Beginning a New Project: Basement Home Office

We've officially been in our "new" home for 7 months now. Wow, time flies, eh?

When we hit our 6 month anniversary, I had planned to get a "6 months in" progress review written. The plan was that I would take current pictures of all the rooms in the house and do a before/after comparison. However, that would mean cleaning my house from top to bottom in order to get those photos. And unless we're having company over, that's a near impossible task these days.

So...in order to procrastinate further on the progress review, we're going to make strides in the actual progress department. This post kicks off the beginning of the basement home office project. Yay!

I'm hoping that this is one space that we can stick to until completion. I know I've mentioned in that past that we are completely ADD do-it-yourselfers. We still have yet to finish the girls room, make additional improvements to our bedroom, finish the half bath, finish the entryway makeover, and now we're throwing the basement office space into the mix too. There is also no doubt that we will start on the boys shared bedroom sooner than later, too. If I were to give advice to anyone, I'd say, "pick one space and focus on that until it's done." But I can't follow that advice myself, so here we are!

Considering that my commute is often taking me an average of two hours just one way lately, I'm going to try to work at home more often. It's amazing how much more productive you can be when you pull 4 hours of driving out of your schedule. With that in mind, we decided to make the "home office" a little more inviting.

This space previously consisted of my craft desk and a whole bunch of clutter stuffed into the back corner of the basement. It was totally overrun by toys and just plain stuff that hasn't found a home since our move. (Yea, 7 months and we're still working on unpacking. Oi.)

I wanted to take a good "before" picture of the space so that you could see this whole wall that would eventually become the wall-to-wall desk. But instead, I captured my husband's annoyed, "just take the picture already" look.

A few years ago, Justin made me this Ikea Expedit Hack Craft Desk. We took two Expedits, affixed a top to it with 3 10x1 boards, and applied a little paint.

It got a lot of use when I used to have more time to sew. Now, it just hold my two monitors and some other stuff.

We are huge fans of reusing stuff where we can, so we came up with this plan:

This "plan" includes a wall to wall desk using a few boards from the old craft desk, and floating shelves for storage.

If you follow on Facebook, you saw our "teaser" the other weekend as we were working on staining the desk top.

What we've done so far to the space has been really easy. We stained the boards with Minwax American Walnut, and used a Kreg Jig in order to piece all of the boards together seamlessly. For now, the boards are sitting on top of the two Expedit shelves.

We will eventually push the Expedit cubes fully to each side (right and left) and build a cabinet in the middle. By placing a cabinet right in the middle, it will provide the desk top with additional stability and help to define two separate work stations; one for computer work, and one for sewing/crafts.

Next though, we need to sand some walls and get painting!

I have picked out Valspar's "Sparkling Lake" and love the way it looks against the stained wood!

That's all I have for today. I hope to have another update for you on this space next week. No promises though. We may or may not have already started demoing our master bath too...

I can't be the only one out there with a million projects going, right?!

White Ektorp Slipcover Debacle: An Ikea Slipcover Tradegy

My white Ikea Ektorp slipcover. I bought it, I loved it, and then I washed it....

A while ago, I wrote this post about how it was wearing and swore to post an update after it's first wash.Well, here we go!

After we moved into this house, I knew immediately that I wanted a white slipcover for our couch. In fact, even when we lived in our old house in Annapolis, I put this mood board together hoping to convince my husband that we should get the white slipcover for our Ikea Extorp sectional. No dice.

But when we moved into this place, we got a gift card at closing from our bank. I guess when you plan to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of a loan in interest alone, the bank decides to give you $200 back as a "thank you" gift. So I took that as an opportunity to spend $99 of it on my coveted slipcover.

It has made it through its first wash and now looks like this:

I could cry. (And not because there are little feet injuring tiny toys sprinkled all over the floor. Darn My Little Pony jewels!) Despite following the washing directions, our white slipcover looks like someone attempted to tie-dye it yellow. What. In. The. World. Happened?!

I've tried bleaching it. No luck. I've tried washing it and putting it out to dry in the blinding sun. No luck. So, in short, my review is simple: I am NOT happy. I followed the washing instructions and my lovely white slipcover is ruined. Poop.

And now Justin says it is so ugly that we can't put it back on the couch. I'm stuck with Old Blue once again...

Many years ago, Old Blue once was part of a Pottery Barn wunnabe mood board, but it's a little past it's prime now. I don't like it as much in this room, and especially not with my new Ikat pillows and paint color.

Old Blue once looked like this in all its glory:

Old Blue even had this mood board created around it:

But Old Blue just looks too old and worn now, and it is just not cutting it.

Does anyone have any tricks up their sleeve in regards to saving my favorite white cover? Or should we just scrap the idea of ever having a white couch and dye the ruined white cover another color? Navy? Gray? Let me know what you think!!

Girls Room: Revised Mood Board Options

Since we bought the bedding for Skylar and Clara's room, it's been full steam ahead on making over their bedroom space.

