Hey, it's time to check out where we are starting with the kitchen! So, here's where we are starting:
Oh, so very much to hate. Tired of that beige paint yet? Yeah, me too. Also, check out that sweet sweet pattern on the floor and those awesome green countertops. Remind you of our kitchen two houses ago?
We meet again....the kitchen from our house in Springfield, VA
Of course, the crappy thing about being in a rental is that we can't change anything. Where in Springfield, that hot mess from above eventually turned into this....
We can't remove the black appliances, get granite countertops, or put in flooring here. (Well, Jon said we COULD put in flooring. My ears perked up, and I think he regretted saying it). But, I think it's safe to assume we are stuck to having to be creative.
The good news? That amazing sliding door. Although it leads to nowhere, it's great to open up. Also, it's so open to the kids' room, and I love that it's really big. AND, I don't hate those cabinets - they are kinda vintage/beachy looking.
Among the many downsides is the very limited counter and cabinet space and the ugly everything-but-the-cabinets.
Ideas:
Continue the paint from the kids' room. It'll look great by the light cabinets, albeit horrible next to the counters. Those counters look awful next to everything though, so no big deal.
Build a breakfast bar overlooking the big window.
Add in a rolling island that we can push to the side to open it up, but roll to the middle when we need extra prep cooking space
Remind Jon he said we could put flooring over the vinyl that we would remove on our way out??
Obviously, my big complaint in all my house posts have been the fleshy beige that someone decided would make the house attractive. It doesn't. You've seen one of the living rooms that we are designating The Kids Room already, but here's a reminder of our starting position:
Well, fast forward a few weeks and we've done two major things: 1) Move in (please forgive the pile of toys as we figure out what stays and goes) and..drum roll....2) PAINT!
So, in addition to a bunch of furniture getting thrown in (more on that below) we got this great paint! This color is called "Fine Silver" and I know it looks a lot like the "Thin Ice" we used in Avery's room, but what can I say? I'm a sucker for Shades of Grey. The colors, not the book, although feel free to read the most hilarious review of that horrible book HERE.
Now, forgive the messy room, but let me give you a quick tour of what we're dealing with.
First, you can see from the picture right above, this color is a BIG change from the beige.
The dressers are IKEA's Hemnes line and we also have two more upstairs. Love em. One here is for Cassidy's clothes and one is for Avery's. We always just dress the kids down here where all the action is instead of hauling each of them BACK upstairs periodically to get ready for the day. So much easier.
We mounted our television up high to save room, but we still have a bit of space on the mantle for DVDs and the like.
The couch is currently a Goodwill find that Jon got in Alabama that the kids can jump/play/spill on. I'd like to replace it with two big squishy chairs eventually to keep the room open more, but the couch is working at the moment. Even though it's sitting directly on the floor cause we can't find the legs in all of our boxes downstairs.
The ceiling that didn't look so beige with beige walls now looks REALLY beige. In face, the whole house has fleshy ceilings, but they are going to be a "Yeah, if we have time, it would be nice to repaint the ceilings" project. More important things to do, so no one look up!
That slide was a $30 buy at a thrift store and has scored me Mom of the Year status.
The bench in front of the fireplace was from Home Depot that held books in our old house. Now, we think it'll find a new home. The plan is to block out the fireplace with wood or something that we've painted with chalkboard paint so the kids can have fun with that. Maybe a big piece of metal painted with chalkboard paint so they can put magnets on as well, but Cassie still likes to put magnets in her mouth, so maybe just drawing is a good step.
So I hope you are all forgiving the mess. Moving + kids is always a work in progress. We are in the process of paring down all of those toys.
I love love love the change, although the color tends to look blue rather than grey. Still, no complaints from me. Wait until you see the color playing off my curtains that will frame that big window!!
Check out the New (!) House Tour tab for pictures of our new house!!
But before you do, keep in mind the challenge I'm setting for myself. I CAN paint, but if I'm only staying there a year, I don't want to paint and then re-paint it all to get back to neutral when we move, so my challenge is to bring brightness and color into this place, without painting. It'll be tough, as you'll see from ALL. THAT. BEIGE. But it'll be fun to create ways to bring in color.
The hearts are blocking our address. I don't have hearts on our door.
