Hallway Plans

I have always loved the idea of treating a hallway like a room. I feel like we often forget about this space and it is often times neglected. In all reality that is where most of the traffic is in a home, at least it is in ours! So why not make it a fun walkthrough to the other rooms in your house. So this is my plan for ours…I found this picture via pinterest and couldn’t get this image out of my mind! I love the texture and colors this has.

So I am going to base our hallway around it. The current state of our hallway has not changed since the gallery wall of frames I did. Lately I have been loving bead board ceilings! So my plan is to use bead board on the ceiling in the hallway like this…

I also finally decided on lights. We ordered a few different lights that ultimately hung too low. So I finally decided on this one…

We have three lights in the hallway and I love the vintage retro vibe these have. Normally these school house lights run pretty expensive but I found these for under $100. One thing I have learned since we bought this house is that lighting is important and lighting is not cheap! I plan to paint an entry way table and a cute little bamboo bench I have to go behind the front door and some cute little hooks above. I am thinking I will pull some colors from my inspiration print. One thing I am still undecided on is should I frame the print and hang it above the entryway table with other art, or with a mirror too?

I have also decided that our closets need an overhaul in the hallway. We are blessed with 2 HUGE storage closets. One is a coat closet and the other is a linen closet. The insides need painted and I also want to paint all the doors white. I also had this imagine saved and showed cody the detail on the doors and said that’s what I want to do on all the doors in the hallway and he surprisingly loved it!

They also need some serious organization. Here are some fun organized linen closets I found!

Its amazing how just seeing these pictures makes me excited to organize them! I have also always really loved the idea of a coat rack. I found this one on Urban Outfitters that just so happens to match my color scheme! Now here is the question, is it stange to have a coat rack even though we have a coat closet?

Too bad I have to do the not so fun stuff like painting the inside of the closets before I can do the fun stuff like organizing!!

It's started...

The kitchen reno project that is. We kind of just jumped into without really planning much out. Call us crazy, but I guess that’s how we roll. I am thinking that this could be a very good freeing exercise for me. I tend to over plan, over think and want things to be all set up and ready to go before we start something like this. It started last week when Cody took the first layer of wallpaper off. It took him about 3 hours to do the kitchen, dining room and entry way by the garage. The next step was getting all the glue off the walls. We have been working on that in the evenings. I would say it is 90% off. Then last night we took a few cabinets down. It went from this…

To this…

It is amazing how much it opens the space up, the kitchen feels so much taller and bigger. We were always hitting our head on it, and since I have so much cabinet space it wasn’t an issue losing out on 2 cabinets. Our next plan of attack is to fix a few cabinets that house the microwave. We are still working on the best way to do that. We are also planning on taking down all the bulk heads or soffits above the cabinets whatever they are called and replacing with some recessed lighting and a few pendant lights above the sink and counter.

So I guess we do have some sort of plan. Our thought was to do all the reconfiguring of the cabinets and bulk heads first. Then we could tackle the sanding, priming, and painting of the cabinets. Then onto the tile backsplash I have planned, new counters and new floors. Easy peasy right?

Opinions Please!

So as you can tell by my picture, I obviously did not major in graphic designJ  But, as crazy as this looks it actually helps me visualize what our dresser could look like!

So, here are the options…

1, 2, and 8 are all stencils

3, 4, and 7 are actually fabric samples that I just like the pattern of. So, I would have to replicate these on my own without the help of a stencil.

5 & 6 are what we were initially thinking…just adding some small detail to each drawer by painting an outline of a box or with box filled in.

9 is a little out there but my thought on that was that I am loving the ombre effect lately, with the gradation in color. I could do this to each drawer separately or all the drawers as one (if that makes sense).

Ignore the color on them all too, I was thinking something navy but maybe bringing another color in would be good, or perhaps I should just leave them all white… I defiantly don’t want to make any rash decisions, so even after I decide what I should do I will probably wait to pull the trigger till I finish some other things in the room.

Ok so I now I need your opinion! Which number is your fav??

Mrs. Hubbards Cupboards

Was that a children's story or nursery rhyme? I cant remember...maybe it was neither. I think it is about time to show you the progress we have been  making on our sun room. We started with the room looking like this...

all we did for a while was put up the drywall once we got rid of the paneling and that awkward window. Then we took a long extended break because I couldn't pick out a paint color. Well I finally did. It is Moonshine by Benjamin Moore, and I love it. Once the room was painted we put in the baseboard. We had to buy baseboard and shoe moulding for this room. If we would have just left the baseboard as is you would be able to see a gap between the wood floor and drywall.



