The House on the Hill

I honestly thought that the light fixture for the closet would be the easiest decision of the whole process but it turns out, I hate most light fixtures. I do not like traditional chandeliers. I do not like ultra modern bare bulb fixtures that look like robots. I do not like builder grade pendant lights. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. I was pretty much set on settling for a drum shade pendant but it just didn’t feel right for this room. At one point I had the crazy idea to build a light but I’m trying to finish projects, not start new ones so that idea fizzled pretty freakin’ fast.

Originally, there was a ceiling fan in this room but since we’re not using this as a living space we decided it didn’t make any sense to put one back in here plus it would make the ceilings feel even shorter than they are.

I must have looked at lights at Home Depot and Lowe’s a trillion times. I looked at Overstock which was just overwhelming because I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I checked IKEA online, Shades of Lights, CB2, and probably a couple of other places that I’m forgetting. We thought maybe we should just put can lights in and call it a day but that would require a lot more work (hello, punching holes in the ceiling and wiring up new electrical) so in the end that option was out, too. We saw a couple of lights that were okay but I wasn’t sure they would give off enough light. Finally, I found this:

This is the Westinghouse Sylvestre 5 Light Chandelier from Wayfair. It’s funky enough that it’s not super boring but it’s not so funky that you feel like you’re back in the 70s. I ordered it on Friday night so it should be here this week but we need to get the ceiling painted before we can install it…and by “we” I really mean Kyle because I have sworn off painting ceilings for the rest of my life. I’d rather hire it out than spend the time and Kyle would rather do it himself than hire it out. Either way, it won’t end with a sore back for yours truly so I’m happy.

Hopefully we’ll get this sucker installed this weekend!

PS – Our trim showed up unexpectedly last night so hopefully we can get all of that installed this weekend, too!!

We’re still working on the built in units for the closet and finding out the most wonderful things about the room; like the fact that the walls aren’t level and neither are the floors! We have a lot of trouble forcing ourselves to get stuff done after work during the week so most of our time working on the closet comes on the weekend which is why a lot of times it takes us forever to get anything done.

Anyway, the built ins are SO close to being finished and I just ordered the rest of the trim we need for the room but it won’t be here until the end of the month which is a bummer because I wanted to be able to call this room done this month and now I’m not sure if that’ll happen. We might be able to make it work but we won’t be able to work on it the last weekend of August so we’ll see. Until then, I wanted to show you guys the dresser that we’re floating in the middle of the room for a little extra storage.

I’ve had this piece of furniture since I was a wee lass (I think it was handed down to me when I was 10? Does that sound right, family members?) and I’ve always loved it. I’m not sure about its history but it’s rumored to be around 100 years old and it’s a sturdy hunk of wood. It’s lived through probably 20+ moves so you know it’s got to be made well. I’m a little bit in love with the dovetail joints of the drawers and I really want to learn how to do this kind of jointery.There’s a large mirror that attaches to the dresser but I’m not using it in this room because we’ll have a full length leaning mirror.

It’s not as tall as a typical island would be but it’s really just being used for the extra storage, not a work space so the height isn’t a big issue.

Anyway, I’m not refinishing this piece because I love the look of it and I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to get that same finish. The knobs on one of the skinny drawers may need to be replaced but only if I can get something that matches the rest of them.

How about those wooden casters? I know our floors are super gross but the room is kind of a construction zone right now and it doesn’t make sense to sweep just to get a pretty picture…sorry not sorry.

In finally finishing caulking and painting the built ins and Kyle is out in the garage as I type building the last three drawers and hopefully he’ll have those done in the next week. Since I suck and don’t want to leave you totally unsatisfied, here’s a progress picture of the built in storage units!

I think there are a couple of things I can mark off the list, too.

