The House on the Hill Blog

Since I missed Friday Five again, I figured I’d do a weekend recap. Friday was insane and I just didn’t have any time to post and I was going to post yesterday but I ended up on the couch all day from exhaustion and just a general bleh feeling. I swear I need another weekend to recover from my weekend.

Anyway. Let’s get to it. I’m going to do a separate post about the shower because I really liked how it turned out so that should be up in a couple of days.

I took the afternoon off from work Friday to run some last minute errands for my friend Cha’s baby shower and to get some cleaning/decorating done. Side note: Publix has their pumpkins out now and it took all the strength I had not to buy a cart full to start decorating our porch. This weekend all bets are off though since Friday is the first official day of fall. I don’t care if it’s still 90 degrees next week, pumpkins and mums are definitely happening.

Friday night Kyle and I went to the Tim McGraw and Faith Hill concert with my friend Jackie. Country is one of my favorite genres and when I saw that Tim and Faith were coming to our town, I pretty much immediately bought tickets. We were in the upper bowl but we looked down directly onto the stage and we sat above the stairs so nobody was in front of us which made for a killer view for the most part. The concert was good overall but I thought the Eric Church concert we went to a couple of months ago was better. We only stayed for about half, most of which was Faith Hill but I was tired and didn’t want to be out too late since I was planning on getting up early the next morning.

Saturday morning I was up bright and early to drop the dogs off at camp and finish cleaning/decorating for the shower. Kyle was a big help with all of the cleaning and food prep and he was nice enough to run out to pick up a couple of things before babysitting my BFF’s toddler during the shower.

The shower went on until around 2 and then our super amazing friends helped us clean up after which was a big help. After everyone left we loaded up the car and headed on to our last event of the weekend.

Kyle’s company put together this overnight camping trip at Oskar Blue’s REEB Ranch in Hendersonville which had some amazing views and is only a little over an hour from our house. It wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had on a camping trip but it came after a very long, busy week and I was exhausted. It was the first time I was meeting any of his co-workers and it was just a lot to take in all at once so I was pretty overwhelmed. Sleeping was kind of impossible because I couldn’t get comfortable and I seriously miss the days where I could sleep on my stomach and I was just grouchy. Everyone was really nice and had it been the only thing we did that weekend I probably would have felt completely different about it but I really just wanted to be home in my bed at that point.

I had planned on trying to be at least semi-productive when we got home on Sunday but I was insanely tired and I ended up getting sick on the drive back down to the house so I spent the rest of the day on the sofa until it was time to pick up the dogs and I think I ended up going to be around 8 that night.

So that was our insane weekend and I don’t plan on being that busy any time soon. It really doesn’t sound like that much when I write it here but I promise you it was non-stop. Our plan this weekend is to decorate for fall, finish up the painting in our bedroom, and start ripping up carpet in the hallway to prep for new floors so hopefully soon I’ll have an actual master bedroom update for you.

Yes, I know today is Monday but I lost half of my Friday to a headache so let’s just all pretend, okay? Cool.

1 – In what is shocking to no one, we have made no house progress recently. It’s a good thing I don’t have a home improvement blog. OH WAIT. Seriously though, we’ve been so busy outside the house and I’ve been swamped at work so when I’m home I really just want to sit and watch old episodes of Chopped on Hulu while I eat copious amounts of Palmetto Cheese and drink Capri Sun. We did finally get the old sectional into the garage, Kyle did some yard clean up yesterday, and we’re calling ReStore soon to come pick up a few things we want to donate. This weekend is completely out but I don’t think we have a lot going on the rest of September or October so our plan is to buckle down then.

2 – We went on vacation a couple of weeks ago and it was much needed! Instead of a cruise we decided to go up to visit Kyle’s family in Massachusetts and spend most of the week relaxing by the pool. Even though I still managed to do some work while we were up there, the trip was so good for our mental health. Plus, the weather was gorgeous and it got us so psyched for Fall!

