2011: A Year in Review

Happy New Year!!   2011 has brought a lot of success in so many ways!  Of course the greatest is little E that is now 3 and 1/2 months old.  Other successes were finishing up some long standing projects around the home and getting our house sold in a relatively quick manner.  Here are some Green Street 2011 highlights:

DIY bulletin board

Before & After Kitchen Roman Shade

Before & After Kitchen Stool

RIT Dyed Lamp Shade

DIY Painted & Stenciled Ikea Rug

Before & After Kitchen

Before & After Patio

Before & After Hallway

DIY Greek Key Roman Shade

Before & After Renovated Bathroom

Before & After Dining Room

Before & After Sideboard

Make sure you click on the links to see the 'before'.  There are some huge transformations.

All of these projects were completed before Elizabeth was born in September and our house sold in October.  Phew! We accomplished a TON in 2011 and I look forward to a new adventure when we temporarily move to Vienna, Austria (leave this Tuesday).  

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year's Day and the next time you'll hear from me will be in Vienna!!   Bis dann....

My Dining Room (as it stands now)

First, a huge thank you for your sweet comments on yesterday's post.  I was flattered.  Many of you commented on the colors and I was lucky to have an interior designer help me choose the colors of my dining room walls and furniture.

Now, onto our dining room, I wasn't able to completely finish my dining room.   Don't get me wrong - I think our dining room has come a long way, but the finishing details are definitely lacking.

If you remember, this was the inspiration.  

The goal was to lighten up the room.  So, how did we accomplish that? 

- We painted over the current wallpaper.  

- Purchased a natural jute rug.

- Installed custom made roman shades.

- Painted dining room table and chairs.

- Painted sideboard. 

What did NOT get accomplished?

- Painting of chandelier, hanging my federal eagle mirror and accessorizing.  So, here is our 

Dining Room BEFORE:

Dining Room AFTER:

It definitely is brighter and softer.  The wall color provides a calming backdrop, the natural rug is perfect for everyday use, the roman shades (more below) provide that much needed dose of color and pattern and the painted table and chairs help break up all the gold tones in the room.  

Another picture of the painted sideboard with the unhung mirror.  You can see the chandelier I was suppose to paint and never got around to it.

The DwellStudio Gate Citrine fabric used for my roman shades.  Isn't it lovely?  Melissa from Windows by Melissa really did a fantastic job (yet again).  They're perfect for our dining room.

If you need window treatments, don't hesitate to contact her!  She is a pleasure to work with.  Well, that is our dining room - What do you think?

Stay tuned for tomorrow, because I will be hosting an amazing giveaway from Melissa!!  It's a doozy!  

Before & After: DR Sideboard

With all the craziness, I've been slow to post some of my finished projects.  And, once the baby arrives (due this Sunday) I know I won't have time.  So, here is the sideboard I found at a tag sale for $25.

BEFORE (Post Sanding)

It wasn't the best quality, but it was the perfect size for our small dining room.  If you remember from this post, I decided to paint it BM Pale Avocado and add this hardware.

I haven't hung my antique gold federal style (eagle) mirror above the sideboard because we're moving in less than a month and I really don't want to put new holes in the wall.  So, here is the sideboard now.

AFTER

The other day, I placed my mirror on the sideboard to see how it would look.  I'm dying to hang it - I think it would go perfectly above the sideboard.  

AFTER

I found that mirror at an antique store for $45.  I love it.  The sideboard has a collections of items which I love and found at various places.  I know my orchid looks in bad shape;  I can not for the life of me keep orchids alive.  

And, do you spy some DwellStudio Gate Citrine fabric in the reflection of the mirror?  More on that tomorrow - I will reveal my dining room (as it currently stands) and will show you what an awesome job Melissa from Windows by Melissa did on my roman shades!    Stay tuned!

Selling Our Home: Lessons Learned

I have never been through the "home buying" process, since my husband owned our home when I met him.  But now I can say that I have been through the "home selling" process.  And I have learned some lessons to share with those of you that have not.

First, a quick update.  With our pending move, we decided to sell the house.  We put our house on the market this past Friday and received multiple offers by the end of open house day on Sunday;  we are now under contract.  I'm relieved because my biggest fear was having our house sit on the market for a long time.

So everything worked out perfectly, right?  Well.....the end result seems to be really good.  But, it was a bumpy ride.  Having just gone through the selling process, I thought I would share a few lessons learned for those of you that have not sold a home before.  For those of you that have, perhaps we can commiserate - or you can add your opinions.

Lesson #1: Don't wait to renovate!

If you're a regular reader, you know we just finished renovating our upstairs bathroom.  And, now we're selling.  I don't regret it because the updated bathroom made our house more attractive and helped us to sell quickly (so our agent told us).  But we will only get to enjoy the benefits of a newly renovated bathroom for a month or two. :(

Lesson #2: Fix the little things - they make a difference.

