Guest room

I finally bought a bed for my guest room.  Yay!  People can come visit!  And have a place to sleep!  

I am kind of in love with this room.  It's almost as pretty as MY room.   

I had an Expedit in my main living area in the last two places I've lived, and I've used it to display all the Christmas gifts from my Uncle Mark, or any other weird things I've found while traveling. Unfortunately, the shelf didn't really fit anywhere downstairs at this house, but I decided it was perfect for my guest room.  Now all my guests can see the cool things I've been collecting over the last 32 years.  

I wanted the room to be fun and colorful, but not so colorful that guests would be uncomfortable sleeping there.  I painted it the same color as my living room, and got plain white curtains at IKEA. Then, I added some orange pom-pom trim to the edges to make it a little more fun.  I love these curtains.  They are one of my favorite things ever.  

                  

I found this awesome bedding on sale at Target, and I knew it had to be mine.  I love it so much, I almost want to put it in MY room.  I'm still looking for an orange nightstand to go in the corner, next to the bed, and I need to find a headboard.  And the overhead lighting needs to be replaced.  But for now, I'm calling the room done.  

Come visit!

Powder room

My powder room was basically the color of human flesh.  I didn't like it, but there was nothing WRONG with it (as long as you don't mind the ugly tannish, pink color).  I had no intentions of painting it any time soon because I was mostly indifferent to the color.  I figured it would be something I would do at some later time, when I wasn't trying to paint every other thing in my house. 

Then, I hung a shelf up in the bathroom next to the mirror.  I have nowhere to put soap or towels or anything else (The pedestal sink does not have a big enough top for the soap to sit, and it was annoying me that it was on the toilet).  But, the shelf I hung was too small and looked really stupid. So, I took down the shelf.  That unfortunately left a rather large hole in the middle of the wall above the toilet.  

I fixed the hole, but I have absolutely no idea what color the room was, and I had no extra paint to paint over the big white splotch.  I contemplated leaving it as is, but just couldn't do it.  So, I went and bought more paint.

PAINT ALL THE THINGS!  

Other than needing some different color towels,  the powder room is awesome. 

Kitchen update number one

The kitchen is moving along.  It's slow.  But it's moving.  

I got all the frames of cabinets primed, and then painted the lower frames black.  It's hard to see in the pictures below, but it already looks so much better in the black than it did in the wood color. I am getting impatient to have the whole thing done, but there is still so much more to do.  Also, that stove just looks so much uglier now that the cabinets are painted.  

I also have the lower cabinet doors and drawers done.  They look so pretty and black!  One more coat (maybe two) for the front of the doors, and they will be ready to hang back up.  I want to buy new hinges and door hardware, but I need to wait.  My budget can't really take that purchase at this time. 

I am also planning to take out the gross brown (fake wood) liner in the cabinets and replace it with the pretty blue liner below.  Eventually.  Or never.  We'll see how I feel.  

Priming. And more priming.

I am so sick of priming the cabinets,  and I still have to do the backs of all my upper cabinets.  

Sigh.  One step at a time. ..

Plans for the kitchen

The kitchen is brown (obviously).  It's not hideous, but it's not my favorite either (actually, I do find it kind of hideous).  It's builder's grade cabinets, with an ugly tan painted backsplash.  It is blah and boring and I really don't like it.  Also, the fridge never stayed shut.  

So, I decided to start changing things up.  I tore down the backsplash (that was way harder than it should have been).  I seriously hate the previous owners for this right now.  It was such a pain in the ass.  

And look, I bought a new fridge!  It's pretty! And it actually stays closed on it's own.  I also ran a brand new water line all by myself...I feel so accomplished. 

I am going to replace the ugly tan counter with a new white counter top (sooooo excited for this to happen).  I am going to paint all the lower cabinets black, and all the upper cabinets white and add some stainless door pulls to try and update the cabinets a bit.  And I want to paint the walls a light gray.  

I ordered an awesome backsplash (seriously...I am so excited for the backsplash).  Look how pretty it is!!!

Then, some gray curtains with blue and red trim to finish it off.  So.  Lots and lots of work ahead of me, hopefully I don't flame out midway through the work.  

Upstairs Hallway

While I was in Richmond, I bought some other pictures to hang in the house (they had SO MANY CANVASES and artwork to chose from!).  I made two gallery walls in the upstairs hallway, but I need two more pictures to add to the bigger collection.  

Right outside my bedroom door (from the two different sides...there is a straight drop down the stairwell in front of these pictures, so I couldn't get a head on shot that fit all the pictures in).

Since the street scenes were all black and white, I decided to frame some of the fabric I had bought to add some color to the walls.  I actually really like how they look with the other pictures.  I think I may try and add two more smaller pictures above and below the largest picture to even it out a bit. 

However, here's a close up of the fabric I framed.  The same fabric was framed for both gallery walls.  

There is a smaller wall right outside the guest room and craft room, and I thought it could use some decoration as well.  I really like how this one turned out.  

Bathroom art

I have had kind of a crappy weekend,  so I tried to stay busy around the house to stay distracted.

I drove back from Richmond on Thursday night after a big snow storm,  and got home to about 2 feet of snow in my driveway.   I had to shovel at 1 in the morning just to be able to park my car.   Not really how I wanted to spend my night after driving on crappy roads for 6 hours.   

Then,  the next night, Little O decided to test my love, again, and had to get emergency surgery  for a stomach issue.    I hope one of these days he figures out that I do love him,  and he can really quit it with his stupidity that puts him in the hospital.   He spent the whole weekend at the vet,  and didn't recover as quickly as they wanted,  so I spent the weekend thinking horrible thoughts that he wasn't going to make it. 

To distract myself,  I hung up some art around the house. 

Everyone has a portrait of their dog in the bathroom, right? 

For such a pain in the ass, he's pretty freaking cute.   Lucky for him I  suppose. 

I officially love my bathroom.  So much nicer than when I moved in.  :)

Front door

I have been looking for something to hang on my front door.   I have a really nice Christmas wreath, and a fall wreath my friend Bug bought me a few years ago, but I wanted something I could hang the rest of the year that wasn't necessarily tied to a season or holiday. 

I had to go Richmond for work this week,  and went to an At Home store (I had never heard of it before,  but I fell in love with it).

And I came home with this for my door.  I think it's perfect :)