2 Years In

Happy Memorial Day everyone!!  This year not only does the 2 year anniversary of us being in our new house fall at the same time, but also the 6 month anniversary of Eaphis being at his new job which = a more flexible work schedule and more time spent with us ---- so it feels like a great time to take a look back at how far we've come before we move forward (and a good excuse to give everything a spring cleaning).  So without futher ado, here is a little before and after of the house (and us) two years ago and today!  I've been doing some smaller projects here and there while finishing up the looonnnnnngggg journey to get the floors done so I'll share those along the way.  This is a wordy post so feel free to just scroll through the pics and ignore my rambling if that's your style - I don't mind!  

Kitchen

I feel like holding a Photo Hunt contest for these pics of the kitchen - there are so many small but great changes we've made to not only make it look awesome but also make it super functional!  I just put the backsplash in a few weeks ago, and we added the under cabinet lighting right before that - so pretty and shiny!  

I don't think I ever shared a pic of our "Command Center" which resides right between the kitchen and the dining room.  It holds our schedule for the week, upcoming big events, grocery lists, and Eaphis just hooked up his new Amazon Echo....I'm not sure if I like it or I'm terrified it's going to kill me one day.

Morning Room

Happy to report the table is holding up very well and serving us well not only for meal time, but craft time / hot wheel time / work time..........check out the details of my first big building project here

Living Room

So clearly my will to cleanup died in this room - as you can see not all that much has changed but now that the floors are done we have some big plans for the next year - hopefully in the year 3 update all those toys will have a nice hidden home

Powder Room

Ahhh - that's better..............check out how the Powder Room came together here

MudRoom

The mudroom is like my Moby Dick - I just can't seem to finish it.  But it has everything we need to function right now so slow and steady seems to be working

 

One of the first projects I ever took on was to turn the coat closet off the mud room into a toy closet.  As you can see, we definitely put this thing to use!

Hallways

 

The best view of how long the house looks with the new floors is down the two hallways.  I also don't think I ever shared any pics of my pantry hallway - I used magnetic knife racks and hooks from Ikea to turn this little passage into my own hidden spice cabinet.

Dining Room

Again, not any huge changes in here, but we did hang up my wonderful light fixture from West Elm (super discounted because a sales associate broke one of the glass jars) and added some antiques that I've been collecting

Front Room

Besides changing up the furniture and bringing my favorite antique table up from Florida, Eaphis bought me this awesome butterfly print for XMas and I used a technique from my girl Joanne Gaines to make the hanger

Front Door

Since I walk past the front door of our house 100x's a day to get upstairs, I love that this little corner makes me smile every time I walk past it!  There have been quite a lot of small projects in here recently - I built the coat rack in the corner, painted the front door, made the wooden picture frame (where I can swap out pictures and quotes through the year), hung our new pet antelope, and added this awesome brass floating frame from my mom (I used a leftover drawer pull to hang it - Eaphis literally just noticed that little detail yesterday for the first time LOL)

Loft

The loft has come together great and serve the exact purpose we were hoping - a 2nd living space upstairs where we can lounge, work, and let the boys play - thanks to adding our leaning shelves from Crate and Barrel and two chaises from Ikea.  It's hard to tell but we're also about 75% done painting in here - baby steps right?

Guest Room

Ummm yeah, still a hot mess

Master Bedroom

Wow - I really didn't realize how far this room has come until comparing these pictures!  Goes to show how far switching out a few things (trim, floor, paint) can transform a space!  I also gave in and bought blinds....and I have to admit I love them and Eaphis was totally right about buying them for the whole house.

Master Bathroom

Not much to report that I didn't include in my last post - Check out the details on our first two rounds of bathroom updates here and here

Guest Bathroom

A little bit more lived in, but holding up great and we all still love it!  If you want all of the nitty gritty of how I re-did this space you can find it all in the archives and check out the final reveal here. Two additions - 1) I added crown molding which I didn't get to earlier  2) Made my own Restoration Hardware inspired Eye Chart...Blake loves to test his eye site before bathtime.  Guess I'll know when it's time for glasses!

