to schedule me for PTO. My mom was originally supposed to stay at our house and watch OG whenever I delivered but she wasn’t back from a trip across the country yet so I called her to let her know that they boys were coming early. Thankfully we had already lined up Kyle’s sister and her husband as our Plan B so we were covered there.

Maybe it was because I was ready to be done or because we knew the boys could come at any time and were mostly prepared but I was surprisingly not freaking out about all of this. And I say “mostly prepared” because the bathroom was functional enough and our hospital bag was packed but we hadn’t set up the crib in our room or gotten a changing station put together or bought a car big enough to comfortably fit three car seats yet. I picked Kyle up and then we headed to the hospital. On the way, I called our doggy daycare to make a reservation for Barley to stay a few nights since Kyle hadn’t had a chance yet, we finalized plans with my sister-in-law to pick up/care for OG and take Barley to Camp Bow Wow, and we called Kyle’s parents to fill them in.

When we got to the hospital, my MFM OB (my high-risk doctor, different from my regular OB) happened to be around so I chatted with him while the receptionist got me checked in. We briefly caught up and casually discussed my birth plan.

Speaking of: I had always planned on attempting a vaginal birth if possible because that’s what I did with OG so that’s what I was comfortable with. In order to have a vaginal birth with twins, it’s important for the lower baby to be head down. Some OBs want both babies head down and some are fine as long as the first one is head down because a lot of times the second baby will flip after the first is out, they can attempt to turn the second baby, or attempt a breech delivery. For me, Baby A was head down but my regular OB had wanted to check on the growth discordance because we knew Baby B was bigger and he was breech. If the difference isn’t that much then there’s a lower risk with delivering the second baby breech but if there’s a large growth discordance (I don’t remember the percentage) there’s a higher chance of head entrapment which is exactly what it sounds like and something we obviously wanted to avoid.

Anyway, my MFM OB didn’t remember there being a huge difference in their growth so he was confident in my ability to attempt a vaginal delivery. Once we got settled in the room, it seemed like the hospital staff thought we likely were not going to deliver during my stay. They went ahead and gave me a steroid shot to help develop the boys’ lungs just in case (holy crap that is the most painful shot I’ve ever gotten) but they held off on starting the antibiotics my OB wanted me on. During the monitoring period they also had me hooked up to a machine that checked my blood pressure every 5 minutes and before I gave birth I was diagnosed with gestational hypertension which resolved immediately after delivery.

Later that evening, I started having regular contractions but I didn’t feel them (if you’re new here, I also didn’t feel them with OG and ended up showing up to the hospital at 8cm dilated and unsure if I was actually in labor). Because 36 weeks was early but not terribly so, the OB at the hospital that day (who I had a couple of appointments with when my regular OB was on maternity leave) decided that they wouldn’t try to stop labor but they also wouldn’t do anything to move it along (like break my water) so that the boys’ lungs could have as much time as possible to develop. At that point they started me on IV antibiotics (another “just in case”) since my GBS results weren’t back yet and then at the urging of the nurses who were monitoring my contractions, the OB checked to see if I had dilated any further and found I was around a 5.5 – 6cm. Since I was now officially in labor, the nurse and I chatted about whether I wanted any pain management and I told her I absolutely wanted an epidural but since I wasn’t feeling anything and was still only 6cm I would hold off for a bit.

Just before midnight, my nurse came back in and asked if I was feeling my contractions yet because they were right on top of each other (no, I wasn’t) and she was afraid I was going to miss my window for the epidural. I decided to go ahead and get it which ended up stalling out my labor overnight which wasn’t really surprising because the same thing happened with OG.

Thursday, April 8th

Around 8am I was still only at a 6 and they still weren’t in any hurry so there was still no water breaking or Pitocin to encourage labor and we just kind of lounged around. I probably watched tv and played around on my phone and Kyle brought his laptop and worked from the hospital room. My regular OB was scheduled that day and I was so happy to see her and thrilled that she was going to be the one to deliver the babies.

At noon I was 8cm and at that point I was essentially in a race with another pregnant lady who was about 7cm. Because I was having multiples and had to have teams of people in place for delivery, I was considered higher priority if it came down to it.

At some point, I realized my epidural wasn’t really working properly. My legs were numb but between the legs, eh not so much. I could feel my SPD pain coming back on and I knew if I was feeling that I’d definitely feel giving birth. The anesthetist came by to check things out and adjust things and I ended up getting some other pain medication (it’s been 6 months and while the length of this post would make you think I remember everything, stuff like this has left my memory) which worked wonderfully for a while. I also got another steroid shot at some point for the boys’ lung development and thankfully didn’t feel it this time around thanks to the epidural/pain meds.

Once I hit 10cm I started feeling the most intense pressure and it legit felt like the babies were going to fall out of my butt. This was all new to me since my epidural with OG left me feeling absolutely nothing from the waist down. I also got nauseous and ended up throwing up but thankfully I felt it coming on in time for my nurse to get me a bag.

Once I was ready, they took me to the OR. Even though I had planned on a vaginal delivery, hospital policy is that multiples have to be birthed in the OR in case of complications and that ended up being a very good thing.

There were 3 teams of people in the OR: one for me (my OB, nurse, a hospitalist, anesthetist, and a couple of other people), one for Baby A, and one for Baby B. Baby A, I think by this point we had decided this was going to be Oliver, was up first and once everyone was in place they broke my water. Holy Crap. The pain meds had worn off, my epidural wasn’t working, and I was feeling everything. I know some women want to give birth without pain meds but I am 100% NOT one of those women and that is totally okay. It didn’t take super long to push him out but it was so painful and I was caught off guard. I remember after a few pushes they said “Okay he’s ready to come out now let’s do some more pushes” and I started crying because I thought I was already pushing him out and that junk did not feel good. They gave me a shot of pain meds and thankfully that helped and soon enough he was out. He cried immediately, I got to see him briefly, and then his team of people checked him out. He was 6lbs and 20.08” which is a good size considering he was one of two and a little early. At this point I got the shakes and was freezing cold so they started covering my upper body with warming blankets which helped a little bit.

Since Henry (Baby B) was breech, our plan was to birth Oliver and then see if Henry would move into a head down position on his own. Once Oliver was out, the hospitalist did an ultrasound to see Henry’s position. Henry had moved but into a transverse position (sideways) so they decided to try to manually turn him. My OB worked internally while the hospitalist worked externally to try to spin him head down; this is where things went south. The hospitalist was trying to spin him to breech but my OB decided she wasn’t comfortable with that and wanted to turn him back the other way to try to get him head down. When they started turning him again, there was a cord prolapse.

