House Progress Update #4

Progress continues on The House!  We have been kind of going full speed ahead for a while but now that The Boyfriend is actually able to live in the house, we have slowed down a bit.  In part, because we have finished A LOT of work, but also because we are a bit tired (Haha) we took things a little easy last week.  Most of the stuff we did was touch ups and other visually unimpressive things so I decided to wait until this week to post an update.  This week, I was out of town visiting my sister and her family in Arizona, so most of the credit for the progress shown, will be owed to The Boyfriend and his family.

Living Room:
Before I left for my trip, The Boyfriend finished painting the living room. We chose Behr "Window Pane" for this room.

 

Its obviously a pretty light color to begin with.  We have affectionately dubbed this room "The optical illusion room". 

 

 

Its hard to tell with the lovely temporary wrapping paper window treatments, if this phenomenon will continue, or if its just oddly colored light that's causing the illusion. (We have discovered that even just the paper we used to cover the floors has been reflecting oddly onto our wall colors) When the sun comes in through the front of the house, the walls facing the windows appear white, while the rest of the walls look like the actual color.  Once the sun passes, it all appears colored.  Sort of amusing.  None the less, we like the color and are moving forward on progress in here.

 

*Before*

 

*After*



The Kitchen:
While The Boyfriend painted the living room, I did touch ups on the kitchen walls and cabinets. (Totally unimpressive!) While I was out of town, The Boyfriend assembled his baking rack to go along the kitchen wall. 

He hung the other pots and pans rack we had and put away most of his kitchen things. AND....

The fridge has been moved in and is no longer living in the master bedroom!! The Boyfriend also picked out new switch plates for everything since the old ones were damaged. We chose Hampton Bay covers in a beige stone.

 So, the kitchen is just about done and functional! Yay!! To celebrate, The Boyfriend used one of his new stock pots and made some home made chicken stock. Can't you smell the deliciousness just looking at this savory shot?! Mmmmm!

 

 

The Laundry Room:

Nothing really exciting going on in here yet.  Last week, I painted the cabinet/pantry in here.  We grabbed a quart of Behr Semi-gloss in "Club soda" for this piece. We thought it went really nicely with the walls in here.

 

 

The Hallway:



While I was away this week, The Boyfriend and his buddy finished the patching and repairs on the baseboard areas and repainted on the Ralph Lauren texture coat.  Then, they painted the entire hallway in Behr "Club soda" (same color as the laundry room cabinet)

 

*Before*

*After*

 

The Office & The Sewing Room:

Last, but certainly NOT least, The Boyfriend got the stain put on the hardwood floors in the office and sewing room while I was away!!

 



It looks SOOOOO good!!! Here you can see the contrast from pre-stained to stained.

 

He used two coats of Varathane water based stain in "Honey Maple".

 



Next step is to apply the finish. Once these two rooms are done, He will move into the hallway and living room to stain and finish the floors in there.

Exciting stuff ahead! Stay tuned!

House Progress Update #3

We seem to be just breezing right through the progress lately (Thanks to LOTS of help!) and it is already time for yet another progress update. This week, mostly consisted of painting!

The Office:
The middle room/office got its top half colored this week. The Boyfriend chose Behr "Celery ice" (yes, apparently we like the colors that include celery in the name) to round out his office colors.

It looks pretty darn good I think.

*Before*

 

 *After*

We used the Behr Marque paint in the house.  Its The Home Depot's new top of the line paint that's supposed to have Uber great coverage and won't fade.  Its also supposed to be very washable. We have been super impressed with the coverage alone so far with these paints. We are pretty happy we chose this paint so far.

The Sewing Room:
The sewing room/front room got a coat of new color this week as well.  The Boyfriend let me choose the color for this room. (I enlisted his help however) I knew that I wanted a grey of some sort in here. Since eventually, I will be doing a lot of sewing and color coordinating in here, I wanted to be sure to pick a color that wouldn't tint or alter my light and reflect differently on the fabrics I choose.  So, I decided on Behr "Subtle touch".

Its just enough grey to not be white.

*Before*

 

 *After*

I'm really happy with it and cannot believe how well it covered that red! There will be lots more projects in this room as we go. I can't wait!

The Laundry Room:
This room also got its color coat this week. We chose Behr "Tropical tide".

The Boyfriend originally wanted this color in the living room, but due to the brightness of the kitchen, we ended up deciding to use it in the laundry room instead. I think it looks great in here!

*Before*

 

 *After*

The Bathroom:
Since the bathroom is a room that is actually being used right now, we have not done a ton of work in here yet.  We did, however, give the bathroom ceiling its color coat while we had out the semi gloss ceiling color.

Super exciting, I know.  I mentioned before but we chose Behr "Beach white" for all the ceilings in the house.

 

I think its a nice color and not too white. It goes really well with all of our other colors.  The Boyfriend has also had his eye on a different over-the-toilet  cabinet unit for in here and so this week, he tore down the old unit.  The wall will need a little patching but then we will be ready to put up the color in here too.

 



The Living Room:
We are still working on evening out the messed up Ralph Lauren texture coat at the bottoms of these walls from when we tore of the baseboards, so it still does not have any color.  The ceiling, however, has been painted in our house-wide ceiling color.

I am REALLY loving this ceiling color! I know, its JUST a ceiling color and who's gonna look at it right? But seriously, this color just looks great! It makes it look refined and finished and I just love it!