Remove old trim
Remove hanging bar from the rooms previous closet, soon to be shoe closet
Remove curtains
Remove ceiling fan
Paint walls
Paint ceiling
Can lights? Decided against these.
Paint/Build storage units
Find dresser for center “island”
Create jewelry area – partially done.
Frame old bathroom mirror to use as leaning mirror
New outlets
Install track shelving for shoes
Install new trim – partially done.
Caulk/paint new trim
Rug for center of room?
Buy center ceiling fixture More on this soon! It should get here this week.
New door
New blinds
Curtain?

Since we’ve moved our focus inside while we sweat through the summer, I’ve actually been decently productive. I spent the last couple of weeks painting the stairwell, upstairs hallway, and finishing up an accent wall downstairs.

When we moved in a couple of years ago, one of the first things we did was paint the entire downstairs but lost motivation and decided we hated the paint color we chose before getting around to painting the stairwell or any of the upstairs rooms. Since then, we’ve painted the future master closet, craft room, Kyle’s office, and the guest bathroom. We also slapped up a coat of white paint in our room just to get rid of the yellow/beige but the stairwell and upstairs hallway remained untouched.

Not anymore! With the exception of our bathroom, the yellow color I hate so much is out of our house and we’re both over the freakin’ moon about it. Picking a new color was a major chore and I must have gone through 10 different grays before settling on Benjamin Moore Gray Owl (color matched to Clark + Kensington paint at Ace because they were BOGO).

The thing I like most about this paint is that it’s not purple! Yay! I mentioned forever ago that I hate the gray we chose downstairs because it reads as a very light purple color. If I want purple, I’m going all the way (Ohhhhh, foreshadowing!). Eventually, the downstairs will be painted Gray Owl as well. It can look a couple of different colors depending on the light but I don’t mind that as much as light purple 24/7. It’s mostly just a really neutral gray but I can’t say it’s the “perfect” gray because paint isn’t going to look the same in every house. If you’re looking for a light gray, I recommend trying out Gray Owl but keep in mind that you’ll probably want to try several samples to see what looks best in your own home.

MORE PICTURES! Keep in mind that I didn’t edge since we’re planning on putting up crown and switching the current baseboards for something a little more substantial.

During:

After:

This one is pretty dark but it’s a shot of the corner where the stairwell meets the hallway downstairs. The left is the new paint and the right is what’s currently painted downstairs. You can tell a major difference here between the two colors and how purple the original gray looks.

While I was on my paint happy spree, I also painted an accent wall downstairs. I’m not usually an accent wall person (minus the hot pink wall in my college apartment) but this wall is kind of weird in that it’s not really part of a room. I mean, it kind of is but…not really? You’ll see what I mean in a sec, but it’s kinda/sorta part of the study (fancy word for the extra room that serves no purpose right now) but it’s mostly on it’s own forming a pseudo-hallway from the foyer. This is what it looks like with new paint and new crown (new baseboards will be put in eventually whenever we can afford to redo all of the floors downstairs).

BAM. Purple in your face! I’ll give you all a moment to get over the shock that we have a wall in our house that isn’t gray or navy. I don’t know why I decided I wanted purple down here but I love it. I couldn’t commit to a full purple room but I think this wall is the perfect place to play with a little color. This view makes me really want to tackle the living room but we’re not quite ready for that yet (although I did test a little paint on the fireplace yesterday – currently hidden by my cat chalkboard).

Of course I can’t have a post that doesn’t have some sort of screw up in it so I’ll show you what I did with my leftover purple paint.

Yeeeeeaaaaah, about that. We have a different door that we’ll eventually put here (we’ve only been saying that for oh about the last year and a half since we bought said door) but I wanted to test out the purple to see if that’s the way we want to go. Turns out, it’s not. I think if we did a purple on the front door we’d need to go with something a little deeper that’s more eggplant and less Barney. I’m sure our neighbors love this. Luckily, the reflection off of our storm door hides this hack job pretty well for now.

I thought I would give you an update on the plans I mentioned in this post since things have changed a little over the last couple of months.

First, most of our outdoor time has been spent in the Great Ivy Battle of 2015. Ivy is a pain in the butt and we’ve spent many, many weekends pulling it out of the ground and off of our trees.