3 – While we were in Massachusetts, we made a day trip to Boston and it was my first time really seeing the city. I’ve flow in and out of Logan a couple of times and I went to a Red Sox game at Fenway several years ago but this time I got to walk around the city a bit. We decided to do a hop on/hop off trolley tour so I wouldn’t have to spend too much time on my feet and it was such a great way to see the city! We ran out of time to go to some of the more historic spots but we did get to see Harvard’s campus which is something I’ve always wanted to do and it did not disappoint!

4 – We tried out a new-ish burger place over the weekend called LTO Burger Bar. I’ve been kind of anti-burger lately but this place was really good. All of the burgers are double patty which I don’t love but I just took off one and gave it to Kyle. I was too hungry to take a picture of my burger but it had sloppy joe chili and an onion ring on it. They also have a small selection of insane milkshakes. Kyle and I split one called the Cinnamon Roller Girl and it was topped with warm cinnamon rolls, caramel, and spicy pecans and the glass was rimmed with cinnamon roll icing and it might be one of my favorite milkshakes ever.

5 – We are still on the hunt for the perfect grey color for our house. We tried out five samples this weekend but I think I’m going to have to prime the wall and try out larger sections to really get a better idea of how they look. There are only 3 of the 5 that we tried out in this picture but it’s so difficult to see what the top two really look like. Kyle likes the bottom one but I’m afraid it might be too dark for our house (more so upstairs than downstairs). It probably wasn’t the smartest decision to test them on this wall since I’m hosting a baby shower this weekend…whoops. I’ll just have to hang something to cover them for now and act like it doesn’t look weirdly placed.

This week/weekend is going to be so busy so I’ll probably spend the next week recovering but after that, it’s game on with the house projects. Probably.

 

So I mentioned a while back that we were changing our plans for the rest of 2017 a little bit and that’s 100% to make room for the nursery. I didn’t really go into detail about what that meant but basically we’re going to be changing the function of several rooms and moving a bunch of stuff around.

Before we start working on the nursery there are other rooms that need attention first.

Master Bedroom. I’m only mentioning this room because it’s still not finished and for my own sanity it needs to be done before we do anything else.

Study/Sitting Room > Family Room.

This is the room between the kitchen and the living room.

I’ve mentioned it before, but we aren’t doing anything major in this room this year. We are, however, changing the function and making it the TV/family room. Eventually there will be built ins and new trim and *fingers crossed* maybe even opening up the room into the kitchen the tiniest bit more (where the Miles Davis poster is in the above photo).

We’ve already moved our old sectional in there as well as the electric fireplace from our bedroom and our TV but I haven’t taken any new pictures. The only other thing we plan on doing this year is re-painting (once I find a gray I actually like…story of my life), installing blinds, and replacing the current sectional with a new one. The old sectional is about 5 years old, smells like everything a dog might smell like, and is currently being partially propped up with a 2×4 because the frame on the chaise broke.

The plan is to get this sectional from IKEA.

It should still offer plenty of seating and is a good piece for us for now. I realize we’re almost 30 and a lot of people think that means you should buy your furniture from somewhere that’s not IKEA but honestly, we have 2 dogs that have decided it’s perfectly acceptable to pee on everything and use the sofa as their jungle gym and we’re about to add a baby to that so whatever. *Shrug* My dream sectional is almost 4x the price and I think I would end up on Snapped if we bought it and it was immediately destroyed.

Living Room > Office/Craft Room.

I’ve always kind of struggled with this room as the living room because the furniture placement is tricky with a TV.

It’s much bigger than the other room but I don’t actually mind a smaller room for TV watching. It’s cozier. The large space is perfect to use as a multipurpose room. We’re losing Kyle’s room upstairs (to become the guest room) and my former craft room (to become the nursery) and we’d both like a space with work from home capability, so we’re combining spaces and moving downstairs. One half of the room will house our shared desk, lots of storage, and eventually a couple of club chairs comfy enough for lounging/reading.

The other end of the room (by the fireplace) will be set up with a small table and chairs for crafting, putting together puzzles, and one day doing homework. We may also work in a play area in here but I have a feeling the family room will double as a playroom.

It’ll be a long time until this room is finished the way I want it but we’ve already moved the desk down so that’s a start!

Kyle’s Office > Guest Room.

