Guest Room Embarrassments

August 2013

As the summer wound down we were rushing to complete a few glaring projects throughout our house. The worst offender: the three windows in the guest room. Back in 2011, we replaced all the double hung windows in the space. While the outside of the wood windows were painted with the exterior the interior remained unpainted. To our defense: we had a roommate living in the room so access to paint them was non existent. Fast forward TWO YEARS and we still hadn't painted the windows. Fail. I can come up with a lot of excuses, it needed to be warm to paint, we had a lot of patching on the woodwork due to some damage when it was removed to install the windows. yada yada yada. The truth is: it's a room we rarely use and divided lite windows are some of the worst things to paint. Josh and I spent two weeks patching, sanding and repatching before we decided to call it repaired enough and start to paint.
 

 

It took a weekend to three coat the window and trim. The longest time was spent taping all the window panes. We already had the paint and the brush so it cost us nothing. It looked a lot better.  Although now the dark wood paneling seemed to bother me more than ever.  Probably because this was the longest time I had spent in the room since 2012.

The other obvious issue in the room was the wall light in the corner. I am not sure you can call it a light fixture when it is only a bare bulb sticking out of the wall on a metal hook. Ghetto is truly the only word I had for it. It happened to be the only hardwired light in the entire room and we figured we should keep it. Does it have a purpose? Not really. But, it seemed to be original and that is often one of the fun things about old houses, sometimes there are lights, trim, built-ins for no obvious purpose. We bit the bullet and went to School House Electric to get a new period reproduction light. They had a sale so we were able to score a cheap clear globe for the wall light. Unfortunately, due to fact we needed it to have a switch in the style and color we wanted we had to custom order it. A few weeks later it had been made (here in Portland!) and I took it home.
 

This was the wonderful time in 2012 when we lived in the guest room during our master remodel.  Shabby chic right?

That weekend Josh removed the existing janky light and and did a fair amount of patching since the new light was smaller. The plaster gave up a fight but eventually we got the new light installed and removed one of the last horrible 1970's lights in the house. At this point, we have updated or replaced every light, fan, or fixture in our house except for the office. It has been a slow process, but it feels so good to check this one off our list. Of course, we have yet to paint the patching from the new light, but let's ignore that for now.
 

 

Stairway Reveal

June 2012

After we had fulled bead boarded the stairwell we had to think about the finishing touches.  We needed to patch, sand and paint the space as well as install new lighting.  Due to the height of the space and the large amount of work needed we decided that we would hire out the painting.  This was a tough call for us.  On principle alone, I refuse to hire out any work that I believe we can do as good or better then the professional. There is not many tasks that fit that description, so we really try to utilize our skills when we can.  The issue was timing.  We wanted to get the house refinanced, we wanted to get the room done and we had other 'life things' that needed to get accomplished. 

So we hired a painter,  I will say now, I regret it but I would not take it back.  It had to be done to get the refinance moving.  The fact is there is no one who will do as good of job on the details as you would.  You're more invested.  The room looks 'fine' but I see lots of spaces that were not sanded as smooth, or where you can still see a nail hole, caulk in the bead lines and other issues.  However, I cannot discount the fact they did the space in three days, which would have easily have taken us several weeks to complete. 

So, happy faces.  All I can say is the stairwell is completely transformed. The space is so bright and clean it's almost too perfect!   We chose to paint the entire space our Bone White. I know you just gasped, Taylor actually painted an entire space white! I know I can hardly believe it myself, but in the end I wanted to keep the stairwell light and airy and there was really no color that I felt would do that except for our trusty Bone White.  We have plans to eventually strip and stain the banister, which will make the space more dramatic. Since I haven't completely lost my technicolor obsession I did paint the stairwell window the same red as our doors and windows (not in the pictures because I haven't taken new ones yet).  This was to copy what we also did in the mudroom since that space was also bead board.

For the lights we went to our favorite Schoolhouse Electric and ordered some very delicate glass and bronze pendants.  They are small and simple, possibly too small and too simple.  But I figured if I was going white I should make all the components match the same aesthetic. I eventually see the entire space covered in art and objects and I want that to be the show stopper not our lights or wall color. The room is bare for now, it still needs the art and new rugs and potentially down the line a better cabinet at the top of the stairs.  But for now it remains the lightest and brightest place in the house.

Before 2010:

 After 2012:

Round Up:

Paneling materials and installation: $1,435, Paint materials and application: $600, Two custom built lights: $420, installation- free we installed them ourselves, New window-$700, Paint for window- free- used old paint, applied ourselves. Total: $3,155

This was our least DIY room in the whole house, but it was probably in the worst shape with the most challenging access so I think everything was required.

Before:

After:

Mudroom Before and After

April 2012

After taking some time off from our bedroom and hallway paint-a-thon we finally got enough good weather to finish off the mudroom.  This room seriously feels like it haunts me... how can we still be working on it?  Over the winter, I had sanded the closet door and painted it and also stripped the hardware and reinstalled it back in place. I also added two coats of poly to the floor so that it was easier to mop up.  The porch paint tended to scuff and discolor so we thought this would help make it more resilient.  Josh also install some base shoe around the room to clean up the edges. The only thing we had left to do was to paint the doors and add the finishing touches.

