Sunny Hallway

February 2012

Hallway part two!  After we let the plaster dry I went ahead and primed the entire room.  This proved to be one smelly situation since our primer decided it was old and was going to be stinky.  It quickly became one very small and very smelly room. It seems painting in the middle of the winter with no exterior windows allows odors to linger for a long time (who knew?). Can you say fumes? After going back and forth about colors and painting 12 samples on the wall we decided to go with a creamy gold color for the hallway. Since the room is so small and all the surrounding rooms had such vibrant colors we thought this was the warmest way to transition between spaces. We went with Benjamin Moore Concord Ivory.  Which is not ivory for the record but more of a butter color. 

I bought a color-matched gallon of Miller Acrinamel Satin and pulled out my trusty Bone White Acrinamel Semi-Gloss for the trim and ceiling and went to town.  By went to town I mean I hand painted the entire space.  It was slow going.  There was a lot of cutting in since there were so many doors.  There was virtually no space to roll anything.  Also, the room is 9 feet tall so I couldn't use a step stool,  I had to move my 8 foot ladder up and down the hallway as needed. But three coats of Ivory and two coats of bonewhite on the doors and trim and I felt like I had a whole new space.

At the same time, I stripped the hardware for the closet door (which someone had slopped paint all over) I also ordered a vintage inspired light on Etsy and picked a clear glass shade to allow as much light as possible. Smaller changes included adding oil-rub bronze light switch covers, painting the thermostat bone white (a huge bonus since it was a gross 1970's gold color) and getting some frames for all of our national park posters.

The end result was light and bright and a huge difference from the blink and you missed it dirty white hallway.  Part of me wishes the color was a little more orange and went with the rug a little better but I didn't want to sacrifice the brightness for matchy matchy requirements. All in all, I was pretty happy with the space.

Just as a reminder: Before 2010

After 2012

A round up:  plaster repairs $200, Concord Ivory wall paint $43.00, Bone White trim/ceiling paint $0 (because we bought it a year ago), vintage inspired Etsy light $75.00,  oil rub bronze switch cover $8.00, Michael's black frames for three posters- $60.00, and Pottery Barn sale runner $75.00.  That's a whole new space for under $500.00! Although when you realize the space is about 8 square feet it may not work out to such a great deal.

Best House Project Ever- Porch Light

September 2011

I am sure you have a few questions already... what happened to August 2011? Why aren't you talking about the mud room...  etc. ?  We took August off from house work, we worked on the garden, went to some concerts, volunteered, celebrated my birthday and planned some September trips. We did manage to take a few hours out of the one of the weekends to install our 'new' outdoor porch light.  I am putting 'new' in quotes because my parents bought this light for us as a house warming gift.  That's right... when we moved in, in May 2010.  It sat in our basement for over a year looking pretty and doing not much else. 

There is multiple excuses of why it did not get installed, the biggest being we knew we were going to remodel the outside and did not want it to get damaged.  The real reason is we put in the basement and then it kinda moved off our to-do list.  But, we had no more excuses, the exterior had been done for two months and the bare light bulb was definitely lowering our curb appeal.

For those of you who are wondering, it is a pottery barn light, my parents got in on sale for memorial day, it is a beautiful moravian star light with speckled clear glass and an oil rub bronze finish.  We pulled it out of the box, shortened the chain, and turned off the breaker. Project light was off and running 16 months in the making.

 

Josh quickly got the old bare bulb socket off the ceiling and we realized the new light base had a much smaller circumference.  For the record, this has happened every time we have installed a new light... what gives?  So, we had to sand the area down and then quickly apply two coats of yellow paint to the area.  Two hours later we came back. The biggest issue we had was that the old wiring in the house is not color coded.  It's hard to know which wire is the positive and which is the negative.   Josh held the fixture and I hooked it up, and I took a shot in the dark.  We ran a test (involving running down to the breaker and flipping the switch), which proved I had guessed wrong.... urgh!  50/50 never works for me.  We uninstalled it and swapped the wires (since this time we have bought an electrical meter to avoid this).
 

The best part was when we flipped the light on... something amazing happened, the barrel vault in our front porch immediately reflected a lattice work of triangles from the star.  It was pretty freaking amazing and a total unexpected win!  I love this light.  This is probably the cheapest and most satisfying house project ever.  It look us about 4 hours (painting included) cost under $100 and transformed our entire porch.  If I had known this I would have installed it ages ago.

Let There Be Light... And Bling

February 2011

After Christmas I started to become alarmed that we appeared to be starting a trend.  A trend of purchasing large items in big boxes and leaving them fully packed in our dining room.  Procrastination should probably be a new years resolution.  The first box was our dishwasher that spent three months in our dining room before we installed it.  Now, we had a very large box containing our dining room chandelier.  My parents gave it too us in early December as a Christmas present.  Late January marked over a month in our dining room and I decided it was time.
 

My parents purchased our whimsical chandelier from Pottery Barn.  The decision was tough, I looked at thousands before I gave into this one.  Most felt way too formal for our small little cottage, others felt to rustic. This one grew on me each time I look at it.  It was in no way historically accurate to our house, however, it provided the appropriate level of bling mixed with casual natural appeal. I unwrapped it and realized that all the crystals do not come assembled.  At first, I was a little frustrated I was looking at easily 200 crystals that had to be screwed on to every surface of the chandelier, but as I started going about it, I actually appreciated it.  We probably used half of what came with it, a girl can only take so much bling! 
 

 

Josh and I moved out the table, shut off the breaker and went about installing our first big light fixture in the house.  We took down the 70's flush mount that I like to call 'boob light' (you know what I am talking about... round glass dome with a shiny pointy decorative metal knob in the center).  After this was done, we measured how long we needed the chain and proceeded to remove the extra links.  What I mean by this is that Josh attempted to pry the chain open to remove the extra links only to discover that this was impossible. Pottery Barn your directions state "remove extra links until desired length is achieved" I am not actually sure who they thought could do this, maybe the hulk.  We pulled and pryed with multiple tools until we gave up and actually cut the links with our sawzall, take that!  

After that our next task was for one person to hold the extremely heavy chandelier while standing on a ladder, while the other person wired it together.  Mind you this was about 50lbs and there is no real place to hold it given its about 4' around and surrounded by pointy crystal covered branches. This was hard, way hard, our old wires are not secured to anything (no junction box) so they like to slip back into the ceiling if your not careful. Eventually, after about 30 minutes and some seriously sore arms we got it up.  Flip the breaker back on and.... LET THERE BE LIGHT.  This thing was seriously gorgeous when the light was on.  It throws great light around the whole room and the crystals almost turn into mini lights.  We were very proud and cooked a celebratory dinner to eat underneath.  Our dining room felt completely transformed.  Actually pretty painless considering it only look us about 2 hours.