Kitchen art

I have a slight obsession with chalkboards and chalkboard paint... it seems to be infiltrating my home and the kitchen is no exception! I had some 'artwork' in our breakfast nook that I wanted to update, so I grabbed my chalkboard paint and chalk and went to work.

Front yard updates

Now that we've had our trees pruned, the rest of the yard needed work. So much so that our HOA sent me a notice... *hangs head in shame* To be fair, the weather has been all over the place, so it has been hard to get out there and clean things up. But with the lovely weather we had yesterday, I knew I had to do something!

I (again) recruited my wonderful mother and we got to work.

Here are some before pictures...

Trees, trees, and more trees

There once was a house,
Covered with trees,
The owners would cringe,
At even the slightest breeze.

Concerned and hoping,
That limbs wouldn't crash down,
On their own house,
And others all around.

*Hold for applause or snaps*

Quick change

What to do with half a quart of leftover chalk paint? Find other things to paint!

These stools (from Target) needed something to help them pop a bit more. Jon and I don't use them very often, but they reside in our main living room, so I wanted to jazz them up a bit.

Spring green

In my never ending pursuit to find more projects to fill my time (so I don't have to do the baseboards), I added one more to the list. Our formal dining (right off the front entrance) was filled with my Grandma and Great Grandma's furniture. Good solid pieces, but they were all wood finished in the same honey tone. The room needed some color!

I recruited my mom and we got to it!

We decided to chalk paint my Grandma's hutch (with her approval of course!). If you aren't familiar with chalk paint, it is a great choice if you don't want to spend time sanding and priming. You can simply clean your piece and paint away! The only extra step is finishing it off with polyurethane or wax to seal in the paint.

Here is the hutch before, during the prep process...

Stripes!

After I finished the baseboards in the laundry room, I decided to add more to my list of things to do in that room! I've wanted to try to paint stripes but didn't want to commit to doing it in one of the more populated rooms. Since I'm the one who mainly uses this room, if I messed it up, I'd be the only one to really care!

Brand new shoes!

Well, not those kind of shoes... the molding type of shoe! Exciting, right? Right?!

Anyways, I am thrilled to finally start the process of adding finishing molding to our baseboards. Ever since we had our floors done (last May!) they've looked unfinished because there wasn't any quarter round or shoe molding. Most people probably wouldn't notice, but anywhere I look, I see too much space below the baseboards and it is starting to really bother me.

White box update

In our master bathroom, we have a separate, small room for our toilet. Before I made any updates, it was basically a white box.

After I had painted the main bathroom area, I decided to go ahead and tackle the toilet area as well. But, I wanted a slightly different, maybe more fun color. I chose Dancing Mist from Valspar - you can see the bathroom and toilet area paint colors together below. The master bath color is less gray in person, so they work really well together.

It's the little things...

Today, I decided to do a small update that I feel has a lot of impact on the outside of our home.

Our outdoor lighting fixtures were a mixed bag of rusty, faded brass...

...and a weird pinky bronze finish that got lost in our brick...

Upstairs construction

The title of this post is a little misleading. However, I did use a miter box, saw, drill, screws, wall anchors, a level, liquid nails, a hammer, and finishing nails - I consider that a construction project!

Upstairs we have a lot of built ins. There are two that caddy corner in the far corner of the room. The problem was that there was a hole (down to the floor) where the built ins met. Paul (one of our cats) loves to climb and regulary jumps onto the shelves, and has started to investigate the hole! I can't imagine the chaos that would ensue if he got stuck down there.

So, construction project!

Master bath | DONE!

I'm not a great photoblogger, so instead of showing multiple steps from start to finish, I just did a before and now an after on the master bathroom. Sorry!

This room has been a work in progress for at least 5 months, no joke. Most of the reason it took so long is because I only worked on it on Saturdays and then got tired and stopped. However, now that I have more time to work on home projects, this was the first room to tackle.

Here are the steps I took to finish this almost never-ending project...

Something I should have posted a while ago...

We made a major update to our home in December. The exterior trim needed to be updated - it was blue, peeling, needed repair, etc. Here are two before pictures...

Master bath | Part One of ?

I'm finally starting to work on some lingering house projects - first up, the master bathroom. This room had wallpaper (surprise), and like the kitchen, some parts were glued right to the dry wall.

What a beautiful border! *sarcasm font*

I did a mix of removing wallpaper where water would get (near tub, shower, sinks), but decided to paint right over some of the other places, mostly out of laziness.