I honestly don’t even know if I’ve ever posted pictures of this room and I don’t even have a listing photo of it to show you. Whoops.

When we moved in, we turned one of the bedrooms into an office/music space for Kyle.

I had planned on keeping it as is, but Kyle suggested we turn it into a guest room instead so that’s what we’re doing. It will most likely still double as his music space because we don’t have guests super often (but we have started getting them often enough to warrant a guest room).

When we bought our new bed, we moved the old one into my craft room so once we clear everything out, we’ll just slide it across the hall and the room will be ready to go. We need to put doors back on the closet (we tossed all of the old crappy bi-fold doors) and we plan on running the laminate from our bedroom all the way down the hall into this room and the nursery.

Upstairs Floors. I just mentioned that we’ll be running the laminate all the way down the hall into the nursery and future guest room but since it’s probably the biggest project, I figured it deserved its own section. Luckily, the flooring is super easy to install so the worst part should be pulling the old carpet out and prying up a billion tack strips and staples.

***

So that’s our main focus for the rest of the year! Luckily it’s mostly just clearing out crap and moving furniture so even though it looks like a lot, it’s really not. There are a few other things I’m still hoping we can do but we’re almost halfway through August so we’ll see.  Here they are:

Master Bathroom. All I want to do is finish demo and put down new subfloor so we are completely done with the old, gross, water-damaged floor. There’s no point in building it all back up right now but I’ll feel better about this room when demo is done and all of the debris is cleaned out.

Foyer. Mostly I just want to skim coat the wall where I tried (and failed) to remove wall paper and re-paint with a new, not purple gray.

Deck: Phase II. This would be major so it’s not likely but I’d love to finish the second phase of the deck. We’re planning on measuring it out and pricing out materials this weekend and then we’ll go from there. Kyle would probably have to do most of the heavy lifting on this project but I could at least hammer in joist hangers and screw in deck boards.

Linen Closet. Super low priority but if we don’t completely redo it, we should at least fix the broken doors.

Now let’s see how much we actually get done.

There are so many things that need to be done before we actually start any work on the nursery (like oh I don’t know, finally finishing our bedroom) but we have decided on a theme and we’ve started to pick out/purchase a few nursery items. So first thing’s first, we found out at a recent elective ultrasound that we are having a girl! They’ll confirm in a few weeks at my next scan but we went at 16 weeks which should be accurate. I had no idea going into it but I am still kind of in shock. I grew up in a house full of boys and all of my cousins are boys and I’m just much better at dealing with boys so I feel like a boy would be more in my comfort zone but I am so freaking excited to be having a girl (and would have been either way)! We’re also pretty excited about our nursery theme: floral flamingo.

Flamingos are kind of a big thing with us and even though we debated several other nursery themes (fairytales, monsters, Harry Potter), I think the flamingo theme was also kind of a front runner. The plan is to mix in some floral patterns and maybe a pineapple or two for good measure.

Here’s my super low tech mood board:

flamingo prints/quilt/curtains/flamingo throw pillow/crib/glider

 

The former craft room/current guest room is going to be cleared out to make way for the nursery. We’re keeping the walls Hale Navy (that’s that blue dot above) and we’re planning on tearing out the carpet and replacing it with the same laminate we put downstairs. I need to find a rug but I can’t decide how bold I want to go with it. I also can’t decide if I want a gray glider or beige (pictured above). I’m thinking since the walls are so dark and some of the furniture is going to be dark/heavy I should go with beige but I also think gray might hide stains better. Meh. I have time to figure it out.

We were going to get a white dresser from IKEA to use as a changing table but then I saw this dresser at a local vintage furniture shop and fell in love. I want to change out the drawers pulls and stain it a little darker but it has a ton of storage (there are more drawers inside the cabinets!) and I love the lines.

The crib and changing tables will be on opposite walls with the glider in one corner and a little play/reading area in another corner. We also picked up this fun flamingo piece to hang on the wall somewhere:

I love how the pink and navy look together!

There are a lot of other rooms that need our attention first before any real work starts in here but I’m really excited to have a plan in place. We’ve already started cleaning out/rearranging other rooms in the house in preparation and I promise we have made progress in our bedroom, I just haven’t really shared it yet. The last big thing we need to do right now is paint the shiplap and the new doors which hopefully will get done this weekend!

