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.

What Hallway?

February 2012

On the main floor of our house we have a very small hallway filled with 6 doors.  It's a blink and you'll miss it kinda space that gets you from one area to the next.  When we moved in it looked like this. 

The first thing we did was refinish the flooring.  But from that moment on I chose to ignore it's existence besides the weekly vacuum and occasional spider web removal. However, this room needed love.  The plaster walls and ceilings had cracks and were stained.  The only light came from a bare light bulb that was one of those CFL's that had to 'warm up' so we pretty much never turned it on.  It was a mess. 

But what really started it was the rug. The existing runner in the space was from my college dorm room and was approaching 9 years old. It was worn, stained and always seemed to be coated in Gus fur.  I could not wait to replace this rug.  So, after careful consideration I decided on a West Elm rug and ordered it during the Christmas sale season.  But my rug was back ordered and then sold out and I was sad.  Until I found this even cooler Pottery Barn rug on after-christmas sale!  Win!  I ordered it up, downgraded the existing rug to our mudroom and rolled this out.  Swoon.

But wait... how can such a beautiful rug be in such a horrible space?  After Christmas when the plaster guy did our upstairs bedroom we had him skim out the walls and ceilings.  Josh and I debated paint colors and went back and forth.  Did we want a cool light gray? Warm golds? Classic browns? It was going to be tough, the rooms off of the hallway are fern green, lime green, butternut squash and seafoam green. More importantly you ask...  how have we still not painted over that horrible blue trim in the stairwell?

Stay tuned.

Big Reveal: Master Bedroom

February 2012

You have been waiting, four posts and counting.... it's the Master Bedroom big reveal!  After repainting the ceiling and walls we set about deep cleaning the room and starting to put some of our furniture back in the room.  Throughout the 6 week process I had been purchasing the required items to make the room a little more grown up and couldn't wait to see it all come together. 

Before I overwhelm you with my pictures. Please note, I am not quite at the point where I 'stage' my rooms for the blog, or honestly for anyone.  I have a weird need to watch telly in bed, so yes, I have a TV in my room. I am aware it is large and awkward but I like watching a little P&P on Saturday mornings in my PJs.  For those of you who don't know me well that would be Pride and Prejudice. Cough.  I also have work out equipment that I use just enough to not totally give up on.  Because I don't want nor own a McMansion, the only place for my equipment is in the bedroom, or the basement... and the basement is scary.  So the elliptical is a part of my bedroom feng shui.  Does this sound defensive?  Probably sorry I am clearly intimidated by other bloggers and their near perfect homes. Anyway you just want the before and after pictures and no disclaimers. So without further ado....

Welcome to our grown up bedroom:

If you don't remember it used to look like this:

Now it looks like this:

  It also looked like this: 

And now looks like this:

Welcome to my little nook of the world, complete with all things I love: my bed, my books and while not in the picture you know wine is often on that nightstand.

What do you think?

Plaster and Paint, And Then Paint Again

February 2012

After our built-in's were completed we brought in a contractor to skim coat our bedroom walls.  We did this for two reasons.  The first being the room was drywall with a speckle texture which did not match the rest of the house.  The second was we had done several repairs/modifications to the walls.  There was the access panel, which added some drywall to the South wall, we had framed in the closets and added some new drywall to the North wall, and finally when we insulated the house we went ahead and added some additional insulation into the walls from the interior.  All in all, it made our walls look like a hot mess.  Some had texture, some were smooth, some had large holes. It was rough.

Over the course of two days, the contractor skimmed all of our walls and applied a rough texture that was a close match to our downstairs plaster. During this time, Josh and I worked on paint colors.  We both were on the same page with having a nice serene blue gray color in the bedroom. We thought this would go well with our vibe, and also with the existing headboard fabric and our duvet which was a mixture of blues, grays and tans.  A little before the remodel we went to a awesome bar in Seattle and when I was in the restroom I thought, this is the color I want in my bedroom. Is this weird?  Most likely.  So when I came out of the restroom I asked Josh to come take a look (which got us even weirder looks from the staff).  But they were kind enough to tell us the color was Sherwin Williams Foggy Day. Bonus!  As soon as I got home I went to Sherwin Williams and got a sample, as well as two other colors just to be safe. 

Josh and I thought the best way to work with our low sloped ceiling was to paint it the same color but in a lighter hue.  So I also picked up several shades for the ceiling.  We put our test colors on and actually felt the Foggy Day read a little too-- dare I say Foggy. So we went with a similar shade called Storm Cloud which was a bit more punchy.  We went to Miller Paint, color matched and started painting the ceilings the lighter hue of Storm Cloud and then the walls got painted. This was pretty hard work, ceilings are miserable and it tooks us one VERY long weekend to paint the entire room.  The whole time I painted I had a weird feeling.....

When we were completely done I stepped back and thought, HOLY PURPLE.  With having the color on all four sides of the room it became overwhelming.  The color which appeared to have NO purple in it from the swatch was reading like a mother-of-the-bride lavendar dress gone wrong.  I took a gulp and asked Josh what he thought.  He was silent and then admitted he too was overwhelmed by the color. We went back in forth about being able to live with it.  But in the end, we knew we would always lay in bed hating it.

So, round two:  Foggy Day (I never should have questioned) and a Bone White ceiling to match the rest of the house began.  As much as we complained it was not that bad.  The ceiling took two coats and was horrible, but the walls only took one coat since the Foggy Day was so close to Storm Cloud.   This was the first time Josh and I have ever had to repaint a room.  I am not proud of it, but it happened.  It meant a  wasted weekend and about $100 in paint.  But now the room was perfect and Foggy and we loved it.

Hello Storage, Have We Met?

