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. 

Dining Room Bliss and Other Rambles

July 2010

I abruptly left the last blog post about the dining room because I felt it was getting long and probably not overly interesting.  Also, I wanted to convey the length of time it takes us to finish these projects.  It feels a bit criminal to sum up 2-3 weeks of work in one blog entry... although I am sure to blog world it makes it look like Josh and I are rock stars. 

 

Since I broke this blog up into two I can also talk a little about our trim/ceiling color.  As many of you may know from this blog, life, or any other interaction with me I do not like white.  Apparently, this is one of the reasons I can never be a true architect.  I feel quite simply, white is for pussies... wow I said it, gulp.  I love color, I think in colors, I want to express my moods in colors.  To the white lovers, I apologize, I try not to make it personal- I just feel deeply about this and wish I could go into every white house/apartment and paint it when their on vacation (so far this has not happened, so friends and family you are safe).   I realize that artwork and furniture can 'pop' against a white wall but so to can a sky blue vase on a chocolate brown wall.  Okay wow, that was a huge aside. I didn't know you could ramble in writing but proof is here.

So yeah, trim, I didn't want white trim in the house. Trying to pick out non-white white is kinda similar to a slow death by fire.  So I was lucky that we were using an 'attractive' cream white at our buildings.  It seems crazy to use a color that is used in health care clinics... how is that not cold?? But it is the perfect shade because it doesn't seem to fight any colors and doesn't change much with the lighting.  So, I had Josh buy a huge 5 gallon bucket for the trim and another for the ceilings.  We applied our Bone White and let me tell you, it was a leap of faith, against the stark white of the primer it kinda looked the color of flesh, urgh.  And Josh was looking at me in that... 'we just spent $200 bucks on the ugliest thing ever look.'  However, as soon as the white was banished with color it looked AMAZING.  It was antique without looking dirty, cream without looking pastel, and it looked fabulous with our oil rub bronze hardware, yay!

After we finished with the trim we pulled up the paper on the floors, cleaned the room and rolled out my favorite rug I got in Morocco, which fit perfectly!  Josh's boss was amazing and gave us an 80 year old Oak dining table and chairs that had been in his basement for years.  It is adorable and totally something I might have bought at an antique store if we had to go.  We slowly unpacked the room and ate our first dinner at a table in our own dining room.  Bliss.

 

 

Also can we all love this Gus photobomb?