2012 House Goals Revisited

I wrote a post earlier in the year about what house projects we're shooting for in 2012. After talking more about our priorities and what we think is realistic financially, Robert and I kind of refined the list over the past couple of weeks.

He kind of surprised me when he brought up painting the exterior of the house this year. I figured that would be something we'd do down the road (as getting a house our size professionally painted would probably cost around 2K--maybe a little less). But Robert had a different idea. He brought up the idea of painting the house ourselves and saving some major coin. I was definitely game. Our house is only one story and 1366 square feet, so painting it ourselves would be pretty manageable. Also, most of the exterior on the front of the house is brick, which we wouldn't be touching. All we need is a pressure washer, some paint, and a couple of cool, dry weekends to get it done (ah, it might be a little more complicated than that but that's the general gist). We figure we can save about $1500 or so if we do it DIY. I think getting some tester samples might be on the agenda for the weekend.

We also talked about a project that Robert has been thinking about since we move in--enclosing our car port and adding an electric door. This is our carport:

And this is the little room off the carport that houses our washing machine/bikes/gardening stuff/paint/lawnmower, etc, etc.

It's this long narrow room that's dismally laid out and jammed full of stuff, which is why I've been dreaming of putting a big old shed in the backyard to house some of our crap. But we're thinking enclosing the garage first might be a good step because

(a) once the carport is enclosed, we can securely store some stuff in there (like bikes and tools)
(b) we can assess how much junk we can fit into the garage and then make a decision about what size shed we might get (I'm thinkin' we'll still need a shed for the lawnmower and other odds and ends)
(c) it will reduce the amount of dirt that flows in from the yard and inevitably flows into the laundry area (gross)
(d) it just looks nice

So this year may turn out to be a year of exterior projects. Sorry, Mr. Sectional, you may have to wait for 2013.

Project Peek

1 wall:

plus 2 Ikea UNG DRILL mirrors:

plus 1 can of teal Valspar spray paint:

equals my next project. Stay tuned!

Dreaming of Sectionals

Ever since we moved into casa Schubach, I've dreamed of having a sectional to better fill our living room space (and to fill to task of allowing me and Roberto to both lie down while we watch TV at night). A little sofa history: our old sofa was perfect for our first apartment, but it looked dinky when we moved it into our new living room. I don't have an up-close-and-personal picture of it, but you can get an idea of what the living room looked like when we first moved in:

The sofa is over there in the bottom left corner—it was a three seater, sea foam blue kind of deal.

Then about five months ago (as we were winding down on the kitchen overhaul), my mom donated this lovely sofa (and armchair) to us:

She moved into a new place not too long ago and didn't have room for the set anymore. We happily accepted and craiglisted our old sofa/armchair. It's a great sofa--a good color and a little longer than our old one--but I'm still dreaming of someday having a sectional. When I first started looking around, I was drawn to a lot of Crate and Barrel styles, like the now defunct sidecar sectional:

But with sectional prices starting at 2K (and going way up from there), the Crate was just a bit too much for us. Then over the summer we were over at our friends' house admiring a new Macy's sofa they had recently purchased. Hmmm...I hadn't thought to look at Macy's for sectionals. So I started browsing around the Macy's site and found something that might just be perfect for us.

It's Macy's Milo sectional and its dimensions fit our living room just right. We actually went into our local Macy's over the holidays and did a little butt test--it passed Robert's comfort quota, which is sometimes tough to meet. In-stock colors for the Milo start at $1,999 but Macy's does a sale two or three times a year on its furniture. You can get the Milo for $1,499 when sales come around. Certainly not cheap, but not crazy for a quality piece of furniture we'll have for a long long time. We don't spend money we don't have, anyway, so the Milo will only come along when we've saved enough for it.

I just hope Macy's doesn't discontinue it by the time we're ready to buy (ahem if anyone out there from Macy's is reading this). We have some other things we need to save up for this year, like a new computer (the old Mac that Robert and I share is slowly disintegrating), so who knows when we'll be sectional buying ready.

A lady can dream, though...

Friends and Family Wall: Finally Up and Running

After some photo collecting, frame painting, and wall arranging, my friends and family wall is finally up. I got most of it done over Christmas and made some tweaks to it over the past couple weeks.

If you remember from my past post, I was kind of going for a look like this:

I didn't quite get the look I was going for--I think the yellow I chose for a couple of the frames might be a little too in-your-face. Oh well. As I look at them more and mull it over, I may end up doing some more spray painting.

