A lighter, brighter bedroom

Hi everyone! Can you believe it's September already? Is it just me or did the summer go by way too fast? (I always say that!) Here in Maine the summer feels so short, so it's always a little sad when it's over -- although I think fall may be my favorite season!

So I have been a little MIA recently but it's only because I've been busy busy busy working on some things around this house of mine. For a little while it felt like I didn't even come up for air! But now things are finished (ish) and I can show you what I've been working on.

In my last post I gave you a sneak peek of my bedroom painting project. As I said then, we painted our bedroom right when we moved in, but the color was too dark and we just didn't like it. But we have a big bedroom, and we didn't really want to repaint it. But we got the opportunity, strangely enough, when our poor pup Colby had to have knee surgery. Because he couldn't do stairs -- and because he's spoiled that he sleeps in our bedroom with us -- we moved our bed to the office on the first floor while he was recovering.

While we were camping out on the first floor, I convinced the hubby that it was the perfect time to take a paint brush to our bedroom yet again We knew we wanted something neutral and light, so I grabbed a bazillion paint swatches and stuck them up on the wall. Um, there are a million light neutrals out there!

The color we finally chose was Gull by Martha Stewart. It's a creamy, off-white neutral with a hint of warmth. Since so much of our house is painted in cooler tones (which I love!), I wanted something a bit warmer for our bedroom.

It took me a little while to get this whole room painted, because I also had to paint the ceiling (we found some leftover paint in the basement from the old owners for the ceiling, but when I used it to patch a couple spots it was definitely not the same color, so I had to take care of that situation).

I felt a tiny bit silly painting a room we had painted less than three years ago, but I am SO happy with out it turned out! It is soooo much lighter and brighter in this room now!

It doesn't feel like a cave anymore, and that makes me really, really happy. I need a light and bright space to cheer me up when I'm doing things like putting the laundry away. :)

I've seen some bloggers describe this color as a light gray, but it definitely skews a bit yellow in our room. I don't mind it, though -- again, it's warm and cozy, which I think is just right for a bedroom.

This is all the bedding, curtains, etc. we already had, but I'd love to get something different. I'm over the green curtains and sheets! I'll keep you posted on what I end up with.

While we were improving this room, we also decided to install a ceiling fan in here. We have one in our office, where we'd been sleeping for the last few months, and we really liked how it helped keep us cool. We also had a desire to update the lighting in our bedroom since the existing ceiling light in there was definitely inadequate for lighting that big space. Here's a look at the light that was in there (with the old paint color):

We ended up buying this Harbor Breeze fan from Lowe's, mostly because of its low profile. Our ceilings are 7.5 feet tall, and the hubs is over 6 feet tall, so we needed something with a profile of less than 16 inches, or else the hubs would be bonking his head! This fan did the trick with a profile of about 14.5 inches, and it was quite affordable as well.

It was no picnic installing this fan. The hubs had to spend some time in the attic installing the proper ceiling supports. But now that it's up there, we're quite happy with it. It's not as quiet as the Hunter fan we have in our office, but it's just as cute (and that's what matters, right?)

We also installed this cool switch that allows us to control the light and the fan speed, and it also came with a remote, which is super sweet because we can turn the light off or change the fan speed from bed.

And as we've done in the other rooms we've painted, we switched out all the beige outlets for crisp white ones. The hubs even put in these fancy USB outlets on each side of the bed, so we can charge our phones with ease.

It's always incredible what some paint can do to change a room (oh, and some white bedding never hurts either!). The before:

And the airy after!

So do you think I'm ridiculous for painting my bedroom again, not even three years later? Or would you have done the same thing?

