Category Archives: Bedroom

Wednesday Renovation Recap: So Many Stair Parts

May 15, 2013 – 10:00 am

Hey, friends! I have something to tell you before I delve into this renovation update. Here it goes.

I, Heather, am totally into the now-cancelled show Ready For Love. There, I said it. I’ve been watching the season on-demand since it’s been cancelled. I don’t even care that it’s like a jacked up version of the Bachelor without any roses, plus three bachelors and dating coaches. I also think the Rancic’s are a totally cute couple even though I literally know nothing about them outside an interview I saw and the fact I watched about four episodes of their reality show in a row one time. To be blunt, this show just makes me inexplicably happy due to the love factor and the hilarious awkward laugh factor. So the lesson is this, don’t question what makes you happy, even if it’s awesomely bad TV. I sort of wish it was going to have a second season.

Whew! I am so glad I got that off my chest. With that said, let’s get into the renovations! As you know we finished the living room and we’ve pretty much just been enjoying it since, with little work on the rest of the house. That doesn’t mean we’ve been sitting around though. We’ve been working on the garden (update to come next week!) as well. With all of the enjoying and planting going on it doesn’t mean we can stop working on the house for too long. With that said, we need to get these darn stair parts finished and out of the master bedroom so we can lay flooring and move up there already!

Over the last couple weeks or so I finished up the stair treads and finally was able to take them off the scaffolding and move them aside so I could start the balusters, trim and a few other boards.

Once the stair parts were moved out of the way, I used the scaffolding to set up all the other parts. You never quite realize how many stair parts there are until you’re prepping them all!

I think total, between the balusters, trim, risers and other wood parts Andy asked me to take care of, there were over 50 parts I was priming. Yep, you read right, priming. Believe it or not we do paint wood, just very selectively. All of this wood is poplar which was both free for us (sawed from our woods), but it’s not exactly the best wood to seal and let the natural shine through. I actually asked Andy to keep them natural but he really wanted them white. Truthfully, I’m okay either way. I’ve learned that Andy’s ideas are often beautiful. While he’s almost always against painting wood, he absolutely loves contrasting staircases that allow gorgeous wood to shine. By painting the “meh” poplar white, we will be able to showcase the walnut rails and the beech treads. Don’t expect to ever see white trim in our house though, you would be just as shocked as me.

With the stair parts finally primed, we’re ready to paint white! While we aren’t there yet, we will be soon. I’ll be picking up basic bright white eggshell paint this week. We’re going eggshell to allow the white parts to “sit back” from the glossy wood we’re trying to accentuate while still allowing the white parts to be easily cleaned. Update: I bought the paint and we’re going with satin since it has a soft sheen to it, and is easier to wipe down than eggshell. After researching it more I realized that eggshell was a pretty bad idea for high-traffic surfaces. We’re not painting the stair parts Dover White like the rest of the main downstairs area simply because it isn’t bright white. We really want it to be a classic white just in case we ever decide to repaint. The Dover White we have from Sherwin-Williams is a beautiful white but it does have a slightly yellow undertone, which we don’t want. It will also be best if we ever decide to change the wall colors, so we’re not left with a staircase with a slightly yellow undertone which could clash dependent on the color we re-paint. We’re certainly not intending to, but it’s a lot easier to repaint a wall than repaint stairs!

Balusters in process!

That’s all for now in the stairs department. With the treads and railings finally done, and all the other parts close, we’re still making progress.

Though, I do have to admit, it’s pretty hard to keep progress going when all you want to do is stay outside planting your garden until dusk and then sit in your living room you’ve been waiting years for. On and up though! Next milestone goal: Move into the new master bedroom!

xo,

Heather

Tags construction, custom, DIY, NBC, Ready for Love, renovations, Stairs, woodworking | Permalink | Comment (0)

Addition Bathroom Bedroom Homesteading House and Home LivingRoom The Dooryard

What Warms You Three Times, In Three Different Seasons?

April 6, 2013 – 10:55 pm

I just thought you should know that as I write this, Rosie is up on the pillow behind me with her face smushed against the side of my head, and Winnie is laying down my legs. I might be quite cramped at the moment but it’s pretty much the cutest cramped ever. Not to be mistaken with the cutest cramps ever. Those are never cute. Ever. This is not up for debate.