There are lots of pluses to living in a place with a Homeowner's Association. You have a great pool, some rules, your neighbors can't put up a gnome village all over the place, and everyone has to keep things fairly neat. There are some major downsides, however, when you yourself don't comply with the rules. Then I hate rules.
About a year ago, we got a letter in the mail saying that we were noncompliant in two things. First, our railing on our stairs had rusted through at the bottom (true) and then they said that the rust stains were on the concrete (true). So, we replaced the railing and ignored the rust stains. They didn't notice.
This past weekend, we got another letter in the mail, saying that we weren't compliant in FOUR things. What?! I'm sure you are thinking that one of those had to be the rust stains, but, surprise, surprise, they picked four brand new things to pick on, all paint colors. Each house has specific paint colors for shutters, trim, railing, and front door. We have never touched the trim or the shutters, but they claim that our colors are incorrect. Le Sigh. We DID replace the railing, but we went to the uber-expensive paint store and found the exact color that they required and painted the railing the lovely Amber White. So, I don't know what they are talking about there.
The front door....enh....we might not be compliant. But we are close. They want it to be "Georgetown Green" which is a color that only comes in gallon-size at Duron and is priced at $50. You have to be fucking kidding me. We pulled out our amazing Paint Template and matched the color we needed as best as we could. It's a shade lighter than what it's supposed to be, but it's the closest that we could get. We got a quart of that for $12 and called it a day. Until the letter.
I went outside to walk Dash and a pile of neighbors were outside comparing paint colors and letters from the HOA, so we aren't the only ones that it affected, but how frustrating, right? Turns out that our other neighbors always get the same letters and don't every change anything, so I'm not really worried. Our option from the letter is to demand a hearing, and naturally the lawyer part of me wants to, but I think we'll just see if we can slide by on our colors until the next inspection when they will undoubtedly find something totally random wrong.
Yep...time to move again. I mean, we have been here a whole 10 months. We're starting to get itchy! Here's our new house (a rental)
Cute, right? It's on base where I work at Joint Base Andrews, so it'll be a unique experience listening to taps play at night, having guests sign into base, and living in a little city just for military members.
The house itself is 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom, and has a kitchen, living room, and dining room. It includes a one-car garage and a little backyard with a hill. We don't have to mow ANYTHING (yay!) and it's a whole 2 minute drive to my job.
Inside pics to come later, but wanted to share our news! It's very neutral inside, so it'll be exciting to liven it up with some Beach flair :-)
Here's the first of the monthly updates on how we are doing on the house! The list changed a bit over the month - we added putting in a light in Avery's room (and then subsequently crossed it off - yay!). We decided NOT to change the front closet into a mudroom, so that's a free cross-off. And a bad turn of events let us mark off a lot of little front-door related projects. In the last month we:
1. Fixed the door that connects the kitchen/dining room to the deck. Like the front door, water had leaked in and was rotting out part of the door frame. Jon removed the rotted part, attached new wood, reattached, and painted. We considered french doors for this part, and they would definitely look nice, but when you see the whole list, it became one of those "nice-to-dos" not a "need-to-do"
2. If there's one thing that Hurricane Sandy taught us, it's that it's pointless to fix a front door when water is leaking through it, likely rotting out our subfloor. Again. So, we got to remove all the "fixes" to our front door from the list, but had to add on getting a new front door and putting in a storm door. We got the new front door installed (and by "we" I mean "Jon installed it himself") and are hoping to get a storm door installed soon.
3. Hung our flat screen on the wall. This is mostly for safety because
my sister-in-law reminded us that lots of kids get hurt every year by
pulling things down on themselves. Avery is pretty rambunctious, so
better safe than sorry. We bought a great corner mount for the wall,
only to discover that behind one of the walls is metal or something that
we can't drill into....despite trying many times and creating many
holes. So, we attached the whole mount to just one wall, but the one we
bought moves so much, it centers perfectly in the corner. Being able
to attach it and scoot back the cabinet where we keep the DVR, Wii, and
other television related things gave us a smidge more room in the living
room.
4. Organized the master closet. The previous owners gave us nice shelves, but attached them in such a stupid way that there was no way you could fill them up and be able to enter your own closet. So, we brainstormed and ended up moving a rack up much higher, being able to move useless shelves below the first, and really opened up the space. We opted not to paint because 1) it's a closet, 2) the paint wasn't in bad shape, and 3) it was low priority.
