Project Recap

So I didn’t blog for almost three whole years. That’s sort of astounding to me, because it doesn't feel at all like it was that long. Time flies so amazingly fast. Obviously a lot happened personally, but we did do some tweaks to our house as well. Here’s what’s changed.

Please excuse the horrendous mish-mash of photos. I took some of these last night, while the kids slept. Others I grabbed off of Facebook from when we first completed different projects. It's really hard when the only time I have to work on this blog is when the kids are asleep!

Playroom

I didn't clean this up much. This is after the kids have gone to bed, but before spring decluttering.

The blue chair that we reupholstered here didn’t hold up to the cats or kids. We passed it along on Craigslist to someone who was very excited about revinyling it, and bought ourselves a chair from Ikea. That also isn’t holding up well to the cats.

We swapped out the homemade train table with a regular train table. It’s not that the homemade one wasn’t adorable or didn’t hold up, but it wasn’t big enough for the more elaborate tracks S wanted to make. So we got a larger surface that’s more conducive to playing, even if it’s not quite as cute.

We ditched the Ikea rug. M never liked it, and I finally had to admit he was right. It wasn’t good in the space for a variety of reasons.

We added more baskets and bins for storage, and a whole heck of a lot more toys.

Oh, we also swapped out the light fixture for a flush mount fixture, so M would stop banging his head into the chandelier. The chandelier moved to the kitchen.

Kitchen

We made one of our biggest improvements to the kitchen: we put in a back splash. Isn’t it gorgeous? I love the white subway tile so much. We went with an accent tile in the center as well, to harken back to our original concept for this kitchen - we’d always wanted black and white checked floors. I’m glad we went with the wood laminate instead, though, as I really think the black and white floors would be too busy and juvenile.

Oh, we also swapped out our old table for my inlaw’s oak pedestal table. I like the more solid feeling of it, although with a high chair it feels a little cramped in the breakfast nook.

Living room

Not much has changed here. A new lamp, new pillows, and a couple new throws have been added to the mix. I might swap out the fluffy white pillows and all the cable knits in the spring, though. These feel awfully wintry to me.

Instagram filters make even my living room look hipster.

I’m also attempting not to kill this adorable succulent.

Laundry Room

I never blogged about this laundry room before, but we got a new furnace! And it’s not avocado green! Spending such a huge chunk of change on something completely un-fun prompted us to try and organize the chaos in this yucky little room. We got some wire shelf organizers to corral cleaning products, some hooks to hang paper and plastic bags, the ironing board, and spring-hooks to hang up all the mops and brooms. 

Oh! And I also found a great idea on Pinterest. I hung up one of those cheap $1 plastic bag holders from Ikea on the wall and am using it to store wrapping paper. 

It's still not super pretty, but it is a little more organized and functional. I will blog about this room in more detail once I'm done fixing it up a bit. 

Organizing makes me want to clean!

This photo makes me want to get a cuter ironing
board cover, even though I never iron.

Hallway

My last post was about the gallery wall. We still love it, and still add to it often. Here’s what it looks like now.

On the other side of this narrow hall, we swapped out the bifold, dark wood doors, for a curtain. When we went to Ikea last week with this project in mind, I immediately began to scope out the white curtains. But M wanted something with color. I’ve been leaning more toward neutrals for a while now, but he still really likes bold color. So, on this one, I gave in. It’s growing on me.  Another post will outline this closet and what we’re using it for soon.

Boys’ Room

Obviously, our biggest change in this room is that we added another person! To accommodate him, we moved S to an Ikea Kura bed (that eventually both kids will sleep in) and turned the toddler bed back into a crib. 

Then, we took down the doors to their closet and made a little book nook and storage area. I seriously love it. I don’t know what it is about closet doors, but I don’t like them! Once I take the doors down to a closet, suddenly, the room opens up and things seem so much cleaner and easier to organize. The upper shelves are a great place to store bins of out of season clothes and S's outgrown clothes for M to grow into. And with the amount of books these two have, we needed an additional bookcase.

This photo is from before M arrived. We decided this arrangement of the crib didn't work. Updated photos when I have a moment when they are awake. 

Our Room

Perhaps this was one of our biggest changes? After a lot of back and forth, we finally decided to repaint the master bedroom. The orange just was not doing it for me anymore. I wanted something airier and lighter. I obsessed over this room on ApartmentTherapy for months, and grabbed a sample pot of the color featured, Benjamin Moore Harbor Gray. I put it on the walls, and it looked nothing at all like the photo. After grabbing billions of gray/blue paint chips, my friend pulled up the Benjamin Moore website and the AT inspiration photo side-by-side and in five minutes picked the perfect color: Benjamin Moore Iced Slate. I wanted something that was gray with a strong hint of blue, and this was perfect. In some light it is a true gray, in others very much a pale blue, and other times looks a little periwinkle. It looks fabulous with the white trim and cream comforter, curtains, and book wreath. The whole room is definitely more traditional and maybe even a little country, but it is soothing and more grown up, and I just love it.

Master Bathroom

Once we repainted the bedroom, I decided we needed to repaint the master bath to better coordinate. It was once painted a tan called “Puppy Paws.” Now it is painted Sherwin Williams “Sensible Hue.” If there’s a better metaphor for how my taste has grown up and calmed down since we first bought this condo in our mid-twenties, I’m not sure what it is. The Sensible Hue has a little more green added to it. I basically wanted the green counterpart to the blue bedroom - something gray with a hint of green. It’s a touch darker than I originally wanted, but I actually got this paint for $5 as a mistint, and the guy at Sherwin Williams was awesome, so I won’t complain. We also bought a framed mirror for this room, and we repainted the grout in our shower. This room looks way less builder basic than it did last year, and while I still would love to gut it, it’s a much more pleasant place to be.