Sources:
Wall color: Martha Stewart Gull, matched to Behr Premium Plus Ultra paint
Quilt, bedskirt, white pillowcases and throw: Target
Green sheets and pillowcases: Bed Bath and Beyond
Green pillow: DIY with fabric from Joann
Lamps, green frames and green curtains: Target:
Bamboo blinds: Home Depot
Ceiling fan: Harbor Breeze Crosswinds from Lowe's

Summer is flying by

Hi, everyone! Sorry for the radio silence over the last couple of weeks. I don't know what happened to the rest of July...all the sudden it's practically two weeks into August! Crazy how that happens.

So I'm here today just to give you a quick update on what I've been up to the last couple of weeks. In no particular order...

We drove up to the top of Mt. Washington...

We enjoyed some Maine summer favorites -- beach, lobster and camping...

We visited some friends and got up close and personal with some sea life in Boston...

We bought a new dishwasher. Our old dishwasher broke for the third time in less than three years, so instead of fixing it, we decided to replace it. We bought this Whirlpool Gold on sale at Lowe's. We're pretty happy with it so far! It cleans well, is relatively quiet and holds lots of dishes.

I did a little thrifting...

And I started painting our bedroom. Our bedroom was pistachio green when we bought our house, so we immediately painted it a Behr color called Mushroom Bisque. But it didn't take long for us to dislike the color. We rushed picking a color so we could paint before we moved in our furniture, and we didn't examine it in all lights. Our bedroom doesn't get a lot of light, and the color was just too dark. We were craving something light and bright...and we're on our way to getting it! I'll post more about it soon when I'm finished.

So that's what I've been up to! What about you?

Entryway update

Hi all! I hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend! It finally stopped raining here and the sun came out yesterday, which was really nice. We got to see the parade and spend time outside with my family eating burgers and drinking margaritas...that's my kind of Monday!

I've been a little quiet lately, so I apologize. I've been spending my time working on the entryway. We kind of lost our motivation for a couple months, so I'm trying to get this project back on track -- and get it done so we can move onto other things!

So, the last time you saw this space, it looked like this:

What we had to do next was trim out the gaps between the cabinets and paint the face frames.

The hubs cut and installed the trim, which made such a big difference in giving the cabinets a finished look. He also filled the cracks between the cabinets.

Then I was up for painting. I used a foam brush to apply two coats of Zinser BIN primer, and sanded between the coats. Then I used my Purdy angled cub brush to apply several coats of Behr semi-gloss enamel paint in Ultra Pure White. I used some Floetrol to help extend the drying time to reduce brush strokes. Try as I might, I cannot get a completely smooth surface, so you can still see some brush strokes, but I think it looks pretty good, so I'm satisfied.

We also had to reinstall some of the trim from around the doors, which the hubs nailed into place. He filled the nail holes with wood filler, and then I painted all the trim (so it would all match) with high-gloss Behr interior/exterior enamel, also in Ultra Pure White.

The hubs cut new baseboard, which I painted the same as the other trim, then he installed it and filled the nail holes.

I gave the baseboards one coat of paint to cover the nail holes, but I'll need to do another coat to hide all of the wood filler. I'm hoping to get that done tomorrow, and then we can put the coat rack back up.

It doesn't look like this was a lot of work, but it sure did take a lot of time -- mostly the time to wait while paint dried. Isn't that fun?

It's starting to look like a real room now! Trim makes such a big difference. And now that the cabinets are all painted we can start using them. I'm really itching to start organizing these cabinets, and am super excited for all the new storage space.

But we're not done yet. We still need to make doors for the cabinets (I'm going to use them even without doors, so we'll be rocking the open-storage thing), and the hubs has plans to make a couple drawers too. And I'm working on a coat hook thing to go over the bench, as well as some other things to help keep us organized. And we need to install a shoe rack. Then it's just accessories -- wall decor and some new cute rugs. My favorite part!

I'm hoping we don't lose steam on this again...although I'm guessing it'll be a long time before the cabinet doors are done. But I'm okay if those take some time to get done, since we've never made them before, so it's a big learning curve. I don't mind taking the time to get them done right.

