Cozy Master Bedroom

This room used to be Noah and Toby's room.  A few years ago we decided to move all three boys into the same bedroom and it made sense for them to be in the biggest room.   At first we moved into the other small bedroom, which used to be the nursery and this room was basically a storage shed.  But I cleaned it all out and slowly started making this room beautiful.  The nursery became the craft room and this room became...this:

The giant wave canvas is from Ikea.  I loved it from the moment I saw it and Geary bought it for me as an anniversary gift.  I love how outrageously over-scale it is for this room.  Somehow the hugeness of it makes the room feel bigger.   On my monitor, the colors of the pillow and curtain aren't showing up as vibrant as they are in real life.  They are closer to the bright aqua color of the center of the wave.

See how the left side of the bamboo shades have light shining through them?  That's because there really is a window behind the shades on that side.  The other side is just wall.  But I wanted to have the bed centered on the window so I made the window "bigger."  In real life, the light shining through isn't as noticeable.

The ceilings slant in this room and our old tall bed wouldn't have fit.  We sold the bed frame on Craigslist and then had our mattress and box spring on the floor while I figured out what kind of bed frame would work best.

I ended up building the bed frame and headboard myself.  Well, the bed frame was one that I found on Craiglist but by the time I was done customizing it, I may as well have built it myself.  I sawed the legs down to make the bed lower, reinforced the supports, created a new center beam, and replaced the platform bed slats.  And I painted it a deep, espresso brown.

The headboard is made from a thick sheet of plywood that I cut to fit inside the bed frame.  I covered the top part with a camping mattress.  Tip:  Buying a $20 camping mattress pad is much less expensive than purchasing the same amount of foam from a craft store.  Even with a 50% off coupon.  Then I covered the foam with a layer of batting and then a layer of natural cotton.  I covered my own buttons and tufted the headboard and it is very comfortable!  I chose to have the headboard inside the bed frame because I wanted it to overlap our mattress by a couple of inches.  I used to always lose my pillows in the small space between our bed and the wall and this ensures that that never happens.

I also made the faux capiz shell chandelier.  It's made from embroidery hoops and wax paper circles.  The method I used was to iron three sheets of wax paper together to the get the thickness I wanted.  Then I used a circle punch to cut out 87 million(ish) circles.  I sewed the circles together and glued them to the inside rims of embroidery hoops.  Then I hung them all up with fishing line.  All the paper is far away from the lightbulbs so no fire hazards here. 

It's a chandelier made out of garbage!  And I think it's beautiful.  The soft glow is perfect and the faux shells flutter and swing and I just love it.

This little dresser holds all my shoes.

It's actually this one from Ikea. But when I assembled it I had Geary cut the sides down to get rid of the open shelf on top.  I also bought different, shorter legs from Ikea and attached them with wood glue.  They don't really hold the unit up, it's screwed to the wall.

Here's the picture again so you don't have to scroll back up.  I drilled holes in the drawer fronts for beautiful turquoise pulls from Anthropologie.

Aren't they pretty with my vintage blue perfume jar?  That mirror was a hand-me-down from Emily.  It used to be green but I spray painted it white.  The color of the drawer pulls and perfume jar in this photo is what color the curtains and bed pillow are in real life.  

Here's what's reflected in the mirror.  Our wedding vows are superimposed over the photographs.  There is a full length mirror on the back of our door.  The paint color is a custom mix of a bunch of paint we had leftover from other projects.  At first I was annoyed that the sheen came out glossy, but now I really like it.  It reflects light and just kind of feels right for this beachy bedroom.

I made our nightstands out of those cheap little cubbie boxes you can find at big box store.  I removed the tops of the cubbies and replaced them with stained wood.  They are tiny and perfect for holding bronze pharmacy lamps and our alarm clocks.  And books, of course!

You can kind of see my rubbish bin in the bottom left corner.  It's just a regular plastic bin from Target that I covered with sisal rope.  Oh, and you can really see here how the chandelier is not centered over the bed.  Oh well, you can't win them all!