With your just-started-snorning-in-my-ear dog update complete, let’s discuss the riddle posed in the title to this post. What warms you three times, in three different seasons?

…..

Firewood! We got our 10 cord delivered (lasts for years) and Andy and Casey have been at work, among everything else, cutting and splitting it. Firewood warms you when you cut and split it in the spring, it warms you when you stack it in the summer, and it warms you when you burn it in the winter.

What also warms you up? Standing in the peak of a cathedral roof sealing beams. This is just one of the many things we’ve continued to work on over the last week. You knew we installed lights, and layed flooring, but I thought it would be nice to give you an update on where each item is as none of them really merit a full post of their own.

One of the things we’ve been working on this weekend is sealing the exposed beams in both of the upstairs bedrooms. We had already sanded them, but they needed to be sealed before we could lay flooring. We went with a satin water based sealant, and used two coats. It gave each beam a nice protection and brought out a little bit of color without going overboard. It was important for us to keep these as natural looking as possible to keep them light looking, or, as light as heavy wooden beams can look.

We still have to do the beams in the master bedroom, but I’ve included a picture so you can compare unsealed to sealed beams. As you can see in the photo above the beams have a slight sheen to them when they have a sealant on them, and are very dull when just bare wood (as in the master bedroom photo below).

The other updates include better quality photos of the lighting we installed, as well as one new light that we actually bought. We really broke the bank on it too, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The first light is the one in the upstairs extra bedroom. I really love the upper metal part, but will definitely be replacing the shade down the line. It’s not horrible, but it’s way too small for the room. Aside from the size, the style isn’t my cup of tea. It was free though, so I’m cool with it for a while.

The master bedroom light is still my favorite. While the post on lighting showed the upper part well, it didn’t really show the underside, so here you go. It’s just a unique light and I absolutely love the design of it.

We also have one more new light now in the stairwell. This is the light we actually bought, which is a big deal in it’s own right considering it’s the first light we’ve ever bought for the renovation. I should first say we looked at a lot of options. We had some criteria:

Can give off enough light to light the entire stairwell very well (how’s that use of the English language)
A little industrial or rustic looking without looking either too modern, or primitive country
Large enough for the space (16″+ in diameter)
Simple enough it’s not the focal point, but still looks good when focused on (we’re adding art to the walls eventually and I didn’t want too many competing items).

Andy and I both gravitated towards these industrial simple shop looking lights, but they were still fairly costly everywhere we saw—including one for over $300 dollars. Yikes! Large lights were straight up expensive and I was starting to get a little discouraged. Then one day when we were at Lowes looking for a simple flush-mount light for the living room we came across a simple industrial light for about $30.00. We decided to get one to see how it looked but unfortunately it was out of stock with no ETA on when it would be in. A little defeated but still optimistic I went home and found almost the exact same light, and a little larger, at Home Depot. I ran down the next day and picked one up and we never looked back.

It’s the best $30.00 in lighting I’ve ever spent. We honestly weren’t sure if we were going to keep it there at first but once it got put up we absolutely knew it was staying. We both love it.

Searching for lights and making decisions on the details has also made us realize our style as a couple a little more; and it turns out we seem to both really like an eclectic mix tied together with industrial/rustic pieces. Andy definitely still leans towards more masculine traditional pieces, while I lean towards lighter brighter cleaner lines. It seems like these two preferences has so far created a really cool balance between anchoring pieces and light pieces.

One of the best examples of this is our reclaimed flooring. While it’s both rustic and charming, the new finish we just put it on it made it very dark and masculine. It’s absolutely beautiful and shows the perfect mix between our two styles. When you last saw it, the flooring had just been laid and was lighter.

We knew we needed to somehow seal the floor so we tested a water based sealer, danish oil and tung oil on sample pieces. The water based sealer just wasn’t a great option to hold up on a floor, and the danish added an odd yellowish tint to the floor which we absolutely didn’t want. So we decided on the tung oil. It was natural and brought out the colors in the floor in the richest way.

Before we were able to get started Andy had to thoroughly clean the floor. Once that was done he sanded very rough spots, and planed down the high spots between boards so, “the baby won’t stub her little toes”. He was referring to the baby we not only don’t have, but aren’t even trying for yet. It was incredibly endearing my husbands mind was on the well being of our hopefully future child. Back off ladies, those overalls are mine.

