did you give up on me?

I have largely disappeared from blogging & well most online life the past couple of months.  There have been lots of varied reason, but I'm feeling like its time to get back into the swing of it.  I have lots of things to update, but for practicality reasons I decided to start with a simple before & after.

We have been working away on our remodel.  It will undoubtedly be a long process.  A large chunk of the house we hope to finish this year but other things will probably take several years for us to get them exactly as we'd like, but its kind of nice to have the perspective that we plan to be in this home for a long long time and its okay if things  don't happen overnight.

Moving to a new house has made me look at the things I already own in a new light -- things have been repurposed, sold and acquired to better suit our new space many things have been given new life. Going into this house I knew that I wanted to be really purposeful in the things I brought into the house rather than just haphazardly throwing things together.

Before we bought our last house my mother-in-law gave us this secretary that has the most charming size & shape & all together bones, but was looking definitely worn and tired.  I had always intended to paint it red or perhaps white, but never got around to it in our old house, but when we moved I knew if I brought it into the house it would stay thus and so the rule I made for the move, was that items stayed in the garage until they were ready for the house (meaning refinished, etc.)

This proved to be quite motivating because I wanted to use my garage and so I got around to refinishing this one a few weeks after we moved in.  After stewing about it I decided to restain it and be true to the piece itself.  I still may or may not change the hardware, I go back and forth, but I love how she turned out with the stain -- lately I've been painting furniture lots of colors and my mom for one (who does not like painted wood) was pleased to see this beauty just brought back to her former glory and in this case mom I think you may be right.

before: 

 

after: 

  
(yes these are just poor iphone photos, but you get the idea right?)

The Nursery -- A work in progress.

Lately we've been doing a lot of work on the nursery, I don't think we will finish all of the projects I have planned before the baby comes, but since he'll be sleeping in our room for a couple months we'll have some extra time before he moves in with Ike to get everything figured out.

This is what Ike's room looked like when I was 38 weeks pregnant with him:


It had the essentials, but was just a bare bones version. Since that time we have moved it around a bit and decorated more, but now as I am 38 weeks pregnant with number two we are back in the same situation -- with a bare bones version of what we want and grand ideas about the future.

Our two little boys are going to be sharing a room. This is something I've had mixed feelings about, I have worried that our new baby will be waking up Isaac all night and Isaac will be disturbing the baby's naps; however, the other part of me loves the idea of all the young "babies" in a family sharing a real "nursery," just like you would envision when reading Peter Pan. I am hoping it will bond them and they will get used to each others habits and personalities. So in preparation of moving them in together we are going to transition Isaac to a toddler bed. Luckily my parents had a bed up in their playhouse that was the perfect size. Its been outdoors for many many years so when we picked it up we new it needed a little TLC, but since that is what we like to do best we rolled up our sleeves and started refinishing it.

Before (we'd already taken it apart at this point):


Then everything in the room got torn up and moved around, which Isaac thought was the funniest thing. The rearranging process (I thought for sure moving all of the furniture was going to put me in labor, no such luck):



This is the layout we've decided on for right now.

You can spot our newly painted white toddler bed all ready with a mattress (thanks Annie!) just waiting for its new little occupant. Now I still need to finish up the bedding and then begin the process of getting Isaac to actually sleep in it. He had taken to the habit of crawling up on it, pulling some books off of his little shelf and reading them to himself (which means flipping through the pages and speaking in baby jibberish) in his toddler bed, which is quite possibly the most darling scene (for me) to stumble upon, but he definitely isn't enthused about sleeping there. Advice please!!!!

Behold! The Daybed!

Phew. The daybed is done! I wanted to do a project wrap-up, if only to remind me in a few years what the whole process was like. First we started with an idea of a daybed, I've always been fond of the Pottery Barn Stratton day bed. Isn't it pretty?