Entryway evolution, part two

Hi all! Any of you in the middle of this crazy blizzard like we are? It's still snowing, and we've already gotten more than two feet! It's by far the most snow I've ever seen in my life...totally crazy.

Colby is loving it, though!

I'm back with part two of our entryway redo. We left off here:

I forgot to mention in my last post that I also had to paint the ceiling, since we took down walls and had to patch drywall. We also got a new light fixture from Lowe's. This semi-flush mount was only about $100. I love it!

This is the only picture I have of the old light, from back before we even bought our house. The new one is big improvement!

So now we had a nice big, open space in dire need of some storage. Obviously, we wanted a place to hang coats and store shoes, but we also had an opportunity for some additional storage in this space. I was picturing some open storage with cute baskets, like this:

Source: bhg.com via Mindy on Pinterest

But the hubs was envisioning some cabinets for closed storage. In the end, he won me over, and we came up with a plan for a floor-to-ceiling pantry and a row of cabinets along the ceiling, with coat and shoe storage underneath -- similar to this:

Source: bhg.com via Mindy on Pinterest

We were hoping to find some off-the-shelf cabinets that we could make work for our plan, but our space is odd-shaped, so that was out. We needed to do something custom, but the price of custom cabinets was out of our budget. Handy hubs to the rescue again!

With his dad's help, he designed and built custom cabinets to fit our space. He made them out of birch plywood, with face frames made out of maple.

To make them safe and secure, he installed them onto strips of wood screwed into the wall studs.

Once the cabinets were installed, I was up again, paint brush in hand. I primed them with some Zinsser B-I-N and painted them with semi-gloss white latex paint by Behr. It took a few coats to cover them. To get a smooth finish, I used some Floetrol to extend the drying time.

I painted the cabinets before they were installed, and I didn't paint the face frames, because we wanted to fill the cracks to make them look like one piece.

A simple wooden rod installed under the cabinets serves as a coat rack.

With the cabinets in place, it was time to tackle the floor. As I mentioned, we had to tear out the old floor because we removed walls, leaving gaps in the tile, and we could find anything to match it. I was kind of sad to tear out the old tile -- it wasn't my favorite, but it was slate, so it felt kind of wrong. While some of it broke when we were taking it out, we were able to save a good amount, so hopefully we can reuse it somewhere else.

Not only did we have to tear up the tile, but then we had to rip up the plywood the tile was stuck to, since it was all covered in old thinset and super uneven. (Sorry I didn't get any photos of this process -- it was ugly and I just wanted it over!) There was a second layer of plywood under the first, leaving us with what you see above.

We decided to go with tile again in this space instead of hardwood since it would get exposed to a lot of moisture. But we had never done any kind of tile and were a little nervous about it. We also were looking for something we could do fast, since we were trying to get it done before winter came and we were trudging in with wet boots.

While perusing tile at Lowe's, I stumbled onto this:

Have you heard of it? It's called SnapStone, and it's porcelain tile with a rubber grid and plastic tabs attached to the bottom. You don't need to use thinset -- the tabs click together and hold the floor in place. It's essentially a floating tile floor.

We did some research on it and decided to go with it. It sounded easy to use and fast to install. It's a little more expensive than the cheaper regular tile, but we didn't need to do a very big space, so it wasn't too bad. We picked a 12-inch tile in a color called Camel (it looks like it's no longer available). They come in boxes of five for $30, and we had to special order it through Lowe's. We bought a total of 13 boxes to make sure we had enough in case we broke some or made mistakes (and we did!), and we had one box left to spare when it was all over.

Before the tile went down, the hubs installed some luan -- a thin type of plywood that was just the right thickness to get the tile even with the hardwood in the kitchen. Then, we plotted out how we wanted to lay  the floor. I swear this took longer than the actual labor. We wanted to make sure the design looked right and that we ended up with as few little pieces on the edges as possible. We ultimately decided to go with an offset pattern running from the front door into the kitchen...does that make sense? Maybe this photo will help:

I installed the tile while the hubs did the cutting on the end pieces. I'll have another post on the details of installing the tile, so for now I'll just say that it wasn't as easy as the installation videos made it look, but overall it was fairly simple and I'd definitely use it again.