So with the baseboard in, we focused our attention to creating a built in look with cabinets. When we looked at this house I saw this room and thought that a window bench/nook with a table would be perfect in the corner. Here were some of my inspirations images all found via pinterest.

I wanted that built in look of cabinets to look like it fit the space and was meant to be there but with room to add a small round table and plenty of pillows for a comfy vibe. I had been searching for something to work in that space for awhile. I tried Ikea, Lowes, and Menards and even thought about building something ourselves. Nothing I found seemed to be exactly right. We were either going to have to take apart something we bought to fit the space or spend a few hundred dollars on cabinets from Lowes. I didn't love either option. So one Saturday morning after a 2 hour long trip to Bass Pro, Cody and I stopped by Builders Warehouse. For those that don't live in the area it is located downtown Peoria in an old warehouse. It has five floors of home remodeling things at super discounted prices. Well, the fourth floor was the gold mine. It was full of unfinished oak cabinets in a variety of sizes. Score! We tried a few layouts with the different sizes of cabinets in the store and found 3 that would work perfectly. Our total came to $116  for all three cabinets.

This is what they looked like unfinished. I forgot to take a picture of all three of them before because I was too excited to get started on painting them. I did a coat of primer then two coats of white paint, the same paint we used on the baseboards.

We ended up take one of the doors off and covering the small opening with a piece of wood for a seamless look. This was before we added any of the molding.

You can see how we brought the baseboard around on the sides and the shoe molding around the whole front of the cabinets. I think that's what makes it look like a custom built in piece.

Lastly all we did was cut a piece of plywood for the top. That will get painted white and we still have a few more pieces of trim to add to cover up the front of the plywood and the corners. That fabric sample is what I am using to make the cushions out of! Here's a better picture of it.

Oh la la! I know this fabric is not every ones cup of tea but I love it! I love all the colors that it has. For curtains I am doing a navy and white strip with a two inch coral band around the edge.

And, I finally refinished a dresser I bought for $15 from the Habitat for Humanity Store. Here is what it looks like now. We are trying to decide what to do with the drawers. We don't know if we should stencil them with a fun pattern or add some lines like I made with the painters tape.



 Here is what it looked like before...



The drawers I painted white and everything else is navy. This is probably what the color really looks like...



So that's where were at. Any suggestions on what we should do with those drawers? Boxes, a pattern, stripes, or paint them navy too?? To many options and I have such commitment issues making paint decisions...

So long summer...

So this post has nothing to do with house related stuff. I just thought it would be fun to re-cap my summer! Since fall is defiantly here and I am in the mood for sweaters, soups and festivals I wanted to write about all my adventures I had this summer! Does anyone else feel like summer has flown by? But then all at the same time it feels like I crammed a lot of stuff in those 2 months! My first summer adventure could possibly be my favorite. I was able to spend a weekend with my college friends for one of their baby showers.

I cannot even tell you how much fun we had. There is just something about getting together with college girlfriends….it was exactly the kind of weekend I needed! All of our lives may be different but we still did the same stuff we did in college. Talked for hours, laughed until we cried and ate junk food on the floor in a circle:) two of them had their babies with them and it was so great to see how they have turned into such wonderful mommas! My friend Sarah was able to stay at our house for the night before we headed up to Michigan. This girl is the greatest and I think she might be one of the best Mom’s that I know.

She loves her kids to pieces and I am in constant awe of her knowledge when it comes to all things kid-related! I think I may have to hire her when I have a baby as a mommy consultant! We were able to go to the beach for the day which was great! This picture kills me but we were going to get a picture of all of us even if it killed us!

Next up was a visit from some of our friends Brian and Bethany Dario! It was a quick overnight visit but defiantly worth it! They were on their way back to Texas and made a quick stop at our place. It was so great to catch up with them, and we had just found out they were expecting so that made it even more exciting! We cherish our friendship with these two and as you can see by the only picture I took, we always have a fun time with them!

I was able to go to New York for the first time for a work trip.

Technically I was in New Jersey but we went to New York for a day. We managed to be in New York the day that the heat index was over 100 degrees! Since it was my first trip, we did all the touristy things. Empire State Building, Central Park, Times Square, the usual.

