Mudroom

One of the things I wanted in our new house was a great mudroom. In our last house we had a small laundry/mudroom and you had to walk through it to get to the half bath. There was just not enough room to put everything.

When we started looking for houses I quickly realized that large mudrooms were not the thing here in Austin. Actually people kind of looked at me weird when I said that was on my want list. I was told maybe they need them in Utah because of all the boots, coats and cold weather stuff but we don't need all that.

So I took a picture of an average day at my house while living in the duplex. You got book bags, shoes, purse, soccer gear, football gear, trombone., water bottles, the list goes on and on. My husband, and I am sure most of you said "the kids should just take all that stuff up to their rooms"  Right, like they are ever going to plus then the mess is just in their room. It needs a place and that place is a mudroom.
So what did I end up with? A mudroom smaller then my last. No, it is not even a mud room it is a hallway with my washer and dryer in it.
They just were not to be found. And when it really came down to it I was not not going to buy a house just because of the mudroom. When we were going to build I asked the builder if I could turn one of the bedrooms into a mudroom. You should have seen his face.
But, when we just felt so good about this house a mudroom was not going to hold us back. We did end up with a big garage so I had a plan. On the kids spring break we did our project.

 I taped off 3 section on a wall just outside the garage door. I used a protractor to round the corners.

 I made the mistake of telling the kids they could pick out their own color. Oh boy! not a good idea. The trip to the paint store was a bit crazy. They all picked crazy colors that did not coordinate to each other. So I helped out a little and this is what they finally came up with.

I am pretty good at talking them into things so we all ended up happy.

They really did a good job. Unfortunatley the painters tape ripped off some of the tan paint and I don't have any paint to touch it up since it was painted by the previous owners but it is OK.

 Next I added these great letter hooks that I found at Michael's. I did have to go to a few stores and ended up not being able to find an "I" but we improvised.

 This is what it typically looks like. So far the kids are using the space.

And I am happy their stuff has a place.

Goodwill GOLD

Now that we got a new computer that actually works longer then it doesn't I am ready to update you on everything that has been going on. Plus I have nothing else to do today. Until kids get out of school of course.
 I know, how nice and of course it is not true, I have plenty I could/should be doing but this is could qualify as a to-do right ? 

A few weeks ago I struck Goodwill gold! I had been looking for a desk to transform our empty dining room into an office. I don't know about you but an office seems to be one of the most used rooms in our house.

I knew what I was looking for, something solid and chunky that had drawers to put all the "stuff". So I was so excited when I came upon this bad boy and knew right away it was going home with me. My youngest son (8 years old) walks up and says "$79.99 that is way to much, you don't have $79.99 and I am telling dad!" He even reached for my phone.  If you know him at all you can totally hear him saying it. He is a little too much like me, just says what ever he thinks ;).  "But this is totally what we have been looking for!" I exclaim.  "This is coming home with us!"  I was soooo excited! I paid for the item and told them I would be back with my husband to load it up.

Now I read a lot of decorating blogs about crazy people who buy crazy things like I do all the time and very rarely do I hear about husbands getting mad about purchases. I KNOW I am not the only one, they just don't tell us about it but when I tell you my husband was mad that is putting it lightly. HE WAS MAD! He did not see why we needed a desk! And it takes a lot to get my husband mad, I guess it was a bad day.

Although he would not admit it he softened up once he saw it and once we got it home and in the office he was cooled down.

So as you can see the desk was in pretty good shape. It is missing two drawer pulls on the middle drawer but those will be easy to replace.

It also had a few scrapes and dings. At first I was going to paint it and maybe even add some bead board in the front molding but once I got it home I decided I kind of liked the wood look. So I got out my black gel stain that I have had for years and with a foam brush went over the areas. I could not have been happier, they covered them right up. It looked great.

We need to get rid of the rocking chair and old china hutch that just kind of got planted there in the move and work on a great rug and accessories.

source?

Since we are on the subject of bathrooms I thought I would share a picture from my idea file. There is something about this bathroom that just calls my name. I think first off it is the sunlight pouring in. It has such a light and bright feel. I love the molding around the tub and the valance is beautiful. I also think the light fixture is really neat. I would love to see more of the bathroom but have no idea where I got this picture.

Master bath

I have major paint issues (if you have not alreay figured that out by now) I can not ever find the color I want. I see it in my mind but it just does not show up on the walls that way. I am working on my master bathroom and I wanted a light, muted,dark, aqua blue. But not to blue and not to green. Not to dark and not to light.

 This is about half of the paint cards I brought home through out the weeks of the color hunt and I won't admit to how many color samples I brought home and tried on the halls

My walls started to look like this. Mike said he started to like the camo look and maybe we should just stick with it.
While on my search one day I came across a can of oops paint, paint the paint store mixes wrong or a customer returns for some reason, that I thought was a great color. Once I got the room half painted I knew it was too green and not my color. So I started over. Bringing home paint chips and little samples. -no luck
I finally decided I was not going to find the perfect color and I just had to decide on a color so I picked the best match and bought the paint but once I started painting I knew it was to blue so I took the can of to green paint and the can of to blue paint and added them together.
I got the whole room painted but have to be honest, I am not happy with it. But I don't know if I want to repaint it and who knows what color! So I am letting it sit for a while and see if it grows on me. I will show you once I decide what to do about it.