For anyone who doesn’t know what that is, like me before it happened, a cord prolapse is where the umbilical cord basically drops through the cervix before the baby does. It’s a very not good situation and causes oxygen to get cut off from the baby and if it takes too long to fix/deliver it can cause things like brain damage or in some cases stillbirth.

When the prolapse happened, my OB told the room “I feel cord” and the entire mood changed. There was a massive energy shift and this very intense feeling of urgency. At this point, Kyle was ushered out of the room and they started prepping for an emergency c-section. My OB had a nurse take her place to keep pressure of the cord so that she could perform the c-section. She started slinging betadine (seriously, I was covered in the stuff) and I started to cry but she reminded me that we knew complications could happen and we were prepared and I was so immensely grateful in that moment that she was there. This part is all a little fuzzy but they had me remove my mask (yes, I had been wearing a mask; one of the joys of labor and delivery in the time of COVID) and I had to be put on oxygen for a bit.

During a planned c-section, a drape is put up and you can’t see them slicing you open, moving things around, and delivering the baby (although I think some places offer clear drapes now for the moment the baby is delivered) but in my case there wasn’t time for that. As one of the nurses put it “Wow you normally don’t get a front row seat for this!” at which point they asked if I was okay or if I wanted somebody to get a drape put up. I told them I was fine, and quite honestly, I was probably also in shock, so I ended up watching my own c-section which was um…probably not something I would encourage. I remember watching them pull Henry’s bottom half out first and while I’m sure it was only seconds, it felt like forever before they got his shoulders and head out and felt even longer before he made any noise. The relief I felt when I heard him cry was overwhelming. Unlike with Oliver, I didn’t get a chance to see him before they checked him out but they did announce to the room that he was 6lb 11oz (to which everyone went “Woah!”) and 19.76” long. Seriously though, no wonder I was in so much pain all the time! Thanks to being so sick during pregnancy I only gained 20lbs the entire time and if you add the babies, placentas, and fluid it pretty much evens out to that 20.

While they checked Henry out, Kyle was able to come back in. The doctors decided Henry needed to head to the NICU for some assistance with his lungs/breathing. I didn’t even really get to see what he looked like before they took him which was hard but Kyle got to go with him which made me feel better. After Henry was out, they put up a drape before stitching me back together and then I hung around in the OR while my OB ran out to deliver that other baby before she could come stitch my tear. Because having to have two types of deliveries a few minutes apart wasn’t enough, I had to get stitched back together for both of them.

Once they got me all put back together, we got settled into the mother/baby room where I immediately started my routine of nursing Oliver followed by pumping for Henry. I pumped after nearly every single nursing session in the hospital and it was exhausting and I think might be part of the reason I’m already burnt out on nursing/pumping after 6 months but that’s another story for another day. I didn’t get to hold or see Henry until the next day (I was allowed but physically I couldn’t do it) but he progressed really well in the NICU and was already off the CPAP by the time I got to see him and they were able to remove his IV the next day. He was able to come to our room a few days later and then we were all discharged together. I think when all was said and done we ended up staying for 6 days which was way longer than we thought we’d have to stay but thankfully we have great family and friends locally who helped out with OG and Barley is perfectly happy playing with the other dogs at Camp Bow Wow.

Visiting was limited due to COVID but OG was able to come by the hospital for an hour or two a few of the days we were there and she immediately fell in love. It was hard for her to understand at first why she couldn’t go see Henry the first couple of visits but she seemed to catch on quickly and was still able to meet him before we all went home.

If you’re reading this and expecting twins, I hope my story doesn’t scare you! A combination delivery is pretty rare (I think it only happens in like 4-5% of twin births) and a cord prolapse isn’t common either. I’m just lucky I guess!

Today Oliver and Henry are six months old and adjusting to a family of three has been hard in a lot of ways. I don’t handle the newborn phase well and having two at once was extremely rough and I absolutely would not have made it through without Kyle being as incredible of a partner as he is. But as hard as it is sometimes I also cannot imagine our life without them. Seeing their bond start to form has been so amazing and Odessa absolutely adores them.

Of course, they’re also the reason we’ve barely gotten any work done on our house for the last six months! But things are getting easier (I think? For the moment anyway) and we’re starting to plan out finishing our current projects and thinking about what’s next.

Spring 2020 One Room Challenge Week Eight – Reveal!

June 24, 2020

REVEAL DAY!

This has probably been the most physically demanding project we’ve done so far. Mixing concrete and shoveling gravel in 90 degree weather has not been the most fun we’ve ever had. We’ve spent the last several weekends working from morning to night on this patio and our bodies are wrecked but you guys, WORTH IT. Just as a reminder, the major things we had planned for back here were: expanding our deck, pouring large concrete pavers, painting the brick exterior, and spreading gravel.

We went from this…:

patio2

arbor

…to this:

I am so freaking proud of how this space turned out and we cannot wait to be able to sit out here and just relax.

These concrete pavers were a major labor of love. We had planned on renting a concrete mixer to knock them all out at once but ended up spending 3 weekends mixing concrete by the bucket.

For those that follow me on Instagram, you might remember we had an issue with a couple of pavers. I tried resurfacing one and patching the other buuuuuut in the end, they still didn’t turn out. You can kind of see them in this photo in the back corner.

So we’ll have to bust those out and pour new ones but not anytime soon. We’re going to hold off on working on exterior projects until the weather cools off a bit. In the fall, we’ll work on Phase 2 of this project which will be to re-pour those two pavers, pour two concrete pads for our future outdoor kitchen, and build a step from the patio to the yard. We had planned on adding an outdoor fireplace but as of right now, we’re going to stick with our fire pit.

We plan on painting our entire house white eventually, but for now we went ahead and started limewashing the brick parts of our exterior. We’ve never loved this particular brick and we’re not even sure what to call our siding color but I’ll admit I got really nervous when I started getting the limewash up. Thankfully, after finishing this wall, I’m really happy we did it! I do want to get some mats for the stairs from the garage though.

We decided to build this planter to hide the giant foundation wall and to add a little greenery back here. This space doesn’t get a ton of light so we picked up a few hostas and we’ll see how they do. This lattice is strictly to hide our outdoor meters but I kind of want to build one for the other side of the planter, too. I’m planning on hanging some potted succulents on the lattice. Unfortunately, Home Depot was out of the pots I wanted to use so I didn’t get that part done in time for reveal day but hopefully soon!