And when we decided we wanted to make our third bedroom more multi-functional with an actual bed, it seemed I started noticing daybeds everywhere. For example, I love the daybed in the "reading room" from The Lettered Cottage, so when we came across the furniture plans on Knock-off Wood (which we found via Young House Love) we decided to make our own. Here is the cost break-down, I'm not going to sugar-coat it, this isn't a completely free & easy project:

$300 on wood & trim & glue & screws & nails & paint & primer & paint brushes
$149 on mattress (we were lucky and found a screaming deal on a VERY comfortable pillow top -- much better than the boards, I mean mattresses they sell at Ikea)
$35 dollars on pillow inserts (This is a steal I'm quite proud of because the pillows are down-filled pottery barn inserts, but I found them at the tent sale for DownEast Outfitters)
$19 dollars on fabric & cording for the piping for the pillows
$34 for the daybed cover (more on this to follow)
Total Cost: $537

Time investment:
1.5 hours --spent by Jordan at Home Depot getting supplies & preliminary cuts made on large wood pieces
4 hours--both of us spent actually constructing the piece (which means me holding measuring tape & reading directions while Jordan "one man show" builds everything else.....this was probably safest because I am so clumsy that a nail gun and me, may not be the best idea)
2.5 hours -- both of us caulking, painting, priming & sealing
1 hour --both of us shopping for mattress & bringing it home
4 hours-- Me shopping for fabric, sewing the mattress cover, & sewing all of the pillow covers
Total Cost: 13 hours

This was a large investment for us (both in time & money), but we feel like it was worth the cost in the end considering that we have a new mattress, a very sturdy bed frame (which we love) and a bargain compared to the $899 for PB's, and all new bedding. Plus we have lots of wood, paint, and fabric left over we can use for more projects (this is the next building one I want to attempt -- and I think we have enough wood left to do it!)

So lets get back to some more specifics. Once we had the bed & the mattress I knew I wanted a removable mattress cover to make the bed look more like a sitting area more than just a guest bed (I do have regular bedding & linens to put on for guests in the middle cubby). I like Pottery Barn's textured daybed cover:

But their cover is $139.00! Eeek! Thats almost the price of the mattress and much more than I was planning to spend. Enter Ikea! I found a full/queen Thisted Bedspread in the clearance section marked down to $34! I was very jazzed about this because the fabric is a heavy & textured & neutral and the cover would be seamless. This was the easiest sewing of all, I simply did some measuring & cut a 12 x12 square from each corner and then just took a seam. Then I did add a bit of elastic on the bottom edge (not the whole way around, just a 8' strip on the inside of each side) to make fit more snug.

I think using the bedspread rather than just regular fabric definitely gives it a more finished look and it is definitely more durable & doesn't stretch out on the mattress with wear, the way I worried just plain fabric would. The bedspread helps it keep its shape.

For the final touch, last night I finally committed to the sewing machine and finished sewing all the covers for the pillows. I didn't do anything too fancy, and basically followed this method since zippers make me crazy. I love how they turned out, but I feel like I want to add a punchy floral patterned pillow in there just for some spice, but as Jordan is not too keen on floral that may never come to be. But in the meantime, I am very happy that this is the view you see when you first enter our "office" now:

And it is indeed the perfect place to read, I just need to get the perfect lamp to set on top of my boxes.

Out with the old in with the new

Lately we've been doing some serious redecorating at Maison de Jones. The bulk of our efforts have been in our "office," and I don't use the word effort lightly -- we are working on a budget that has allowed for only a couple cans of paint. Anything else we wanted to do we've had to do for free or else sell something to buy something.....thus necessitating lots of elbow grease. It is still in-progress, but here is how far we've come (click on images to enlarge them):

1. When we first moved in (2007), this room was painted taupe (you know the color that 99% of houses seem to be now days). Since the closet is miniscule, right away Jordan built me some lovely shelves that went right around the whole room to store all of my "hobby crap"

Are you getting sort of dizzy looking at all of those items up there? Me too (more on that later).

2. The next thing we did was paint the room yellow, I was in love with some yellow rooms that I had torn out of magazines and wanted my very own.

(seriously could I have put more things on those shelves?)