It’s too hot to exist right now and I’m ready for Fall (yes, I’m one of those people). I’ve never been a huge summer person and I’m a baby about the heat. All I want to do right now is crank the air down real low and never leave my house but there’s that whole work thing I have to go to so I’ll have to settle for keeping my desktop fan turned all the way up and pointed directly at my face.

1 – In case you missed the announcement over on Instagram, Kyle and I are having a baby! Well, I guess I’m the one that’s having it but he’s pretty involved in the whole process, too. I just hit 15 weeks today and we’re do mid-January and we’re both very excited about the whole thing. I don’t know how much baby related stuff I’ll post on the blog outside of the nursery, but it probably won’t be much.

2 – Our garden is exploding and I love it. I’m nervous about losing some of the plants because it’s been so hot lately but we’ll see. Our jalapeno and tomato plants have been producing like crazy and I think our bell peppers might be ready; hopefully we haven’t missed them! It’s been a few days since we checked on them and they were close.

3 – I posted forever ago about a mirror I was in love with and although I thought we would never actually buy it because spending that much money on a mirror makes me want to hurl, it showed up at our house a few days ago. Yep, we actually pulled the trigger on it. West Elm was having a 25% off sale and Kyle’s parents very generously offered to gift us half (thanks again!!) so while it was still more money than I every thought I would spend on a piece of decor, I’m very happy with the purchase. We’re hanging it this weekend and until then it’s safely sitting in the former craft room/current guest room/future nursery.

4 – Kyle and I tried out a new diner downtown this morning and holy crap it was good. Seriously, if you are local you should check out Diner 24. I had heard mixed things but our service was pretty good and the food was delicious. The best part is it’s open 24/7 so if we ever find ourselves out partying downtown at 2am (hahahaha, yeah right) we can easily go throw down on some dinner plate sized pancakes.

5 – We still haven’t really worked on the bedroom (other than installing the new door frame/doors with help from Kyle’s dad) but Kyle and his dad knocked out part of the fence that still needed to be done and we got a new roof! We also moved our sectional and tv into the sitting room so now the other room is open to become the office/craft room. So the bedroom might not be done yet, there has been a little bit of progress going on around the house.

 

Holy crap I can’t believe June is almost over. I swear this year is going way too fast! I know I haven’t posted in a while but we honestly still haven’t done much of anything around the house. To be 100% honest the only reason I’m even posting is because I’ve never missed a month and today was kind of my last chance 🙂 I really have been wanting to get back into blogging so maybe July will be my month.

I figured since we’re halfway through the year I should check in on our goals. Spoiler alert: it’s not going well. We’re actually going to be changing our plans around a bit but I’ll get into all of that more next week.

1. Make over the study. We haven’t actually started this but some things have changed anyway. We finally decided to make this room the tv room but other than moving the tv in here, it probably won’t see many other changes this year. We decided that replacing the trim, adding built ins, and repairing the door frame will make more sense to do when we do the kitchen. We’re going to have to re-lay the flooring in here when we do the kitchen and it will be easier to do the other stuff after that happens, otherwise it will create a whole bucket of other issues. We’re thinking this will be on the 2018 list.
2. Redo the master bedroom. Still in progress! Kyle asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year (Hellooooooo, 29) and I couldn’t think of anything I actually wanted or needed so instead I asked him to finish the room because honestly I’m just kind of over it at this point and ready to move on. We’ve done a lot in the room already but still have a good bit to go. We’ll probably hold off on adding crown molding for a while but Kyle is planning on finishing up the rest of the projects (other than the dog crate) next month.
3. Finish demo in the master bathroom. Not done but we decided once we’re done with the bedroom we’re going to spend the $80 on a tool rental at Home Depot to finish off the floor removal and after that we can tear out the tub and fix the subfloor.
4. Tweak the linen closet. I still want to do this but decided to wait until we do the flooring in the hallway (so maybe later this year?). It’s not a big deal though so if it needs to be moved to 2018, that’s fine. It’s mostly functional right now other than one of the doors not being attached.
5. Finish the deck and fence. This was listed as a “maybe” item but I think we can do one of these this year and it will probably be the deck and it will happen mid-late Fall!