We left our old World Market outdoor sofa outside uncovered last season and unfortunately, it did not hold up. The frame itself is okay but all of the woven resin covering basically falls apart at the touch. So, we used the cushions we had from that sofa and Kyle built an outdoor loveseat and two chairs. The chairs still need a good sanding and another coat of stain before I can seal them but I love them.

We’d love to add a larger outdoor sofa in the same style so that we have even more seating out here. We love to entertain and although we haven’t done it as much over the last couple of years, we’re itching to start hosting again once we’re comfortable having people over.

We’ve had that little elephant plant stand since our apartment days and I’m so glad to have a permanent place for her as a little side table out here.

Since our deck project ended up being smaller in scale than we originally planned, we used our leftover materials to build this outdoor table. I love how it turned out and it’s going to be great having some place to set food and drinks. Between the rest of the leftover decking and some other leftover lumber that’s been living in our garage for a few years, we were also able to build a boardwalk and step from our walkway down into the patio.

It has been SO much nicer than the gravel and retaining wall situation we had. I can’t find a true before but you can see it on the right side of this photo:

Of course we finished this space just in time for it to get uncomfortably hot and aggressively humid but you’ll still find me sitting out there with a box fan by my side while I enjoy all of the blood, sweat, and tears (and believe me there were all three) that went into this space!

Before:

patio3

After:

Check out all of the other guest participant reveals right here!

Spring 2020 One Room Challenge Week SEVEN

June 18, 2020

Week 7. That means there’s only one week left until reveal day!

I kept meaning to post for Week 6 last week but I’ve been working non-stop either for my job or on this patio and I just didn’t get around to it. When we last left off, we had finished our deck extension and I had started limewashing the brick exterior of our house.

I don’t want to give too much away (although if you follow me on Instagram you’ve already seen a few sneak peeks in stories and on my feed), but we have made a whole lot of progress over the last couple of weeks.

I finished limewashing the brick, we finished all of the concrete work and spread most of the gravel, Kyle built an outdoor sofa, we started building stairs from the walkway to the patio, and we built a table out of leftover decking.

We were hoping to finish the stairs from the walkway to the patio over the weekend but unfortunately Home Depot was out of the lumber we needed.

It looks like an entirely different property back here and I cannot wait to finish up and show you guys the whole space!

Going into the final week, here’s what we need to do:

Finish building stairs
Build planter
Finish spreading gravel
Build outdoor chairs
Sand/stain stairs
Sand/stain deck
Sand/stain table
Sand/stain sofa
Sand/stain chairs
Stain planter
Limewash garage stairs
Clean pavers
Clean out gutters
Hang lights
Place furniture

It’s not a terrible list but I was hoping to have most of the staining done already. Unfortunately, the weather has not been great this week but it’s looking clear for the weekend so hopefully it stays that way so we can finish strong and take some photos before more rain moves in!

Don’t forget to check out what the other participants are up to right here!

Spring 2020 One Room Challenge Week Four

May 28, 2020

We’re halfway through!

Here’s last week’s to-do list:

Test limewash
Set final two posts for deck stairs (using fast setting concrete for this)
Build deck stairs
Build more concrete forms
Remove second remaining brick walkway
Remove gravel from patio to prep for pavers
Cut and cap sprinklers (can only happen if we remove the gravel)
Start setting/leveling concrete forms

And here’s how well we did:

~~Test limewash~~

~~Set final two posts for deck stairs (using fast setting concrete for this)~~

~~Build deck stairs~~

Build more concrete forms

~~Remove second remaining brick walkway~~

Remove gravel from patio to prep for pavers
Cut and cap sprinklers (can only happen if we remove the gravel)
Start setting/leveling concrete forms

Not only did I test the limewash, but I ended up getting almost half of the wall started before a pop up thunderstorm washed me out. Thankfully, most of the limewash survived but I need to go back and wash some off where I went a little too thick. The nice thing about the product I’m using is that you can wash it off within 5 days of applying it to the brick. The not so nice thing is that it’s been raining most of the week and I’m on day 4.5.

I’ll also need to go back and get into the mortar better in a few spots. Our mortar is pretty deep set and it’s been difficult to get good coverage using the masonry brush. I remembered afterward that we have a paint sprayer so I might try that out for the rest of the wall. I was hoping I could leave the door to the garage alone but after painting the brick, I don’t think the color is working. My plan is to find a light gray but the gutters and downspout will likely stay the same color unless I can’t stand it and then we’ll see what happens. The gutters also need to be cleaned ASAP. We’re thinking we’re going to build a raised planter along the other wall (stained to match the deck) and plant some hostas to help hide the foundation and maybe help disguise our meters. Hopefully we can get that done during the ORC but it’s an extra project that wasn’t in our original plan.

We finished our deck expansion on Saturday with help from Kyle’s parents. Not sure if we’ll be able to get it stained by the end of the ORC but at least the building part is done!

Kyle installed some temporary stairs down into the yard for OG and the dogs but Phase 2 of this project will include adding some big box steps and railings to finish everything off.

We are still planning on building an outdoor fireplace at some point but that will also be a Phase 2 project and won’t be done during the ORC. We’re planning on going ahead and pouring a concrete pad for it when we rent the mixer for our pavers but the actual building and plastering we’ll save for later. There are still a lot of details to figure out there. As for moving the gravel, we’ve gone back and forth on this but we decided to leave it all in place and just move it around as we need to. We have a lot of leveling to do this weekend since the patio is sloped about 6-8 inches and we’ll probably just use the gravel that’s there as a base layer and get marble chips to go on top and between the pavers instead of using the aggregate. We also didn’t cut/cap any sprinklers because we’ve only come across one so far and it’s not in the way so we can deal with it later if we need to.

We did start leveling out the first concrete form but got rained out. It’s supposed to be nice most of this weekend so I’m hoping we can get a lot of leveling done and most, if not all, of the forms in place. We weren’t able to build anymore over the weekend so we’ll start by setting the 5 we have and go from there. Here’s our plan for this weekend:

Finish limewashing
Finish building concrete forms (for pavers)
Dig/level patio area
Set/level concrete forms (hopefully all of them)
Choose a paint color for the garage door
Clean the gutters?

I can’t believe we’re halfway through and I’m so glad we have 8 weeks instead of 6 this time or else I’d really be sweating! You can check out all of the other guest participants right here.

Spring 2020 One Room Challenge Week Three

May 22, 2020

Week Three!

Over the weekend, we got ready to knock out a bunch of progress on the deck expansion and start getting the patio ready. First up, we removed the first half of our current wonky brick walkway to make way for a new 5ft x 24ft deck expansion.

