My Kind of Valentines Day!

 

Happy Valentines day everyone!  Jon and I had our own little kids-free celebration yesterday (thanks mom and dad!) complete with chocolate, flowers, and a yummy late-night surf n turf dinner.  So waking up nice and refreshed today I charged ahead and finally finished putting up the rest of the trim on the first floor - huzzah!  So to top up a lovely weekend I thought I'd share a progress update while my valentines are enjoying some late afternoon naps.

 

I am SOOOOOOO in love with these floors!!! They make the whole house feel 100xs brighter and cleaner.  To be honest - before we did these floors I was actually really thinking that we made a mistake in the choices we made for the kitchen and went way too plain, but with the floors in I have done a complete 180 (thank god!!)

I also had similiar misgivings about the color that I chose for the kitchen table - was thinking that going dark was the wrong choice - but again the light wood contrast makes all the difference.

 

One of the most exciting things about crossing this massive progress off our list is that now I can start to check off so many building projects that are floating around in my brain - as soon as it warms up outside I'm going to start working on some built in cabinets on either side of the fireplace to hide everything kid related.

 

Looking down the hallway you can see all of the trimwork - by completely removing all of the old floor and trim, and evening out the subfloor, we were able to install the floor right up to the walls and then trim it out without having to install any shoe or cove molding.  The straight trim might not be everyone's taste - but we love it.  Simple, straight, and sooooooooooo much easier to clean than molding that has curves in it.  That is my ultimate goal for my house BTW - to make it as easy to clean as possible.

 

For anyone interested - the kind of floor that we installed was Pergo laminate called Riverbend Oak that we got from Home Depot.   We went with laminate for three main reasons - 1) It's super durable and easy to keep up which was crucial for us with two little boys and a dog, 2) I was able to find the exact look I wanted - large plank, light wood, and it's actually got texture to it so it doesn't look like cheap laminate up close at all (bonus, it hides dirt and dog hair really well), 3) We could install it ourselves. I have to take the time to give my wonderful husband a huge THANK YOU for all of the hard work that he put into tackling this project with me!  We installed floors in our townhouse when we put it on the market so we had a lot of knowledge in our back pockets (and much better tools this time around) but this was a really hard job and a 100% team effort. Thankfully I have the best partner in the world.

Since we've made our way into the front / dining room, I wanted to share two more things I checked off of my list recently:

1)  I finally got around to hanging the beautiful butterfly print that Eaphis bought me for my birthday.  This makes me so happy every time I look down my hallway : )  Thanks to Joanne Gaines for the "How To" on how to hang prints like this

2) I've avoided sharing one of the very first things that we added to the house - the light fixture in the dining room - we scored it at West Elm for 60% off, but only because a sales associate had broken one of the glass bulbs.  I finally got my butt around to tracking down the missing bulb and we were able to eat our Valentines night dinner under a fully functional light for the first time.

So now I've only got to fill in the holes, sand, caulk, and paint all of the trim....oh boy....well that will wait for another day - time for cheese and chocolate fondue!

Powder Room 2.0

One more room scratched off the list before the New Year!  I had finally had it with the Nutella smeared walls and slowly worked my way through the Powder Room between Thanksgiving and Christmas and am finally ready to share.  Since this wasn't such a huge job I decided not to post on each stage of the project but just share some of my favorite updates - so without further ado...

Thankfully Eaphis trusted that I had an end goal in mind because there were no examples that I could show him for what I was going for.  I knew I wanted a mix of hard/soft and wanted it to have a little something special to it because this is the bathroom in the house that everyone will see.....so I had my mind set on adding a pattern above the beadboard.  The last time we tried to put wallpaper in a bathroom it was a complete DISASTER so I did the next best thing and stenciled the walls.  I am obsessed with how it came out and am already looking for what else I can stencil!!!  If you like the look, go check out Royal Design Studios...they have so many amazing patterns to choose from.  One word of advice, make sure you read the tips and I totally recommend using the paint they suggest.  I used the Creme Stencil paint to get the translucent look, but am planning on trying out the Chalk Paint in another room...makes all the difference.

I ended up building pretty much everything for this room, including the mirror (which I finished with Chalk Paint), the Shelves, and the vanity.  If you're interested on any of these plans here are the links to the tutorials that I followed - Mirror / Shelves / Vanity

I tweaked the vanity from a nightstand and added a Vessel Sink from Ikea and a cool faucet that I picked up at Home Depot.  I had very specific things that I wanted and I managed to get them all by building it myself - open storage underneath the sink, a small drawer to store the boys toothbrushes (we keep one set downstairs because sometimes it's just easier!), and a towel bar on the front which I once again made out of pipes from the hardware store.  The fact that thing sits level, has a working drawer, and functional plumbing is honestly one of my proudest accomplishments!

Once the hard stuff was done I added some final touches including these beautiful antique bird prints, some monogram towels I picked up at Target, and a new tissue box cover with fabric from Ikea.

I love that this room is done and came together so well from all of these random ideas that I had.  I tried to tie it into the guest bathroom and I think I was able to accomplish that without making them too similiar.

Oh - and I have to give one big shout out to my dad for changing out the light fixture for me.  He is my go to for quick electric work that I'm still a little too timid to take on.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season and is looking forward to 2016 as much as I am.  Me and Eaphis already have a really big project ready to kickoff as soon as it arrives....all I'll say is that it's something I've wanted to do since we moved in and I CANNOT WAIT to get started.