House Tour: Nursery

I'm so excited to share pictures of the nursery today! This was by far my favorite room to decorate in our house. Mostly because it meant getting ready for our little girl! Click through to see more pictures...

House Tour: Laundry Room

Today I'm excited to share another little piece of our house tour! Next up is our laundry room. Here's a little side-by-side before & after:

When we first looked at the house, I had issues with the laundry room. The biggest problem was that the door opened right into the washing machine, meaning you had to squeeze through the half-opened door, then shut the door behind you to finally be able to access the washer. I also didn't like the lack of cabinets and the one lone shelf around the entire room. I'm not a big yellow fan, but this shade especially was too dark, making a small room look even smaller and darker.

To fix the problem, Caleb took the laundry room door off the hinges and cut it in half to make double doors that opened into the kitchen. He cut the door right down the middle and hung new hinges. Since we didn't know what color of paint the door was, we took a kitchen drawer of the same color to Lowe's and they matched it exactly for us. Caleb painted the double doors and added new dummy door knobs to the front. He also put a little magnetic strip at the top of the door frame to keep the door closed tight.

Caleb removed the shelf that was in the laundry room to begin with. Then he painted the whole laundry room with a couple of coats of white paint. The walls and ceiling are the same white, since I just wanted a fresh, bright room. He built a cabinet with two interior shelves, and then built and mounted L-shaped shelves to go around the rest of the laundry room. There is a TON more storage now, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

All I had to do was get a little rug and find cute baskets to store all of my cleaning supplies. And actually when it came time to do that, I realized I had SO many extra cleaning products stored under my kitchen sink. I would just buy extra cleaning supplies thinking I needed them, since I couldn't really see what all I had shoved under there. This resulted in my finding 8 tubs of Lysol wipes - whoops! I'm glad that I now have a clear view of what I have on hand, so that I can replace only what we need.

I am so pleased with how our little laundry room turned out! Cutting the door and making it into double doors made the biggest difference! It was so much cheaper than buying new doors, and I love the way the double doors look. Like usual, Caleb did all of the hard work to make this laundry room a happier, more efficient space, and I'm so thankful for all his efforts!

sources: paint: Valspar Signature Paint + Primer in One in "White" | 

cabinet + shelves: designed + built by Caleb | 

rug: Target | wire baskets: Target 

House Tour: Craft Room + Office

Today I'm excited to share photos of my newly completed craft room/office! Click through to see before & after pictures.

House Tour: Dining Room

Today I'm excited to share pictures of our dining room! We fell in love with this room when we first looked at the house because it was big enough for a larger dining room table. We love entertaining, so we wanted a space we could do so comfortably. We knew the dining room was going to need some work, and I am finally pleased with the way it's come together. Here are a few before + after pictures after the jump, if you're interested...

House Tour: New Front Door

I have been quite remiss in sharing a house tour, but I promise I have a few rooms on the way! There's a couple of things I want to finish up in several rooms, so once they're all the way done I will share them! In the mean time I realized I never posted about our front door transformation! A couple years ago I wrote a blog post about how much I loved brightly colored front doors, and at the end of last summer we finally painted ours! I chose red because I like the pop against the white front porch and black shutters. It makes me happy to see our bright front door every day when I drive home :)

Our Entertainment Center

Just this week something very exciting happened around here: Caleb finished building our entertainment center! Yes, Caleb designed, built, and dyed that beautiful piece of furniture on his own! This is only Caleb's third piece of furniture (he built the nighstands for our guest room); didn't it turn out so well? There's more pictures of the process after the jump, if you'd like to see...

Our Home: The Backyard

I know that all I've shared from our new house is our bedroom paint, but that's because none of the rooms are completely done yet!  The guest bedroom is actually looking like it's going to be completed first, so be on the lookout for that in the next few weeks (ok, maybe months).  So today I thought I'd share our backyard!  Here's our yard tour, if you'd like to see :)

A huge must for us in looking for our house was big trees.  We love the privacy we have in the back (and all the shade!).  Our garden box used to have our sunflowers and tomatoes but now it's empty.

One of our new blueberry bushes!  We have been wanting blueberry bushes for a while, and just this past Saturday we bought two from the berry guy at the farmer's market.  He shared all of his tips and tricks (like this variety of blueberries loves the red clay - who knew?!), so hopefully we'll have a full crop next spring!  (side note: The bushes are supposed to grow to be pretty large, so I'm hoping the ugly pipe will be covered up, too!)  I'm so excited to walk outside my door and be able to pick fresh berries!

Our row of knockout roses.  I can take zero credit for these; they were here when we moved in.  Over the past five months we've lived here, they've bloomed and drooped and come back about four times!  I love them!

This is our play fort/shed!  When we moved in this was a really dumpy-looking fort.  Caleb pressure-washed and stained the fort, and then he completely built the bottom part to make it a shed - walls, door, and everything!  It looks SO much better now, and it's great for storage for him and a fort for our future kids :)

Our Bedroom: Painted!

As I mentioned the other day, we are finally done painting our bedroom!  Our bedroom furniture and all of our clothes have been scattered throughout the rest of the house since we moved in, so it was our goal to paint our bedroom and bathroom first.

We really didn't like the goldish yellow color they had going on, and the ceiling, doors, and trim were a creamish/yellow too - which definitely had to go.  When I first looked at paint swatches, I immediately liked one specific shade of grey.  I didn't tell Caleb which was my favorite, but held up a bunch of them for him to pick one - he picked the same one I liked!  Following the advice of this post, we painted a sample on the wall and I still loved it.  We used a shade darker in the bathroom - I am SO happy with how both rooms turned out!  I love the clean, fresh look of it - it's exactly how I imagined it!  Thank you so much Caleb for doing most of the work! :)

BEFORE

AFTER