Before... and the glorious After

I have been so excited to write this before/after post about my house. I feel like I've been working on a million projects since the beginning of the year and then they just continue to multiply until I forget that I ever accomplished anything at all! So even though my project list is still pretty lengthy, I forced myself to clean up and take some pictures before the baby comes so I can feel good about the progress I have made.

It's amazing to me how MOTIVATED I feel to sand and paint and decorate when I'm eight months pregnant. You would think that I'd have that enthusiasm and energy when I don't have a huge belly to carry around. These past few weeks I've been "nesting" like a crazy woman. I have to give a LOT of credit to David and my mom for their patience and HELP with my endless projects and pickiness. It takes a good man to give up two entire Saturdays--football Saturdays--to paint a hallway with an OCD pregnant woman (and a fantastic mother-in-law to take the kids!). I'm amazed my mom still visits me with all the projects I've recruited her for. Luckily, she can be just as particular and thorough as me, so I feel like I have two of me working around the house when she comes--we are so productive together! So thank you, Mom.

Here's a peek on the progress we've made:

Two years ago, when we first moved in, my bedroom started out like this...

Before we moved in, we re-drywalled, painted, and installed new baseboards in this room. This is one of my favorite paint colors, called "Aegean Teal" from Benjamin Moore.

The dresser and nightstands belonged to my parents and came with very gaudy brass fixtures. I'm still working on aging/darkening the brass. I'll let you know how it goes once I try it out! The dying plant and random unused rug remnant are what stand out to me in this picture (and lack of pictures on the walls).

This is when I was getting ready to have Charlotte, so we had the pack-n-play and an old forest green lazy boy that I covered with a white sheet.

Then this part of the room changed slightly when my mom helped me sew Euro shams out of some beautiful pottery barn curtains I wasn't using (the yellow stripe). We also moved the TV out since we never used it (no cable) and brought in this horrible bookcase we bought when we first got married. It was $10 at DI and I was desperate for something to hold my books. Who knew we'd keep it for so long--bah!

AND NOW... (drumroll please)


Next project is that treasure chest at the end of my bed. My Grandpa made it for me ages ago, but we never sealed the stain and it's dulled quite a bit. I had the guy at Home Depot create a mix of Benjamin Moore's "Stuart Gold" and Martha Stewart's "Cornbread" that came out perfect! I plan on adding some decorative trim to the front of the chest like Jenny did in this post on her blog Little Green Notebook. (I LOVE her ideas.) Then I'll paint the entire thing in that yellow/gold. I think it will brighten things up in this part of the room.

I also ordered this dark brown and cream chevron rug from West Elm that will arrive in December! It will go under the end of the bed and the treasure chest. I can't wait!



I added some more pillows to the bed: standard size shams from Downeast home with a nice dark brown stitch and a chocolate brown velvet pillow from IKEA. (Don't worry, I'm not sparing ANY details. For some reason it's really fun to write it all out!)

I found the yellow panel in the clearance section at IKEA for $5. Cute white frame is also IKEA; also $5. Love good deals.

I really like the fabric I used to recover a chair, so I framed it and put it above my nightstand. I'd like to add some brown bias tape on the lamp shade and remove the beading around the bottom. Still need to darken those brass pulls...

I also plan to sew some brown trim (ribbon?) around the edges of my IKEA roman shades to add some color.

I bought these huge IKEA frames on KSL over a year ago--it feels so good to finally hang them! They were black so I painted them "Cassia" from...Lambert paint, I think. I couldn't afford some lovely paintings, so I tried out silhouettes of the girls. I took their pictures and then developed them at Kinko's on 11x14 paper (it's only like .40 cents if you use their cheapest paper and do it in black and white). Then I traced them onto fabric and glued them onto some muslin fabric I already had. David thinks Charlotte looks African, but I like them. I can't help that her hair was a bit crazy that day! (Of course the empty frame is waiting for a little Eloise silhouette.)
I also painted that decorative bowl (DI) the gold/yellow I told you about.

I really wanted a new glider/rocker for my room like this one from Fawn and Forest but they are crazy expensive!! So one day I randomly stopped in an antique shop here in Ogden and found this cream-colored rocker for $59. Sold!
The IKEA rug was my birthday present from my mom. LOVE. IT.


