While all that was going on

A side project we had going with the same team doing our addition was to give our existing main floor rooms a facelift. Two small details on the main level had been ones on our to-do list for a while.

D has been bothered by the fact that a few rooms on the main floor of our house have crown molding, which he really likes, while others do not. We made sure we added it to the sunroom when we had that remodel done, and he wanted to add it to the rest of the rooms too. And now the work crew was already tasked with matching the baseboard, door and window trim for the addition--so why not throw some crown molding in, too.

And I have forever wanted the doors in our house to match. Most of the first floor doors were plain doors, while the upstairs doors (and, randomly, the two closets in the guest room) had panels in them. The plain doors were beat-up and generally unattractive, and I'd occasionally try to find a handyman (what is the gender-neutral term for this? handy person does NOT sound right. maybe just a general contractor?) to install some, after doing some research to learn that door installation was no easy feat and not something we wanted to tackle ourselves. So while they were ordering custom doors for the addition (pocket doors, in that case), we added this to the pile.

You can guess this added up to a very expensive and very expansive side quest.

The molding:

A few "before" and "after" pictures in the two rooms we decided to trim: the office and the guest room:

The crown molding was wide enough to interfere with our existing air vent (which, as a reminder, had been above a window but is now above the entry into the new addition) so they sort of carved out a little niche for it. I...don't love it. But I didn't have any better ideas and we certainly weren't about to cut the ceiling and move the vent an inch just for this. And honestly, I really never look up and see it.

Taking a closer look at the line where the ceiling meets the wall also made me hyper-aware that we didn't always do a great job with painting the edge. Yet another thing that crown molding solves (well at least if that crown molding is pre-painted).

Take a moment to admire all those corners!

More corners, no molding:

With molding!

To give you an idea of how very disruptive this felt, here's a "during" picture. You can see the lovely molding going up but also how all the furniture is in the middle of the floor covered in a tarp (at one point, I needed to get something in one of the dresser drawers, so that was fun).

In the end, we're very happy with the look. It makes the house feel more consistent across rooms. Much like with the doors, which now also all match. Onwards!

The new doors arrived, all custom ordered. And of course since we have an old house, each door had its own unique fit issues they had to deal with on-site. In total, we swapped out 6 doors (three doors off the hallway for the bathroom, guest bedroom, and office; the pantry closet; the bathroom closet; and the office closet). 

We got new doorknobs too, since the old ones weren't worth salvaging. Many had paint all over them and they felt light and cheap. We went with Schlage knobs, and the bedroom and bathroom ones have a lock on them. We have a few more to install, actually, in the doors that we did not replace. But that's a post for a different time.

Here's the teeny pantry door that is so narrow, it only became a three-panel door.

And here it is now! It's a heavier door (we didn't get fully solid doors, but we were upsold on a slightly heftier model from our original choice and we couldn't be happier--they're the perfect weight).

Here's the "before" view of our bathroom and office doors. You can see that they're not bad, but they are very plain. These doors were wood, so that was nice, but they were hollow and light and pretty beat-up. I felt that swapping them out was no huge loss to our home.

And here it is now. I think the panels look a lot better.

This picture above does depict how we did not quite get the right white. The white is Chantilly Lace, described as a "go-to" white, a decision supported by many blogs we had read in advance when trying to pick the best white for our addition trim (in semi-gloss) and hallway (no record of which finish we decided on and they didn't leave us extra, ugh). We were wary of "warm" white (whites with yellow undertones) since our home is all grays and blues. But yes, this white turned out to be quite white. TOO white. And yes, our new addition hallway is VERY bright. It showed us that most of the things we thought were white were actually white with yellow undertones. Oops. This is noticeable next to our IKEA liquor cabinets in the kitchen and in our main floor bathroom too. It's also doing our dingy towels no favors.

Nonetheless, we are happy with the result. The doors feel solid and look much better. The trim classes the house up a bit more. They had both been on our to-do list for a long time and we had just lacked the ability to find someone to do the upgrade. (Once we even came close, with a handshake deal that fell through.) So it feels good to have this done.

A tale of two bathrooms

To continue the tour of the new addition, it's on to the bathroom. Or bathrooms, as the case is here. Remember that in order to keep the window in our existing bathroom and avoid having to move our AC unit, we split the bathroom up so that there are rooms on both sides of the hallway. You can get an idea of that here in our last post from 2024, in the first picture. We used the same decor on both sides (tiles, paint, finishes and fixtures, etc.) so that they look like one coherent whole. Or that was the goal at least. You'll notice from that post that the pictures don't look all that different than they did just before we moved into the space--bathrooms don't require the kind of filling in that a bedroom does. But still, we've accessorized and made it our own.

