yet more house tour: the upstairs

The second floor--well, technically the 1.5 floor according to our paperwork--has our most dramatic change (the master bedroom) and also our biggest future remodeling projects (spare bedroom and bathroom). For obvious reasons, i.e. embarrassment, the two unfinished rooms haven't featured very prominently yet on the blog. But here they are in our "tell-all" house tour.  First, the pretty stuff.

Here's the hallway, before. It's painted a pale yellow with white trim:

Lightening up the hallway from yellow to white and putting in a new ceiling lamp really brightened the space. The gray lower half helped connect the upper and lower floors. We also changed out the hardware on the handrail and all our doorknobs so they were all brushed nickel.

The only thing left to do? Hang more pictures! The hallway still feels very sterile, in all white with mostly empty walls.

Now my favorite room, the master bedroom. Here is the before picture, with little-boy-blue walls and yellowy-white alcoves.

And the same angle, after.

Here's the room again, from the inside, looking out into the hallway:

And here it is, when we got done with it. I just refinished that trunk and will hopefully feature it in a separate post soon.

So what needs doing? Well it looks pretty polished, but there's a surprisingly long list:

• Refinish the legs on the upholstered chair (in progress--I was planning to paint them white but it turns out there is light-colored wood under the red stain)
• Cut wood, paint, sand, and install the under-window shelf
• Install a shelf or buy a table that will fit under the other window, to hold the fan (and the cat, when the fan isn't needed)
• Solve my nightstand dilemma (I want something more substantial but the drawer under the bed makes it hard)
• Hang pictures (this is a common theme...)
• Hang hooks for our bathrobes on the wall (they're going to go on the wall with the shower plumbing, so we're a little nervous about it) and a hook in the closet
• Find a throw blanket that actually matches the room (that purple one is a place-holder to keep the cat's claws off our chair)

Next up, the upstairs bathroom. This is the "before" picture and there is no after. We've been having some fun with the toilet lately (also a a separate upcoming post) but otherwise are ignoring this room for a while longer while we do little things around the house. At least we finally put up curtains and a shower curtain. Even installed a nice new low-flow shower head. We do have to use the room occasionally when guests stay over.

The plan is to install a new sink unit and medicine cabinet and paint. With tiles that are off-white, beige, and pink, we don't know what kind of wall color to go with. We'd like something bold but might have to settle on something boring and neutral. Please give us your suggestions.

 

Finally the 4th bedroom. Right now it's a holding area for our unwanted furniture. And also a refinishing area for the chair, which was too big to easily get downstairs. So it's not usually this bad--the drop clothes are temporary.

This is the last room on the priority list for now. It's nice to have a junk room while we get the other rooms in order.

Thus ends the house tour! I might show off the garage later but that doesn't really count as "house" anyway. I hope you've enjoyed the tour as much as I have! It's nice to see how much we accomplished in just a year. I'll be updating these tour posts as I finish some of the to-do lists, so you can check back in and see if I'm making progress.

And while I've been indulging in September's flashback posts, we've been busy around the house and the yard. So October will be blogging catch-up month, where I get to show you all the things we've been doing now that the temperature has cooled off a bit.

the house tour: downstairs to the basement

There isn't much of a before and after for the basement. The basement just "is." We use the space but we haven't made much effort to improve it. That's mostly due to the fact that it was already much nicer than your average basement when we moved in. I have a few plans for how to organize the laundry area, but everything is functional now and so improvements here are a pretty low priority compared to the rest of the house. I present to you the finished half (2/3's?) of the basement:

Besides accumulating more exercise equipment (I could use some recommendations for a good, well-padded treadmill) and hanging some pictures on the wall, this is pretty much how it's going to stay. Oh, and when we eventually get a bigger TV for the living room, the upstairs TV will get demoted to the basement. I look forward to it!

Here's the unfinished basement and laundry room. It isn't pretty and I try to never come in barefoot (who knows what I'll step on?!) but it's all good.

We put bars on our windows (after repairing the glass, of course) and put up a lot of shelving. We also insulated the pipes, though we could still make improvements in that respect by sealing up a few holes where the pipes pass between rooms. The other side of the basement is our "bike shop" and paint storage area--the hanging bikes cover up the door to the crawl space.

