project: bedroom makeover

October 8, 2014

I updated on changing our bedroom carpet back in May, and exactly zero has changed since then (with the exception of purchasing this chair). I tend to abandon designing our master bedroom until the very end because it's the least visited room when we have guests, but I'm tired of living in a mismatched mess, so it's been moved up on my priority list. Here are my current plans for the space:

Here you can see my serious paint indecision. I originally planned to paint it BM Stonington Gray like our living room, but once I got it up on a couple of walls I realized it was going to show way too purple. Then, I went a bit lighter with BM Wickham and it felt too blue, so I totally changed directions and tried BM Athena. After I realized this was too beige I was bummed out, and went back to my inspiration images to realize I needed to paint it white. I've been wanting to paint our bedroom white for years, so BM Decorator's White it is! The ceiling and trim will be BM Super White.

This bright blue pocket door hurts my eyes every time I look at it. Not only is it so very wrong for the space, it was installed wrong so there is a 1-inch gap at the top. The glass also makes light flood the room when you get up in the middle of the night guaranteeing that you'll wake up whoever is sleeping, so it's an all around bad design decision... and precisely why most people should to consult with a designer before making changes to their homes!

No, our walls aren't dirty, that's just the awful shade of glossy "white" they decided to paint everything. It's just so... blah and just changing this will totally change the feel of the room. We're also changing out these bi-fold closet doors to double doors similar to this.

Here is a bit of my design inspiration:

While there is a lot to do, it's mostly quick fixes so I'm hoping it won't take me too long (famous last words). I'll keep you posted on my progress via instagram and share a full reveal on here as soon as it's finished!

project: easy front door makeover

July 31, 2014

Hello! Sorry for the radio silence as of late. It's been a combination of having a bunch of half finished projects that aren't ready to photograph, and being too busy to upload and edit pics of the ones that have been completed. I think I'm finally out of my funk, so today I'm going to share our super easy and affordable front door makeover!

Our contractor put on our new door before I had time to take before photos, but when we purchased the house our entry door was a standard wooden door with a beveled glass panel similar to this. There was nothing wrong with the original door, it just didn't fit the aesthetic that I wanted for the house, so we replaced it with a steel craftsman style door.

I debated for a long time on whether or not I wanted a door with a window, but ultimately decided I'd rather have the privacy. To make up for the lost light in the entryway, Charlie and I installed (ourselves!) a new storm door and love it.

It had been hanging unpainted and damaged for three months (the installers put a big dent in it when they installed it, and it took this long for our contractor to fix it!) so we were anxious to give it a makeover. We chose to paint it Night Fall by Benjamin Moore to match our newly painted beams, and we replaced the hardware with this modern lockset by Schlage and these house numbers from Home Depot.

Our new house numbers were the easiest and cheapest part of the makeover, and I think they're my favorite change. Instead of putting a bunch of holes in our new door (and spending a lot of time worrying about everything being perfectly centered and leveled) I just attached two strong magnets to the back of each with Gorilla Glue, and used the magnets to attach the numbers to the door! It took me only a few minutes and completely transformed our door to the modern look I was going for!

We still have to finish painting, and I'm waiting for my new console and light fixture to arrive before I share final photos of the entryway. Stay tuned!

project: pantry makeover under $100

July 9, 2014

I've been eyeing inspiration for our pantry makeover lately, and when I saw this image of Caitlin Wilson's gorgeous pantry, I knew I needed a shelving system that had pull-out drawers.

via Rue

I also knew I wanted it to be all white.

via Lonny

Our pantry was a nasty beige color that made it look so dirty that I didn't even want to put our food in there. The layout was pretty much identical to every other pantry I've had, but this color really bothered me.

The beige mixed with the yellow shelves felt old and dated and it had a weird musty smell that freaked me out. It also had plastic stick on baseboards which are just... no.

The walls got a good scrubbing and two fresh coats of white paint. We painted our living room ceilings in Behr Ultra Pure White, and used the leftover paint we had in here.

I had been planning on using the Elfa system from The Container Store, but once I started pricing it out I looked for other options. I ended up finding the Algot system from Ikea for less than $100! The Elfa system was going to be at least triple that, and since I'm weighing everything I do in the house to how much we'll get back in resale value, I decided it wasn't worth it to spend the extra money when this system would work just as well.

It took Charlie and I about an hour to put together, and would have been easier if we had the recommend suspension rail on top for spacing. We purchased one, but when we got home we realized someone had opened the hardware box and taken out two of the pieces we needed to hang it! It was a Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend when we realized this, and you couldn't pay me to go to Ikea at that time.

We're almost finished, but still need to add new baseboards, paint the kitchen walls and trim white, and hang our new door and hardware. Our door is on backorder so we'll be doorless until late August, but I don't mind - It feels so good to walk by everyday and see the transformation.