A new look and a lighting update

Hey all! I've made some changes around the ol' blog, switching up the header and adding some pages for easy navigating. Let me know what you think! So far there's a page about the blog and us, and I'll soon be adding a "house tour" tab so you can get a better idea of the many, many transformations that this house has undergone all in one place! Check back for that soon.


We've slowly but surely been picking away at some projects in the guest bedroom. As of now, it's still a storage space. One of the biggest issues we were facing is lighting in the room. There was one very outdated ceiling fixture when we bought the house, but since the room was renovated in June it has just looked like this:



Not very welcoming. Gotta love having exposed wires in your ceiling.

It's tough to get projects done in here with just a couple of table lamps. We knew we needed a solution, but the placement of the fixture, wayyy off on the side of the room against the wall, made for a tricky situation.

We wanted a way to bounce a lot of light around the room, and we knew that just one light wouldn't help brighten up the rest of the space. Enter the solution: track lighting!



This was not an easy fixture to install, and took quite some time and frustration. Installing each of those supports while keeping the heavy tube level was a task. The result, though, is fantastic! The room is so bright now and having five movable fixtures means that we can direct light in any direction we need to.





I love the versatility that we'll have when we actually start using this room!

With the spotlights, I feel like this wall deserves some really interesting artwork now, but I'm not sure what will live here yet. I'm thinking that the dresser will need to move as well. We hope to someday put either a daybed or pullout couch in this room so we have the option for guests to stay over.

We're working on finishing up a long bookcase that Branden built from some scrap wood we had from another project. Once finished it will give us ample storage space in here. I can't wait to show you how it turns out!

Tree trimming details!

I know I've been a little quiet around the blog lately... I've been busy with parties, shopping, gift wrapping, and general holiday craziness. You know how it goes!

I did want to share some pictures of our lovely Christmas tree. For the last few years I've wanted to do a tree in those fun Dr. Seuss-esque colors. I always see ornaments in those bright and happy non-traditional colors: hot pink, lime green, turquoise, purple... and I've always wanted to use those colors for my own tree. So this year I picked up some cheap-o ornaments from Tar-jay (yeah, I said Tar-jay, deal with it) and went for it. And it looks so pretty! The colors makes me seriously happy.





Way up at the top of that last picture you can see our Lucy dog ornament. The dog has floppy ears and one patch over its eye, just like her. We saw it last year (back when she was just a teeny baby only a few months old!) and couldn't pass it up. I know it makes us those people. But whatevs. We love our pooch.

And cause I've got crazy Christmas fever, I got some holiday throw pillows to swap out for the couch. Does anyone else have seasonal pillows? Or is that a seriously kind of insane thing to do?



I couldn't resist the lime green and polka dots! So very merry.

And here's one more peek at the tree, all lit up at night and stuffed with presents underneath:



(Yup, it's December 15th and all my presents are wrapped and nestled under the tree! Woo!)

Oh, and after looking at it for a while, Branden and I both agreed that the outside of the house needed more lights. :) So he climbed out on the porch roof to string a few strands above the second floor and we stuck candle lights in the upstairs windows (the third one is hiding behind the porch roof). (I'd like to also mention that it was at night, while it was about 18 degrees out with 30 mph winds, that he decided it was time to climb onto the roof...)



And might I also mention that we, without a doubt, have the best lights in our neighborhood. Eat it, neighbors! (That's what the holidays are about it, isn't it?)

Decking our halls!

We are transitioning into full Christmas mode around here. It's the first Christmas in our own house and you know we're doing it up big time. I've been decorating the shelves in the living room and the buffet in the dining room, and will post pictures of those soon.

In the meantime, we're the first house in the neighborhood to be all done up, Santa style...



1,800 lights!

We got a few of those industrial spools and ended up using about 450 feet of lights. That's a lot of Christmas cheer. :) (Oh, and please ignore that extra fence panel that hasn't found its way to the garage yet. We're lazy, but at least in the meantime the window would be safe from a zombie attack.)





Branden spent a long time measuring and meticulously planning how the lights would be strung. I think he might be fulfilling some kind of childhood dream to be the Clark Griswold of the neighborhood.

After looking at lots of tacky, busy wreaths, we opted for the simple and classic approach. Pine wreath with a big red bow. Nothing says Christmastime quite like that.



We're having so much decking the halls around here. We've agreed to restrain ourselves and not put up the tree until December 1st though, so we'll be busy trimming our tree on Wednesday for sure. Happy start of the holidays!!

Slow... but steady, at least?

I know, I know, it's been almost two weeks since my last update. I've been a rotten blogger! I haven't updated because there's really hasn't been too much to report.

Since we finished all of the major renovation in the bathroom (walls, ceiling, tile, paint) we're down to just the annoying little details, which is why we haven't been quite as gung-ho to "git 'er done" as we were at the start. We're stuck with tedious jobs like putting up trim (Branden's the math whiz so that is allll on him, thank you), painting the endless little nooks in the beadboard, and painting all the trim throughout the room (and there's a lot of it).

That said, on to what we have done...

We installed a snazzy new light fixture:



It's chrome with white details. I just love the shape of it... the mount looks almost like a shower faucet!

I threw together some super cheap art (coast about $13 total, I think) for the walls:



This consisted of buy-one-get-one-free frames with mats, downloading free images from 19th century zoology books, and making prints at wal-mart for a few cents each. Yup, I said super cheap and I wasn't kidding.

We've got most of the trim up around the room, but you can see where we skipped over the particularly challenging cuts in the image above... don't judge. We'll get to it. But it makes our brains hurt.

So here's the room as it stands now.





I have a really hard time capturing this color, but it's a hint more blue and brighter than it looks here. I'm too lazy to correct these in Photoshop before I post them, so take my word for it. :)

We've got unfinished trim, beadboard to paint, and the shower tiles still need a good amount of grout scrubbed off of them:



Like I said, don't judge. We'll get there!

The little things

It's amazing how little things like light switches and outlets can make a big difference in a room. Earlier this week, all of the power outlets and switches throughout the house went from looking like this:


To this:


Something so simple has really made the house feel so much more complete! Plus, I don't worry about getting electrocuted when I reach for the switch in the dark anymore. :)

We also scored about 800 bucks in free work because the electrician wasn't able to order two-prong white face plates for the electrical outlets. So instead of backordering them, he switched all of the outlets over to three-prong (there were still some in the house that hadn't been converted). That work alone was going to cost around $800, and ended up not costing us a dime! So we got all updated three-prong outlets in matching white, and can say goodbye to those stupid adapter things forever. Amen!

Inspired, we finally decided to put an end to this half-installed light fixture that's been dangling from our bedroom ceiling for weeks.







Now I'm not a big fan of these boob-looking lights, but it's better than the outdated frosted glass fixture from the 40s that was in here when we bought the house. And being on a budget, these lights were the clear winners. I would much rather have something softer, maybe a small chandelier or something with capiz shells, but this will certainly do for now!

While we were on an installing roll, we also finally put up the same fixture in the upstairs hallway. We had been without a light on the stairs since we moved in, and Lucy does not enjoy going up or down in the dark one bit. That big heavy head of hers causes some serious downward momentum, which has caused her to trip and fall more than once.





Much better!

Lucy greatly appreciates the small change. And while we did drop a couple of screws along the way, putting the project on hold while I searched each step of the staircase with a flashlight, it was a relatively easy job and well worth it. :)