Well, I know you have all been anxiously awaiting my plans for the nursery. I'm flattered! :)

I have to admit, as of right now, they are just a bunch of crazy ideas that are floating around, waiting to be decided upon. I like to dream--and dream big. Then reality hits and I realize that a giant slide won't fit in our little one's nursery.

Wait, my baby won't come out wanting a slide within the first month? Oh. 

Thanks for being a kill-joy.

Anyways! Please ignore my craziness...let's talk about the realistic plans that I have. I only have a few ideas about how I want to nursery to feel--we are waiting to make any design decisions, until after we find out the sex of our little one. So once we have our ultrasound on March 6th, I will be able to give you a better idea of what we are going for. There may or may not be a mood board included. Now you have something to look forward to. :)

Ok, so down to the nitty gritty. Just in case you don't remember what our guestroom looked like before, here she be:

A few months ago, I cleared her all out (she was our storage room for a time being) and decided it was high time that we have a proper guestroom to welcome our, well, our guests to. I will miss having a designated guestroom, but you know what, I will enjoy having a nursery even more. Plus, next week I will show you the new arrangement we came up with, for our future visitors--because we definitely want them to be comfortable when they come. Hint: our new arrangement sort of resembles this again. 

So, first we emptied everything out of the guestroom. Right now, most of the stuff is stored on our porch or in our dining room. I'm currently working on designated places for everything that was in our guestroom, as none of it will be coming back in--but that has been a bit harder to figure out than expected.

After I cleared everything out, Jonathan proceeded to gut the entire space. We were anticipating a huge mess of plaster and lathe, but thankfully it turned out to be some-sort of thick cardboard that was on the wall. It made for an easy removal and quick cleanup. Plus, he also found this wonderful surprise during the process.

Not only was there a nice, old nest hiding behind the wall, but there are also 4 x 4's for studs. Definitely not necessary, but nice to know as we are putting the room back together.  (In this picture you can also see the cardboard...on the left there...see it?)

Jonathan then wired the room for better electric access. Before, the room had one outlet and a small wall light. (You can see the wall light in the picture above.) Now, the room has five outlets and an overhead light. Plus, Jonathan wired one of the outlets to a switch so that we can turn on a table lamp if need be. I thought this would be a good idea with the space being a nursery and possible future office. This way, if we just want a bit of light, to see what we are doing, without waking the baby, we have that option. Or in the future, the option of having a small table lamp and cozy chair would make the perfect little reading nook.

After a bit of wiring, up went plenty of insulation. The room had none before, but man can you tell the difference it has made! Our little one will be nice and cozy during the winter next year :)

And that is where things are currently. The carpenter said his goal is to have all the drywall up by this weekend. Then it's new windows, finishing the drywall, and we will be all set to paint! YAY! We probably won't get to that for a bit though. At least until we find out our little one's gender and are able to put together a better idea of what we would like to nursery to look like. 

So, in true Liz-has-to-talk-and-share-every-detail fashion, here are my simple ideas for what I'm looking for in the room. 

1) I want the space to be as simple as possible. I'm also looking for something that is gender neutral, in the sense that, we won't be picking out a paint color based on the sex of the baby. Rather, we will more than likely accessorize to reflect gender. 

2) I would love to have some kind of built ins. We have been discussing the idea of turning the one wall into a combination bookshelf/small closet/window seat area. Only time and availability of money will tell. We think it may be a great way to get the storage we need, without overwhelming the room. We would build something along the wall, with the window, in this picture: 

3.) Jonathan and I, both, want to do something special and eye-catching in this room. We aren't sure what that will look like yet, but we agreed that it would be fun to do something out of the ordinary. I'm thinking an accent wall with lots of texture. Maybe a burlap wall? Don't knock it till you've seen it. :)

So, what do you guys think? :) Are you as excited as I am???!!!! 

Keepin' it Real

I like to keep it real around these here parts. I don't want ya'll to think that everything is going along smoothly and we are accomplishing things at lightning speed. It seems, for everything that we have done, there are at least five things that we haven't done. Trust me when I say, there is SO much more we still need to do.

I have been steadily updating you on the bathroom and master bedroom as those are the exciting projects in our house. They are the places that have been totally gutted and built back up. But the rest of the rooms, i.e. the dining room, guest room, living room, and kitchen, will all be getting their own makeovers in due time. Right now, they are just the last ones on our 'to do' list.

So today's post is going to be about the progress (or lack there of) in those rooms. I just want to keep it realz- yo. Sorry, I seem to have an identity crisis going on--southern rapper anyone? :)

So, here is the progress in the living room. We started off with this:

and went to this: 

Yea, nothing really has happened--though we have ripped up the gross carpet that was in here. Right now it is acting as a storage/work area. It's where I have been sanding our clawfoot tub and sink, in preparation for the coat of paint I will be putting on them.  I will also be using this room as a place to sand and paint our cabinet doors for the kitchen and the molding for our bedroom--this way I can work rain or shine! We also have housed all the doors from upstairs in this room for the time being.

