Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Nothing Simple Allowed. . .

In my book at least! Todd probably wishes I would take a simpler approach in life, but honestly it's just not in my nature. And since the baseboards had to be taken off anyways to install the floors, thought replacing them with bigger/better ones was a no brainer! Sure the original baseboards could have been salvageable, but what better time to replace them with new ones then after they've been ripped out!

I actually got the idea of using the 1 x 6's for baseboards from my best friend Brigid. She built an amazingly AWESOME house 2 years ago and she used them in her home and I fell in love. Todd and I knew without a doubt that after we were done putting the floors down we would replace our baseboards with the 1 x 6's.


Honestly, when we got to his point in the house I was getting overwhelmed with excitement! Most of the wood floors were down and I could actually see what I had been envisioning for so long. It was an awesome feeling getting this close to being done! Todd's mom & I took a little stroll to Lowe's and roughly 3 hours later {jk, but it did take a good amount of time!} we very precisely selected some 30 boards that would soon become our baseboards. It's a good thing the two most anal OCD individuals made these selections. If we saw too many dings, tree marks, or discoloration we kindly set the boards to the side and kept digging through the pile! Hey, I didn't want crappy boards through my house!

As if selecting 30 baseboards wasn't time-consuming enough we then had to weed through hundreds of pieces of quarter round to find the best ones! With our cart full, we picked up some primer and white paint and headed home to start on this painting endeavour!



Special thanks to my mother-in-law and mom for helping with this tedious task. We got all the boards and quarter round primed and painted and I could hardly wait for babe to start nailing these suckers in!


Isn't he cute? I mean seriously, a man who is as talented as my husband should get major recognition for all his cuteness!! Thanks to B-I-L Brian for allowing Todd to play with his air gun for a couple days!!


I'm not going to lie, at this point in the baseboard process I was getting a little stressed out. I had envisioned these large, beautiful, perfect, crisp white baseboards and when Todd got all his aggressions out, I was left with all these HOLES! Everywhere!!! Honestly, we had a hard time finding {studs} at certain spots in the room so it took a 'couple' shots before we struck gold! OK, we didn't strike {gold} instead we struck the water pipe from our kitchen sink! We spent a day {a day I had planned to spend a different way} fixing this little watery problem! Once again, props to the ever so talented husband who surprised me time and time again with his handiness throughout or remodeling adventure! He fixed our leaky pipe and we were smooth sailing from there on {at least where the baseboards were concerned}!! The quarter-round isn't down and the holes are not puttied and no touch-up paint has been applied yet, but you get the idea! PRETTY! :) Happy girl again!
Here is a sort of {before} and {after} shot. Dining room before with little ordinary baseboards.


And after with the large, beautiful, perfect, crisp white baseboards I had been envisioning. It's starting to look like a house!!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

House Update

Paint, Paint, Paint . . .

Roughly 4 months ago we closed on our first house. After months of endless work, exhausting weekends and tons of blood sweet and tears our {house} has now officially become our {home}!We didn't waste anytime getting started. We closed on Thursday, December 16th around noon and we welcomed 'working' visitors about an hour later! My brother, Kyle and his girlfriend Alex came in to town Thursday afternoon and quickly got busy painting the house {the entire house}. It sure pays tremendously having a professional painter as a brother. Within two days my entire house was transformed from a builders beige to a color palate of blues/greys/greens. Paint seriously changed the feel of our entire house {almost} instantly. Quick gratification makes me a very happy girl and the way the colors turned out in the house couldn't have been any better. I had a color vision in mind and with the help of a very paint perfectionist brother we made that vision come to life!

This was our ever exciting dining room prior to a nice coat of paint. We selected a shade darker than the living room.


All painted & carpet ripped up!


Foyer



Foyer {after}living room before


Alex painting the arch

Living Room painted {after} with no carpet and minus the old baseboards!

Kitchen

Office {before}

Other than Bub cutting in around the windows and ceiling I will take full credit for how AWESOME this room turned out! It took me a solid 6 hours painting the stripes, but once I removed the tape it was totally worth it!

I have to say anyone planning on painting stripes MUST invest in 'frog tape'. It doesn't allow the paint to bleed through at all! Worth the extra $! Happy face!


Office {after}


This room is one of my favorite rooms in the house!






Make shift ladder


Laundry Room {before}


Me & mom painting the laundry room!


Painting was the first step we took to making our home so beautiful, it definitely wasn't the only step in the process so I'll be posting more on how we redid the baseboards, changed all the light fixtures, and best of all ripped up all the carpet and put in wonderful hardwood floors throughout!!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

St. Patty's Day

Typically, St. Patrick's Day wouldn't be a cause for a celebration in our house. But this St. Patty's day was anything but typical. Our wonderful cousin, Brady, who is studying music @ Berklee in Boston was home for spring break and was playing a gig in Tallahassee. Luckily for us, we had some awesome visitors over at the house and celebrated Brady being in town {st. patty's day}! Can't even tell you how awesome it is to have family and friends over at our new house enjoying each others company. I love to entertain and doing so in such an awesome space make me one happy girl! I'm so grateful.

Little wine in a mason jar!

Had to add a little green flare!

Not to fond of green beer, so green bottles had to do!



The whole crew minus a few

Silly Cousin's!

Brady Jammin'


Saturday, March 19, 2011

Life Lately...

It seems as if times just a tickin' away. . . I guess when our weekdays are filled and every weekend till May we have something planned, we should expect our life to fill like a never ending adventure. But honestly, I don't think either of us mind one bit. Sure we sometimes wish for a quiet house or a little down time, but the minute we get it we wish we were somewhere spending time with family or friends.

But anyways. We are all moved in and getting settled in our new amazing home, that I truly love almost as much as the man who made it so wonderful!! We've already had the opportunity to share our home with lots of our family and friends. And it's truly so awesome to be able to entertain in our own home with all of them. This weekend my bestfriend, her husband and sweet baby girl came and spent the weekend with us.
Braxton meeting his future girlfriend! :)
Are they not BEAUTIFUL???
Playing together
Sweetest baby! If ever there were a child that made Todd and I consider having one right away it would be Shaylee! Sleeps through the night, doesn't cry, entertains herself... I'm telling you she's pretty close to perfect!

Poor baby can't even eat dinner in her clothes...

We enjoyed having our weekend visitors and I can't wait for them to come back, hopefully VERY soon! I hope everyone has a great week. I have a short work week and can't wait for my sister and cousin to come visit on Thursday!