A fun addition to the wall was this Christmas gift that my mom gave us:
 

I also hung up our parents' wedding photos a little further down the hallway:

I bought the frames from Ikea and Michael's and then spray painted away to get the colors I wanted. To get the arrangement I wanted for the main wall, I set the frames down on the non-printed side of a large piece of wrapping paper and outlined around each one with a pen. That way I had a "mock up" of how they would appear once they were hung. Then I held the wrapping paper up against the wall and moved it up and down till it was where I wanted. I centered and hammered the nails through the wall paper/into the wall and then pulled away the wall paper. Then the nails were right where I wanted and I could just hang the pictures. 

Love walking down the hall and seeing so many lovely faces on my wall!

New Threads in the House

When Robert and I started buying furniture together, I was all about dark espresso furniture that matched—I thought dark furniture was oh so sophisticated and that all the wood color in a room should be uniform. Fast forward to today and I'm all about mixing woods, textures, patterns, and colors in a room. But those dark pieces we bought were quality items (see our bedroom and dining room furniture), so we couldn't just chuck them and start over. So to add a little more interest and texture to those rooms with dark pieces, I've started incorporating fabrics with bold patterns and colors. I added this white and yellow chevron runner to our dining room table (it sits under the great turquoise planter I bought from Etsy):

I also plopped down a couple of white and blue ikat pillows on the chairs that flank the buffet.

Although I still have a couple more projects to do in the dining room (like hanging colorful syroco mirrors above the buffet and maybe adding some potted plants) these little changes make a difference.

 

 

We also recently bought some new threads for our bed. Our old duvet cover was getting pretty dingy, so we switched it out for this new one from West Elm. We got it on sale just before the holidays.

It's a little hard to see the pattern in the fabric in the above pic, so here's a close-up:

* I got the runner from this Etsy shop and the pillows from this one.

A Year of Projects

As 2012 comes rolling in, I thought I'd reflect on our 2011 projects and take a look at the things we got around to (and some of the things we didn't). I jokingly refer to 2011 as "the year of the kitchen" 'cause it feels like most of our time was consumed by demoing, dust, waiting for walls to get taken out, doing dishes in the bathtub, etc. But it was definitely all worth it—something we realized even more when we had friends over around the holidays. We could all stand around the open kitchen, cook, and talk without feeling claustrophobic. It was really great.

And we did manage to get some other projects in as kitchen progress was slowly commencing. We did some sprucing up around the yard, like fixing up our firepit area and relandscaping the bed at the front of the house.

We also got around to our mini office makeover as the kitchen craziness was coming to a close.

I managed to organize some of our closets (somewhat) but never got around to tackling our master closet—something that's still on the agenda. So what else is on the agenda for 2012? There are the smaller, more manageable projects that I'm pretty sure we'll get done over the next few months, like:

• purchasing some bar stools (still haven't done that)

• patching up the thresholds where the kitchen terrazzo meets the living room laminate

• finishing the rock garden project (Robert actually started working on framing out the bed last weekend)

Other things are long-term, big-ticket-purchase kinds of things that we'll have to feel out the timing for over the next couple of years, like:

• buying a comfy sectional that will better fit our living room area

• buying a comfy rug to go with the sectional

• buying a shed for the backyard (it will give us some badly needed storage—right now all of our yard/hardware/painting stuff is crammed in our laundry room off the carport)

• painting the exterior of the house

• replacing our very old windows with ones that are more energy efficient

So we shall see what we get to in 2012. I also did a few small projects over the holidays that I'll be sharing with you soon. Happy new year!

Office Makeover: Pretty Much There

You may remember that last spring I had talked about doing a little office makeover. I just wasn't loving the wall color in there anymore and Robert wanted to get a new desk. So I started slowly working on the room bit by bit.

First came the new desk. Then came the new paint. I had originally wanted to do a nice blue color in there but we never got around to picking one/deciding on one. We had quite a bit of edgecomb grey left over from our living room paint project (yes, we did actually paint that room--I was kind of waiting for all the kitchen craziness to settle down before I shared pictures with y'all) so we thought, what the hell, and carried that color over into the office.

After we finished painting, we rearranged the room a bit and brought in some floating shelves from Ikea. A little accessorizing and organizing made it feel like we were getting there. But before I show you the afters, you may want to take a walk down memory lane.

This is what the room looked like when we first saw the house:

This is what it looked like about four months later (in June 2009):

And this is it today:

(That beige chair actually doesn't live in the office. We moved it in there to make room for our Christmas tree)

There are still some things I'd like to do down the line, like add some curtains and a larger rug. But it is indeed feeling a little more inviting and user friendly in there.