Then, before we could even start digging out holes for the new deck posts, we had an idea that ended up changing our entire plan: What if we built an outdoor fireplace? Not a fire pit, but an actual wood burning fireplace with a hearth and a chimney.

(Ignore the measurements) How does that change our plan? Well, we don’t have enough space for the full deck expansion we had planned and the fireplace where we want it. The whole reason we were doing the deck expansion was so that we could eventually replace our dining room window with a sliding door that would lead out onto the deck. Moving the doors from the kitchen to the dining room would have given us enough space for 3 more sets of drawers and another 4.5ft of counter space in the kitchen. So we could either keep our original plan or we could add in the fireplace and scrap our plans to expand the kitchen and the deck. In the end, we decided to scrap our original plans. We have plenty of storage in the kitchen and while we have slightly less counter space than I’d like to have, the island makes up for it. So instead of a full deck expansion, we are just adding on large box steps down into the new patio area and we’ll add another set down into the yard. Now, I’m not thinking we’ll be able to build the fireplace in the time frame of the One Room Challenge. If we had this idea from the beginning and had started on time instead of two weeks late, I’d feel pretty confident, but we already have a huge list to get done and we’re battling the weather (remind me to never commit to an exterior project for the ORC again, mmmmkay?). Plus, we need HOA approval and I haven’t even submitted our request yet. ANYWAY. We weren’t prepared for that change of plans and basically lost half of the weekend but we did get two of our new posts set before the rain hit (we’ll still need 4 posts for the steps we’re building).

We also ripped down a sheet of plywood to use for our concrete forms. We used 2x4s last time and that’s what I would rather use but we already had 2 sheets of plywood that were just sitting in our garage with no purpose so we’re using those up first. We ripped enough material to put together 7 forms (I think we need 14 for the pavers and we’ll need more for the concrete pads for the kitchen area and fireplace) and Kyle built 5 of the forms over the weekend.

We started playing around with the placement to make sure spacing will work.

On Monday, we got hit with crappy weather and it rained every day until Thursday. We’re supposed to get more rain on Sunday so we’re hoping to get a little bit of work done after work today (Friday) and knock out the deck stairs with some assistance from Kyle’s dad tomorrow. Here’s how it was looking near the end of the weekend (before we got our second post in):

Yikes. I can’t decide if that’s better or worse than how it looked a couple of years ago…

In better news, we got our approval from our HOA to paint our brick. I’ve been having the hardest time finding the limewash I want to use in stock due to the shutdowns in Italy but I managed to find a local paint store that carries it and has two of the color options in stock. The store also happens to be on my way home from work (my company recalled everyone to the office this week) and is offering curbside pick up so I’m going to swing by on my way home to pick up some to test out. Eventually we’d like to add brick around the rest of our foundation and maybe above the garage door around front and paint the siding white as well but those things will be done down the road. Here’s what I’m hoping we can get done this weekend (majorly dependent on weather):

Test limewash
Set final two posts for deck stairs (using fast setting concrete for this)
Build deck stairs
Build more concrete forms
Remove second remaining brick walkway
Remove gravel from patio to prep for pavers
Cut and cap sprinklers (can only happen if we remove the gravel)
Start setting/leveling concrete forms

Be sure to check out the other guest participants here!

Spring 2020 One Room Challenge Week Two…No, you’re not crazy. I skipped Week One.

May 15, 2020

It’s that time of year! If you don’t know what the One Room Challenge is, you can read all about it right here and make sure you check out the other participants here.

You guys, we have gone back and forth so many times on whether to participate this season. Originally, we decided to sit it out and just keep slowly (painfully slowly) working on finishing the trim work in the kitchen and dining room. Then we decided to join and redo our family room. We were all in on this plan…until we weren’t. So then we decided again to not join. And then we started spending a butt load of time outside trying not to go completely bonkers from staying home 24/7 for the last 9 weeks and decided it would be nice to finish out deck/patio and give ourselves a nice outdoor retreat. And since the ORC just happens to be going on right now, we may as well just go for it, right? Right?! So here we are joining in Week 2 and we’ve got half a plan and no work done. Sounds about right.

We attempted to do our patio a couple of years ago for the Fall ORC and it was a massive fail. We still have a pile of gravel in our driveway from it that we never finished spreading; it’s only a slight hazard with a two year old running amok. It was the rainiest fall I could remember at that time and I swore off ever trying to do an outdoor project for the ORC ever again. And yet here we are. Attempting to finish an outdoor project in 8 weeks (LOL more like 6 because we’re starting 2 weeks late). In the Spring. In the South where it’s sunny one minute and hailing the next. Should be fun!

There’s a lot going on back here. Our grass is always way overgrown, we need to extend our fence another 20ft back, and there’s ivy taking over everything. I’d love to one day replace our murder shed with a garden house and add a plunge pool. But none of that is going to get done right now so let’s just talk about the patio/deck area.

First up, the deck. A few years ago we took down our original deck and built a new one. The old one was in very poor shape: the paint was peeling, the joists were undersized, some of the frame was rotten, it wasn’t attached to the house, and none of the posts were actually in the ground; they were either sitting on pavers or random pieces of wood. It took me literally ONE swing of the sledgehammer to take the entire thing down and I almost knocked the spigot off the house in the process. We are going to extend the deck about 5ft into the patio area, basically replacing the brick walkway, plus a step or two down to the patio. Eventually, we’re going to replace this window with sliding doors and a couple of box steps down onto the deck.

We won’t be able to stain the deck during the ORC since the boards will need to dry out first but eventually it will get the same stain as the rest of the deck which could use a new coat, too.

As for the patio, we are planning on doing a mixture of large concrete pavers and gravel. The gravel we have here now was supposed to be temporary and is usually used for drainage so it’s pretty sharp and doesn’t feel great if you step on it the wrong way without shoes. We are going to keep/reuse this gravel though because we already have it and most of the surface area of the patio will be large concrete pavers that we pour ourselves. We are also going to pour two narrow concrete pads along the tall section of our fence to eventually build an outdoor kitchen area. For now, we’ll be moving our grill and smoker down there. I’m not sure that we’ll have time to do a kitchen build during the ORC and we’re not 100% sure on what we want it to look like or exactly how we want it to function yet. The arbor was trashed by a storm before we got to finish it and we don’t need/want it anymore so we’re going to repurpose the posts from it to be used for the new section of our deck. We’re also going to put in a more permanent set up for our café lights. The patio area is sloped but instead of filling it and leveling it, we’re going to level the pavers and then fill in with gravel where we need to.