And because I hate posts with no pictures, enjoy this picture of Gatsby who just turned 7 yesterday:

I really don’t have much to talk about today (shocker, I know) but I couldn’t let May pass without a least one post so here I am.

1 – Still no bedroom progress. The burn out is real, folks. Our weekends have been filled with lots of couch time and errand running and I don’t see that changing this weekend. We still need to paint the shiplap, finish installing baseboards, spackle/caulk/paint the baseboards, order/install/paint the crown, build the dog crates and shelves for the closet nook, remove the old doors, and install/paint the new doors. So much to do but so little motivation.

2 – We finally got a quote for our new roof! We need to check over a couple of things before moving forward but hopefully they can get us on the schedule. Pretty much everyone in our neighborhood has gotten a new roof so it will be nice to join the club.

3 – I am failing hard on my reading goal this year. I have all of these new books and I have read a whopping 2.5. I definitely won’t be hitting 26 books this year but that’s okay. I really just haven’t been in the mood to read at all.

You guys, I really have nothing else. We’re pretty boring these days but if we actually want to check off our 2017 to-do list we’re going to have to find some motivation pretty soon and when we do, I’ll be sure to tell you all about whatever we do with that motivation.

 

You guys, we’re still not done with the bedroom. Every weekend we make plans to finish and every weekend we end up doing anything else (including nothing at all). Maybe this weekend we’ll finally make some progress but I’m not making any promises. I’m trying not to start any other interior projects until this one is done but I’ve definitely lost motivation to finish.

1 – Last weekend, we built a raised garden bed and planted some veggies. Eventually, our garden will be about 10ft x 20ft but we’re going to add on slowly. We may do one other box this year but I’m kind of leaving that up to Kyle. Here’s a picture before we installed chicken wire to keep out all of the cute but destructive animals that live in our yard. I’m lookin’ at you bunnies and groundhogs.

2 – A couple of weekends ago, we went up to Asheville with a group of friends and it was much needed. I’m planning on doing a full post later. I forgot how much I love Asheville. It’s only about an hour from our house to downtown but it had been years since we had last gone. Hoping to make it up there more often even if it’s just for a day trip.

3 – I cannot get motivated to eat well and work out consistently. Does anyone have any tips? I’ll get in a groove where I’ll go a few days eating well and working out but then I just lose all motivation. Something has got to give though because I just feel blah all the time and I know it’s my terrible diet and my lack of physical activity.

4 –  We’re getting a new roof! We had a crazy hail storm a few weeks ago and finally got the insurance adjuster out to see if we qualify. We haven’t hired anyone yet but hopefully within the next few weeks we’ll get it all done. We don’t think our roof is terribly old but it’s been patched a couple of times and it’ll be nice to have everything new and matching.

5 – Homes in our neighborhood keep selling for way above what we paid for ours (like $75-100k above) and it’s really making me want to finish out our current projects and put ours on the market. Of course then we’d have to find a new place to live and the market here is insane right now. If we rented we’d probably end up paying more than what we pay for our mortgage so as tempting as it is, it’s probably not going to happen. Plus, we really love our house and our lot and there’s still so much potential we want to see through. I’m just hoping that if we do end up selling in a few years we didn’t miss our window.

Fridaaaaaaaaaay! It was so tough to get out of bed this morning. It was rainy and gross out and the bed was just so freaking comfortable. I wanted to take the day off but Kyle had to be at work at 4:30 this morning for a news segment which meant I had to get up anyway to take care of the dogs plus I just took a mental health day a couple of weeks ago.

1 – We’ve officially been in our house for four years. In some ways it seems like it hasn’t been nearly that long and in others it seems like it’s been so much longer. I think my favorite project so far is the living room even though it’s not 100% finished and we might be changing the entire function of the room soon.