And now a surprise! A room never before featured on our blog, mostly because I usually forget it exists. Our basement half-bath. In fact, we even forgot to count the window in there when we bought and installed our security bars. Oops! Anyway, that's on the to-do list. And at some point, the whole bathroom is going to have to get redone, but it's not even worth thinking about, since it's way way into the future. For now we just keep the door shut and remember to run water through the pipes about once a month.

So the basement to-do list is relatively short:

• buy a treadmill (that one doesn't even really count...)
• hang some pictures
• fill in some gaps where the pipes cross between rooms
• hang security bars in bathroom window

Next time: upstairs!

Happy Anniversary!

One year ago today, we were signing for our house and wondering what we were getting ourselves into. As I'm proving to myself by looking at all my before and after pictures, we haven't done too bad. This day also marks the day I can tell myself (and my parents, who were worried for me) that I made a good decision in not buying a one-year home warranty (I say, as I knock on wood, spit over my left shoulder, and click my heels).

More tour to come! I'm out of "after" photos and it's been too dark after work to take good pictures. But that's what the weekend is for.

more house tour: guest room, office, bathroom

More significant change as we make our way down the hall. I hope you're enjoying these posts as much as I am. I like an opportunity to show off!

The guest bedroom before, 3 walls in a dusty brick orange with yellow gold sponge paint (a bear to prime over!):

Same angle (more or less), after:

Ignore the fact that the wider angle automatically makes everything look bigger and more open. It really is nicer and not just a trick of photography!

Now the other wall, then:

And now:

(Our cat is very kind to model for you in all of these pictures.)

So in addition to reversing the accent wall scheme (they did 3 walls dark, one wall light, and we did the opposite and opened the room up enormously), we put up all new window treatments and (obviously) furniture. This is the room where we slept until early spring and now it is a lovely room for guests.

What still needs doing? Well, ideally we'll replace the ceiling light with a fan, but we're afraid we'll never get as lucky as we were upstairs to find a box already installed that is compatible. Oh, and remember this little incident? Yeah, so we never replaced that windowpane. It's still ugly and covered in tape. Fortunately, we have shades and curtains to help us forget. But at some point that will need fixing. But I think that's about it:

• Ceiling fan
• Replace windowpane 

Next, we move on to the office.
Here it is before:

And after:

I am so happy to have eliminated some yellow from our nearly-all-yellow house! This blue is such a nice color that at least 3 people have asked us for its name. We even gave my parents the rest of our sample paint, so they could try it at home. The chair was an exciting find for us too, at a consignment shop that sold it to us at at discount. Very mid-century-modern. Also among this guy's favorite places to sleep:

I'm so glad we finally hung some stuff on the wall too! I like a well-filled wall.

Left to do here? Let's go straight to the list:

• Curtains!
• Filing cabinet
• New ceiling lamp (the one from the guest bedroom, if we ever trade that out for the fan)

Finally bathroom before:

And after:

It's a shame the "before" picture does not capture the hideousness that was the old vanity light, before we put this one. We also installed some hardware, like for the hand towel and bathrobes. D even managed to reattach the towel rack, with my mom's help. Next up for this room? First step is to redo the shower stall ceiling, where the paint bubbled several months after we put it up, even though we followed all the steps about priming, sealing, etc. It still looks ok, but definitely has some bad texture. But we definitely don't feel like sanding and starting over, so at this rate, it might take a while--maybe until the upstairs bathroom (which we'd have to use for a while as the paint sets) is in better shape. I would also like to replace the medicine cabinet and the ceiling vent fan, but those sound intimidating. Finally, the walls are not sufficiently crowded for my liking.

• Sand, prime, and repaint shower stall ceiling
• Install new medicine cabinet
• Install new vent fan
• Hang pictures

And all throughout these rooms, our big pipe-dream project is to replace the windows to match the upstairs. However, that's waaaay down the road financially, especially because of the big (and expensive) picture-window in the living room.

Stay tuned! We still have the basement, upstairs, and garage to do.

the house tour continued: dining room, kitchen, and hallway

Continuing along on our before-and-after tour, here's the dining room, as seen from the kitchen, right when we moved in. Basically, an ugly old ceiling lamp and an empty room:

And now the after. The kitchen/dining room area is the only area where we liked the previous owners' choice in paint color (which is a problem, actually, since I can't seem to find extra in the garage and there are some spots that could really use a touch-up). So instead we decided to tamper with the light fixtures and buy lots of pretty furniture. You can't see it in these picture, but we also hung some lovely Roman shades (but you can see them here).