Josh and I took a Saturday and teamed up to add two coats of our favorite red paint on the doors. We decided instead of painting the doors white in an all white room, to paint the doors the same color that we did on the exterior.  We felt this was in keeping with our theme of this being a porch, not a staircase landing.  We wanted it to feel more a part of the outside then the interior. I think this reforced our decision to paint the floor with porch and install exterior bead-board.

Before:

 

After:

After we finished painting, I added the old hallway runner to the space and started to think about accessories.  The room gets a lot of use and a lot of bangs and bumps. We were a little nervous to put up a lot of artwork in the space.  In the end, I pulled out two photographs I bought in London ages ago and decided it was their time to shine.  I took them to Michael's to be framed, using our signature black frame and white mat to beef them up and hung one on the wall from the kitchen and another on the wall to the basement.  I was happy to see them find a home after 8 years of hiding in a box. I also think the pops of red, black and white work well with the room as whole.  My last addition was a cute brass dog head coat hook I got a couple of years ago at anthropologie.  It made the perfect spot to hang Gus's rainjacket (yes my dog has a rainjacket, you laugh, but the smell of wet dog 9 months out of the year is not a joke).

Before:

After:

Down the line, I would like to update the rug and add some additional art.  Hopefully in a year or so this area won't be as much of a construction zone and we can put some nicer things in it.

Dare I say... I another room down?

The round up:

Where we paid:

New custom made French door $1,900.00, New energy star dog door- $175.00, Installation of new french door and dog door $300.00, Cost for paneling, installation, and skim coated ceiling: $650.00, One gallon Acrinamel Semi-Gloss basic white paint- $43.00, One gallon porch paint- $45.00, Artwork- $120 for custom framing and matting, Coat hook-$12.00 Anthropologie, New light fixture-$120 School House Electric, Electrical for light- $60.00

Where we saved:

Tore up the linoleum ourselves, decided to keep original floor instead of installing tile, sanded the floor ourselves, painted the room ourselves, reused an existing rug, reused existing paint for the doors, reused existing poly for the floors, reused existing hardware by stripping it.

It still a huge expense which feels crazy for a mudroom, but then I have to remember: we had an unusable door, structurally unsound framing, no light, falling down plaster, horrible floors all of which greeted you from our kitchen.

A Christmas Miracle, Mudroom Vortex Part Deux

December 2011

This year we decided to spend Christmas in Portland, which was super exciting.  It was our first time staying home and would be our first opportunity to really celebrate in the house.  Of course, we could not just sit back and relax?  Apparently working on your house 24/7 doesn't end for the holiday season.  So, Josh and I decided to host a small Christmas party of desserts and drinks.  Then as luck would have it, we offered to be part of our neighborhood progressive dinner party which happened to land the following night December 26.  Yup, that's two parties, two different menus, in two days, gulp.

 

As if this wasn't enough, this would be the first time many of our friends and neighbors had ever seen the house.  Which put the pressure on to finally deal with a lingering project to nowhere: the mudroom.  As you may remember, back in July we installed beadboard in the entire space.  In August, we rented a belt sander and sanded the floor boards.... then nothing happened for a while. Then we sanded the ceiling, only to realize we had to skim coat it again, so we sanded it again.  Are you seeing where I am going?

Well it was a little over a week to Christmas and we needed to at least make the room presentable.  We primed the entire room and set about painting all the walls, trim and ceiling a nice fresh white semi-gloss.  One coat went up, then two, the wood was soaking all the paint up like sponge, I seriously didn't know if I could keep painting the same space every night like this.  Finally, we tried a third coat, it had to be deemed good enough and we stopped at four coats of paint.  This made a huge difference in the room!  So bright and so fresh.  We were excited and couldn't wait to paint the french doors. Except we soon realized they had to be open to painted?!? Since it was about 30 degrees and rainy in Portland these doors were not getting painted anytime soon.  Total fail on our part.  We had three months of perfect weather in which to paint the doors and well... it looks like it would be almost a whole year before it happened.  So please ignore the ugly preprimed beige doors.

 

I will take a break from this failure to show you a picture of our amazingly cute sconce we added to the mudroom.  Prior to this addition there was no light in the space, not one.  Making trips to the basement or outside at night was an 'at your own risk' adventure.  Then I saw this little guy and decided he should come home with me (I am glossing over the fact we had to bring in a electrician to actually make it light up). But that aside, its adorable and I love him every time I go down to the basement without tripping and dying.

 

With the door failure looming we decided to paint the floor.  I primed the bare floor boards, which kinda gave it a fun whitewash effect and then Josh painted the floor with crisp porch paint. Two coats, one of which was done on Christmas Eve.  Yes, we painted the mudroom floor on Christmas Eve, Josh was at until 9pm.  Fumes be damned this would be our Christmas miracle! We pulled it off and shared a glass of wine before passing out.  Now I just needed to start contemplating two parties to cook for.