The Blue Room

Ah. The blue room. Let me take you back. At our second showing I took some pics of the house so here it is in all its former glory. I'll let you guess why we named the room the way we did.

Ceiling - wish I could say a lot has changed but that would require more funds than we have at this point.

Don't forget the wallpaper.

Then we moved in and started renovations. The blue room was all we had (plus our bedroom, but we had to walk through construction to get upstairs so spent most time down in the blue room). The blue room is also the connection between the garage (where construction equipment lived) and the main floor. SO - it served as a walk-through area as well as a den and kitchen.

It was a blessing to have a "second den" of sorts, but it sure wasn't fun living down there.

The fridge never had the chance to call the blue room home, but it was close enough to count for a long while.

We got to the point when so many things had gone down on that carpet that we didn't even care about the carpet anymore (did we ever?) and just stopped trying to clean it.

It was such a happy day when we finally moved out to the lake (although I still had to wade through water for a few days to reach the house due to the record spring floods). The blue room remained in use, but when we moved back in we had to use the furniture upstairs so it was empty for a while.

We got our new sofa upstairs (hooray!) finally and it was time to tackle the blue room. The first step was to remove wallpaper and re-paint. Our poor painter tackled the job and got more than he bargained for.

He stripped wallpaper and then had to use drywall mud on top of our plaster in an attempt to make the walls even and smooth. He did a pretty good job!

It was a messy process.

Oh yea - we put in hardwood steps to match the rest of the stairs leading up to the landing during our active construction phase.

Then we picked out some new carpet (this wasn't actually the one we went with but it was similar).

Matt took these after painting was completed...the day the carpet guys came.

AND FINALLY - the after photos. We still have a long way to go as far as hanging things but we're moving slowly in that direction.

We think it's much improved :) It's so nice to walk through the room into the house now that it is done! I will post some updated pics once we hang a few more things...

xoxo!

Gallery Wall

While Cynde was here we worked on another one of my Pinterest-inspired ideas - a gallery wall.

Here are the inspiration pics...

This one...

These...

This Black and White Wall

I already had a few framed black and white photos so I decided to go with a black and white gallery wall. I had a coupon for Michaels that I used to buy some more black frames.

Cynde helped me arrange the frames on the floor first...

We started putting them up...

Then kept going...

Until we had this!

You can see I had a few frames left over that didn't quite fit. I still need to fill in a few holes on the left side and the bottom.

I ordered some of my photos in black and white to fill the frames. Here is how it looks as of now!

Now for a peek at the rest of the foyer. I need to add something above the desk and I'm still debating whether I want to leave it open or closed.

A peek into the den and a view of the basket lamp :)

xo!

Cynde was here!

Matt's mom was here a few weekends ago visiting. She was such a big help to us with our house! I want to get a few more things together before I post pictures of all our work, but here are a few pics of Cynde and Matt one night we went out :)

Thanks for all your hard work Cynde!!! We loved having you here!

DIY Chalkboard

I love chalkboard walls. When we started our renovation I thought I would want an entire wall in our kitchen painted with chalkboard paint. Then I realized I really only had one wall of color in the kitchen...so I had to reconsider.

Of course I went to Pinterest and looked around for some things...

A smaller, framed chalkboard area? This was a serious option for a while.

A chalkboard door? Hm. Old doors are expensive.

Then I saw this chalkboard out of an old window. My mom mentioned that we had some old original windows from our camp at the lake I could use.

It needed some major love.

Ick.

First, the glass had to go.

Then we were left with the frame.

My mom cleaned it up, sanded off some of the white paint, and then finished it with this.

It looked great!

I was in charge of going to Lowes and getting luon pieces to fit inside the frame. It was harder than it sounds. I lucked out and found a nice salesperson willing to cut them for me in the store.

I read online that luon is a good option because it is much smoother than most plywood. It's cheap too. I brought those home and painted them with chalkboard paint.

A warning about chalkboard paint. I'm not sure if some brands are better than others but I had some trouble with it. I was also painting in the direct sun, a no-no. It came out a bit bubbly so we tried painting the other side of the board in the shade. It was only a little better but you can't really tell from a distance so I decided to deal with it.

Next we cleaned up the hardware. It was beautiful but RUSTY.

First we cleaned them with dish soap, then soaked them in hydrogen peroxide and baking soda. After that we scrubbed them with steel wool. The ones on the right had been soaked.

They didn't come out completely clean, but they were much improved!

The finished product!

I had to wait a few weeks to hang it up in the kitchen, but it's finally ready to show!

xo!