Are you ready for the reveal? Keep in mind this is only one coat, and it was still soaking in when I took this photo. There will likely be at least two more coats going down.

In the words of Rick Savage, BOOM BAAAABBYYYYY (there has been far too many references to this in our house lately.)

Let me show you a progress photo which really shows how different the floor looks with tung oil.

Finally, the other big thing I wanted to show you was the reclaimed pine flooring in the stairwell. This flooring isn’t quite finished yet underneath of the stairs so it hasn’t been tung oiled yet, but it will be.

There has been quite a lot going on and the wheel keeps on moving: To get this addition “move in” ready, so we can rip apart the original house, we still need to:

Do two coats of sealant on the beams in the stairwell and in the master bedroom
Finish laying the reclaimed pine flooring in the stairwell
Finish applying the tung oil on the reclaimed pine flooring in both the living room and stairwell
Install the flooring in the three bedrooms
Install the stair treads, balusters and rails.
Apply a finish to the flooring in the three bedrooms
Do a second coat of paint in each bedroom
Paint the accent wall on the back of the stairwell
Put all the face plates on the switches and plugs
Install doors
Put the trim on the windows

There are other things we’ll need to do to “finish” the rooms, like get a real light (instead of a bulb) for the living room ceiling, install a shelving system in our bedroom, hang a rod or shelving system in each of the other bedrooms, install the wood stove in the living room, install the monitor heater in the living room, install a door to the storage space underneath of the stairs, and finally finish the bathroom in our bedroom which is still currently in disarray and will stay that way for a while (money speaks).

I’m pretty sure I missed things that need to be finished, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, here’s a peek at the two trims we’re looking at (the final choice will likely be the left trim), and the beech flooring for the rest of the house.

What have you guys been up to? Are you starting any outdoor activities? Have you been working on your house? Tell me about it!

xo,

Heather

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Addition Bedroom House and Home

I Saw The Light, And it Opened Up My Eyes, I Saw The Light

March 27, 2013 – 12:15 pm

Did you just flash back to the Ace of Base years? I did, almost constantly, while we were installing lights. I’m pretty sure those aren’t the lyrics but that’s what my brain kept singing over. and over. and over.

You’re welcome.

So first let me just say I just realized I haven’t posted since March 14th. I want you to know I am NOT going anywhere, nor did I realize it had been that long. I swore I wrote a post on the flooring we put down. Then I remembered I still had the photos to edit for the post, hence no post last week. Holla for being super organized at work and then losing my brain at home. Son of a bee sting.

So here’s what’s been going on in the last few weeks:

Andy milled two different trims for the windows and put them up so we could choose.
Andy has been milling our staircase parts and daaammmnn do they look good. Right now we’re doing a beech/walnut staircase with painted ballusters (the same Dover White as the living room and stairwell area).
We painted the stairwell area Dover White except for the accent wall, which will still likely be the sea salt color we used in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
We laid our reclaimed pine flooring. It was a process but very worth it.
We’re laying the same reclaimed pine flooring leading up to the new staircase.
We’re decided if there is enough pine flooring left (someday down the line) we’re going to build a farmers table we can put outside to have wonderful outdoor meals around with friends.
We wired!

The last point is what this entire blog post is about, though many of those other items will be getting their own post too. I promise. Not empty promise, real promise. So let’s delve into the electricity (but not literally). Heads up—my nice camera died so these are all iPhone pictures. Once again, you are welcome.

First, remember this:

Okay, maybe he’s referring to fallen electricity lines from the poles but a hot wire is a hot wire. Don’t touch that shiz unless you like being six feet under, or having tingly arms and legs and neurological problems for the rest of your life. Or just being zapped. It’s like touching an electrical containment fence for a cow times about a million, and a cow fence hurts. Don’t ask how I know. It has nothing to do enjoying a beverage or three at a relatives wedding and leaning on one without thinking.

In other words – keep the electricity off while you’re working with it. I joke around, but seriously. Also keep in mind while you’re reading this that I’m vague for a reason. Neither Andy are I are electricians. While Andy is more than capable of hooking up a light or switch, etc. we’re still not giving out electrical advice. Mistakes happen and I don’t want it to be from our words. Safety pep talk complete.