Our bedroom is tiny, but we love the coziness and the whole feel of the room.  It's peaceful and quiet but still vibrant and full of life.   And someday I'll get around to ironing my duvet cover.  Yeah...probably not!

Thanks for taking my little bedroom tour!  I hope you enjoyed it as much I have enjoyed putting this room together and that it was worth the wait.

Powder Room

This the first time I've shown the inside of our little powder room.   There are no before pictures.  Just imagine a tiny white room with an ugly pinkish tan trim and a dingy white vanity with black plastic handles and and a mirror so small you couldn't even see your whole face in it.  Yeah...it was bad.

When we first moved in I got rid of that mirror lickety-split.  And when I painted the main bathroom I also painted this one the same color.  I also painted the vanity the same dark espresso color as the cabinets in the main bathroom.  And then this bathroom sat for years looking slightly less ugly but it was still very neglected.

Replacing the flooring in the back hallway/laundry room area is really what started this little makeover.  For a long time I wanted to add floating shelves like they have in this image I pinned (sadly, it's one of those annoying pins that leads to nowhere.)

But our house is really old (1890) and nothing is square.  I mean nothing.  And I knew getting perfectly aligned floating shelves with no seams was beyond my capabilities.

I also had a ton of artwork just laying around since taking it down from from our Linh{art} gallery in the step down/hallway/nook/weird space when I painted stripes on those walls.  (Pictures still to come!)

So one day I just started hanging pictures.  I decided not to over think it and just starting filling in spaces.  Most of the paintings are from my children.  It just tickles them to see their artwork framed and hanging on our walls around the house.  The "love" is from the giant spool of thread I had in my craft room/jewelry studio.  And there are a few framed cards from Geary with love notes inside that I don't want to lose.

When I got near the bottom of the wall toward the toilet I kept thinking that the box of tissue on the tank was a real eyesore.  And then I remembered this amazing whale tissue box I had seen on etsy.

Whale Tissue Holder from shopSparklyPony

I loved everything about it.  Except for the price.  $40 for a tissue holder is way out of my budget.  But then I remembered that I have a husband who has developed the skill of making wooden boxes!  So I had Geary build me a box.  And then I turned that box into my own whale tissue holder.

It makes me happy.   I'm thinking we should make a few more.

This bathroom is super tiny, as I mentioned before.  It was really difficult to get pictures of the vanity/sink part of the room.  I ended up just sticking my arm in the bathroom with the camera in my hand pressed up against the wall and taking a bunch of shots and hoping they would turn out.  Here's what I got.

The painted vanity.  I need to touch up that one area right by the edge of the sink.  And then probably put some kind of protective coating over the paint.  Six years later...

I would also love to get a new faucet.  You can't really tell in the picture but this faucet is old and kind of rusty and the finish is chipped and cracked in a few places.

A pretty soap dispenser would be nice, too.

I found a mirror at Ikea in the As-Is section about five years ago. It's just been leaning against the wall behind the sink since then.  The plan was to frame that mirror and hang it up.  But let's just be honest, if that hasn't happened in the last five years it's probably never going to happen.  No adult can see their head in the mirror.  My friend, Katy, suggested that I write on the wall something like, "You look fine.  Nothing in your teeth."  My friend Micah suggested that I have a sign saying, "Maximum Occupancy: 12" somewhere in the bathroom.  I like both ideas. :)

So, I'm on the hunt for a cool mirror that already comes with hanging hardware.  And don't tell Geary, but I kind of want to paint this room again.  I like the paint color in the main bathroom but in here it reads a little more yellow and sometimes peach-ish.  But really, the mirror is the main thing.  Once that's up on the wall I can declare this room done.

Laundry Room Update

Last time you saw our laundry room (in May, 2011) it looked like this:

And the floor looked like this:

About a year after those pictures were taken, our washing machine, which was pretty old, gave a clunk and a cough and stopped working.  I called a repair man to describe what happened and he pronounced our old machine dead.

