Where I’ve Been…

Is it bad to say “In the bathroom?” Well, not for the reason you’d think. We’ve gotten into remodeling again. It seems like it’ll never end. But we are one step closer to having gutted every room in the house. This one was a challenge. We weren’t planning on re-doing the bathroom. But then we discovered a leak from the bottom of the toilet. We thought, “okay, we’ll replace the wax ring and be done.”

I don’t think either of us really believed that.

Sure enough once we pulled up the toilet, we saw that not only was the wax ring disintegrating, the sub floor under the carpet (yes, carpet) was rotted to the touch.

Cue the stress. Suddenly this little job became HUGE. We could replace the floor and stop there, but if we’re going to take everything out, which we need to, why not fix the walls? If we’re going to fix the walls, we might as well get a new vanity, and chuck the old one. And so on, and so forth. Until at last, this:

 

turned into this:

and resulted in this:

Yes, I made the last picture bigger than the rest.

I’m kind of over the moon about it. I’ve never gone into designing a room without some sort of plan, or inspiration piece. Until this. I had to figure out SOMETHING to cover up those walls. I didn’t want tile again, and I couldn’t afford to re-drywall. So we went with beadboard. I absolutely love how it looks. We ended up running it vertically for the bottom 36” and horizontally for the top 16”. Why our bathroom was tiled up to 52 1/2” I will never know, But we found a way to fix it, and that’s what matters.

I won’t go into all the dirty details, but I’m so so happy to share the end results!

Those shadowboxes are the drawers from our old vanity. I painted them, cut down the glass shelf from our old medicine cabinet to fit inside, and backed it with the same fabric I used for the curtain. Which was, in fact a shower curtain that I cut down. I’m not a great seamstress, so I used the loops that were already done on the shower curtain for my rod. Then I just sewed weights into the bottom hem, and sewed up the side. The artwork are just some inexpensive frames from Wal-Mart and then scrapbook paper and letters I had.

I’m so glad it’s over. And now I won’t be embarrassed to let my guests use the restroom!

And one day, I will get on a regular blogging schedule again. Until then, thanks for hanging around and being patient with me. Congrats to all those writers out there who are getting good news too! Agents, and book deals, and cover reveals, oh my! You all are an inspiration.

I think I’m finally getting back to a place, mentally where I can write again. I’m even flirting with the idea of NaNo this year. I have another idea…

Hope all is well in the blogosphere! Happy Tuesday!

Grand Finale and a Short Goodbye

This is my last remodel post (collective sigh of relief from the interwebs) and probably my last post at all for the next 6 weeks or so. I'm officially going in on Monday to be induced (inner sigh of relief from me). So I'll be busy with the occupant of this newly designed room, and I hope you all will be here when I get back! Anyway, onward and upward.

I hope you’re not tired of seeing remodel pictures yet, because this one’s probably my favorite from our latest round of renovating. I told myself that if we were having another girl, I’d leave the nursery alone. It was fine, it was girly, it didn’t need anything else. It was foolish to spend money on it. (For THOSE before and afters, go here).

Then I thought, well, maybe I’ll get some new bedding at least. What’s new bedding going to hurt?
Then I saw this:


And I fell head over heels. But wait. It’s plum. Like DARK plum. That doesn’t match a pink striped wall! Well, we can paint the wall easy enough, right? But what about the pillows? Those don’t match either. And the curtains are out of the question!

Suddenly, I was doing a new nursery in my head. And once its in my head, ladies and gentlemen, it must be realized. Or I get a little…cranky. So with this bedding set as the jumping off point, I plotted and planned and paint-matched and finally ended up with my new favorite room in the house. Which, really, nurseries are more for the mom’s than the babies right? I mean I’m the one who has to sit in there looking around for hours.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now. These pictures are also from Danielle Oakey, bless her soul.

Plum makes me happy. There’s so much in this room that makes me happy. The jewelry holder that I’m using for hair bows, The framed scrapbook paper above the changing area, the little ceramic owl peeking out from the bookcase, and the lampshade that was supposed to be a pendant light from IKEA (you can see a glimpse of it in the third-to-last picture).

So while the furniture stayed the same, and the layout stayed the same, this room feels completely different. And now, I have pictures to put in baby A’s baby book of her new room that aren’t identical to her big sister’s. And that makes me happy too. Now I just need her to get here so I can put into that amazing bedding. Not too much longer now…

Happy Friday!