Because of that, we’re holding on phase one of our fence until the weather cools off in the fall. We’re already experiencing temps in the 90s and the humidity has been no joke lately. Add in our daily thunderstorms and it’s just not the ideal time for fence installation and staining. We already have some of the materials and we’ve been clearing the area where the fence will go so hopefully in September it’ll start to cool off enough to where we feel comfortable tackling the project.

We’re also holding on the walkway but that’s mostly because we’re not sure what to do there. All of the brick has been pulled up but we ended up not loving the pavers so those went back to Home Depot. Right now, we’re rocking a mulch + stepping stone set up; complete with overgrown monkey grass, random trees, and a weedy parking pad.

It’s fine for now but eventually I’d like to have a legitimate walkway so that when we’re entertaining out back, people can just walk around this side and through the future fence gate.

We were also going back and forth over the area behind the garage but we’ve settled back on our lower deck plan and we’re still on track to get it done late this fall/early winter. As long as that goes smoothly, we’ll still be on track to put in our upper deck next Spring.

Since we’re kind of in a holding pattern outside (well ya know, other than fighting the good fight against the ivy) we’ve managed to get a few projects done inside including the frame for my dry erase board and finishing up the guest bathroom. We’re also working on our master closet project this weekend and I’m hoping to finish the accent wall in our study.

A long, long time ago I posted the before pictures of our guest bathroom. If you’re having trouble remembering, it’s probably because that was 3 months ago because we’re the worst at finishing what we start in a timely manner. But then again, how could you forget such beautiful pictures as these?

Yes, the room is so small that I had to get in the shower in order to get a shot of this side of the room. Sooooo luxurious, right?

We couldn’t afford a full gut of this bathroom like I’d really like to do so we settled for a small makeover. We agreed to leave the floor, toilet, vanity, and shower alone since they all work fine. I would seriously love to re-tile the shower but we want to put a new tub in here, too and it doesn’t make sense to put in new tile first so all of the ugly off-white tile stays for now. Side note: we have the same tile in our shower so there’s no escaping it.

Anyway, I digress. Here is what “Phase One” of this bathroom looks like:

We didn’t want to spend a lot of money in here so we tried to use a lot of stuff that we had on hand. We painted the vanity with some left over Hale Navy and added some different color knobs that we had stashed in the garage. The mirror, sink, and faucet were originally purchased for the half bathroom and we bought most of the subway tile a while back for the kitchen backsplash that never happened. We did have to buy one more box of tile plus mastic but we used leftover grout from the half bath floor. We ended up buying a new counter, light fixture, paint, trim, and toilet seat (sources at the end of the post). Oh, and we switched out our almond colored switch and outlet for white ones.

If you were a normal person and not such a slacker, you could definitely knock this out in a week instead of the 8 months it took us. The bathroom has been mostly finished since February but we finally got around to hanging the trim last week and then over the weekend, I caulked the seams. I was so excited when I started painting the trim because it was the last thing on the to-do list but of course the new white paint on the trim made me realize how not so white our ceiling was. Blah. I hate painting ceilings but I knew that it would bother me if I left it and it’s a small space so it didn’t take too long to knock out. I’m thinking about adding shelves on the back wall over the counter but other than that, this space is d-o-n-e until we have the funds to redo the tub and shower area! And now all of our guests can take pleasure in the fact that their space is 400% nicer than ours.

Let’s take one more look at the before and after:

Progress!

Source List:

* marks new purchases, everything else we already had on hand

*Counter – Lowes ($84)

Mirror – Home Depot ($45)

*Light fixture – ReStore (I don’t remember the exact price but I don’t think it was any more than $10)

*Shades – Lowes (around $10 each but free to us thanks to a gift card)

*Subway Tile – Home Depot (We used almost 3 boxes which is about $53 but only one of those boxes was a new purchase)

Sink – Home Depot (Purchased for $100)

Faucet – Overstock ($100)