But you know how God provides!  My mom called to tell me that she could help me with buying a new set because my Papa's house was being sold and she would have some extra money.  Such a gift!  I had to wait a few weeks until the house was closed on but in that time I was able to do laundry in a couple different places:

1.  The Laundromat.  This place was awesome because I could get ALL the laundry done in less than 90 minutes.  And it all got put away right away, too.  It was also awesome because I was able to watch the Summer Olympics on the TVs there.  We don't have cable and watching events online didn't always work out the way we had hoped.   The only bummer was that it cost about $20 each week to do our laundry.

2.   Becky's House.  My BFF was really generous and would let Miles and I (and sometimes Toby) invade her house for hours at a time.   She fed us, pulled out awesome toys for the boys to play with and watched movies and chatted with me about nothing and everything all while I used her washer and dryer.  Those were some great days.

One day while I was perusing Craigslist I found and immediately fell in love with a set of Kenmore front loaders.  And...they were orange. Orange!  I know, I know, who in the world would want an orange washer and dryer.  ME!   They were actually up in Seattle and my mom and her friend, Sandy, rented a trailer to bring them down to me.  

Now I have to back up a little bit.  When we very first moved into this house our kitchen, bathrooms, hallway, and laundry all had this sheet vinyl flooring. 

It was fine.  Neutral, basic.  But we almost immediately ripped a hole in the vinyl when we were trying to move our refrigerator.  For a quick fix we cut out a piece of vinyl from underneath the dryer and used that the patch the hole in the middle of kitchen.

So, since we were moving out the washer and dryer anyway and had a chance put new flooring down while the space was empty, and since I found flooring that matched the laminate I had put in our living and dining rooms, and it was on sale for only 74 cents per square foot, we decided to just go for it.

While my mom and Sandy were driving down from Seattle I was ripping up the old vinyl and laying down the new stuff.  Sandy and my mom arrived just as I had finished laying a big enough section for the washer and dryer to sit on.  

I hooked up the new front loaders and they worked perfectly!  I could not be happier with my orange washer and dryer.  But I also wasn't thinking about them that much because I still had the entire kitchen to finish to flooring.  And when the floor was all in we loved it!  But it did make our kitchen feel kind of dark. So I repainted the kitchen.  And then I repainted our little step down hallway/nook/weird space.  I'll have to show you updated pictures of those spaces, too.  Here's one taken on the day I finished the kitchen floor, before the new paint.

Phew!  That was a crazy tangent.  Sometimes following home improvement stories is like trying to follow a path through a plate of spaghetti.  So, back to the laundry room.  The new orange appliances are front loaders and they are a little bit deeper than our old set.  So we decided to stack them (with a stacking kit made especially for that) and then I found these two large cabinets on Craigslist for a song!   So now our laundry room looks like this:

And I know what you're thinking.  "Jeana, why in the world would you make your laundry room uglier?" Well, it's because sometimes you have to tear down in order to rebuild.  And sometimes the middle of a project makes no sense.  And because even though the reality is kind of ugly now, I can see the potential for beauty in my head.  Here's the plan:

• Add trim to the cabinet doors and drawer faces to give them more style.
• Build a washer and dryer surround so the entire unit looks like one built-in.
• Paint the whole thing white.
• Add beautiful cabinet hardware.

I have a couple other projects that are a higher priority than this one but I am really looking forward to getting this one done.  I think it will look so nice and function so well for our family.

In the meantime, we are definitely enjoying how much wider the hallway seems now that it's not full of a washer and dryer and laundry shelf.  And I love that our dirty laundry is literally not out in the open anymore.   

Ooh, and sneak peek of the orange stripes in the step down/hallway/nook/weird space!  More pictures coming soon.  (And you should probably assume that by "soon" I mean in about two years.  Just kidding.  Not really.  It always takes me so much longer that I think it will to complete a project.  Sigh.)