At that time we set up a desk area:

But it didn't look like this for long, soon the bulletin board was covered & Jordan's Wacom tablet (thats a fancy mouse pad that Graphic Designers use --its two feet wide, I'm not exaggerating) overtook the desk & crammed the computer. Also quickly every drawer in the desk became a "junk" drawer and the binder system which I used to manage our finances was relegated to storage in another room due to lack of space. Sadly I don't have a picture of this.

3. Promptly this room became the most cluttered & difficult to keep clean room in the house. Also the yellow color I loved so much, promptly started to drive me crazy. Probably because this room is already quite small & the north facing windows don't let in a lot of natural light -- if I ever paint a room yellow again it will be a large, airy room with tons of windows.

Then when Isaac became really mobile & really curious, the electronics in this room (computer, printer, shredder, sewing machine, etc.) became the most fascinating things in our house and I had constantly keep him out. Also, as my filing "binders" were in another room I developed a constant paper trail with things flitting back and forth from the computer area and the filing. Needless to say it was not completely functional or attractive. A couple months ago I decided something had to be done (more on what prompted this in an up-coming post --maybe). So we:

4. Painted the room a light gray color (it has the faintest undertones of lilac, but its mostly gray), and we have both decided it is probably the new favorite paint color in our house and we sold the desk on the classifieds:


5. Then we scoured the classified ourselves and purchased an unfinished corner desk/amoire, with the life-saving closing doors:


6. Then, while Ike was napping, I spent hours on our back deck in freezing temperatures priming, staining & sealing the piece (I had to brave the cold as the fumes were potent inside and I didn't want our unborn coming out with a third arm) until it looks like this:


Ta da! It now holds all of my binders (up top) and misc. things that I painstakingly organized from the chaos that was the four desk junk drawers:


It also has a pull out tray for Jordan's huge Wacom tablet & it holds our printer, shredder, and any other electrical equipment we want to keep out of little 18 month old fingers:


7. However, with the loss of my bulletin board I was missing a place to tack up things so I decided to line the inside of the doors with cork. I didn't like the way just the plain cork looked so I plan on recovering it with some pretty fabric (which I have yet to decide on), but in the meantime I just covered the cork with plain white paper using spray adhesive. Jordan isn't necessarily enthused about me "cluttering up our uncluttered space," but as the doors close he grudgingly went along with it.


8. Also, once I had started on the desk drawers, I moved to de-cluttering the entire room. I organized & set things aside for our tag sale, and threw out mercilessly until our shelves on top had some breathing space. I am not done with the shelves and will post more pictures when the room is finished, but here is a peek:

To fully appreciate the change (see top picture)


Well we are still in the thick of it and have a ways to go, but I'm excited about what we've done so far.

Awaiting the Stork

While we've been waiting for our little one to arrive I have found a couple ways to keep busy (*read drive my husband crazy)....mostly this has entailed getting the baby's room ready. However as I am *great* with child, this means my role has been mainly supervisory and poor Jordan has done most of the work. Since I've been horrible at posting lately I thought I'd post some pictures of all our hard work. To fully appreciate the transformation I am first posting a picture of how the room looked when we bought the house. Granted it didn't look like this by the time we moved in as Jordan had already repainted/drywalled and put in the new hardwood floors, but everything else we pretty much did in the last few months.

Original 2nd Bedroom

Eek I warned you it was scary!

Here is how it looks now:


To start the transformation Jordan put up bead-board, painted the walls green (with white stripes) and painted some furniture I had inherited from my parents yellow. Then he whitewashed the furniture over the yellow as it was too yellow for me (can you tell I'm just a little bit particular?). Next came the question of the closet....what's a baby to do with a massive built in, with only one rod?

Closet Before


Closet After



Next Jordan tackled the crib. My parents had given me the crib I used when I was a little girl. However after my niece used it and it had been stored in a barn for over 20 years it had seen better days. Almost twenty hours of hand-painting later it is nicely white and beautifully refinished!

Original Crib



New Crib



So here are some more pictures of the room waiting and ready for the baby....its not completely done, I haven't hung pictures and done the decorating details (including the crib bedding), and we ordered a glider that hasn't come, but overall I'm quite pleased with it.