Of course, the first thing that I had to do was come up with some more mood board options. Since my original mood boards for this room just weren't going to work, I've drafted these:

Option 1 - This has a navy feature wall with the remaining walls painted in a light light gray. On the walls above the beds, picture ledges are hung for frames and other trinkets. We would also like to add individual lights on each wall so the girls can have their own reading lights. I absolutely adore the barn style lights! My concern here is that the accent wall will make this already very small room appear even smaller.

Option 2 - This option is a two toned room with light gray walls on the bottom and white on the top third of the wall. I would plan to keep the picture ledge to help divide the color transition. Pretty much every thing else stays the same! I've swapped out the barn lights for a different color option here.

Besides picking out paint color(s), we also knew that we would have to trim out the window in this room. None of the windows or closets in our home have trim around them and it makes them look extremely awkward, like you can just tell there is just something off. We have addressed the seemingly naked window issue and will talk more about it in the next post.

If you follow on Facebook, you might be able to guess the direction that we're headed, but please weigh in with your opinion! How do you feel about dark accent walls in little rooms?

Seeking: Two Girly, Adorable and Affordable Twin Duvets

Before we jump into today's scheduled post, I wanted to apologize for taking so long to get this out this week. (And for not posting last week either.) It's been a bit crazy around these parts lately. Last week I celebrated my 30th birthday and I am admittedly in denial. We partied by staying in and watching trashy tv. We're so exciting! In other news, our family has managed to pass around a nasty little stomach bug over the last 4 weeks. The latest victim: baby Cullen. My poor, poor baby! The pukes are so awful for babies so little.

I will preface today's post by saying: Why is it so hard to pick out a duvet?

Since we painted our room, I've come to realize just how dingy our girls room looks.

Though the wall color is neutral beige, it actually looks dirty. Like, someone smeared dirt on the walls, dirty... I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that we are just now dealing with this. Okay, so it's not that bad. I'm sure that Justin would tend to agree that I might be a little dramatic at times. But hey, I need to be a little dramtic in order to get motivated.

To get the ball rolling on this room, I put together a little mood board (or two.)

 -and-

So what's the hang up? Finding the desired cute duvet/quilt/fabric within our set bedding budget. All of my "designs" are somewhat reliant on finding the right bedding and I have been totally striking out. Making a duvet would be super easy but the fabrics I like are just outright crazy expensive.

As a result of the hunt for the perfect duvet/quilt, our children have grown to hate shopping with us. Just this past weekend we spent about 30 minutes in the bedding aisles at Target trying to convince ourselves that we liked one of the available duvet/quilt options. Our Target is currently under construction and inventory is disappointingly low. Rather than going home empty handed, we grabbed some Tostitos chips, a jar of queso, and called it a day. (Because it's blasphemy to leave Target empty handed. And I love me some Tostitos and queso.)

I've resorted to surfing the internet for options and it's up to you to help make the final decision.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

We're giving you the chance to VOTE for your favorite!



Once we make a decision, I'll be able to pick out a paint color for the room. Believe me, the girls room is in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint and I can't wait to get to that point!

Someone please tell me I'm not the only one to feel so paralyzed over a seemingly simple purchase? Who out there has experienced a similar commitment issue when it came to purchasing a home-good?

**This post contains some Amazon affiliate links, however, we are seriously considering all of the above duvets/quilts as possible options! Also, we reserve the right to override the above vote based on our final vision and budget allowances.

Getting Moody in the Master

Last weekend, I did a little painting in the master bedroom. It's been a little slow going with the "makeover" progress in the house lately, but we've really been trying to focus the majority of our efforts on getting organized. No one likes to see piles of stuff just laying around their house or have closets packed full of stuff that doesn't belong there. It's been over a month since we moved in; we really need to get on that!

All I can show you today is the color of the master bedroom:

Since I really don't have much of an update to share with you on the master yet, I thought I would share the mood board I put together instead.

 Here's the overall to-do list for this room:

- paint the walls with the base color
- tape off and paint stripes on the wall behind the headboard
- use existing headboard to mimic the tufted inspiration piece
- find night stands and table lamps
- purchase and assemble crib (While our babies are still nursing, I like them to be close for all of those night time feedings. The pack-n-play just wasn't cutting it anymore, so we broke down and bought a new crib.)
- make a mobile to hang above Cullen's crib
- find and hang curtains
- find and hang mirror or other art for above headboard
- find/make console table for under tv
- find/make bedding

Ummm, yea, so pretty much start from scratch! At least I have a base coat of paint on the walls...

If you haven't yet checked out the Home Tour, here's what we're starting with:

 

It should be quite a transformation.

We're going to have to get a little creative to get this kind of look on our budget though. We most certainly don't have $1,000 to spend on a headboard! I have the room painted with it's base color, but still have the stripes to tackle yet. Wish me luck, because I am totally nervous that they will turn out wavy or crooked. Can't wait to get a progress pic posted.

Anyone have tips for me when it comes to painting stripes? I could use all the help I can get on this one!