When Andy first wired our home and ran the wires to the panel, he made sure he marked each one so he knew exactly where they were coming from. This little detail made our most recent step infinitely easier. The first step was taking the wires for the two bedrooms and the stairwell and hooking them up to the panel.

Now, once you’ve seen one electrical switch/plug/light hookup you’ve sort of seen them all so let’s discuss how we did the hookup in our guest bedroom upstairs. To start this is a really tall ceiling so we had some high-rolling staging we were working on. Andy is not just balancing in an incredibly uncomfortable position in the photo below; he is firmly planted on two feet. I can promise you any man who would be balancing like that on a beam would not be non-chalantly putting together a light. So many jokes. I refrain.

Get ready to get your minds blown at how difficult this is.

1.) Determine light length, cut to length, splice cable, pull out wires and remove sheathing from tip of wires.

2.) Attach fixture to electrical box.

3.) Match up wires and put wire nuts on them. All nutted up? Tuck those wires up into the box. Don’t jam them in there, just tuck them in there. (So many bad bad jokes. Deep breath. Deep breath.)

4.) Screw the ceiling plate on. Or whatever that piece is called. Very technical.

ElectricalHookup (1) 5.) Admire!

Let’s discuss the elephant in the room, or rather the mouse if we’re making a size comparison to what I’m about to say. We knew when we started that this light is simply too small for this room. Scale wise it’s way off, but cost wise it was perfect. I.E. it was free. In fact, both bedroom lights I’ll be showing you were free. My husband is a master of salvaging items. I admit that while I like the upper part I’m a little “eh” about the actual shade. Hopefully down the line we can replace the shade with something larger and in charger. Much like Scott Baio.

There’s one other thing I’ll point out. Obviously those beams create crazy shadows. The shop light below them demonstrates this perfectly. I’d say this is the only disadvantage of having exposed beams, the crazy light situation. The light in each bedroom is centered, which means it hangs directly above a beam. This downside to this is crazy beam shadows everywhere, and the inability to hang a light too low. The positive side is that, uhm, the beams are still the focus? And it’s centered so it looks weighted correctly? Let’s go with those silver linings. Me being me, I would rather have my light centered and deal with beam shadows then have it off-centered and have it hang between two beams off kilter. If you are planning on having exposed beams, plan for this. Andy has been asking me if we should put up track lighting for months now and I am adament against it. After seeing the shadows for myself he said, “Are you ready for track lighting yet?” To which I squinted my eyes, looked around, and said “No!”.

Stubborn much?

Though we may do some sort of track lighting below the beams in the future the truth is we’re honestly lamp people. I much prefer lamp light to overhead light. We’ll play with that idea first and hopefully the combination of overhead light + lamp light will help. If not, maybe (a big maybe) I will consider track lighting. Knowing me, we’ll eventually do it and then I’ll be all “I LOVE THIS. WHY DIDN’T WE DO THIS EARLIER” to which Andy will be all *face-palm*.

It’s how we roll.

SO enough chatter, let’s discuss our master bedroom light which I adore beyond reason. Let me set this up by saying this light was salvaved from a house which was slated to be destroyed. This light would have been a casualty had we not saved it. Again, it was free. Sparing the uber informative and intellectually stimulating description of how to install a light above, let’s just look at the light.

ElectricalHookup (10) Ohhh no.

ElectricalHookup (9) Ohhh yes.

I love everything about you. (And you too, Andy. I love everything about you too.) This light is the bees knees to me. It’s the peanut butter to my jelly. It’s the jam to my ham. Wait, I don’t think that last one works…or maybe it does *contemplative thought of the day*. Whatever your favorite combination is, this is it to me. This light also casts these odd shadows all over the walls but I have to say I love it. No photo captures it properly so unfortunately I have nothing to show it. Maybe once my nice camera is recharged up I’ll be able to snag one, but for now, just trust me. I don’t know why I like it, but I do, and that’s all that matters.

I’ll be back in another post to show you, with proper photos, these lights again as well as our $30 staircase light.

We’re breaking the bank I tell you, breaking it. Though I’m pretty sure the banking system is already broken. On that note, I think it’s time for this blog post to be over. I refuse to segway into banking regulation discussions. Primarily because I would rather eat ham and jam.

