office overhaul

Our office was purple and green, and it really needed a paint job, but we had already put all the things in there and the colors were d-a-r-k. I do not understand why they were those colors or why they were so dark. I polled Facebook & Instagram for paint colors for the walls, and we settled on Light French Gray by Sherwin Williams. It is perfect! It is just the light gray I was aiming for. Our kitchen cabinets are an Olympic color called Dogwood Blossom, so I opted to match our upstairs built-in shelving to that. I value consistency in paint colors in a house (each room in my house is a different shade of beige.  Each one. Different.), so this seemed like a reasonable idea which paid off, because choosing between shades of white sounds pointless.

Here are my super-fun taken-on-my-iPhone before photos:

After much taping, priming, painting, and more painting, we finally had a room we would really love.

Here is a grand tour of our office with the updated colors:

this is a very clean version of Austin's
desk. this is not my desk.

I do claim that desk!
{what do you do with a glider you don't use?}

found this gem today at Kirkland's for $15!

a look at our brackets. we love the flexibility.

pair of curtains ordered from Kirkland's
for $25

we made our giant ruler go to seven feet
instead of 6!

I used to walk in this room and just think of all the work it would one day need - almost every time. And now I get to relax and enjoy it. This is a room Austin works and plays (computer games) in, where I spend time with the Lord and where we get general home chores done. I wrap gifts and make crafts in here as well. It's been a huge change since the room was painted. The room has come together with new accent pieces - frames, wall decor, and shelf decor.

So happy to be done... or mostly done. We have doorknobs coming in this week!

xo,

Elizabeth

{house 2} Home Tour

This is super brief, but I spent all of naptime tidying up for these pictures. Sometimes it's just hard to get the ball rolling and clean up after a weekend trip.

Ethan's room pictures will be added later as he was asleep during all of these so I couldn't get in there! He has a huge room with a sink area between his room and the shared bath (hollywood style).

Welcome!

half bath off entryway

Our very gated stairs

Formal living with view of gameroom
(up) and dining

Dining room: table to come

Kitchen & breakfast nook
with table I refinished

Master bed

Master bath

Upstairs game room

Shared upstairs bath (another vanity is in
Ethan's room)

Upstairs hallway: large closet, bath,
Ethan's room, Hannah's room, and
an office around the corner on the left.

Sneak peak of Hannah's room

My new vinyl print! I love it.

Austin's (messy!) desk nook

Purple shelves and green walls (why?)

xo,

UPDATE:

Here are Ethan's room pictures!

Haynes home #2!

We took shifts at the new house today. Austin ripped out some floors this morning, so new ones can go in this week. 

Austin bought a pry bar to get the boards up. And we didn't rip out perfectly good floors! We visited the house two times after deciding to buy it (went twice for that, too) and the longer we were there, the more we realized the serverity of the buckling, bowing, creaking and water damage (dishwasher issue, we think). We realized they weren't genuine hard wood floors, so they couldn't be refinished. We actually think they're original to the 22-year-old house so they've seen a lot of wear. Austin doing all this manual labor saved us $700 on the floor install, however, we still have to work out logistics on getting it removed from the house. We also need a rotting swingset removed if anyone has tips on that!

I went in for the paint in the afternoon. There is so much green in this house! There's also a green room with purple shelves (that's so 90s, y'all). This is how our game room used to look:

I am not into accent walls - personal preference. This one was really bright and  one of the first things you see from the front door. I started by taping it off & cutting in on the edges with primer:

Then I painted one coat of primer. I just needed to cover that green, since going from darker or brighter colors to another color can be really difficult.

Without primer, I would've have to paint a lot more coats of the mocha color. This way, I actually got away with one coat of primer, and not quite two coats of mocha. 

I followed the primer with more cutting in with the mocha color, followed by rolling in the middle. Cutting in can be a painstaking task, but it really saves some time in the long run as you're less likely to mess up your edges. 

BOOM!

I also riddled our home of some woodland animals in Ethan's room (much to Austin's chagrin):

Sayonara, suckers. 

Around this point, I realized I couldn't find the matching paint for this room, but I knew this was a possibility all along. I chose to prime the animals because I will eventually either successfully match this paint color, or I will (sigh....) paint Ethan's entire room. Ugh. I'm pretty determined to match that darn color. And while I made jokes about ridding my house of the creatures, I ultimately made the decision to remove them because Ethan's decor is nautical, and I would rather spend a few bucks on paint than have to toss what I have for him already.

Tomorrow morning, the movers come! It's going to be a crazy place for about 3 days, what with sticky floors and a generally non-child-friendly environment, but come Wednesday we should have beautiful engineered hickory floors with rustic details. (Eeek!) Next week we might look a little more like a home!

Stay tuned...

xo,