Interior Tuesday: Transforming a Toy Closet

Our home is full of closets. As in, we have 3 real bedrooms and 10 closets throughout the whole house. It’s nice to have so much storage, especially when we decided to convert our basement office into E’s bedroom. This room has a huge under-the-stairs closet that had seen better days. For example:

This is what it looked like when we first toured the house. It pretty much stayed that way when we moved in except we had less board games and more…junk in there. Office paper, luggage, air mattress, etc. It wasn’t pretty, but it was space that got filled.

Well, when planning out how to do the new bedroom, there was one obvious transformation to me and it was to take this dingy, scary basement closet and brighten it up so my girl could read and play and laugh and enjoy herself in there. Who, as a kid, didn’t want a place to hide and pretend?

So once the room was finally cleared out and we found new homes in our other nine closets for our miscellaneous junk, I began the arduous process of painting this cavern-like space. At 6-months pregnant BTW. I don’t think it helped my hip in the least. Nonetheless, it needed to be done and I had a vision.

Unfortunately at the time I did not have a camera, so my vision is shared with you courtesy of my iPhone camera. Not great. But you get the idea.

First, I cleaned the beast out and prepped it for painting.

Second, I ripped off the old shelf liner and practiced adding the new liner on the top shelf. I actually found this cute green striped pattern at Wal Mart for $5 a roll. I used just under two rolls total.  It went on pretty smooth, but I didn’t want to get paint on it, so I held off doing the rest of the shelves until it was painted. I proceeded to prime all the walls with white primer and then a coat of white paint.

I knew I wanted to add some kind of visual interest to the back of the closet as well, so I taped off a lattice-like pattern on the top three shelves. The bottom was too low for me and I knew it’d be covered up anyway, so I didn’t bother. Also, you can tell, I didn’t measure these angles. They’re a little wonky in places, but oh well.

I painted over the top of the tape with yellow and before it dried all the way I ripped off the tape. Now this is not normal drywall, it’s some kind of horrible wallboard that isn’t smooth or straight, so there are some obvious deficiencies. But we work with what we got, right?

After that, I finished lining all the shelves and started to move stuff in. And Voila! It turned into:

Toy Heaven! I used our leftover carpet remnant to cover the concrete floor and threw some pillows in there for her to sit and play comfortably on.

I also used her drapes from her old bedroom and a staple gun to make a sort of fabric ceiling to cover up the ugly underside of the stairs. It softens the whole area and adds some interest. Also it didn’t cost me a dime, which was awesome.

And just to add one more dimension of fun, I painted the outside of the doors with more chalkboard paint:

It added a pop to the big white wall that I was missing, and provides her with yet another opportunity to be creative, which I’m all about.

And there you have it! She gets a private place to play and I get all her toys out of my living room, which totally rocks. So far it’s been a hit with her and any other kid that comes over. Is it bad that I’m a little jealous that I never had this when I was a kid? Ce la vie. At least I got to design it for her.

Hope all is well in the blogosphere and have a Happy Tuesday!

Big Girl Room Revealed

Remember this little post oh way back in AUGUST of last year? Where I displayed this virtual board of what I wanted my 2-year-old daughter’s room to look like?

Well I’m happy to say that it is FINALLY done! My friend and former fellow design school classmate Danielle from the amazing blog Danielle Oakey Interiors was kind enough to come and take pictures of the finished product, since my photography skills are severely lacking. If you haven’t seen her blog, you’re really missing out!

Drumroll please:

     

      

Don’t mind the rumpled slipcover…I ordered it too big.

There’s so much I could say about this room. It took SO long to feel like it was finally finished. However, considering it started out like this:

And then moved on to this:

It’s no wonder it took so long to transform! I have a whole different post planned for the evolution of the toy closet. It’s probably one of my favorite spaces in the whole house. Except I feel a little like Aunt Petunia telling Harry Potter to go to his room when I tell her to play in the closet, but hey, at least I don’t make her sleep in there! (Although she could if she wanted to. I tried to make it cozy.) So look for that coming up soon. And also, I have some awesome pictures of the new nursery; aka my new favorite room in the house.

And the best part of all? She sleeps in her bed like a champ! No more crib for my big girl!

Happy Monday!

IKEA Hackers

So my little bookcase project was on the IKEA Hackers website today! Go check it out here! Pretty cool huh?