 I surprisingly didn’t do any shopping which my husband was shocked about but I did manage to stop at Magnolia Bakery for their cupcakes! Oh my were they good…and yes I pretty much ate that whole box of mini cupcakes….I had to they were melting:)

Sometimes life throws very unexpected curves. My Grandpa passed away this summer very unexpectedly. I could write a book about what this man meant to me.

 He was the kindest most helpful person I have ever met. He was a Mr. Fix-It man through and through. He probably tore most of the wallpaper off in our house. It was and still is heartbreaking but I know everyone in my family takes joy in knowing that he is in heaven today.

 We had a wonderful time remembering and telling stories. All of his grandkids were able to be there which was a really great thing. It was wonderful seeing all of them and spending time reminiscing. We took a trip up to Michigan for some of the services and were able to see My Grandma and Grandpas house they bought when they were first married and the house my Mom grew up in. I was able to ride in the backseat with this girl for 8 hours…which made the trip much more enjoyable!  

And last but not least a few weeks ago we headed up to Elgin to celebrate our nieces first birthday! I cannot believe this girl is already one year old.

To say she brings so much joy into our lives would be an understatement!

She was such a trooper through the whole day and I think played with the wrapping paper more than her presents!

My sister in law threw a great party and it was a great ending to our summer. I am looking forward to the fall and everything it brings! Since it is cooling off we are switching our house efforts from working outside to working on stuff inside! There could be a bathroom or kitchen reno in our near future! Stay tuned!

Why So Blue?

Our front door had the blues...big time. I am going to show you the after picture before because the before is soo bad.

I don't even have a definite before picture, but hopefully this picture will somehow help you figure out what it looked like. It had bad 70's plastic flower moulding in the middle of the squares. Take my word for it, it was bad.

We talked about just buying a brand new door, but after we both had sticker shock at Lowes one day we decided to see what we could do with the door ourselves. In all reality it s a really nice steel front door and the cheapest wood front doors we saw were around $200. I spent some time researching the proper way to refinish a steel door. It didn't seem like too hard of a process. I started by ripping off all the old moulding which left me with lots of holes to patch. Since the door was steel I couldn't just use any old spackling I had to use Bondo.

It is basically something you would use to repair scratches or dents in your car. So once we filled all the holes with the Bondo it was time to sand. This is probably where we made our one mistake. We put too much Bondo on the holes...we basically over-filled all the holes. We thought that would be better so then I could sand everything down nice and even. Wrong. I probably sanded that door for a good hour or two with a palm sander and it didn't look any different. And since my arm was numb by that time I knew this process wasn't going to fly. The directions said that this was the most critical step in the process of the re-do.

Basically once I primed the door the scratches or unevenness would show and it would be too late to fix. So we came up with plan B. We went to Lowes and bought some moulding and a thin piece of wood. We essentially wanted to cover the middle section and add some detail to the door, all whiule covering up the center section that wouldn't sand down. Once the door was sanded as much as it could be I used primer and then on came the color! It took me awhile to convince Cody our front door should be a fun bright color. He was a little hesitant but I just thought that a dark brown would be so ho-hum. At first I thought a green would be nice, then after holding up about 100 paint samples in the green/blue family against the siding, we both loved this color and thought it complimented the siding color.

The door took about 4 thin and even coats of paint that I put on with a small foam roller so you wouldn't see any brush strokes. Since we were upgrading the door it self I figured we might as well spruce up the door handle! We took off all the door hardware and I used a liquid de-glosser then primed them with a spray primer. Then I sprayed them with Oil Rubbed Bronze Rustoleum Spray Paint. I did about 4 coats waiting 30 minutes between each coat.

We used Liquid Nails to glue the piece of wood onto the door since we didn't really know how nails would be going into the steel door. We just used heavy stuff we had laying around the house to hold it down while it dried...including Cody.

Once it was down and dry, we added the moulding and I did a few last coats of paint on it. Since the door was now all spruced up it was time for the frame to have a little bit of a makeover. All our windows and trim on our house are dark brown so we wanted to keep things consistent. I primed the frame then did about 5 coats of paint on it.

This was defiantly a project that took a couple of nights and a weekend to do. But it was well worth it and a whole lot cheaper then buying a new front door! And I love the pop of color it adds to our house.