Book review

A couple of weeks ago when Travis and I were being "interviewed" about our home restoration project by our neighborhood historian for the newsletter-he said "You guys could write a book about all of this!"

That made me go "hmm"

The next time I was at the library I decided to see if I could run across any books on the subject of old home restoration..... I came across this.

All the Way Home. Building a family in a falling down house by: David Giffels

This book. Wow.

Ok, I've to say~this is the first time in our 13 married years that I've seen Travis finish a book. lol. We tag-team read it and finished within a day of each other. I must say...it's almost like we could have written it. It's been done. Guess no book authoring is on our horizon...David Giffels has said it all-and much better than either of us could express in written word.

I totally recommend this book to any DIY'er or old home owner. It makes you think about the history, the original owners, what these walls have seen....Too bad we didn't find 17,000 hidden in one of our walls like he did (not for lack of looking!!)

{The newsletter has come out now-but unfortunately isn't online yet. I'll post a link once it is online......}

~Amanda

From one boys room to another

Looks like we'll be tag teaming little boy bedrooms on here for a bit!!

It was time for our 3 1/2 year old to move on up to the big boy bed! I don't think I've seen him so excited in quite some time... Then it was a crib switcharoo for the littlest guy...

I plan to do an overhaul on the room. I never finished it like I wanted and have lots of ideas.

Here is from the doorway looking left. He's got 3 nice windows but it makes it difficult to arrange furniture in there--at least with a crib...I'm hoping that with a twin bed will be easier! These 100+ year old houses make furniture placement so hard!

And looking to the right. The antique lawyers bookshelf was given to me from a friend. Love it.
This crib is now in Sawyer's room.

The plan was to bring the antique twin bed down from attic storage and paint it while waiting for a mattress order to come in. Surprise...mattress was there and ready to be picked up the same day. You'd think Gabe got a new toy-I can't keep him off of the thing!

Actually I can't get any of them off of it-I finally got one of them laying still.

The bed is about 1/2 way painted and hopefully will be ready to put together this weekend. I can't wait to rearrange and find some goodies for the walls. For Christmas Travis gave Gabe 3 of his old 80's skateboard decks and will be making shelves out of them...now I need to figure out where to put them and what goes on them. I love that Gabe is wanting to be involved with this as well. He's been saying he wants to help put the bed together-he'll probably be hovering with his plastic drill and screwdriver ready to go....lol. Love that kid :)

I'll be posting progress as it happens...

:)

~Amanda

The best kind of inspiration

I've been slacking big time and I'm really feeling the pressure since Amanda has been working hard on her desk project. It turned out great, btw :)

I think I (sort of) have a good excuse for not doing anything around the house lately. After a very long and difficult journey, we now have the best inspiration for a decorating project......




Our little guy.
Due to arrive in April.





Let the fun begin.........


We have an empty room with 2 windows and 2 closets.





























As you can see it's a blank slate.

We're expecting a boy but we're not crazy about using blue. It really would make it easier since it seems like almost everything out there for boys is blue. We also don't really want a theme, per se. After a lot of browsing we finally decided on a green & brown color palette.

Here are some paint paint and fabric samples..........















(Sorry, I'm not a photographer nor do I have a great camera so my pics leave a lot to be desired. I think you get the idea though)

We've been browsing through a lot of pics for wall treatments. Stripes are a definite possibility but do we want....







vertical stripes ?







~OR~








horizontal stripes??

(picture from Design Dazzle)









I almost forgot, this is the crib we have on order (along with the matching double dresser).


















So there you have it, the project we've been waiting to work on for more than 7 years.

If you have any ideas or inspiration pics, please do share. Thanks for looking and I'll try not to be a stranger on my own blog. I plan on updating throughout the process.

~Kim

All wrapped up!

And I've gotta say~ I looooove it! One last little thing I'd like to do is add some high shelf lights-but that will have to wait til our next trip to Ikea...I do plan to eventually add a rug and maybe a sitting chair and table where the plant is but this will all come in time...

I rearranged the shelves a bit. Here's a closer peek at those scrapbooking book plates now that they're up...