February 2012

Soon after we finished framing in the wall, our carpenter Jason arrived to start our built-ins.  The first thing to go in was a bookcase that we designed to go in the small recessed area around the chimney.  We designed it to have a small cabinet on bottom and three movable shelves up above.  The first day it went in was a huge break through! One more hole in this room was finally filed up! Next, Jason installed new baseboards and door trim throughout the room.  Instantly our shanty half constructed room started to look a little more professional. 

Last, he started building in the two closets along the eave wall.  The last step was for him to make the solid wood shaker style doors to match our kitchen cabinets. He then dropped the doors and shelves off for us to start painting, and painting, and painting before he installed them.  We had 6 doors in all, 7 shelves and endless feet of closets and trim to start priming and painting.  We pulled out our trusty Benjamin Moore Bone White Acrinamel and went to work.  We set up the doors and shelves in the basement and I circled the room countless times painting the trim.  Slowly the spaces came together and we started to imagine what life would be like with four walls in the bedroom and enough closet space for all of our clothes. In the meantime, we kept painting.

I Used a Framing Gun, It Was Scary

January 2012

The title of this post just about sums up everything I am about to cover.  In December, for Josh's birthday I decided to buy him some useful around the house tools.  Since we had big plans to build a fence in the spring I thought what better gift then a framing gun and a compressor.  For the tool ignorant (pretty much me prior to internet research) these are some big tools. There are many different types of nail guns, again I was not aware.  There are framing guns (the big boys that can hold 2-4" nails), roofing guns (a big nailer that is angled to apply shingles), finish/trim nailers which hold smaller nails for finish work, and finally a brad nailer which is the smallest and made for tacking small trim pieces in place.  Since we were planning on building a fence, I decided to get the framing gun, I soon learned this weighs about 54lbs. Wow.  In addition these nail guns all run on air, so you need to buy a compressor, air tubes and valves.  Quick round up to a long winded paragraph about tools, I bought all of these things and they were large, intense and scary. Josh was of course appropriately impressed with my manly gifts.

Little did we know, we would be using it even sooner then I thought.  For the master bedroom remodel, Josh and I worked on several different schemes for storage in our eaves space.  The eventual decision was to make two closets, that book end each side of the wall, leaving space for our existing wardrobe to sit in between. To help support our built-ins we would need to add some framing which we decided to do ourselves.  This meant we had to remove several studs to create the openings and add some additional studs and a header above each opening. Since space was tight we decided to use the existing 2x4 wall cap and then sister another 2x4 to it for a header.  This gave us a 4x4, we also sistered up the 2x4 wall studs on either side of the opening to make sure we were carrying the weight of the 4' wide closet openings.   To those of you with an architectural background this is not exactly 'to code' however, we felt pretty confident that the wall wasn't going anywhere if we removed 4 studs and added 4 somewhere else.

It was relatively easy work, the hardest part was that Josh had to go up and down the stairs to the backyard to cut all the pieces.  Unfortunately, in old houses the measure twice cut once is often followed by, cut again, and again. This wall was seriously about of plumb.  It was actually leaning into the room by about an in inch and was 1.5" taller near the outer wall.  But back to the nailing.  We fired up the compressor and went to work with safety goggles in place.  It was a huge time saver, our existing 2x4 studs are 80 year old vertical grain doug fir and they have the density of concrete.  Honestly, nailing in them is almost impossible, you pretty much have to predrill to get the nail started. Or, you can have a fancy nail gun that shoots the nail into the wood at approximately 182 mph. Which is intense. I tried a few hits and had to two hand the entire thing.  It was quickly decided I was the better 'hold it in place' assistant then nail gun operator.

After we framed out the wall we added drywall and mudded our screw holes and joints.  We planned on hiring a plaster guy so we didn't worry too much about our finished product.  The main goal was to frame the wall, get the drywall up to allow for the built-ins and some electrical work to happen.  After our foray into home construction we decided to sit back and let the professionals do what they do best. But hey, we looked good doing it!

The First Step to a Remodel- Downsizing

January 2012

As part of project grown up bedroom, we had to vacate.  With all the dust, contractors, and work to be done we realized it could be upwards of a month before we would be able to use our bedroom again.  This wasn't a huge issue because we had the guest room downstairs.  It was still an issue in many ways.  The room is about half the size of our current room and we needed to get most of our things out of the bedroom whether we needed them or not.

First, we brought down my dresser.  This fit pretty well and would actually be staying downstairs so we didn't have to worry about moving it back up the stairs.  Next, we moved Josh's wire rack of clothes down and squeezed it into the corner.  We then emptied our closet, which amazingly all fit in the downstairs closet. Our bed was too big and difficult to take apart so we decided to leave it upstairs, we did take our foam top (we can't really be expected to live without the foam topper?).  By now the room was increasingly full.  Add to that, the requirement of an entire bed for Gus and it was a tight ship.

 How tight?  Gus was forced to sleep inside the closet, a la Harry Potter.  Honestly, I think he kinda like it.  Snug in there, with all our smells, but I still felt bad, especially when he sad eyed me from in there.  I was expecting to hate it down there.  The small room, my stuff in chaos.  Instead I kinda like it.  The room has great light, was definitely quieter (it is at the back of the house, verses our room in the front), and was only steps from our bathroom.   I could get ready in the morning in half the time.  No trips up and down the stairs for changing, forgotten items, dog walks.  It was pretty nice, similar to a dorm room.  We settled into our snug abode for the long hall and kicked off project with a new trick for us: framing and drywall.

Things to note in these pictures.  The lack of curtains on the West wall(again!).  The shady tacked on curtain on the South wall so we didn't look directly into the neighbor's kitchen.  The large prevalence of Games of Thrones books in the room.  Three books in two months (it was bad).  The fact that I took these pictures at 6:30pm in January and it is that dark in Portland.