On to the dining room. It looks 100% the same. The before:

and how it looks now:

Now, it is just holding all of the things Jonathan needs for our bathroom project. The dining room has basically turned into our tool (and toilet ;) ) storage area. It is a convenient location for all of the tools to congregate because it is right off the bathroom and is the only room downstairs (besides the kitchen) that has an overhead light!

We haven't even taken up the carpet yet! We figured it would be good to leave it down in here--though I can't really remember why? Who knows! It probably made sense to us at that point and I know we were really tired of ripping up carpet by the time we got to the dining room. Oh! Plus it is the only carpet in the house that was professionally laid, meaning we couldn't just roll it up and carry it out. It actually covers the entire floor and wasn't just an area rug - like the rest of the house had.

Side note: this carpet used to be a mint green color. In person, you can see the original color around the edges. But over time it has faded so much and is so dirty that it looks like it was a light beige color--nope, think mint green!

Now let's talk about the guest bedroom. We still need to do a lot of work in that room. But right now it looks like this:

Yup, its housing all of the things that we don't want to get damaged and covered in dust. The stove, bed frame, and dresser are all under that tarp. After we went through all of the things that the previous owners left behind, we put all of the stuff we wanted to keep into this room and covered it all up. We are able to close the door and keep the dust from the house projects away from it all. Plus, this is the room with the most cigarette smoke damage (see those spots on the wall?), so it is nice to close the door and make the nastiness disappear.

We also have moved all of our purchased light fixtures and window blinds in here. Like I said, it basically holds all of the finishing materials that we don't want to be shrouded in glorious drywall dust--that stuff gets everywhere! So far, so good!

Finally!!! We reach the best part of the post. Thanks for sticking around through the boring-ness of the rest of it-ha! So, onto the kitchen-the room that has shown the most progress out of all of these, but still needs tons of work. Good news is, this past weekend I painted everything in a glorious coat of eco friendly, water based Aqua Lock. This is what our local hardware store recommended as an alternative to Kilz/Bin since I wasn't interested in inhaling all of those chemicals. Anyways, here is a look at the cabinets freshly sanded:

After I sanded everything so that it was smooth, I then filled all of the holes. There were SO many. I'm not talking about holes left from the hinges--those I left because we are going to put the doors back on--I'm talking about the ones left from push pins! They. were. everywhere. All over the window molding, the side of the cabinets, and on the back of the kitchen door. So many. The woodwork was starting to look like it was chewed to death. So, I filled all of those and then made sure to clean up all the dust, left from sanding the cabinets, before I started to paint.

I couldn't wait to start painting! Here is the finished project after one coat of primer.

So, I know you are probably thinking, "Man they got a lot of work done this weekend!" Just kidding! I didn't really get the whole kitchen painted. This is just a test spot to see what it will look like:

Jonathan and I were using the primer upstairs in the MB and I was so anxious to start the kitchen cabinets that I decided to take some of it and start painting them to see what it would look like. I am getting really excited about painting the rest of the kitchen! It is going to look so different and fresh! Our plan is to paint all of the cabinetry white and then the walls will be getting a healthy dose of color. Not sure which color, but something bold!

I have been taking my time on this space because I know how much time I will be spending in the kitchen, in the future. One of my favorite spaces in a house is the kitchen. To me, it is the hub of the home. On Saturday, Jonathan asked why I was taking so much time to fill the holes and what not. My response was, if I had to live with these cabinets for at least two or three years, before we are able to afford the renovations we are planning, then I wanted to make sure that the kitchen looked as good as possible. I figure the more work I put in now, the longer the paint job will last.

So that is the progress on the rest of the house. Our plan is to coat and seal all of the walls, trim, and molding with primer to lock in the smoke stains. We plan on just painting right over the wallpaper to save time and money. Eventually, we will gut the rest of the rooms so we aren't going to waste our time trying to take off the wallpaper now. Our fear is that it will pull down the plaster with it and Jonathan will have to spend too much time skim coating the wall so that it will be nice enough to paint. Just not worth it in our opinion.

As far as the floors go, we are planning on leaving the wood as is and just putting down area rugs for the time being. The wood floors are all technically sub floors but, they seem in decent enough condition that we can get away with them for the time being. Eventually we will probably put down hardwood throughout the first floor and carpet the upstairs. For now, think area rugs!

So that is the progress in the rest of the house. Anyone have any questions? I'm dying to know what you guys are wondering about...please let me know!

Happy Monday!