Also because….boring.

How do you like that segway?

xo,

Heather

P.S. Thank you for tolerating my sub-par writing in this post and attrocious grammar/train-of-thought/segways. You’re all awesomesaucesome. Is that still a thing? Saying awesomesauce? I feel like it’s not. I also feel like it maybe never was really a thing to begin with. *contemplative thought of the day number two*.

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Addition Bedroom House and Home LivingRoom

Who Needs The Gym When You Can Paint

March 5, 2013 – 9:39 pm

I admit I haven’t been to the gym since November, and I just finished eating girl scout cookies. Judge away. So while I’ve been eating cookies and not exercising, I have been painting and I entirely forgot just how much exercise painting is. Or maybe it’s not and I’m that out of shape, but I felt it in my arms, shoulders, and abs. That said, I really should get back to the gym…juuuusstt after I finish this next cookie.

So while I wipe the crumbs off my keyboard let me tell you about this whole painting thing. Despite my ~~sarcastic~~ very serious blog post here on choosing a paint color, I have to say that once we chose the living room color the rest of the paint pallet for the house came together easily. I know the big thing in design are either these bright funky colors and patterns or very cottage like. I had to put aside all these design ideas all over blogs, tv, etc. and decide what I liked. What we liked. It came down to this: We both like color, but we both like muted color. The colors that we can easily change the decor and not have to repaint. The colors that will enhance the beautiful wood work and custom features in the house instead of compete with it. We also wanted to really stick to as few colors as possible. So our paint pallet for the house ended up being this:

All of the colors we chose were Sherwin-Williams. It’s our preference paint first because it’s good, but as mentioned a long time ago in a full disclosure we have access to it at an affordable price because of the industry my husband is in. Honestly though, I would likely buy it anyway even if we didn’t. I think everyone just has the paint they are comfortable with and for us it’s Sherwin-Williams. I also really love that the Promar-200 (contractor paint) is VOC free. It makes painting in the winter tolerable and dare I say, pleasurable?

The first area of painting was our living room, which is Dover White (SW 6385). It’s a white that is warm with slightly yellow undertones but barely so. We chose it because we decided to have a nice range of cool and warm colors throughout the house to keep it balanced. This color will also go throughout the entire open kitchen area once we renovate the original house, and is also in our staircase area primarily. It’s the “overall” color of the house I guess you could say.

As with most paint colors, it changes dependent on light and the area it’s in. The staircase showcases this well. On the underside it looks like a warm white, but on the flat wall without the direct light it looks more yellow. In the room just to the left of this staircase we decided to go with Realist Beige (SW 6078). It’s a beautiful warm light brown. I had always been against any color that said “beige” in it, but I’m really happy with this. Truth be told, if I hadn’t been trying to match the leftover Edgecomb Gray we had from a previous paint project (Benjamin Moore color, color matched to Behr paint) I wouldn’t have chosen it simply because I wouldn’t have been able to picture it on a wall and I would have had trouble with the name beige. Consider me a convert I guess because this color is truly beautiful on the wall.

The photo below shows the slight contrast between the Edgecomb Gray in the closet, and the Realist Beige on the walls. In natural light it’s almost a light brown with a grayish undertone but still warm, but when the artificial light hits it (like the photo of the swatch above) it becomes a beautifully warm brown. Either way it’s a really pretty satisfying color and most definitely the dark horse.

In the upstairs bedrooms we decided to go with cool tones, using a light gray for the master bedroom called Eider White (SW 7014). It’s similar to the Reflection color we used last year in the original part of the house right before our appraisal, but it’s a warmer gray. I always think of gray as being slightly cool no matter what but I guess it’s the warmer of the non-beige gray tones {I feel like I’m making no sense, but hopefully you get what I mean}. We originally were going to stick with Reflection but I decided I wanted a gray that was a little less blue so Eider White it was. I have yet to paint the master bedroom, but on the swatch and in the can it looks like the perfect gray. Cross your fingers!