I took a quick trip to Goodwill the other night to see if any little treasures jumped out at me. I came across a cook square glass vase/container thing for $1.50 (in the top photo you can see on the shelf-I filled with old wine corks) and then I came across these 2 little silver bowls~~~

I loved the colors of the patina running through them....There was weird little labels laminated and scotch taped to the bottoms that said "wheels" with no prices. The lady sold them to me for .75 each.

Once I got home I washed them and concidered polishing them~ then realized I bought them because the colors called to me~so I left them alone. After removing the labels I saw the Gorham stamps on the bottoms with numbers. I googled the stamps and turns out antique dealers are listing them for $25-30 each online. Makes em even cooler!!

~Amanda

Bulletin board=Happiness

Part 3 of the desk nook...
This is where is all starts coming together-finally!
Ok for months I've had these strips of paper taped underneath each rattan box cubby telling me what each is for...

They seriously looked crappy. I've had an idea in my head all along-and ran into them the other night when shopping for the bulletin board...

2.99/yard for burlap at Joann Fabrics. I needed just shy of 2 1/2 yds.

Scrapbooking bookplates. $4.Found them at Joann's 40% off. Ended up having to buy 2 packages since I didn't realize there were assorted sizes...

Since the silver handles on the drawers are brushed silver I'll probably hit these with fine sandpaper. They'll be screwed on under the 6 basket cubbies where the papers were.

Trav installed 3 spacer boards on the wall to attach the board to give it stability (well, more like he added 2-there was already one up above that you can't see that is helping support the shelf bottom) so he just evened it all out.

I think the board we used was called homasote board. (?) We found it at Menards and is about 1/2 inch thick and pretty heavy. Note that I had to cut it down and rig it into 2 pieces to get it to fit the area I needed. I glued them together with Goop and those paint stir sticks for a little stability-lol. Stapled the burlap on just like I'm upholstering a chair...The back is never pretty-but who cares-no one will ever see it once it's up, right?

Tah dahhhhhh!

I cannot believe how MUCH I love it! The texture really warmed up what was kind of a cold space. I still need to hang the little silver plates after some minor paint touch ups today. Still need to attack those shelves above-but will have to wait for another day. One is just getting over the stomach flu here and another one has started and the 3rd is out of school today and going absolutely stir crazy!

Off to go play Go Fish.....Have a great one!

~Amanda

Getting there~Desk progress...

So close...We got so much done this weekend!! (Shocked since the 3 year old must have a stomach bug and we're zombies from being up all Saturday night) but we *mostly* completed 2 big projects!

First up: the desk nook.......

So I'm continuing this from the previous post~ I ordered the glass top~it was the wrong size. hmm. The girl typed the order up as 2 inches too short. Not happy. Luckily she re-ordered it no problem...but there was a slight problem. They decided to skimp on polishing the edges this time around. Again-not happy. Decided not to mess with it-it's too much of a pain to haul an 8 ft piece of glass in a minivan. Moral of the story? Make sure your husband checks each little thing and measures before leaving the place.

Drilling the hole for the cords-I opted for 2 holes at each end of the desk.

Hole at the left side.

Wah lah-with the white desk grommet in place...

Looks better already!

The under cabinet lights (3) were installed. We picked them up at Ikea on our last time dirt cheap.

Close up of a light.

Exciting-I know...

The little cord catcher things Travis picked up and screwed along the under edge of the shelf to keep them nice and hidden.

This is the kind of help he was getting-along with plastic drills and screwdrivers. See why these projects of ours seems to take a wee longer than norm?

A good shot of the cord holes at either end of the little wall inset. The switch for the lights will be tacked up to the wall-not just hanging there like that...

And from farther back. The old desk (to the left) is now carried out. Yesterday I spent gobs of time upside down and twisted around hovering over the glass top to prime and paint the underneath of the shelves where the lights were. (I could slightly see under there from the couch and it was driving me NUTS!) It looks so nice and clean now. Edges caulked and smooth...Love it!

I can't wait to re-arrange the shelves so it doesn't look like such a jumble!

Next update: the bulletin board for the back wall.....

~Amanda