5. Paint Avery's room. Doing this by myself took much longer than the nursery where I had some help, but it eventually went from powder blue to more-green-than-I-thought Mochachino in two coats.
6. Open up laundry storage. Our laundry room seemed a bit small because
there was a big open space not being used behind a pegboard wall. Jon
took half of the pegboard down, which allowed us to open up a place to
store some of our things. Handy!
7. Childproof Avery's room. After Avery nearly electrocuted himself in front of his pediatrician grandmother during her visit, we realized our outlet covers weren't tough enough and she bought us some heavy duty ones that I can barely remove. We put those in Avery's room and cleared it out of any big furniture that could tip over on him. We also bought a special outlet cover for the IKEA lamp we attached to the wall so he can't grab it and pull it down. Cause our sweet angel would NEVER try that. Ha ha. Note: we have misplaced it, so we are just hoping he doesn't become curious until the new one arrives!
8. Childproof the upstairs bathrooms. The new doorknobs we are installing throughout the house allow us to lock it from the outside, giving Avery access only to his room when upstairs so he can go up there by himself. But, just in case, we made sure he can't open the bathroom cabinets and partake of any shampoo/cleaning supplies. We also put all our medicines in a tool box and locked it with a combination lock.
9. Fix the front porch railing. The Homeowner's Association pointed out that our railing was rusted through (like we hadn't noticed). We opted NOT to DIY this and got a company to come out and fix it up.
Best $27 I ever spent. Why yes, that is Glidden's master fan palate with over 2000 paint colors on it, thanks for asking! With all the painting we have done, do, and will do, we figured it's time to expand our colors from the measly 200 or so they keep in the store and go big time.
We sat down and went over our House Project list, prioritizing the 10 most important to get done at the moment. And wow, it's one thing to know there's a lot you would like to do with your house, but to see it all on paper is terrifying:
See? Scary.
And for for an extra panic-factor? We found out we are moving next summer. Jon is moving to Alabama and I'm moving to Maryland. No, we aren't getting a divorce, it's just that we got stationed apart from each other in the Air Force for about 9 months. Jon is going to go to school at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama for 9 months and while he's there I'll stay at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where I work now. To save commute time, I'll move to a house right outside of base. With two babies to take care of by myself, I'll need all the extra time I can get!
Anyway, here's the list typed out (the starred ones are priorities), and hopefully as we knock things off, I can give some updates to how we are doing.
Fix kitchen door leading to deck **
Put the laminate flooring in the kitchen
Get new kitchen countertops
Get new appliances
Paint the kitchen walls
Paint the kitchen cabinets
Get a cool backsplash
Finish the living room floor by adding the molding around the edges **
Paint the living room walls
Hang the television on the wall
Attach furniture to walls (babyproofing)
Turn front closet into mudroom
Paint the stripes in the bathroom
Patch the front door **
Attach a kickplate to the front door **
Fix the front porch discrepancies that our HOA reported **
Paint the front door frame **
Fix the cracked master bedroom wall
Paint the master bedroom
Put a ceiling light in the master bedroom
Organize and paint the master closet
Replace the master bath floor
Paint the master bath
Redo the master bath vanity
Replace the master bath faucet
Paint the 2nd bathroom upstairs
Replace the 2nd bathroom floor
Redo the 2nd bathroom vanity
Replace the 2nd bathroom faucet
Paint Avery's room
Change out all door handles in the house
Childproof Avery's room **
Childproof the upstairs bathrooms **
Fix the master bath toilet **
Paint the downstairs guest room
Get new carpeting downstairs
Replace the basement door leading to the backyard
Organize our storage area in the basement **
Replace laundry room door (Dash destroyed in during a thunderstorm)
Open up the laundry room storage **
Fix air conditioner
Adjust window in guest room
Replace/pain the deck
Fix the outside window frames
So....that's not too bad, right? Right? Ugh, better get to work. This list doesn't include small projects like buying curtains, installing blinds, general decorating, etc. It's a bit overwhelming to look at it all typed out, but we are determined to knock through as much of this as we can before we move again. Wish us luck, and we'll update you on our progress monthly!