The Kitchen:
I have saved the best for last this week.  Our friend came back over this week with her paint sprayer and sprayed the outsides of all the cabinet doors for us.  After they dried (which was about 2 seconds later in the California heat) I flipped them all over and gave them a coat with a foam roller on the flat backsides.  The cabinet doors were ready to be hung!

I put a second coat on the drawer faces and we put the drawer pulls on and put the drawers back into their spots.

I love how cheery the yellow looks as its all coming together! Its so cute!

Then, came the moment of truth! I was very nervous about the kitchen wall color and how it would look in here.  The color itself is actually quite pretty, but I was concerned it would be too loud in this space. The Boyfriend chose Behr "Sea life" for the kitchen walls.

The Boyfriend kept assuring me that it would look fantastic, but I was not convinced. Well, we put it up on the walls and......

OK, I DON'T hate it! Hahaha! It DOES look very cheerful and nice! The Boyfriend was right after all! (Did you hear that Love? I said you were right! hahaha)

*Before*

 

 *After*

Just look at how much brighter and cheerier it looks in there now! I love it, I do! Good choice on The Boyfriend's part I say.

Well, that's about it for now. Hope you are enjoying all the updates as much as we are! The progress continues daily so stay tuned for more! Until next time....

House Progress Update #2

Well, another week has passed since the progress in my last update post and further progress has been made on the house.  This week, in particular, was very exciting because we are starting to get to more visually productive progress.  Its really getting exciting and rewarding after all of the hard work everyone has been doing!

To start with, we took advantage of the labor day rebate deal that Home Depot was having and bought 90% of the paint we needed for the house.

Deciding paint colors for an entire interior of a house is pretty hard!  Especially when dealing with boys! Hahaha! If its not a "comic book" color or a primary color, they don't like it.  I'm exaggerating slightly, but after some compromise on both our parts, we came up with our colors. YAY! (I will go into more details on the colors as we go.)

The Kitchen:
While the others were priming and prepping other rooms, I spent most of my week in the kitchen.  I started by removing all of the doors and drawers.

Neither of us were particularly fond of this color wood and the cabinet doors had a fair amount of wear and tear on them.  Since the cabinets were hollow and we couldn't really sand and re stain them, we decided to paint them. We plan to eventually fully remodel the kitchen, but for now, its functional and just in need of a face lift.  I drew a little "map" and numbered all of the door and their hardware in numbered baggies so we can get them all back in place properly.

Once those were all down, I primed all the cabinet interiors.

Our fantastic friend came by the next day with her paint sprayer and got all of the insides of the cabinets done.  We chose Behr "Celery Sprig" for the interior cabinet color.

The Boyfriend loves to cook and feels so at ease in the kitchen.  He really wanted this room in particular to be a bright and happy feeling space.  This color really brightens up the insides of the cabinets,will make things easy to see and adds a nice pop of color. 

While she sprayed the insides of the cabinets, I primed all the cabinet doors and the drawers outside.

Luckily, the drawers dried so quickly in the heat that she was also able to spray the insides of the drawers also.

The next day, I painted all of the faces of the cabinets and drawers in Behr "Wild bamboo". I was not convinced of this color just from the paint sample, but its really growing on me now.

Its a little on the bright side. The Boyfriend has decided to start calling the kitchen "Caribbean" themed. Wait until we get the wall color up! Haha

Living Room:
Not much new in here, except that the living room is now fully primed!

                                                                          *before*



 

 

                                                                            *after*

HUGE thank you to The Boyfriend's parents, sister and buddy for helping so much with washing down walls. priming and painting! You guys are FANTASTIC and have been such great help!

Sewing Room:
Not much new here either, but its fully primered as well!

                                                                         *before*

                                                                         *after*

Middle Room/Office:
This room has also been primered. The Boyfriend's Mom spent forever chipping away at the gross stick on tile that used to be on the floor in the closet of that room.  It was super stubborn in coming off the floor AND it was super hot in the closet! But, she chipped away at it inch by inch until it was done. What a trooper!!

 

The Boyfriend also painted the ceiling in our house wide ceiling color, Behr "Beach white".

 

The office has a chair molding which he taped off for now.  While the ceiling dried, he worked on painting the bottom section of the room. He chose Behr "Amazon Moss" for the bottom half.

The Hallway:
The Boyfriend's Dad has been an amazing helper as well and has been particularly awesome at patching our holes and making sure they are smooth and ready for priming.  This has been no small task in this house!  When pulling off the baseboards in the living room and hallway, we discovered the previous homeowners had used a fancy Ralph Lauren texture paint.  The paint peeled in thick layers along the length of the walls and left some pretty major divets in walls.  In a few places it peeled up the walls in large chunks like a sunburn peel.

We will eventually be covering these spots with new texture and then paint. (sigh, what a pain....but more on that later) BUT The  Boyfriend's Dad has been the master at getting these holes prepped and sanded.  Thanks to his and The Boyfriend's  buddy's efforts, the hallway is now fully patched and primed!

Yards:
While working on the house, we have been spending a little time on the yards.  I'm not sure what kind of grass the yards have, but its longer, fuller grass.  The boyfriend has been getting some tips from the neighbors and put down some miracle grow for lawns to some of the patchy areas.

The Boyfriend's maternal Grandfather passed away many years ago and he is fondly remembered by the family.  I am told that The Boyfriend is very much like him.  He had a strong liking for Hummingbirds and The Boyfriend's family keeps lots of hummingbird memorabilia around.  We discovered quite a few hummingbirds flitting around the yard.  I purchased a couple of feeders on my way over the other day and The Boyfriend hung them in the yard.  Hopefully, we will attract some little friend soon. Stay tuned for more updates!!