2 – Our first race of the year is tomorrow and I’m super unprepared. It’s a 10k so it’s shorter than our last race but I could probably count on two hands the number of times I’ve run between the half in September and now and the furthest of those was a 4 miler. I think I can make it the whole 6.2 but chances are I’ll be even slower than normal. At this point though I don’t care about my pace/time, I just want to finish and get my medal. I thought signing up for a race would push me to start running regularly again but it really hasn’t. Maybe I need to sign up for another half. Hmmmmmm. Here’s a photo from our last race.

3 – I was checking West Elm the other day to see if the mirror I want is on sale and I found they aren’t carrying it anymore which makes me SO sad. I mean, I wasn’t going to buy it any time soon because it was crazy expensive but it didn’t even go on clearance or anything. It was there one day at full price and then it was gone. Bye, mirror.

I think we’ll probably end up with this much cheaper IKEA mirror I found the other day although I need to measure the space again to make sure the scale is right.

4 – I finally bit the bullet and signed up for a recurring package at CycleBar. It’s more money than I thought I’d ever spend to sweat but I really like it and it’s the only workout I’ve been able to get myself to do consistently. I’m trying to go 3 times a week and I’m thinking about starting my long run Saturdays back up, too. Time to get back in shape for real.

5 – I’ve got the vacation itch BAD. We’re going up to Asheville for a weekend soon but I really want to go on another cruise or do a few days in Orlando and go back to Universal Studios. I really don’t even like traveling but a couple of days at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter would suit me just fine. Here’s a couple of pictures from our trip there last year.

I just realized I have yet to do a “2017 Goals Update” post but then again there’s not much to update; let’s hope the last 3 quarters of the year are more productive for both house and personal goals. Confession: I have only read two books so far this year which means I’m 4.5 books behind schedule. WHOOPS.

I know it’s been forever and a day since I posted but honestly, I just didn’t feel like blogging. I also didn’t feel like working on the house so I don’t really have much of an update but I finally had the urge to write and I didn’t want to ignore it. I don’t know if it’s burn out or what but all I’ve wanted to do for the last month and a half is sit on the couch and eat junk and watch whatever happens to be on tv. But, we just bought a new rug for our entry and it makes me really want to move on to working on that space and we need to finish the bedroom first so here we are!

Here’s the original list of what needed to get done in the bedroom:

1. Remove closet and patch wall/ceiling- We don’t use this closet and all it was doing was jutting out into the room and taking up space. We wanted to tear it out to open things up and give us more options for furniture placement.
2. Remove carpet
3. Install laminate
4. Replace baseboards
5. Paint walls
6. Build semi-built in dog crates that double as a console table
7. Add faux beams on the ceiling to match the ones in the living room
8. Buy new bedding
9. Buy a large rug to go under the bed
10. Install wall sconces on either side of bed
11. Replace window/door trim

If you’ve read my previous posts, you already know that we couldn’t actually do #1 because the closet opening supports our roof structure so we decided to turn it into a feature instead. We also added crown molding to our list and decided against the beams which made our list look more like this (I’ve crossed off the things that have been finished):

1. Install shiplap
2. Install trim around closet opening
3. Install corner boards on closet- started
4. Paint shiplap and trim
5. Remove carpet
6. Install laminate
7. Replace baseboards – old baseboards have been removed, new ones are here just need to be installed/caulked/painted
8. Paint walls
9. Build semi-built in dog crates that double as a console table
10. Buy new bedding
11. Buy a large rug to go under the bed
12. Install wall sconces on either side of bed
13. Replace window/door trim – window trim is done
14. Install crown molding

We started the corner boards yesterday before heading to the movies to see Kong: Skull Island. We still have a few pieces to install and then we’ll need to spackle, sand, and caulk everything. I don’t know how much we’ll be able to work on the room during the week if at all but I’m hoping this weekend we aren’t totally drained after our 10k so we can finish off the corner boards, install the baseboard, and get all of the trim work and shiplap prepped for paint (minus the crown molding which I’ve yet purchased and the door trim because we have to fix our door frame first from a failed DIY project).

And since I hate posts that don’t have pictures, here’s a poorly lit shot of our new entry rug! I’ve been wanting this rug for months and we finally pulled the trigger during one of RugsUSA’s huge sales. 10/10 would recommend.