Renovation Lesson #106

I'm exhausted. We spent all day Saturday & Sunday working on the house and are back at it today. The living room is one coat of wax away from being ready and we're cranking the rest of the rooms out (well, except for the kitchens, that's gonna take a while).

One thing I've learned about myself is that I'm fairly ADD when it comes to projects. The other night while waiting for the ladder I decided that I should start stripping the wood in the front hall. So sure enough, I got some paint stripper and got to work.

It's a lot more work than I thought. Probably not worth doing but it looks terrible right now so I'll keep at it for the time being.

The front entrance isn't all bad, while stripping the wallpaper my mom uncovered this wonderful vintage wallpaper. We're guessing it's from the early 20th century & thinking it'll stay.

How did you spend your weekend?

Hip Happity Monday

Good Morning, darlings! How was your weekend?

Ours was good, very busy and fairly productive.

Remember our new friends M & M that I've gone on and on about?

Well, this week they got married in California. They invited us about a month ago and with the cost of flights and hotels we knew we wouldn't be able to go.

Then, last Monday Jus & I decided that we would drive 2100 miles to surprise our friends at their wedding. I packed, we made arrangements for the dogs and then we got to talking; about the mortgage payment, the fact we have a wedding this year, and the idea that this would have to take the place of our honeymoon, and we realized that sometimes it really sucks to be a grown up.

Then my parents got involved and offered to buy us plane tickets for our birthdays, we could stay with a friend and make the trip super cheap. But then our plans fell through and plane tickets skyrocketed.

I'll admit I was a little mopey about the situation until I came up with a great way that we could still surprise our friends. They recently bought their first house and have been working at making it their own, on the docket is redoing the kitchen and they hadn't had time to paint it yet. So Jus & I headed over to their place Saturday (luckily they had given me a key to get their mail) and painted. M & M had chosen the color so all we had to do was slap some paint on the walls but it was fun to know that we would surprise them.

M & M's kitchen mid painting

After we finished painting at their place we came home to paint our back hall. Way back in December Jus tore down the ugly wood panelling and last weekend he & his dad installed a new back door. We picked a color called "Lemon Pepper" and I'm not sure if I like it or hate it, but we're planning to add some cork tiles to break it up. I'll be sure to show you the finished product, but for now here's a picture of Jus painting up a storm.

Sunday we cleaned the house and saw "Inception" which I would highly highly recommend.

All in all I'd say it was a pretty good weekend, and just because you all seem to like weddings as much as I do here's a picture of M & M that our friend took right after they got hitched, don't they look happy?

Have a happy Monday lovebugs!

Happy Friday!

Are you as excited for the weekend as I am?

For some reason yesterday just really wore me down. I think it's that time of the year. I am so tired of winter. I want sunshine, and more importantly warmth, 40 is not warm, 80 is warm.

I'm also itching to do something fun around our house, lately, all I've been working on is wedding stuff, and while that's fun we haven't had any big projects in so long that I'm starting to get bored.

The first project we need to do is our back hall which still looks like it did two months ago.

If I had my druthers we'd wallpaper it will cork board. I think it would be tons of fun to have a place to stick all of the bits and pieces of our life. Unfortunately this stuff costs about a dollar and a half a square food and we need approximately 80 square feet. This is something I feel we need to correct ASAP.

The second project I'm dying to work on is a new headboard.

I'm not crazy about the wood paneling in our bedroom and tried to make a cool, graphic headboard but I'm really not crazy about the pipe cleaner flowers we have now. I'd love to have a sweet headboard made from plumbing pipes. Kind of a modern take on an iron headboard.

Lastly, something I've wanted to do for a long time is to paint the front hall with chevron stripes.

I am dying to paint the wooden panel doors white and think it would be awesome to add some pattern to the walls.

In reality, this weekend is pretty busy for us, we're moving a friend's home store, going to a wedding and trying to crank out some save the dates. Alas, maybe we can squeeze some home remodeling in in the down time.

What project are you dying to do?

New Year New Entryway

Our back hall still looks like this. Between getting engaged and Christmas we haven't been able to do anything so now that it's the new year I thought we'll start working on a new entrance.

I would love to use wallpaper in our entry. Since it's a small room it would be pretty reasonable to wallpaper it.

And there are so so many lovely wallpapers out there.

Farrow & Ball's Lotus Paper

Another Farrow & Ball paper Via

Makelike's Succulent Wallpaper

Elli Pop's Foxy Flowers

Adelphi Paper Hanging's West St. Mary's

Adelphi Paper Hanging's Ribbon Sprig

Anthropologie's Topsy-Turvy Wallpaper

Anthropologie's Dotswold Wallpaper

Marimekko's Joonas Black/White Wallpaper

Wingbud Wallpaper's Silbodal Wallpaper

So now my only question is can you wallpaper over a textured wall? I'm pretty sure the answer is no which is way too bad for me.

But I have an idea and so I might just have to do a little back entryway work.

I'm gonna be a little lonely this weekend, Jus is headed to Chicago with his brother. For Christmas I got them tickets to see Second City aso they could have some brotherly fun, Jus's little brother is still in high school and the two of them don't get to spend as much time together as they should.

I hope your weekend is great.

Throw a little party,

drink something with an umbrella in it,

and say a little F you to the cold winter weather.

A Good First Impression

One of the problems with owning an old house is that there are always projects. I imagine if Jus and I live in our house for twenty years we will get to the point where we will finally be done working on projects, but for the time being there is one project right after the next.
One project I've been dying to complete is tacking the back hall. Our back entry way is pretty terrible, when you walk in the back door the basement stairs are right in front of you and the doorway to the kitchen is to your left, this area is teeny tiny and somewhere along the way somebody decided to put some wood paneling up.*

While I was working Saturday I got a text from Jus saying that he was working on the entry way. I can't tell you how tickled I am that Jus decided to deal with said wood paneling and he even took some pictures so you could see his progress.

Halfway through...ugh, I can't tell you how terrible our hallway is.

All of the paneling is off now and the hallway looks a lot better and a million times bigger.

I am so excited that this project is started, now all we need is some paint and some hooks.

My Love for Today: Jus, who starts projects in the same way that I do.

My Happiness for Today: I know I said we weren't doing any wedding planning until after Christmas but we're too excited. I'm off to try on some wedding dresses today with my mom, Banan, Jus's mom, and my two aunts.

*Isn't it a little hard to believe how much paneling is in our house?