And this beautiful desk. What a project. I was in a bit of a slump during the summer and my mom mentioned turning this end of my bedroom into a craft area since I've had all my craft supplies stuffed into our guest room closet. She told me to find a craft table and have everything accessible so that I can work on projects and feel HUMAN when motherhood takes its toll.SO...I looked through some magazines and fell in love with this Queen Anne style desk, but they are also very expensive--even used on KSL. So I kept looking-- FOREVER --and finally found this one on KSL. The guy sold it to me for $30 because the veneer on top had bubbled all the way across the front. I figured I could find a solution, and bought it.
Here's the before:
I cut out the damaged veneer with a utility knife and filled it in with a heavy duty wood filler. I sanded it and primed the entire thing before I realized that my repair was very obvious. Reluctantly, I started over. I watered the wood filler down to make it smoother and spread it over the patch again. It still came out too textured, so I took regular wood filler, mixed it with more water and spread it over the entire top of the desk. That did the trick. More primer, couple layers of paint ("Cassia" again) and we were done. It was a LOT of work, but well worth it.
Here's the only "before" shot I have of the chair. I found it at an antique store for $30 and painted it the same color as the desk. I recovered the seat in some fabric I ordered at Joanne's.






I've had my eye on these boxy bookshelves for a while. I was going to try and make them and then I found them at IKEA for a decent price. Love em!
And lastly, this little dresser here was nothing short of a tender mercy for me. My budget was spent and that darn DI bookshelf was still sitting here in this part of the room. I found this dresser on KSL twice--the first time it had sold for cheap by time I found it. The second time, the seller was asking too much and it just didn't fit into our budget. I forced myself to stop stalking KSL classifieds. AND THEN, David's grandparents mentioned they had a dresser in their garage that we could use if we needed it. I finally gave in and decided that I could paint it--whatever it looked like-- and make it work. So David and his dad brought it over and what do you know? It was the exact dresser I had been obsessing over. It's the little things!I found that clock at DI and painted it the yellow/gold. It's my favorite.
So that's it for my room! It makes me happy just to walk in.
Here's a few more things we've done:
The girls' room is one of my favorite things to decorate. Here's how we started out in our last house when Hazel was little:We got this awesome solid wood crib and matching dresser that a friend of ours built himself. Before Charlotte was born, I painted both pieces "acadia white" from Benjamin Moore--another crazy difficult project, but rewarding. It made a big difference. These next few pics are from after our move into our current house.
Once Charlotte moved into Hazel's room, I found a used toddler bed and painted it to match. I also painted that rocking chair in the corner that used to be mine when I was little. We moved things around, added a rug and pink knobs to the furniture...

Sewed a pillow and added this little vintage bear to my rocking chair. It's Lottie's favorite.
I covered this beautiful Noah's Ark chest in some fabric (I do hope to convert it back if we ever get a little boy!)It's a little messed up now since the girls have jumped on it so much. It's also stuffed to the brim with dress-up dresses.I found both these frames at DI and I've only painted the one. I plan on doing some more silhouettes in them.
I found this idea for pelmet boxes which made the room so much more colorful! My friend Paige helped me make them and they were easy once we cut the fabric to the right size. I think they work out better than curtain panels in this room.
I painted some more frames and covered others in fabric to hang above Hazel's bed. The wall on the left will have a big alphabet collage one day... I even have the big button for my "O."

I love this elephant. It's a Heather Bailey pattern and I believe it was around the time I found this pattern that I saw the name "Eloise" on her blog. It was for a turtle pattern or something, but it stuck! The mirror was a DI find that I painted.

Since I rarely actually use the top of this dresser as a changing table, I added some decorations instead.
Oh yeah, and this is the hole that Hazel created during a difficult tantrum phase she went through in the early fall. Whenever they'd start, we'd have to run and grab this toy so she couldn't kick it against the wall. Glad that's over...for now.

This is our guest room/office---no changes here but soon we'll be converting this into Hazel's room. She already sleeps in this bed sometimes; I think she likes the privacy or maybe its just bigger and more comfy.


The family that lived here before us had a dog and he obviously liked to gnaw on the trim upstairs. There were bite marks all over the baseboards and the hallway walls were a pale off-white with patches everywhere. We finally painted the walls a nice khaki color (it was a lightened version of some Benjamin Moore tan...I forget!) and the trim a bright white. You probably can't tell much of a difference in the pics, but this was HUGE for me.

Before:


And after:



We prepped and sanded each stair and painted the front facing part white. Now we just have to paint the stairs dark brown, but I think that will wait until after the baby. I can't wait to see the difference.

While my mom was here, we painted our little entry way by the side/back door. It was the same yucky yellow that's in our kitchen and the baseboards weren't painted yet. Unfortunately, I don't have a before picture.





Whew! That's it for now. Sorry for SO MUCH information and pictures, but I enjoyed this post. I'm sure I'll slow down A LOT once the baby comes, but I hope I can stay on a roll and keep up with the projects in this house. The more we work on it, the more I enjoy being in it with my kids all day...every day!
Happy Thanksgiving week!