The other thing that I’d love to do back here is to limewash the brick wall (eventually we want to paint our whole house white). TBD on whether we can do this during the ORC because I’m still waiting on HOA approval and then we have to test a sample to see how we feel before committing since it’s not the cheapest product. So let’s see if I can break this down into a nice handy to-do list that will probably change 12,000 times over the next 6 weeks:

Remove bricks
Extend deck (this is a big to-do list on its own)
Install ledger board
Set posts
Build frame
Install joists
Add blocking
Cut/install deck boards
Build stairs
Pull weeds from patio and try to blow out pine straw and broken acorn bits
Remove ivy that’s growing through the fence
Remove railroad ties in patio area (to be replaced with retaining wall at some point)
Build frames for pavers (ripping down existing plywood to use materials we already have)
Place/level/stake frames and rake out gravel where needed
Cut and cap sprinkler feed line (we don’t use our sprinklers but they run under the patio area and don’t want any issues for future homeowners)
Pour pavers (we’ll be renting a concrete mixer this time instead of mixing by shovel in a plastic baby pool)
Remove frames from pavers (once cured)
Fill in with gravel where necessary
Hang wire for lights
Hang lights
Limewash brick?
Paint door to garage?

That somehow doesn’t seem like that much and also seems like a whole heck of a lot all at once. Thankfully we’re going to have some help building the deck and the concrete mixer should speed up the concrete work so maybe it won’t be so bad? Now let’s just hope our weekends stay dry.

Let’s do this!

Odessa’s TWO-tti Frutti Birthday Party

January 17, 2020

We are finally back to making progress in the kitchen but not enough for a full blog post so I thought it might be fun to post pictures from the birthday party we threw for our TWO (how??) year old.

My original career plan after college was to be an event planner. I pretty quickly realized I like having my nights and weekends to myself though so I’ve settled for throwing themed parties instead. Last year, we hosted a Winter ONEderland party and this year I decided on a tropical TWO-tti Frutti theme. In case you’re wondering, the plan for next year is “Odessa’s 3 Ring Circus” unless she decides she’s done with my ideas and wants to choose her own theme.

Here’s a glimpse of last year’s party. I bought out the silver and rose gold bottle brush trees from the Target Dollar Spot every time they restocked for months and used them all over the party.

We knew a large chunk of our family wouldn’t be able to make it this year so we decided to send out invitations to OG’s classmates. Kyle found a template in Canva and then tweaked it to fit the theme.

I spent the week leading up to the party blowing up balloons and putting together balloon garlands and other decorations throughout the house. I had planned on putting one above our front porch but since it was supposed to be rainy the day of the party, I decided to nix that one and just go with the three I had planned for inside the house. Outside, we blew up flamingo and pineapple floats that we already owned, hung a garland I ordered from this Etsy shop, and put up a “Welcome” poster mounted to foam board. We had the poster printed at Staples and grabbed the foam board at a craft store.

Inside, we set up the goody bags and a “Thank You” sign on the entry table along with another one of those flamingo and pineapple garlands, one of OG’s stuffed flamingos, and a little wooden pineapple we bought in Haiti a few years ago.

We cleared probably about 80% of her toys out of the playroom and left out a few toys, puzzles, and blocks and set out coloring pages and crayons. I set up the gift table in here with a “Happy Birthday” sign I ordered from amazon and I had a few photos printed to go over her toy shelf with the balloon arch. I also pulled out some tassel garlands I made for my friend’s baby shower a few years ago and we strung them up using command strips.

We threw some table cloths over shelves and furniture we didn’t want the kids to mess with (our shelf full of vinyls between the playroom and family room, the gift table that had my computer equipment under it, and a dresser in the family room hallway) which worked pretty well. I think we ended up with 8 kids ranging from a year old to 4 years old so we tried to keep things we didn’t want touched pretty well hidden and tried to keep the toys and crayons easily accessible.

Of course, I also had to decorate the pictures of our pups who were at camp during the party; those are pineapple glasses on Barley, if you can’t tell.

Balloon arch #2 helped to hide the yet-to-be-finished opening between the family room and kitchen.

I didn’t take a picture of the food set up or the few decorations on the kitchen shelves. The party was at 1 so we provided a lunch spread plus beer, wine, water, juice, and soda. I ordered 2 sandwich rings (turkey and ham) and a platter of chicken tenders from Publix plus chips and dip, goldfish, cheese puffs, and two large fruit salads. We also served falafel and hummus as well as spanakopita as vegetarian options which were a big hit. And then of course cake (and cupcakes both from Publix)!

I used a tropical table cover from Target to cover the back doors and hung balloon arch #3. I ordered a flamingo and “Happy Birthday” cake topper from amazon for the cake and fruit themed toppers (amazon) for the cupcakes. I also purchased balloons and a template from The Creative Heart Studio to make a flamingo balloon mosaic. I was going to make a watermelon slice too but I ran out of time. The flamingo actually wasn’t even finished the way it was supposed to be but I deemed it “good enough” and rolled with it.

I always like to make sure we have plenty of options for seating so in addition to the lounge furniture in the family room, we also pushed our dining table to the window and set up an extra table and chairs. I went to Lidl the week before the party and bought a butt load of fruit to decorate with. The table cloths I bought at Lidl a few years ago when I hosted my friend’s baby shower and they worked perfectly for the party. Those pineapples were $0.99/each and we sent them home with a few of our friends after the party!

Overall it was such a fun day! I was a little anxious leading up to it because OG’s first birthday party was the last time I saw my dad completely coherent before his passing and it was hard knowing he wouldn’t be there this year. That’s honestly probably one reason I threw myself so deep into the planning and decorating leading up to it and thankfully I was so busy the day of I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. I’m extremely thankful for the family, friends, and classmates of OG’s that showed up to celebrate with us. I wasn’t social most of last year and it was nice to see everyone and feel like a real person again.

Anyway. It’s hard to believe we have a two year old! It feels almost impossible that it has already been two years and at the same time that it’s only been two years. Time is a weird thing.

This weekend we’re hoping to knock off a few things from our kitchen list! I stained the last two floating shelves yesterday so Kyle just needs to hammer the top one into place and those will officially be done. You can’t really tell but I didn’t tape off the bottom shelf and ended up staining some of the grout so I’ll have to touch that up at some point,

I’m also hoping Kyle can get the ceiling primed and that we can do a lot of work on the trim that we’ve already installed (crown, window, hood). I also need to finish up a tiny bit of grout but that should only take a few minutes. If we can get a lot of time to work (which just depends on the toddler’s mood), I think we can have the already installed trim all patched and painted or at least prepped for painting this weekend! In case you don’t follow me on instagram, here is a look at the two floating shelves I stained yesterday. Don’t ask me why we haven’t put outlet covers back on. It takes two seconds but we just haven’t done it yet. One of those silly little things that’s easy to do but takes you years to actually get done I guess!