I know I have not posted in forever! Our computer has been in and out of the emergency room so we were without it for a week or so and now it is only half working. I cannot seem to get my photos to pull up off my card. So long story short is I have some things to post but it will just have to wait.
In the mean time I have been working  on my master bed and bath rooms. Once again I am having a paint crisis and can't seem to find the perfect shade that is in my head. I have 5 samples on the walls and none are the right one. I have decided to go back to the drawing board. Hopefully I will be able to post pictures soon.

I was featured on Chic On A Shoestring Decorating! How cool is that?Make sure you go check it out
http://chiconashoestringdecorating.blogspot.com/

If you ever have a minute and want to look at great home decor check out my new favorite spot www.horchow.com . Lots of oohhing and ahhing. I love it all

Before

I have been painting and I can't wait to show you. There is still tons I want to do in the room but I was to excited to wait.  Since we don't have basements here in Texas a lot of homes have what they call a game room upstairs. We have a great game room with a theater room right off it (the double doors). When we moved in it was painted red. You know in the past I have had some red accent walls but I actually have a thing against rooms painted all red. It was very loud. You turned the corner and bam! there is was.

 So I gave it some new life.

After

Ballard Design

Mike came home and was very unsure of the color (even though the wall had swatches of the color on them for at least 3 weeks). He got me a bit nervous until I got the mail that day and one of my favorite catalogs, Ballard Design had come. It is full of aqua, full I tell you. Even for outdoor rooms. You have to check it out.



I have also been drooling over this wall in Pottery Barn forever. It is filed in "house ideas" on my computer. (I will have to share some of the other pictures someday) I have been collecting frames to do my family photo wall right over the chair

Pottery Barn

I am going to add some more color to the room. The colors of the lanterns on top of the book case. 

 This is the fabric I have picked out to make the drapes  (no I don't sew) but Mike has put me on pause for a bit.

I am really liking the color.  It is very relaxing. My style is kind of changing from the reds and deep yellow  feel to the light bright feel but with all the stuff I already have it is hard to start over.

Pink

I have to admit I have always been kind of  a thrift store snob. It was not somewhere I frequented. But, while looking on all the blogs they always talked about this store called Goodwill. So when a brand new one opened right down the street a few weeks after we moved in I had to go see what I could find. The first time I went I made it a very short stop because I thought it smelled really funny, I know snobby.  And I was not sure I was going to ever make a second trip. But I did go back and now I enjoy the thrill of the hunt and make it a frequent stop.  One of my first purchases was this cute dresser for Whitney. I paid $35.00 for it.

I saw it and thought it was so cute but it wasn't until later that night that the idea came to me to paint it pink.

It was very clean, in great shape and the drawers smelled like cedar when you opened them. The hardware was in great shape and so cute so I just gave them a quick coat of spray paint. Whitney was a little hesitant to have a pink dresser but I think it turned out so cute. I have been toying with the idea of glazing it.

Her room is still a work in progress

So have you heard what color Pantone picked as the color of the year for 2011? Honeysuckle Pink.  We are right in style ;)


Attending party at http://chiconashoestringdecorating.blogspot.com/

Beadboard

 We decided we wanted to dress up the front of the bar a bit. This isn't our first go round at it as we did it in our last house but this was the first time we had corners and rounded corners at that.





Mike was just excited that he got to get a new toy. I plan on keeping that baby busy.

 We prefer to go with the tongue and groove pieces verses the sheets on a project like this. We found that they are easier to hide the seams and easier to work with when the wall is not the exact height all the way around.

 So don't forget here is the before

 And the after -wet paint and all :)

Back splash

One of the first things we knew we wanted to update was the back splash. It just felt so dated. After further investigation Mike figured out that they had actually taken the different tiles that they had used all over the house and made this design. I have to give them credit for their creativity but it had to go. 






I had the idea right away that we could probably spray paint them to look like metal with that new spray paint from Kiltz. But I was not sure the paint would actually stick and that we wouldn't end up with a mess. We also considered using a Brummel tool and removing the tile and replacing it with something of similar size. The spray paint method sounded a lot easier. We had some extra tile in the garage so I did a test on it and found that using spray paint alone, once it cured (dried  for a few days) was not easy to scratch but if you worked on it a bit it did scratch. But, if you sprayed a primer then the metal spray paint it was a very hard surface.
So I got to work. I first taped off the square to be painted.

Then I taped a large garbage sack up to avoid any over spray. I put one coat of primer on, let it dry for at least 10 min. Then put one coat of spray paint, let it dry for 10 min and then followed up with a second coat of spray paint.
And here is the final product

BEFORE

                                                          AFTER

 

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