I don’t really have more to say. I’m just counting minutes of every hour of every day until I have this baby. 3 weeks to go by Dr.’s timeline, but I’m praying for her to make her debut sooner than that. Either way, her nursery will be making its debut soon enough, as I get the bedding on Monday and other than that it’s done! Yahoo!

Happy Three Day Weekend!

Interior Tuesday: The Craft Area Revealed

I guess this could be part three of my latest Interior Tuesday series, centered around my bookcase, but there’s more here than just my bookcase now and I absolutely love this goofy little corner of my house.

When we moved in, we didn’t know what to do with this area of the basement. It’s just kind of awkward (as my Interior Design professor would say). It’s off of the main living area in the basement, and is dominated by the old textured curtains that are there to hide an ancient sprinkler system attached to a concrete wall. Here’s what we saw before we bought the house:

You can see the sprinkler pipes peeking out from behind those curtains. And you gotta love that carpet huh? I won’t even mention the pillows.

So after our initial remodel, here’s what we turned it into:

Better, but still not very functional. This is the tiniest sofa ever. It was the first piece of furniture we ever bought together and I think it was $200 from Kmart. It worked when it was just us, but it really isn’t very comfortable. Anyway, this area of the basement was pretty much unused.

When we found out baby #2 was on the way we realized we needed to shift everything around. The office had to move so we could move our 2-year-old’s bedroom down there. Well this meant not only finding a new place for our computers, but also for all my scrapbooking and crafting supplies. I didn’t want the nasty plastic table I was currently using, so I took this opportunity to splurge on the IKEA Expedit bookcase / desk combo.

You already know about all that drama, so let’s get to the pictures shall we?

Here’s what it looks like now:

(See? There’s the pretty yellow fabric I hid!)

The bins are for Eisley’s craft supplies; markers, crayons, stickers, etc. She can reach them, and I can see her from my desk. We put another chalkboard above the table just for fun. I’m going to hang a picture wire so we can put paintings up to dry or pictures she’s drawn.

She loves her new table and chairs.

It’s so nice to have a dedicated area to work on projects. Plus my desk is kind of hidden so I don’t have to clean up if I’m still in the middle of something. And it’s been so nice to have a place for her to do her art projects.

So that’s it! Next room I’ll be featuring (as soon as I clean it) will be the long-awaited Big Girl Room! I can’t wait to show it off! If you’re on Pinterest, come follow my boards and you can see the inspiration for all of these spaces. www.pinterest.com/kadiek

Happy Tuesday!

Interior Tuesday: A Room for a Big Girl

I finally got my computer to work with me and luckily salvaged my design board for Eisley’s new room. I’m so excited! You might recognize the rug from the board I did for my book’s MC, but I can’t help that I love it and it’s the perfect starting point for all the color I want to bring into this room.

I can’t wait to see the finished product!

The bedding won’t be that yellow, it’ll be plain white, and the walls I’m still deciding on, but I’m thinking vertical stripes…

And the lattice stencil will be used inside her new toy closet / book nook that I’m working on. I think it’s going to be amazing.

Stay tuned!

Interior Tuesday: Eisley’s Room

I realized today as I was thinking about what to post, that I never showed before and after’s of my daughter’s nursery! We’re going to do some changing soon, since it’s about time for her to be in a “big-girl bed” but for now, this is what it looks like. I’ve shown a little of it with this post but not the whole story.

So here we go:

Eisley’s room was probably the…creepiest one. Unless you like dolls. Then it’s totally normal and un-creepy, but for me…creeptastic. Anyway, see for yourself!

That wall of dolls = nightmares. I won’t bring up the blue carpet or crazy wallpaper.

Basically her nursery looked just like this in our old house, minus the striped wall, hardwood floors and rug. And if you’ll notice, this is pre-picture frame breakage. The big “E” was a cardboard letter from JoAnns, which I mod-podged some scrapbook paper too. So fun and easy.

Those doors came right off. After painting over the blue trim in the rest of the room, I decided we could do without the closet doors. They are currently residing in the garage thankyouverymuch.

And now:

I’m not sure if she has enough clothes.

Sorry my pictures are terrible. I need a better camera. But you get the idea. While I love this room, I’m ready for a change. I found this rug from Feizy and am lusting after an entire room based on this color scheme:

And how cute are these prints?

Soon, my friends, soon. I’m so scared to transition her to a big girl bed, but if it means I get to redesign a room, I think it’ll be worth it!

That’s it for today!

Oh and I’ve got the beginnings of an idea in my head for a giveaway…stay tuned.