Grayson / Blake's Rooms

So - now we've come to the moving forward part of this post.........the next rooms up in my master plan are the boys room.  We will be moving both of them into Grayson's current room (as you can see, it's much darker and smaller so perfect for a bedroom) and Blake's room will become a dedicated playroom (again, as you can see much brighter and bigger, and besides the tiny little bed it's basically a playroom already).  I've already started to paint, move things around, built a desk out of two Ikea cabinets, and my dad just stopped by on Friday to hang the ceiling fan....the next step in my plan is pretty big so I will post a much bigger "Phase 1" post then and let you know what's up next.  My goal is to have the bedroom part of this project done by Blake's birthday so need to keep the DIY train going!

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So phew....that's it!  I hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane with me.....I actually remembered some things I had forgot!  Oh, and if you're social media inclined, you can follow me on Twitter at @lindseyjoy_diy  Full disclosure, I am not the biggest fan of Twitter but I do find it's a good place to share progress photos before I have time to write a full blog post, and to cyber stalk my HGTV crushes : )  So until next time - enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend and the start to your summer!

Grown Up Bathroom Phase 2 - How to Build Pipe Shelves

While Eaphis and the boys were having some good father-son time at the 76er's game yesterday, I decided to tackle an easy project in the master bathroom and put up the over the toilet shelves in our master bathroom.  I had been collecting stuff to fill up these bad boys for a few weeks so I've been patiently waiting to put it all together.

I usually don't write up step-by-step blogs but I've gotten a few questions from people about the pipe shelves that I built in the boys bathroom so thought what the heck, let's change it up a bit.  So following is a semi-detailed description of how to go about making your own pipe shelves - I started these yesterday afternoon and finished hanging them this morning so this really is a super quick project.

I like to draw up little sketches before I start so I have an idea of what I'll eventually be putting on the shelves and can make sure they're wide enough to hold everything.  In this instance, the widest thing I had was the toilet paper holder which juuuusssttttt fit on the wood I found in the construction site which was one long 2x9 board, perfect for some nice chunky shelves.

Because this wood was so thick, I used my table saw to cut it down into 4 - 30" boards and then set up outside to start staining. (Adding a note from a smart friend who is adept at home improvement:  Be careful cross cutting wood, particularly thick dimensional lumber, on a table saw. There's a big potential of nasty kickback.  Much safer to use a hand held circular saw or a miter saw.)

For this project I used the same process I used on my dining room table to get a nice dark and weathered look, which involves doing one coat of dark wood stain, then sanding to distress, and following up with a coat of gray stain.  If you're just planning on a solid color I would suggest sanding beforehand to get rid of any rough edges.

Once I'm done staining I go over with one coat of polyurethane.  This is my favorite kind to use because it dries very fast, doesn't leave a shiny coat, and can be cleaned up with water. 

While these were drying I ran out to Home Depot to pick up the pipe pieces.  For each shelf you will need two straight pieces that are long enough to hold your boards, two flanges, and two end caps. There are a few sizes to choose from, but I like the 3/4" size because it holds up good with the chunkier look.

At home, I assembled them together and than painted with Hammered Silver spray paint (after they dry I take them apart so I can install the flanges separately).  You can use any color you'd like (I used black in the boys bathroom) but the Hammered finish works great and gives you that worn in look.

Once dry enough to handle, I started hanging them.  I measure in the same distance from each side and then use my level to mark out the line for the top row of screws.

When I don't have studs to drill into I like to use self-drilling anchors.  I find that they hold up really well, especially with heavy things, and if you need to take them out for any reason they are much easier to remove than any other kind.  To use, you pre-drill small holes in your drywall, and then use a  screwdriver to drill in the anchors.  Once those are all in you can hang your flanges; make sure your screw-heads are large enough that they don't slip through the flange holes.

Once your flanges are up you can re-attach the pipes.  I check to make sure these are level before I put my shelves in so I can adjust accordingly, and then check again to be extra sure.

After I get the first one in, I measure out the distance to the ceiling and then divide by how many remaining shelves I have.

Lather, rinse, repeat - and you're done!  Then comes the fun part - decorating...............

I'm super happy with how these babies turned out - good luck if you decide to tackle your own set....I think you'll also be super happy if you do!