You would be surprised how easy it is to get used to things not working in your home.  For example, the entire time I've lived in this house, our doorbell has not worked.  It just was never a priority to get fixed.  Well, of course, we had to fix it before the house went on the market and it 30 minutes to fix it.  Thirty minutes!  When my husband was done, I asked him, "Why didn't we do this sooner?"

Lesson #3: Don't let your design ADD/indecisiveness stop you from moving forward.  

I am SO guilty of this.  One thing I've learned is that when you sell your home, your home needs to look completed.  So, in the interest of getting our house ready for selling, I had to sacrifice my design preference to just complete the room.  Get it done!  And, if you have time later, go back and play with the aesthetics.  You can't afford to have a room that looks unfinished.  People want to envision themselves living in the space.

Lesson #4: Farm out work, as necessary to stay on a timeline.

When we first had our upstairs bathroom appraised, the contractor quoted $27K.  Yes, that is right - $27K for a bathroom smaller than a jail cell.  That really scared us so we agreed we would do the work ourselves.  This was a great idea from a financial perspective but it really, really stretched out the project (longer than I even want to admit).  Obviously, we should have gotten a second or third opinion.

Well, two weeks before our 'go live' date (house on the market), our realtor said, 'you have to renovate your downstairs bathroom.'  With this compressed schedule and our experience, we knew we had to get outside help.  We aggressively contacted contractors and told them our guidelines - renovate in less than a week and under $2.5K.  It's amazing when you clearly and aggressively spell out your needs, how quickly things move.  One highly recommended contractor agreed to do it and he knocked out the work. It was stressful because we constantly monitored progress and he was here sometimes until 9 or 10 at night.  But, it got done properly and right before our 'go live' date.  It's definitely not my dream bathroom (see above), but it is a huge improvement for our small investment (will post before pictures in a later post).

So there you have it!!  Had we known these lessons earlier, I think we would have enjoyed this house more and the selling process would have been smoother.  Just sayin'.....:)  Stay tuned for pictures of our new place in Vienna!!!

Our Newly Renovated Bathroom

I wanted to post this earlier, but we had five showings and an open house since Friday and I literally was running around like a crazy woman.  Of course, wouldn't you know, I can't find our before pictures!  But, our upstairs bathroom was rough - really rough.  The kind that hasn't been updated since the 1940's (when the house was built).  I did manage to find some pictures mid renovation.

We had a sink that just jutted out from the wall like the ones you see in a jail cell.  No joke.  We had a gross medicine cabinet with two ugly sconces.  We removed them and took them immediately to the dump.  We had an awful ceiling with a huge crack and peeling paint.  My husband tore out the existing ceiling and installed a vapor barrier followed by beadboard, made by Nantucket Beadboard.  We used their MRI product, which is a premium grade moisture resistant fiberboard.  We primed and painted it with mold/mildew resistant semi-gloss paint (even along the edges, after they were cut to size).  Here it is, partially installed.

The floors were covered with individual square vinyl tiles - how lovely.  And the plywood around the toilet was delaminating (breaking apart) after 60+ years of condensation around the toilet.

My husband did all the flooring.  He tore out the baseboards, the laminate tiles and cut out the plywood subfloor.  He installed a new cement board sub-floor.  I chose the tile and decided on the Daltile's porcelain hexagon tiles 2"matte white which came in square mesh sheets making it a tad easier to install.  We grouted in delorean gray.  Here's the floor post-tile but pre-grout.

We kept our existing tub and just had it resurfaced which ended up saving us a good deal of money.  Our shower/tub walls had been one of those cheap plastic inserts (ack!).  He tore that out, as well as the drywall behind it.  Up went more cement board, which provided the foundation for our tiled shower walls.  

And, now the afters!

The walls are painted SW Nonchalant White which is a subtle green.  We purchased the Del Mar 36 inch wide vanity cabinet which ended up being a perfect fit for this very narrow bathroom.  It is only 12.5 inches deep.  I love the toilet - it's a kohler.  

I can't remember where I bought the sconces, but I purchased the mirror from Lowes.  It was hard to find a narrow mirror and this one came with oil rubbed bronzed brackets which I spray painted chrome.  

My DIY greek roman shade which I love.  

Here is the beautiful subway tile.  I love how clean and bright it looks.  I bought a tension rod from Target because we didn't want risk drilling into the tile right before we put the house on the market.  It has held up pretty well and I don't think you can immediately tell that it is a tension rod. 

It was hard to capture a full on picture because our bathroom is so small and narrow, but I hope you got the jist of it.  I am very happy how everything turned out given our resources.  What do you think?

Switcheroo...