We finished the installation in a day -- and next time we use them it would take even less time, since we know how it goes.

Now it was time to grout. Because it's a floating floor that will expand and contract, you have to use a flexible grout that they make specifically for SnapStone. There are a few color choices -- we chose Mushroom. We picked up two buckets at Lowe's but only needed one in the end.

The grouting went very fast -- I did it in a couple hours.

You aren't supposed to grout around the wall -- you're supposed to leave it open, or use a silicon caulk if you have a high-moisture area (like a bathroom). We left it open around the walls, since the baseboards will cover the gap.

We used caulk between the tiles and the two doors, since there's no trim to cover the space -- they make a caulk that matches the SnapStone grout. The silicon cracked when it dried, so we need to add another layer on top.

I was sad to tear out the slate, but now I'm not missing it at all -- I love this floor! I love the variation in the colors and the warm hue.

After the floor was finished, we added shelving to the cabinets. Since our cabinets are a custom width, that also meant custom shelves. The hubs made these out of birch plywood and trimmed the fronts with pine trim. I primed and painted them like I did the cabinets.

Meanwhile, I was also busy planning out what to do in the corner where the small closet was. I really, really love entryways with benches. They're a place to sit to put on your shoes, to toss your purse when you get home -- and they're also totally cute, right?

We decided not to go the custom route this time -- luckily I found lots of benches that would fit nearly perfectly on this wall. I picked up this one from Target:

I was happy to get my open storage and baskets! I totally have a thing for baskets -- they're like everywhere in my house. The hubs thinks it's weird... :)

To give this bench a custom look and jazz it up a bit, I decided to recover the cushion in some fabric I had on hand. I'd bought it because I loved it but wasn't sure what to do with it. The colors went great in the entryway!

I am not a good sewer, and I kind of made up making a new cover. It's definitely not pretty -- don't look too closely or you'll see all my mistakes! On the bench, though, you can't tell. I didn't make the cover removable -- I just used no-sew fabric tape to seal the back edge together.

The Target cover came with Velcro pads on the bottom that stick to ones on the bench. I used a seam ripper to get them off the original cover and then handstitched them to my new cover. So cute!

So, here's where we are now!

In case you can't tell, I did not stage these cabinets -- this is really what they look like, full of tools and supplies to finish the job, plus some random baskets of mittens and scarves.

There's still lots to do in here. We need to install a permanent shoe rack -- it'll probably just be a shelf along the bottom with space for shoes above and below. The hubs is adding drawers to the bottom of the pantry cabinet, and he needs to make some doors.

I also need to paint the face frames and the doors, once they're made. We also need to trim out the gaps underneath the cabinets, and the base of the cabinet. The trim has been cut and primed, so now it needs to be installed, and then I'll paint it.

The trim around the doors and the baseboards need to get reinstalled and given a fresh coat of paint. And the outlet and light-switch covers need to go back on. And over the bench I have plans to make a cute shelf with hooks underneath. Something like this:

Source: gthegentleman.tumblr.com via Mindy on Pinterest

Lastly, we need some hooks near the door for keys, and I'd like to add a place to put mail too. I'm working on those details!

Let's put this all in a list, shall we?

Left to do:

• Install a shoe rack
• Build and install drawers
• Install and paint trim around cabinets
• Build and paint cabinet doors
• Replace trim around doors and baseboards, and paint
• Replace outlet covers
• Make shelf and install hooks over bench
• Make a key-and-mail holder

We're so close -- I can't wait to get this done! Even though it's not finished, I think I can finally call this a mudroom instead of an entryway -- it feels like a real room now.