Here's the view "from the toilet" of our....powder room? We don't really have names for these split rooms. It's the one with the toilet in it. Still loving the wallpaper a year later and thrilled that we were able to find something to put on the shelves (with them being exposed and in the room with the toilet, we didn't really want to store towels there, and open storage for toiletries would get messy, so we went with pure decor--two samovars and two Asian vases--that had been calling out for a nice place to live. And the color complimented the room perfectly).

We were able to use the curtains that had been in the office, so that was a good repurposing. And a year into our Toto Washlet I can say it was definitely worth the splurge.

I don't think I really need to explain what all the buttons do but let me tell you it is great. The only problem is that even with the lid closed, it definitely makes noise sometimes in the middle of the night randomly.

And sometimes, it makes noises not-so-randomly. The cats are fascinated with this toilet (especially in the dark when the two sets of lights both on the side and in the bowl are lit. I believe they think the toilet is trying to communicate with them. It definitely makes using the bathroom...interesting.

The other half of the bathroom also looks a lot like it did a year ago. We are still living with our mismatched chrome medicine cabinets because buying new doors was too expensive. I barely notice them. Mostly. The heated towel rack, the second of our three bathroom splurges, also has proven to be a great feature. Even in the summer, I like coming out to a slightly warmed towel (that then continues to heat and dry up after my shower). It's also amazing for drying handwashing laundry.

Inside the shower, it's spacious and the bench makes shaving easy. It's dark, because the light is controlled by the steam shower and therefore can only be turned on when the steam shower is on. If we had known that was how it was going to work, we would have demanded a different set-up. But we can drop the steam shower temperature to something like 55 degrees F so that it doesn't produce steam to get the light on when we need it. Annoying, but workable.

Here's a picture of the steam shower panel, and our third and final splurge. I am not using it this time of year, but I turned it on most showers in the winter to supplement the water temperature (which seems to cool dramatically in the pipes, despite our attempts to insulate them--a future project, I suppose).

And with that, our addition tour is over. Next time, we'll start showing off all the other many projects we've spent the year working on!

Closets with a view

Time for a tour of the "closet" hallway of our bedroom--we really don't know what to call this space. As a reminder, it's behind the wallpapered wall that our bed is on. The whole section is made up of IKEA PAX units built into the wall. There are four in total: three along the main wall (seen here) and then a fourth on the side (where I'm standing to take this picture).

We put a slim sofa table along the opposite wall (Yamazaki Home). It was smaller than we imagined it to be, but it works pretty well and is low enough that we can hang relatively long things from the hooks we installed along the top of the wall. Plus of course I have my original IKEA step stool (no longer available, sadly) to help me reach the higher shelves in the closet. All of it is in the light wood we're sticking to in our bedroom.

A lot of thought went into choosing the blinds for the two windows in here after, all the drama the last time we bought and installed blinds. In that effort, the trade-off between terrible and cheap-looking ones vs. those that cost a small fortune was....not ideal. This time, we found options that were pricy but not overly so (and ordered swatches and then waited for a sale), and we're quite happy with the outcome.
 

They are Bali Blinds roller shades in the black-out fabric named Silver Fox. Funny enough, that was the color I picked without any swatches in hand, and it remained my favorite after seeing about a dozen little squares. It looks sort of like a linen or slub cotton and does a good job of blocking light. The west side of the house doesn't get a ton during the morning, of course, but every bit helps when trying to sleep in on weekends.

Both pieces of furniture tucked in under the window are ones we bought down from upstairs (my jewelry chest and a dresser). I would love to replace that dresser with one that looks very similar but has more functional drawers--these are cheap and hard to open. I've been on the lookout for another maple or birch piece with similar height. The mirror was one I bought for the guest room a few years ago. I think at some point we will replace it with one that rests on the wall and takes up less space, but this fits the decor for now and I'm glad we've been able to make-do with so few new furniture purchases (for cost reasons as well as sustainability). The kids have been using the hallway area with the mirror at the end as a runway for trying out new fashion!

Here's a glimpse inside the PAX closets for an idea of how we're using all the organizational features in the system. We're using the hanging bar, stationary selves, pull-out drawers with both opaque and clear fronts, the pull-out shoe shelf and the pants bar (hard to see, but it's on the right above my shoes). They do certainly make it easy to cram a lot of things in there. And yes, for the record, I have PAX units and D has just one. But he's making it work.

And of course it's all by the light of this cute little chandelier (and some can lights, but that's boring). I had to add a little glamor

Next time, the bathrooms, which look remarkably like they did last July because, well, they're bathrooms and don't require much furnishing. But I'll show them off anyway before moving on to the projects we've been keeping busy with in the rest of the house.