House redo: the beginning

I have promised many people to provide some before & after updates on what we did to our home over the summer.  It quickly became all I did over the summer.  Things are now mostly complete, so here we go…How did all this begin?

It all started with our living room… after I put Sweet Girl to bed, Mr. B and I like to catch up with each other.  He prefers the couch in the living room, but I could never get comfortable there.  I prefer the bedroom, but there’s no place to sit except the bed, and he would fall asleep the second he lay down!

So we set about making changes.  We decided to flip our living room arrangement, moving the tv to the opposite wall, turning the couch around, etc.  We liked it so then we ordered a sectional and waited 12 weeks for it to come in. (Separate living room post coming soon.)

As soon as the sectional arrived, we realized it looked just plain awful with the wall color in our house.   We had been thinking of painting anyway, at least the living room.  Our house was a cappuccino brown, which I must have liked 5 years ago because our lights, fans, lamps, cabinets, etc. were all a dark wood espresso color. We wanted to lighten the space and make it feel much larger and airier.

So we began getting paint samples.  At one point, I think every wall in the front of the house was striped with various shades of white and gray.  It’s so difficult to tell what a color looks like when it’s next to another color!

We finally decided on Light Pewter by Benjamin Moore and we love it.  It provides a nice contrast with our newly painted white trim.  It’s light and fresh and soft.

Once I got a quote from our painter to do the kitchen, living room, entry, and hallway and it wasn’t too bad, I had him add the trim as well.  When we moved in and painted before, I really wanted white trim but the flippers we signed with just would not do it! They really thought off-white light switches and trim was best.

Along with the painting, I wanted to bring our house up to date furniture-wise with where we are in life right now.  I had lists of projects, which makes me nervous, so I got started right away.

The project list:

• Entry: new overhead fixture, repair broken latch on front door, furniture with drawers, mirror, move all photos to feature wall, modern decor, add lighting
• Kitchen: lighting, repair drawer slides, fix broken wine fridge, and several projects that didn’t happen
• Living room: new sofa, sofa pillows, end tables, lamps, lighting, console piece and decorate shelves
• Front bathroom: wallpaper, remove pocket door, style
• Office/craft room: more storage and create space
• Playroom: desk, place to display artwork, clean out and update
• SG’s room: new bed, paint fan, new bedding and drapes, paint
• Hall closet: reorganize, install wrapping station and tool storage
• Laundry room: light fixture, paint
• Master bedroom: bed, nightstands, dresser, chair, bench, lighting
• Master bath: sinks, granite, fixtures, mirrors, paint

I started pinning ideas, shopping, and ordering.  At one point, we came home from a trip in July to all these boxes! It got a little insane there for awhile.

Some projects got nixed; some others got added.  As I got to know my new handyman’s skills, we added all sorts of cool ideas.

I’m really happy with how it looks and feels.  I look forward to showing you everything I did, room by room, over the next few weeks, starting with the entry, where you would enter the home and see it for the first time.  Come on in!