Eden's Coral Striped Room

And for Eden's bedroom redo...

I have four different pieces of art and some shelving I still need to hang. I'm just procrastinating on some of those finishing touches until we repaint the whole thing. I don't want to hang them up just take them down. So without further ado...


BEFORE (looking in from the hallway)

 AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Now for some more detailed pictures...

The new closet (Eden's clothes are on the left, Charlotte's on the left)

Paper sorters turned bookshelves

Eden's big girl bed

A pom pom garland and some pinwheels to adorn her bed

Her nap lamp...which we are in love with.

I am super jealous of the decorative pillows on her bed.

Her toy/play corner

Closeup of the sheet sets we got her

And the sad and disappointing result of pulling the tape off the wall after painting the stripes. This (and a few other spots like this) are the reason we have to mud, prime, and repaint the entire room. Boo!

So what all did we do? Here's the list:

• Tore out all plaster and lath (including walls, ceiling, closet)
• Insulted all walls and ceiling
• Installed drywall
• Installed new closet lighting and room lighting
• Opened up the closet and removed the door
• Installed pine on the back of the wall for some architectural detail
• Installed a new closet system
• Had the hardwood flooring from inside the closet pulled up and redone to fill in the gaps where we took out a wall...and then put a slightly elevated new closet floor in
• Installed new (and larger) windows
• Installed and painted new trim
• Painted the bedroom door to match the trim
• Painted stripes (and subsequently tore off paint)

If there's enough interest, I'll provide a source list for the items in her room.

I'll post another update on it once we've repainted and have the finishing touches added (art, shelves, etc). 

House tour

Here's a little tour of our home (from when we first got our keys April 2012). Progress pics to come...

The front bedroom...which is currently our office/Charlotte's room

View from inside the office/Charlotte's room...gotta love that hideous yellow. And the plaster isn't in very good shape. And they did an awful job painting.

Hallway view from Eden's room into Charlotte's room (back to front of house)

The girls'/guest bath. The only thing that looks different right now is that we have a different shower curtain. I'm dying to redo this bath. NOT my taste. The wall color reminds me of baby poop. And the painted green clawfoot?? Why would anyone desecrate such a beautiful tub like this?! And the tile job is terrible. WIth a capital T. You just can't see it here. 

Eden's room. View from the hallway.

Eden's room...view from the back corner. The open door is the hallyway, the door on the right is the attic, and the door on the left is the closet. This room has been completely gutted and redone...more on that later! Talk about a hideous color combo going on in this room...YUCK!

Living room view from the hallway. Awkward tv nook and the doorway to our master bedroom (two steps down...because it was an add-on). Some bad patch jobs on the hardwood...plans to refloor the entire house down the road...

Living room view from our master doorway. Front door. Hallway doorway on the left.

More of the living room, looking into the kitchen.

Kitchen and eating area, view from the living room.

Kitchen view from the eating area. Door on the left is the stairs to our basement.

Eating area in the kitchen (pretty small and cramped). View from our back door (where we come/go since the driveway is in the back of the house).

Some how we entirely missed pictures of our master bedroom/bathroom, so here is what it looks like currently. No judging allowed. It's fairly clean, but I'm a mom of two little kids.

The door on the left is the one to the living room. And yes, there's a blackout curtain on it because it's made of glass??? Who installs a glass door for their master bedroom??? And please ignore the closet door that's leaning against the wall. The literally just fell off its track yesterday, and I haven't had time to fix it yet. 

View from our bathroom. Hate the carpet. And the paint color. 

View from the closet...looking toward the bathroom. Bay window, a randomly place bookshelf (I really can explain that one...it's just an awkward explanation. And it's moving soon anyway). And that door on the right leads to our patio. Kind of awkward, right? Hey everyone! Let's go from the patio to our master bed/bath!