For the last two areas of the addition we decided to use the same color, called Sea Salt (SW 6204). Andy mentioned wanting to do an accent color on the back wall of our tall staircase to give it a little dimension but we didn’t want something bold. As well, I really wanted a soft calming color in the other upstairs bedroom which will be the guest bedroom for now but eventually a nursery. We both thought it would work well to have these two areas be the same color and to help keep the two areas of the house cohesive and tied together.

This is without a doubt my favorite color of the bunch. I had been eying it for months and kept coming back to it. I showed my Mom and she laughed because it is apparently the same color she painted the downstairs of her house. This color has the most change between natural and artificial light going from an almost steely gray with very slight green undertones to a warmish blue-green (like the photos below). That description does it no justice but I highly recommend it. It’s gorgeous.

Overall we’re happy, but I’m also relieved I have a general paint pallet to go off of when we re-do the original house which takes some stress off. We may not use the exact colors here (except in the kitchen/open area which will be Dover White) but they will either be from the same pallets or complementary pallets.

As far as the addition goes here are the next steps:

Paint the master bedroom
Paint a second coat in the upstairs and downstairs bedrooms
Paint the stairwell
Finish the electrical hookups in the entire addition
Lay the flooring
Build the staircase including treads, posts, balusters, etc.
Sand the beams in the upstairs bedrooms
Seal the beams (we’re not painting or staining)
Trim the doors, windows and flooring out

Now, where are those cookies?

xo,

Heather

P.S. I have a Public Service Announcement: Eat the lemonade Girl Scout cookies you haven’t. If you’re as lemon flavor obsessed as I am, including fake lemon flavor (it’s a guilty pleasure), you will not regret it.

Tags color choice, muted, paint, sherwin-williams | Permalink | Comment (1)

Addition Bedroom House and Home

This One Time We Finished Drywalling And Primed Each Room And Then I Was All “Woah!” Like Joey Lawrence On That Show Blossom

February 25, 2013 – 9:25 pm

Remember when our upstairs was a hot mess (and this photo was after we had done some demo).

Then after we ripped it all apart, we put on an addition, and framed up two bedrooms?

Well, now, from the same view above it looks like this.

Wait for it.

Wwaiiittt for it.

SHA-BAM!

One of the things Andy did in this room, which I have to admit is super cute was build that nook above the closet. He built that specifically so one day we can put a ladder up there so our kids can have a fun nook to read/play in. I absolutely love it! Obviously we won’t allow that to happen for many many many many years, but the fact he even though of it was ridiculously heartening.

Okay, are you ready for the next mind blow? Our master bedroom!

Oh, but there’s more. It’s primed!

The hallway is all primed too!

I can’t believe the timeline it took to get the entire house drywalled and primed. We’re talking roughly 10 days. 10 days to drywall, tape, mud, sand, touch up, and clean up four bedrooms, two with cathedral ceilings, a downstairs nook/hallway and a huge tall hallway stairwell. Oh, and add in sanding 30 ends to 15 beams and then wrapping said 15 beams in plastic. Wait, then we had to do an initial priming of them, and then spray the ceiling paint.

It was done through help from my neighbors, and an incredible amount of hard work from my husband who spent every moment he wasn’t at work or sleeping covered head to toe in drywall dust. We are both so relieved it’s done.

Now it’s onto the fun part – PAINTING! Then we get to trim out the doors and windows and lay our flooring. Oh man. It’s *so hard* to believe we’re finally at that point from when we started this in June of 2012. We added about 1,000 square feet to our house in about 8 months, with no outside contractor.

As I told you once, I’m almost positive my husband was infused with mutant and ox DNA as a child.

So while we take a small break from the crazy whirlwind week that happened we’re going to go enjoy the fresh snowfall outside and make our final decisions on paint colors and then….then prep to rip apart the original house this spring potentially.

You didn’t really think we were done with the renovations yet, did you?

xo,

Heather

Tags drywall, drywall dust, exposed beams, nursery, renovation, trusses | Permalink | Comment (0)

Like A Cup Of Tea

Category Archives: Bedroom

Wednesday Renovation Recap: So Many Stair Parts

What Warms You Three Times, In Three Different Seasons?

I Saw The Light, And it Opened Up My Eyes, I Saw The Light

Who Needs The Gym When You Can Paint

This One Time We Finished Drywalling And Primed Each Room And Then I Was All “Woah!” Like Joey Lawrence On That Show Blossom

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