Have a great weekend!

2020 Project Plans: Our “Finish It” Year!

January 4, 2020

Warning: This is going to be a very long post full of photos, plans, and to-do lists.

I’ve never been great at posting regularly on the blog but I think 2019 is the first year that I’ve had multiple months with no posts. I’m hoping to get into a somewhat regular posting schedule (at least twice a month) for 2020 but as always, no promises!

2019 was basically bad news after bad news and because of that, we didn’t actually finish or even start on any of our 2019 projects (which were really just finishing 2018 projects). We did unexpectedly demolish our kitchen in May or June and have slowly been rebuilding it and we completely made over our dining room and added a new walk in pantry that houses all of our entertaining and serving dishes so it wasn’t an entirely unproductive year, just different than what we expected.

I’m not usually one to wish time away but I could not wait for 2019 to end and I’m ready for a more positive year in 2020 which we have dubbed our “Finish It” year. We have 8 spaces in our house that are in some state of project limbo that we have decided to finish this year. These aren’t all of our partially finished projects but I think it covers all of the “in progress” spaces on the inside of the house and one exterior area.

Here they are in no particular order (although the kitchen and dining room/pantry are the first three spaces we plan on finishing):

Kitchen

The kitchen is #1 on the priority list to finish after we host OG’s birthday party next weekend. We’ve come a very long way on this Phase One renovation but we still have several things to finish.

In case you’re new here or these images haven’t been burned into your brain, here are some listing photos from before we moved in:

We immediately painted all of the cabinets white and lived with that version of the kitchen for almost exactly 6 years:

Then, we decided to replace the tile to run laminate floors in the dining room through to the kitchen and found a ton of water damage and mold that went under the cabinets. We decided the best thing to do was to completely demolish the kitchen including some of the sub-floor and drywall.

Then, we very slowly started rebuilding the kitchen on a teeny tiny toddler sized shoe string budget. The last time I posted about it, it looked something like this:

We are much further along now and I’m hoping to get some current photos up soon. Here are the things that we need to do to finish:

Drill out, install, and stain the remaining floating shelves
Finish counter installation, including waterfalls at ends and small counter on the pantry wall
Prime and paint ceiling
Fix crooked faux drawer on sink cabinet
Install, patch, sand, paint toe kicks for bases and pantry and microwave cabinets
Finish installing, patching, sanding all trim work
Paint all trim
Figure out window treatment for window over sink
Purchase, assemble, and install final cabinet for pantry wall
Tile and grout between counter and cabinet on pantry wall using leftover penny tile
Install outlet/switch plates.

And here is a list of “might do” items depending on how I feel about how the kitchen looks after we finish the list above. Admittedly, I love the overall concept for the kitchen but some of the pieces just aren’t coming together for me at the moment. I want to see everything above finished before I decide on any of these projects but I want to be completely open and honest and sometimes projects just don’t turn out like you thought they would or you don’t love the result as much as you thought you would.

Apply veneer to kitchen counters (not loving the color with the green cabinets)
Build new drawer fronts (don’t love how much of the boxes you can see or the style of the fronts)
Paint drawers slightly darker green (major maybe; I think fixing the counters would help)
DIY panel on dishwasher to make it blend in

Dining Room

The dining room was one of two spaces we started and “finished” in 2019. There are really just a few things we need to do in here for it to be completely finished.

As a refresher, here’s a listing photo:

Here’s how it sat for many years. Super inviting, I know:

And here it is now:

We replaced the floors and trim, added two doors to the wall on the right (one to the garage and one to the pantry), changed the fan to a pendant light and then to this gorgeous wood bead chandelier, added batten molding to the walls, and installed removable wallpaper. Thankfully, the “finish it” list in here is pretty small:

Install/Paint ceiling trim
Paint ceiling (in tandem with the kitchen ceiling)
Paint door to garage
Trim out cabinets
Add curtains
Maybe switch out faux wood blinds with something with more texture (like a woven shade or something similar – TBD)
Spray paint HVAC register black so it doesn’t stand out so much

We also may need to reinstall one small piece of wallpaper that has started bubbling. Trying to figure out what’s happening there.

Pantry

This little pantry is one of my favorite parts of our dining room makeover. I love having a place for all of my serving dishes and it’s the perfect spot to store my KitchenAid mixer. This closet used to be the home of our cats, their food, and their smelly litter box. We ripped it down to the studs thinking we’d be expanding our laundry room into this area but unfortunately, there is a plumbing stack and lots of electric that would be very expensive to move so instead we built it back up, moved the door from the hallway (which was super inconvenient) to the dining room and made it into a small butler’s-type pantry.

Here it is before:

And here it is now:

All we need to do in here is:

Finish door frame
Clean/Paint/Install door (need to fix one pane of glass as well)
Install a shelf liner on the bottom shelf
Patch/Sand/Paint base trim

Master Bedroom/Closet

Our poor bedroom has never been a priority. At some point we removed the carpet and put in new floors. We also painted it white and then navy and then we tried to remove the reach in closet that takes up a bunch of space but I guess the builder decided to tie the roof structure of our house into the closet which means it stays. Of course we didn’t know this until we took all of the drywall off and honestly we just didn’t have the motivation or energy to put new drywall up so we used tongue and groove boards painted white instead to make it a “feature.” Our new long term plan is to hopefully expand the hall bath into the closet and close it in on the bedroom side but for now, this is what we want to do:

Finish installing small tongue & groove boards on the closet (just need one or two small boards at the very top)
Finish painting – originally, we had planned on installing crown but have since decided not to which means I have to take the paint up to the ceiling. We’re also going to paint the tongue and groove boards navy to blend rather than stand out.
Touch up paint the ceiling because I’m a messy painter and there are a couple of big navy spots
Purchase and install chandelier for the bedroom – we bought a chandelier for in here but it now lives in the dining room
Move sconces to new location – we moved our bed to the other side of our room and now that we know we love it there, we need to move our plug in sconces over.
Patch where old sconces are currently installed
Move couch to family room
Build a small walk-in closet – this is a biggie. We don’t have a walk-in closet, we have two reach in closets: one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom sink area. We turned one of our bedrooms into a closet but we’d like to convert it to a home office/gym. Our master bedroom is huge and I love it but we really don’t use all of the space. I always thought we’d create a sitting area and we do have a couch in there but the dogs are the only ones who use it and that’s not often. So, we decided to sacrifice some of the bedroom space to create a closet instead. This project will have a whole to-do list of its own and will probably happen later in the year if all goes to plan.
Build art ledge (or two) on new wall – we have so much art and this will give us a place to display some of it once we have the new wall built for the closet (the entrance to the closet will be on the far left end of the wall and will act as the entrance for the bathroom and closet.
Bring up free standing electric fireplace from family room and put into current reach in closet “nook”
Hook up TV – we have a tv for our room but it’s just sitting around unplugged until we have a place for it.
Build a new bed – I love our bed but it’s dark gray which I don’t love against the dark walls. I have an idea that will really end up just being a cover for the headboard but we’ll see if it works out.
Add a rug!
Add a dresser under the art ledge(s) (either existing or buy new if nothing we have works)

Here’s a couple of listing photos and how it looked for way too long after we moved in. I don’t have any great pictures of what it looks like right now but hopefully I will have some soon! Here’s one little peek into the room from the hallway for now. We need to take down the Christmas tree we have in there and clean up a bunch of old boxes of my childhood stuff my mom passed off to me before I can take any more pictures.

This is probably the biggest project we’ll tackle this year (assuming we aren’t able to work on the master bathroom) but it’s one I’m most excited about. I’m even starting to consider doing some sort of wall treatment or wallpaper (WHO AM I?) but I need to get through the kitchen and dining room before I can really think about it.

Master Bathroom*

*This is a major maybe. It really just depends on our finances and how expensive this project will be.

Here is a listing photo:

If you’ve been around here long enough, you might remember that back in 2017, just a few months before expecting our first child, we had our master bathroom demolished. We hadn’t been able to use it for a while after finding severe water damage that left our subfloor crumbling next to the tub. Our plan was to rip it out and just make it functional but I’m here to tell you that since it was demoed, it hasn’t been touched. Not at all. Partly because we have another full bathroom and it wasn’t a priority while navigating our lives as new parents and partly because we weren’t really sure how much we wanted to do with it. Do we just make it functional for now and do the big dream bathroom reno later? Or do we just hold off until we can do it the way we want it? To be honest, that’s still what I’m struggling with but as OG gets older it’s becoming very apparent that we need our own space back. Sharing a tiny bathroom with an entire farm’s worth of squeaky rubber animals and bath books plus our 1,200 shampoos and body washes is getting more and more aggravating.

So, at the bare minimum we’d like to try to make it functional this year and if we can do more than that, we’d love to. This is what I hope we can do this year:

Have the old tub drain moved – we had a tub/shower combo but would like to move to just a shower for now and add in a free standing tub down the road. We were quoted $600 to re-install the existing tub and $1,800 to move the drain. Doesn’t really make sense to spend $600 for the tub now knowing we want to get rid of the combo at some point. $1,800 is a lot more but it’s better than $600 now plus $1,800 later.
Fix vent (ours currently vents into the attic)
Install drywall where needed
Purchase and install new toilet where plumbing exists
Build and tile shower – will likely use a curtain for now but would love to replace with frameless glass down the road
Remove carpet and carpet pad in sink area
Install new floors throughout (tile vs. vinyl)
Paint
Make over vanity (or replace depending)
New light fixtures
Replace mirror (maybe)

Here are things I would love to do this year but not sure if we’ll be able to do them at this moment:

Remove wall between toilet/shower area to make one room instead of two (depends on if it’s structural)
Remove reach in closet (depends)
Rough in future tub???
Install a second sink to make a double vanity – this would likely mean replacing the existing vanity and sink
Add a linen closet
Move toilet

And here are some super long term wants that won’t happen this year unless we win the lottery:

Look into possibility of raising the ceiling
Install free standing tub
Add a chandelier over the tub
Add a window above the tub
Add recessed lighting
Marble hex tile floors

Exterior Walkway

This is one of those projects that we made way worse before it got better. It was originally made up of brick pavers which we had planned on replacing with 12″x12″ pavers all the way down and through the patio area behind the garage. We ended up changing our minds on the pavers (or more accurately, I changed my mind and Kyle is thankfully very laid back) after pulling up all of the poorly laid brick pavers. We threw a bunch of mulch down just to have something but it was a weedy, muddy mess for years.

We finally started clearing out the walkway and monkey grass and we poured these 4′ x 4′ pavers and filled in with gravel.

We abandoned this area once it got cold a couple of years ago and then we just never made it a priority to get back around to it until this year.

I’m not 100% sure what I want to do here but we need to back fill more gravel near the gate and I know I want to string cafe lights to make it more inviting. I either want to do planter boxes with flowers or some sort of retaining wall situation, just not sure exactly what yet. Once it warms up we’ll start figuring out exactly what we want to do between the current walkway and the property line.

Downstairs Hall Closet

This will hopefully be a relatively quick project. When we moved in, I tore the shelves out and doors off of this closet, built a bench and a box for our shoes, and hung a couple of hooks for bags and jackets.

Great idea but it honestly just became a dumping ground so we decided to tear it all out when we were planning on expanding/opening up our laundry room.

Long story not nearly short enough, the framing in this house is weird and we’re not confident that removing the little wall between the laundry room and this closet is possible, at least not without redoing other framing and it’s really just not worth the money and time to do that. SO the closet stays but we plan on making it more of a built in cabinet where we will keep all of the food and other necessities for the pets.

Foyer

I swear we have tried to finish the foyer every single year we’ve been in this house but this is the year!

This is what we’ve done so far: paint the walls gray, remove all of the trim, replace some of the trim, install new floors, switch out the door, paint the walls white, switch out the light fixture, add a mirror and entry table (which is actually a working vintage stereo). We also built a barn door to close off the laundry/closet/half bathroom.