Charlotte's cage while I shower. And yes, this bathroom is entirely open. No door. Apparently whoever added this area onto the house didn't care about privacy. First the glass door. And now no bathroom door. Which gets really annoying at 5am when my hubby is showering and getting ready for work. Let me tell you.

Oh, the lovely 90's era green shower and countertops! This shower looks deceivingly big here. It's not. It's tiny. And talk about an oddly placed shower head. Only one half of the tiny shower stall gets water. 

Can't get enough of this gorgeous greeeeeeeen! On the other side of the shower there is a toilet.

Hello little toilet! 

The weird nook where our hamper sits. Previously, it had a bench...like the kind you would see in a sauna. Weird. So much weirdness in this area of the house. And so many glass blocks. 

More glass blocks, and the small opening to the bedroom above them...?? In case you wanted even LESS privacy or something. 

Terribly painted/distressed cabinets, brass hardware, green counters (and an awkward vanity that's lower than the sink??). Not sure why they didn't just make this a double sink. Oh! Wait! Because they wouldn't have been able to put in those much-needed glass blocks! 

 So there you have it. That's our house. Lots of work to be done. It's just a matter of money and time! It'll be a slow but (hopefully) steady work-in-progress. We've got some really big plans for our room and bathroom that we are excited to tackle. We're hoping to make that the next project after the yard is done (once we have the funds saved up).

Yard progress

Ready to see the progress on our yard? These "before" pictures are actually from when we moved in...over a year ago. So imagine everything with an additional year's of growth before we ripped stuff out. The house was vacant for over a year before we moved in. And one of the previous owners (about 5 or 6 years ago) was a master gardener. I would love to see what the yard looked like when she was keeping it up. We've been told by our neighbors that our house/yard was featured in the local home/garden show. Too bad it got so out of hand!


BEFORE (April 2012)

PROGRESS (as of July 2013)

We recently put seed down in the area on the bottom right where all those shrubs and plants were...which is why it's spotty looking.

Where we ripped out a lot of plants, leveled the garden bed to match our lawn, and put down some seed

So...previous owner put that grass thing in a pot in the ground. I guess to keep it contained so it wouldn't take over? We haven't gotten around to figuring out how we're going to get that out just yet...

Trees partially gone. Had to take a break because it was 90º out and our allergies were going nuts.

My dahlias!

This was full of weeds and plants. We took everything out except the rose bushes.

Both sides of the driveway were covered in weeds/plats/ivy. Where those is sitting on the bottom right was a bunch of evergreen bushes.

Got some sprouts coming up we need to take care of, but this whole thing was covered in 3 or 4 huge bushes we removed and ivy that was taking over (the ivy is what's trying to come back).

Previously, we didn't even know that little cement path (we believe it's the old driveway) existed. This whole area was overtaken by some acanthus that was badly overgrown.

Progress, but still lots to do!

More plant/shrub removal.

This is the area of the yard we have yet to tackle. It's going to take another long weekend with help. 

I don't even want to know what's back there...

The view of our patio at the moment. Had to put all those pavers/landscaping stones somewhere when we removed the flower bed in front. Planning to post them on craig's list in the coming weeks to get them out!

Our dirt mound growing weeds...this is where we dumped all the extra dirt from the front flowerbed until we figure out what to do with it.

So there you have it! Obviously, we still have a lot to do, but we've definitely made a lot of progress too! Our ultimate goal is to get a lot of the remaining plants removed and get more grass down so the girls have a better yard to play in. Plus, it'll be a lot less maintenance for us to have more grass and less plants. It's a shame to remove some of them because I think they could be really pretty if they were healthy...but most of them are to far overgrown and unhealthy to even transplant. Though I did attempt to transplant a couple...we'll see how they do. It's taken us this long because with the kids, only one of us can be out in the yard at a time. It's not fully fenced, so we can't both work without keeping a constant eye on the girls.

I'll get a house tour up too from when we first moved in...and then I'll post Eden's room (the only room that looks different with the exception of our furniture being in the house).