Nothing really significant needs doing in the dining room. We are going to hang one pair of photos that needs special mat board but those will be on the wall to the left that you can't see from this angle anyway. The wine rack, as much as I love it, has to get hidden in the basement eventually, because we just read that wine needs a much more constant temperature than we keep our house, so we are basically ruining our wine. Down to the consistently cool basement it goes...

The next two pictures, taken this week, are both sort of "befores" because we haven't actually done anything to the rooms since we moved in. First, the kitchen, which was one of the reasons we fell in love with the house to begin with. Not much needs doing here. Maybe one day we will replace the cheap vinyl floor with something to match the level of the super nice cabinetry and appliances.

Next, as a lead-in to the guest room, office, and bathroom featured in the next post, here is the main floor hallway:

It's kinda awful. We like the white painted knotty pine and so are very reluctant to create any holes in the wall to hang pictures. We'd really like to find a way to hang them without hardware. Some sort of wire with clips, like this system (sold online as a curtain rod but also marketed in stores as a way to hang pictures). But that still requires us to screw the lines into the wall. So any suggestions on how to put up pictures without damaging the walls?

Second, we want to buy a really really skinny table for the far end of the hallway (the end with the red dust buster and the cat). Ikea, as usual, sells almost, but not quite, what we want:

It's skinny and thanks to the fact that it has no back legs, is mounted flush to the wall to make it even skinnier. But it's a little cheap and plasticky. So we want basically this, done well.

And finally a new floor runner is a must. You can't tell from the picture but this is actually two rugs overlapping and it's annoying looking and easy to trip on.

So the list:

• Hang pictures, somehow (suggestions please!)
• Find a skinny table
• Find a new rug

Next time, we'll finish off the first floor.

A very good year--the house tour: living room

The cooling weather means that we've finally gotten up the energy to start working on the house again and have begun to clear ivy out the backyard. But I'll save those details for another post and instead look at all the things we've accomplished in the year that we've owned our house. For the next few posts in September, I'm going to give you a house tour of before and after pictures to show off how much we've done. It will also be a chance to talk about the things we still need to do (or buy), room by room, mostly for my own records. I might even remember to go back and cross out items on the list as I get to them this year. I don't think that will affect blog readers using an RSS feed, but holler if it does and I will stop revising posts.

And without further ado, let the tour begin:

One year ago (minus 10 days), when we invited you into our house, this would be the view that greeted you:

Here's what you would see today:

Pretty dramatic change! New color, a wall of books, and furniture. Now the other half of the living room. Then:

And now:

So what's left for the living room? Well, wall art, for sure. I have commitment issues every time we hang a nail, so I have to be really sure I like what I'm hanging. On the wall above the piano, we are going to install a photo ledge from Ikea.  That way we can easily change the pictures without changing the hardware. On the small wall to the right (between the doors to the dining room and hallway), I'd like to have an eclectic and crowded mix of frames. And the old wicker shelf thing from Target has to go. Hopefully to be replaced with something that matches better. D wants a small mid-century-modern-style chair, maybe in vinyl or steel to go right next to (or in place of) the standing lamp to the left of the piano, for putting shoes on and for more modular seating when we have parties. I'd like a new coffee table, too, since ours is too small for the seating area (and doesn't match, though theoretically I could try to refinish it). Finally, I need to finish up the curtains. The inner and outer curtains are still on one rod. We have to hang a second rod for the translucent white curtains and then I have to hem everything so they don't drag on the floor and block our heat.

Here's a recap in list form, so that I can strike through items as I make progress:

• Art over the piano (ledge is up and "placeholder" pictures are there until we frame something new)
• Art on the skinny wall
• Replace wicker shelves on the skinny wall
• Chair beside the piano
• New coffee table that matches the rest of the furniture
• Curtain hardware
• Hem curtains
• Oh, and buy a super absorbent door mat

This post is long enough, so I'll end the tour here for now. Stay tuned as we make our way through the house all month.