A La Entry

I wrote a post a few months ago about our entry stairs when Dave refinished them.  Apparently, we love spontaneous stair projects.  At our friend's house one night (after several glasses of wine), we helped them rip carpet off of their front hall stairs.  After a few hours of pulling staples, some minor cuts and just a few nicks in the stairs, it looked pretty good.  I'm not sure how thrilled they were the next morning.  Anyhooters, my sister and I painted our foyer and upstairs hallway soon after moved in.  Like most of the palette in this house when we bought it, the foyer was in the depressing brown category.  They left a few hooks that I spray painted black and they look fab.  Before;

 

You can see the dark red paint and original wood trim in the living room to the right.  So many changes!  I also found a bench at a garage sale, spray painted it black and recovered it.  It's still one of my favorite finds.

 

Stairway wall space is intimidating.  We don't have kids school pictures to frame and an entire wall dedicated to Bruno would be a little much.  Dave and I were walking around the Antique Mall and we noticed some sepia-toned, vintage photographs and decided to make a little project out of it.  While we realize that it's a little out there to frame and display pictures of perfect strangers, we figured we can replace these with our children's photographs someday.  Here are some prep pics and the after;

 

  

 

  

  

  

I bought a few rolls of that pink ribbon so that we can carry this idea into the upstairs hallway.  

The Loo

I'm full of pictures and posts this week!  I'm going to break the bathroom update into several posts because it's going to take several weeks...maybe months.  The bathroom was the most updated room in the house, which put it firmly last on our list of to-do's.  Now that we've cruised through most of our house projects, I'm ready to take this beast on.  The former homeowner, let's call him Hank, really gets my proverbial goat.  He should have just left the house the way he found it so that we wouldn't have to go back and fix his nasty choices.  Exhibit A:

 

Hank thought it would be super sweet to frame the mirror with individually laid glass tiles in a variety of sea foam colors.  I admire his creativity, as you all know we're taking creative liberties with our home that we will most definitely regret some day.  Did he have to lay them individually?  Mesh backed tiles weren't invented three years ago?  To repeat myself from yesterday's post, the only thing I know how to do are demo and paint.  So I thought I'd grab a wonderbar and a hammer while Dave was out running errands and get after that tile.  It took me about an hour to get half of the tiles chipped off and it was hard work (for me).

 

At this point, I'm feeling really good about myself.  No pain, no gain...blah blah blah.  Dave comes home just after I snap this picture and asks if he can help.  I thought it would be some great bonding time...until it took him (literally) 45 seconds to demolish the rest of the tiles.

He put the claw part of his hammer at the top of the tile and dragged down bringing every single stinking tile with it.   I knew this was going to happen, too. After watching my dad and uncle tear down our kitchen wall in five minutes with brute force, I figured there had to be a better, albeit messier, way to do this.  I tried hammering the tiles and was afraid I was going to put a hole through the wall.  My mistake.  The good news is that now the tile is done and we have a big mirror from our last place to rest there until it can be filled and patched.  Here is a little preview of the rest of the bathroom;

 

  

We have high hopes for this bathroom...things like Moroccan stencils, gray wainscoting, Anthropologie fixtures and an enclosed linen closet made from our old kitchen cabinets.  So red, hot and green!

Weekend Project

In blog world, I'm led to believe that people knock out demolitions, renovations and furniture construction in one weekend.  I've come to believe that this is a lie.  Dave spearheads most of our projects and it can make me feel a little disconnected from the "fun" of our home improvements.  One fine Sunday about four weeks ago, Dave decided to take a nap in the basement.  This may be the first nap he's taken since we moved into the house.  I took it as my cue to pick up a powerdrill and demo our pantry, which happens to be located at the top of the basement staircase.  We can delve into my motivations to do so at a later date in time.  Here is the before of our pantry.  The previous homeowner had yellow doors with green flowers on it, which we removed within a few weeks of moving in.

 

It's a pretty sorry excuse for a pantry.  Here is mid-demo;

 

The former homeowner had a really sharp eye for color.  I think everyone loves the look of their food products set against lime green.  Mmm.

It's important to note that this took me all of 45 minutes.  After the demo was done, so was I.  The truth of the matter is that the only thing I know how to do is demo and paint.  I'm slowly learning, but the only way to really accomplish that is to take on a project all by myself....with the good and the bad.  But why (and the better question is how) can I do that when Dave can do everything?  So Dave was reluctantly drawn into the pantry project.  He had the genius idea of building boxes on casters for garbage and recycling that can be tucked away so that we don't have to see them.  

 

Here they are before being covered in wallpaper and trimmed out.  In the meantime, we'd each taken a crack at painting the pantry with chalkboard paint.  I've been wanting to paint a room black for awhile and the pantry is the only "room" that I was actually allowed to try it out on.  Here is the glorious after picture of the completed garbage/recycling bins and painted pantry;

 

So you may be wondering how the bins came to be covered in cow print wallpaper.  I'm obsessed with wallpaper...obsessed.  But it's very expensive and very intimidating.   I'm not even worried about the commitment of wallpaper and the nightmare that is removing wallpaper.  I'm afraid I couldn't hang the stuff correctly and that would be one, huge expensive mistake.  So I thought I'd buy a roll and try it out for the pantry project.   If you go to the website and take a look around, you'll notice all sorts of beautiful wallpapers.  I didn't want to pick anything with color because I thought it would clash with the food items on the shelves.  I do realize that choosing an animal print for a nook that houses things that we eat may have been in poor taste.  But I'm a carnivore and make no apologies :)  We went ahead and papered all of the shelves that I cut;

 

(I'm so serious when I'm sawing things.  Please take no notice of the fact that we're doing this in our basement.)

 

Right now you're probably thinking, whoaaaaa.  And not in a good way.  We had the same reaction.  So Dave decided to paint right over them and it's actually pretty cool.  You can see the cow print coming through, but it doesn't assault your sense of sight.  Here are the after shots;

 

 

Bruno is such a camera hog.  I prettied up the top shelf with some cake plates and I may take another picture because now these are really bothering me.  The moral of this story is that it didn't happen in a weekend, or even a month, but in blog world I could probably lie and get away with it. 

t-u-t-o-r

And a new Spelling Bee champ is crowned!  Bridget's triumphant rise to the throne marks the third Boland girl to get her name etched into the majestic St. Raphael School spelling bee plaque.  (I'm pretty sure my brothers dominated the geography bees, but they'll get their own moments in the sun.)   

Here is a quick pic that was snapped of Bridget and Mom enjoying the victory!

Go on girl and get that Regional title!