I totally planned to post my before and after pictures of our bathroom today, but I'm going to have to do it tomorrow.  I'm in such a rush this morning - I'm sorry.  In the meantime, I realized I never posted some updates to our family/living room.  This is last the picture I posted:

Before:

After:

This is now.  I love my target lamps with the gray shades and my zig zag pillow with the chiang mai pillow.  I think the chaing mai pillow has seen better days - my son beats on those pillows non-stop! :)  I promise to post more pictures soon of our living/family room....

Surprise Party & Sneak Peek

This weekend my husband threw me a surprise birthday party (brunch) that he has been planning since this past April!  I was completely and utterly surprised because honestly, my birthday is the last thing on my mind these days.  But, it was the sweetest thing and I am completely humbled by all his effort, and the distances friends and family traveled to make the event.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of pictures (as it was yesterday) and am waiting for friends to email me, but my blogger friend Casey, from Loft and Cottage was there and it was so fantastic to see her and her boyfriend, Michael!  So, I have this picture of us (from her post this morning)!!

Thanks Casey!! Doesn't she look so cute?

My husband did all the planning, made the invites, flowers and vases (he scoured etsy and got inspired) with input from his sister.  I told him he should consider a career change and go into event planning. :)

Yes, I'm turning 40 next month (two days after this baby is suppose to arrive!)

In other news, here is a sneak peek of our newly renovated bathroom.  I should have final pictures to post by the end of the week.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!!  Happy Monday!

DIY: Greek Key Roman Shade

Sorry for the absence.  We're putting our house on the market and we are furiously (and frantically) finishing home projects.  I'm exhausted and blogging has taken a hit.  Anyhow, I wanted to share the DIY roman shade I completed.

It's for our upstairs (recently renovated) bathroom.  The greek key trim is from M & J Trimming.

Some white duck cloth from Joann's, Greek Key trim and a Home Depot (Providence) natural bamboo shade and viola: 

I was inspired by this photograph:

and I followed John's Journal tutorial.  If you haven't seen her dining room shades, they're amazing!

I would love to do this project again and the greek key trim made me so happy.  I was torn between the green or black greek trim, but I'm so happy I decided to go with the green.  

I do have 3 to 4 yards (60 mm) of the M & J Trimming's black and white Greek Key Jacquard trim if anyone is interested.  It retails for $9.98/yard and I'll sell it for $9.00/yard.  

Let me know if you're interested.  

Before and After: Painting Over Wallpaper

Thank you for your kind comments about our dining room saga.  Some of you asked if the color on the furniture complemented the color on the walls - it kind of doesn't.  The color palette in the room is cream/gray/citrine and now I have these stark white chairs and table.  It sticks out like a sore thumb.  Anyway, I'm trying to see if I can hijack a highschool student to help me repaint them!! 

Anyway, before we painted, our dining room had wallpaper.  Actually, it still does.  But now it just has paint over it! :)  The wallpaper was there before I moved in and it is just not me.  See below.

I find the stripes overbearing for our small dining room.  So, let me tell you 3 reasons why I chose to paint over the wallpaper instead of taking the wallpaper down.

1) Condition of walls.  The reason the wallpaper was hung in the first place was because the walls are not in great condition. I was concerned that after taking the wallpaper down I would probably have to skim coat and sand the walls to ensure an even and smooth surface.  This would be a pain.

2) Removing wallpaper is not always an easy task.  Sometimes the paper comes down in sheets and sometimes it doesn't.  And since I am pregnant and have no experience with this I decided not to go there.

3) Time and Money.  I wanted to get this done before the baby comes and since we're moving in the near future, I didn't want to waste too much time or money removing the wallpaper, sanding walls, etc. 

You get the picture.  So, how do you paint over wallpaper?  Well, here is a good tutorial that I followed, but I will give you a quick run down of how I went about it. 

1) Identify all the visible edges, as well as any loose/peeling wallpaper.  With a razor, carefully trim back any loose pieces.  See the seams below.

2) Next, put just a little joint compound (the mud used at joints in drywall) on any uneven spots - so this means all seams, edges, and places where loose wallpaper was removed.  This is the most important part, since you want the surface to be as smooth as possible before painting.

I had our painter do this and the key to having a seamless look is to ensure that the compound is "feathered" out properly (so the seam disappears).  If it is visible or bumpy, you'll need to sand it more.  Use 150 grit sandpaper or finer.

3) Once the compound is dry and sanded, you will need to prime over the wallpaper.  You need to use an oil based primer.  This is critical because the glue holding the wallpaper onto the wall is activated by water.  Putting latex (water based) paint on will just cause the wallpaper to fall off the wall, which is what we're trying to avoid.  Also, the primer is also the first step to hiding the wallpaper pattern, so it doesn't show through the top coat.  Oil based paint stinks ... so ventilate the area well.  

4) Now, you are ready to paint your walls.  The painter used two coats of latex paint (eggshell finish) and voila!

So that's it ... I love the new color (BM White Down).  It's just so much more airy and open.