Have I mentioned how much I hate moving? First off, a house always has fun little surprises for you, and they are never good. Remember the door rot issue? That was great fun. Now, 1 day into the new house, and we sense the power of the air conditioner depleting. Turns out, the previous owners had ignored a leak that blocked up the whole system, AND, drum roll......the system will have to be entirely replaced next summer - yay!
Moving is always tough, and I hate that our house looks like this:
Table saw in dining room
Giant piles of packing paper in kitchen
Living room chaos - couch currently facing the front door.
Close to the top of our list of things to get done in the new house first was flooring. We didn't want to put furniture in, then move it all out to do floors and move it BACK in. Yuck. So, pre-move-in was our best option.
The living room was covered in clean, but stained, carpet:
The dining room and kitchen have in-good-condition, but ugly, linoleum:
So we set out to Lowe's, Home Depot, AND Lumber Liquidators in search of the perfect wood flooring. There are SO many choices from real hardwood (softer, but can be refinished, but more expensive) to laminate (harder, but can't be refinished, but cheaper) to cork (soft and quirky) and bamboo (love it, but pricey). I mean, your head really just explodes trying to decide, and even taking and buying samples of the wood to look at in your house still makes it hard.
So. Many. Choices.
After collecting all of THOSE samples, we found even more stores in the DC/NOVA area to hit up. Which, of course, led to more samples.
Avery gets into the testing phase
We narrowed it down to a few, and, viewing them in different lights and getting advice from my friend, Andrea, we decided we really liked one in particular from a store called Rick's near us.
It's the lightest of the three large samples pictures above. We were rolling with the middle color (not too dark, not too light, just Goldilocks enough for us) but Andrea pointed out how that one looked in evening light, and it just looked a little cheaper than the nice tone it gave off in the bright light. Since our house isn't well-lit to begin with, we didn't want to stare at cheapy looking floors all the time. the lighter color was the same brand, and although lighter than what we originally were looking floor, didn't change much in different lights. We also enjoyed the rustic looking vibe of the lighter color, which showed the "knots" in the "wood" off. Home Depot has a similar (and cheaper!) style and color called Highland Hickory, but, of course, all the samples were gone at both Home Depots near us.
In all honesty, it was exhausting and quickly became no fun when trying to decide. But eventually, my rationale was "Something you buy a house with wood floors, and you just go with it and tailor your house around them, so just get something you like and go with it!" After reiterating this mantra and making some eliminations, we decided to go with the Highland Hickory from Home Depot.
Pergo makes this, and we chose it for several reasons. Not just for color, which is how I pick my football teams.
Pros to this flooring: Super durable and cheaper than hardwood flooring, and it looks great!
Cons to this flooring: We can't refinish it, like you can hardwood.
So, little by little, Jon was able to start cutting and clicking in our new floor!
We didn't have the time to put the new laminate in the kitchen before move-in date, so that's still on our list. BUT, we are SOOO happy to have the floors so close to being done in the living room. They look amazing, really open up the space, and feel great! With just a little bit of the trim and stuff left to go, we should be done in no time!
Our carpet came in and was installed this past weekend, and it's awesome. Not to mention, it smells great.
Remember how the upstairs bedrooms started? Well, now we've got new carpet in! No more dingy, stained carpet with that oh-so-nice ring around the room. The carpet we agonized over has been laid down, and Jon has touched up the trim! (the great thing being that since we'll repaint all the walls, he didn't have to spend a lot of time being careful!) So here's some befores and afters for comparison!
First is Avery's future room:
Old, stained carpet and dingy trim
Nice fresh carpet and touched up trim
Next is the new baby (Cassidy?)'s room:
And finally, the master!
Now, the difference is subtle in pictures, but there's no long a ring around each room of dirty, stained carpet. It's new, soft, and great-smelling! Jon's also touched up all of the trim, so it's a brighter, cleaner, more universal white - hooray!
I've updated the House Tour page (click the tab at the top of the page!) with this first before/after reveal. On to the next project!!
I know I usually don't post on Saturdays, but we are getting our carpet in today and Jon's been working on the floors so I wanted to post a little preview.
I like to shop (evident here). And when I can't shop (like, let's say when I'm getting ready to move and the point is to get RID of things, not so much accumulate them, I like to browse around and find things I love and hopefully buy them later.