This is what we plan to do:

Get another new door. The one we put in is a beautiful, very old door which was painted with lead based paint. We painted over it to seal it but our dog Barley continues to scratch it and has now gotten down to the lead paint. We are going to replace it with something that fits more with the style of the house and isn’t potentially dangerous to our health.
Maybe replace the current light fixture with a recessed light
Patch and spot paint the ceiling where we removed a post
Get a new barn door track (the one I bought originally isn’t long enough so the door won’t fully open)
Get a plant stand for our snake plant
Figure out something for the window sill that Barley can’t damage while standing on it and barking at/protecting us from other dogs, neighbors, delivery people, stray cats, her own shadow, the sound of her tail thumping the floor that she mistook for a car door, a sound that came from the tv, and/or absolutely nothing.
Add batten trim in the foyer and down the hall because we love how it turned out in the dining room (this time with white trim and white walls above)
Install/patch/sand/paint crown moulding
Touch up paint

So that’s the plan! It’s hopefully going to be a big year for this house of ours and I can’t wait to finally knock some projects off the list. We also have one project on stand by in case we decide to start something new this year but I’ll talk about that more later if we decide to take it on.

One Room Challenge Fall 2019: Week Six!

November 7, 2019

Week Six! We all know what that means…it’s reveal day!

It has been both the slowest and fastest six weeks ever and I’m so ready to take the weekend off before jumping back into our kitchen. Did I mention we’re hosting Thanksgiving and our kitchen is only 70% finished?

ANYWAY, that’s another post for another day. Today, we’re here to talk about the dining room. Before I show you how it looks now (which I’m going to say is 95% finished: the final ceiling trim and painting the ceiling can’t happen until the kitchen is ready for the same treatment and the pantry door isn’t installed yet among other small things), let’s take a trip into the past.

This is what our dining room looked like before we bought the house and it has looked more or less like this for the last 6.5 years that we’ve lived here.

I did paint it a far too purple toned gray at some point, Kyle installed a new light fixture, and we filled it with a hodge-podge of furniture but otherwise, this room sat pretty much ignored.

As beautiful and inspiring as that space was, we decided to try to make it over and add a pantry to the room for the Spring One Room Challenge earlier this year. Now to be completely honest, this was probably not a good decision on my part. I was struggling really hard after my dad passed in March and my grandfather’s health was quickly failing (we lost him shortly after) and I was really just trying to distract myself from grieving. Long story very short, participating in the Spring challenge probably added way more stress than I needed at the time and it actually lead to us having to demolish our entire kitchen which you can read about here if you feel so inclined. To say it has been a stressful and emotional year would be a giant understatement.

This is about as far as we made it for the Spring ORC:

Actually, I do think we got the new door to the garage installed but you get the idea.

We talked about finishing the kitchen and taking a break from projects for the rest of the year but when the Fall One Room Challenge rolled around I felt like it was the perfect opportunity to give ourselves a hard deadline for the kitchen, dining room, and pantry. Obviously the kitchen didn’t make the cut but the dining room has come so, so far and I am so excited to share it with you guys! I am planning on getting some professional photos of this space done when our kitchen is finished so for now I just have my always stellar iPhone photos.

The wall to the right used to be solid with no doors and now there are two: one to the garage on the left and one to our new pantry).

Don’t worry about the fact that I didn’t paint the crown molding all the way to the ceiling; we have one more piece of ceiling trim that will go in once we’re ready to do the same in the kitchen and it will hide the unpainted parts. I also need to paint and install the pantry door and paint the garage door but those are two projects that got cut for the ORC.

The entrance to the pantry used to be in the hall and was used for our cats’ litter box. This is what it looked like before:

We opted to move the entrance to the dining room side and use the space for storage for our serving/entertaining dishes, specialty baking tools, and a couple of small kitchen electrics.

I’ll be 100% honest and say we chose to plank the walls and ceiling with tongue and groove pine because it was a lot easier and faster than hanging and finishing drywall. I love how it turned out though and it’s reminiscent of the paneling in other parts of our house.

It’s killing me that these are so dark but it’s a cloudy day and the room doesn’t get a ton of light at this time of day anyway. I cannot wait to get my friend Christina in here to work her magic!

This chandelier from World Market is one of my favorite parts of the room.

We actually bought this during Black Friday last year to install in our bedroom but we never got around to it and once I painted the walls and trim in here, I knew our chrome pendant wasn’t going to work in this space anymore. I love the wood beads with the dark green trim.

The cabinets are actually Billy bookcases from IKEA and still need to be trimmed out but we wanted to see how they felt in the room before doing too much to them. They hold all of our drinkware and some of our overflow dishes that we don’t keep in the kitchen as well as some seasonal items.

We looked into buying actual cabinets for this area but the price difference is huge and we needed something shallow anyway so these 11″ deep bookcases are perfect.

I have had such an incredible response to this (removable!) wallpaper and trim combo. If you’ve been around a while, you might remember that I actually bought this wallpaper for the laundry room which I was going to pair with dark green cabinetry. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to expand the laundry room like we wanted and this wallpaper has just been sitting rolled up on top of a cabinet. We knew we were doing a faux board and batten painted green in here and we had planned on just painting the top half of the wall white. The more I looked at it, the more I knew how much that color (Behr Northern Glen, by the way) and that wallpaper (which you can find here) were meant to be used together. Shout out to Young House Love for using this same paper while I just happened to be on the hunt for a large print wallpaper. I had been looking for something with lemons because I liked the idea of yellow and dark green but the minute I saw the oranges I was sold. The wallpaper is actually a wall mural meant to be hung vertically across about an 8ft span but we were able to add more trim and hang it horizontally without needing to match up any seams in most areas.

I think I found about 6 different popular greens on Pinterest when I was trying to find the right color for the dining room and kitchen cabinets. I got samples of all of them and none of them were “the one” so I headed back to Home Depot to get two more samples mixed up. While those were being mixed, I decided to browse the paint chips and got a sample of Northern Glen on a whim. It just goes to show that while the internet can provide a wealth of inspiration and information, sometimes a random paint chip at the hardware store is what you really need.

We’ve had these chairs almost as long as we’ve lived here. They were a gift from my in-laws and they are so sturdy and gorgeous. We’re planning on getting a new dining table at some point and one of my requirements is that the new table has to work with these chairs.

We needed some sort of hutch to put by the new entry to the garage to use as a place to set down our keys and wallets after coming home each day. When this beauty was posted on a local vintage shop’s Instagram, I snatched it up. It fits perfectly in this space and offers extra storage.

Speaking of coming home each day, this view coming into the house is sooooooo much better than walking into a 5×6 cramped box that’s 2/3 taken by a washer and dryer and not one but two doors.

Although, this view is more realistic:

And the view coming down the hall from the front door isn’t too shabby either:

So, that’s it! Like I said, there are some small finishing things left to do but this is the first time in four One Room Challenges that we’ve actually finished our space enough to reveal it and I could not be happier!

Let’s just take a look one more time.

Before:

After:

Please make sure you go check out the other reveals here. There is some seriously insane talent out there!