Our house is being worked on by my beloved husband, but I haven't really been over there because 1) I'm pregnant and can't help, 2) The place isn't safe for Avery to run around, and 3) My 20-month old just isn't old enough to stay at home by himself. Maybe next month. BUT, last weekend, I did convince Jon to take me to World Market (a place I've been avoiding like the plague for fear I'll buy the store out) so I could browse around for neat ideas. (BTW, I'm completely obsessed with this store now). Jon said "I hope this place is cool" but as you can see here...
Even Jon found a section he liked (and he left with two things of chai tea and some raspberry/rhubarb jam! Even Avery picked up something that he liked:
But, let's face it, this was about me. And here's all the cool things that I found!!!
I'm considering doing a very naturesque natural wood and materials theme in the new place. Considering. I don't know. But, if I did, I liked these frames which looked like they were made of bone and rock.
I love the idea of a round, natural hamper for the bathroom. Something that wouldn't embarrass me if guests saw it. This would also be a great storage basket for towels in a guest bath. Or kids books. Hmm...lots of possibilities.
In my dream home, I'd replace every knob with something funky. In a house that must appeal to renters, I'd just use these gorgeous little bobbles for furniture.
I love two things about these: 1) the bright colors and 2) the pattern that they'll put on a wall when you put a candle inside. Nice!
I love the crocheted look of these floor poofs and can picture Avery rolling all over them. I also like the idea of giving Dash that big cushion. He's a good dog, usually, he deserves a great bed.
Fell in love with this pretty patterned tray. I love serving appetizers on great trays.
Never could I talk Jon into such a plate design (these were purple) but how fun are they??
I love these brightly colored hot plate holders which could add the amazing pop of color in a kitchen that I'm picturing in my head. I've also seen these used as decorations up on the wall. I like how they are different patterns.
U-S-A! We love maps, and I loved the look of this. It probably would have fallen into the below "I can make that!" section, but I wouldn't have the patience to be as precise with the map drawing.
I'm really digging sitting poufs, and this pattern (kinda like the serving tray above) is bright and fun!
I like these wire serving trays which look like you could spray paint them a bright color and use them for parties or fruit in the kitchen.
Super cute white and blue birdy kitchen holders.
This clock was ginormous! I didn't even look at the price, but it's vintagy and neat colors. My top two favorite things. I just hope it doesn't make loud noises (we currently have to shut the bathroom doors while sleeping because our bathroom clocks tick the seconds so loud).
My dream is to hang a ton of these from an overhead awning over a great outdoor table. We don't have this setup in this new house, but one can dream!
Jon actually spied this table and we loved the older looking wood and the tough iron look of the legs. Not to mention the fact it stands without a support on one side, making it fun to look at!
I loved this metal wine rack. Very industrial.
Jon liked this one better. I did like the neato handle on the side!
I was obviously on an industrial kick, as I also fell in love with this metal chair. It was on a table, so I didn't know how comfortable it was.
I love spice holders! And we have TONS of spices, thanks to my husband's love of cooking. Wouldn't it be fun to have a giant magnetic strip all around your kitchen with brightly colored spice holders spread out all over??
There's not much I love more than glass bottles and containers. So, I stared at this shelf for a long time resisting the urge to buy anything. It was tough.
And now, I'd like to introduce a few things I call the "I can make that!" section. These are things that, given the proper thrifted item, I'm pretty sure I can pull off.
Letters covered in maps. These are pretty hot on the decor scene right now. I believe that with spare maps, cheap letters from Michael's, an exacto knife, some glue and some modge podge, I could knock this out.
Red Asian bench for $149? This could probably start as an old coffee table from Goodwill for $20 that I paint red. The end.
Awesome recycled wood/metal storage basket unit. The shelf itself seems simple enough, and if I could find the baskets to fit (or find the baskets and have Jon build the shelf to fit) it would be a snap.
I think this is for keys - it seemed to be a frame with burlap in the middle. I think it would be awesome to expand this into a fun Advent calendar for kids, hanging ornaments or candy canes or something from each hook.
I loved the beachy feel of these glasses, which I could probably imitate with some twine glued around the right glasses.
And, that was our trip! Needless to say, I love this store, and I can't wait to get into the new place to start thinking about what pieces would go in all of our new rooms!!
