Paint Samples Galore!

Hi friends! I need your help!! We are trying to decide which paint color we want for our dining room. Here are the options.. 

A little background: Our living room colors are yellow and gray and we are going to accent with teal and navy with some floral pops of pink... that's the idea anyway! Since we're accenting with a navy in the living room, I think we should carry that color, more substantially, into the dining room - for cohesiveness. So that's where the blue color choices come in! 

 We're leaning toward sample 4! What do y'all think?

Post your replies in the comments section or e-mail me.. we are planning to paint this weekend!

 Happy Wednesday!

Stripes, Sliced Cucumber & Elephant Skin, Oh My!

Hi loves! It's been a while since I've posted a little DIY action, but that changes today! The majority of our house {with the exception of the guest bedrooms} is extremely boring with the beige.. it almost makes everything have a yellow tint - YUCK! We decided to spruce up our laundry room with stripes and I'm so glad that we did! It almost makes me want to do laundry.. almost. I wanted something refreshing, but contrasting and gray was a must for one of the colors. We decided on Elephant Skin for the gray and Sliced Cucumber for the pale, and refreshing, green. We are happy, happy, happy with the results! Now Tyler wants to do stripes in another room... so we'll see!

My Inspiration:

Via

 Here's the boring beige.. so blah!

Step 1:

Using the lightest color, paint the entire wall(s). For us, we painted the walls Sliced Cucumber and we painted the ceiling Elephant Skin.. we wanted absolutely no beige left!

Step 2:

Measure the wall, divide the wall horizontally with painters tape (we used frog tape), then lightly paint against the tape to seal it from leaking. Ours wall is 116" tall, so we divided the wall into 8 stripes (the bottom two stripes were 16" and the top six stripes were 14"). You can't even tell that they are different dimensions!
Helpful hint: seal the tape with the base color, not the second color, that way what leaks through won't matter. Let that dry then paint your second color and it won't leak because the base color already sealed it.

 Step 3:

Using the contrasting color, paint every other stripe. Since we painted our ceiling gray, we started from the top using green, so there would be a contrast.

 Step 4:

Even though we "sealed" the tape, there were still mess ups. Once the paint has dried completely (and you've removed the previous tape) re-tape on top of the color that leaked. Then lightly cover with the other color and remove the tape immediately. It's a tedious process, but the results are SO worth it!

 Here's the finished product! We are in love.. makes such a difference!

Now that the painting's done, we have a few more to-dos left in the Laundry Room! Here's the rundown:

- Add some sort of window treatments

- Add a runner/rug

- Framed wall art & accessories

- New light fixture (something like this)

- Paint cabinets/base boards/door (they're all off-white)

- New washer/dryer (Would these old things die already!)

Linking up with Steph and Katie!

  Happy Thursday, y'all!

Exterior Facelift - Phase 1

Hey friends! This weekend was crazy-busy, but we still managed to get a few things checked off the ole to-do list! Since we moved in to our house {almost 1-year ago!}, we wanted new light fixtures for the front and backyard. The poor left light always ended up slanted, no matter what we tried! We wanted something big and substantial... something with a wow factor. We ended up finding the perfect fixtures {finally} and they came in on Saturday!

Backyard light

So there you have it - phase 1 of our Exterior facelift is complete! It's amazing what a little upgrade will do for your house! Phase 2 will consist of adding flowers to the front flower beds and to the flower pots on the front porch. Stay tuned!

Oh, this weekend we also purchased A LOT of paint samples for our dining room and bedroom. Once we put the different colors on the walls, I'm going to ask y'all to vote for your favorite color!

Happy Monday!

Bathroom Facelift!

 

I seriously have a hate-hate relationship with the boring 'Builder's Beige'! Our guest bathroom was all sorts of beige, in all the wrong ways... I mean how depressing can a bathroom be?! A few weekends ago, Tyler and I tackled this baby - ceilings and all! We didn't want a single trace of the boring beige that consumed our guest bathroom. It's ah-mazing the difference a little paint makes!!

Ceiling Paint Color: Cream in my Coffee

We are ecstatic with the results of our bathroom facelift! But, this room's not finished yet...

To-Do's:

- Paint

- New light fixture

- Hang floating shelves

- Frame out the mirror

- Paint the cabinets

- Update vanity hardware

- Change out all fixtures to oil rubbed bronze

- New shower curtain (that's ceiling height)

- Purchase new linens

- Update decorations

- Install granite counter top 

What rooms have you been updating? Have any plans to give your bathroom a makeover? 

Have a great Tuesday!

 

Our Home + A Tour!

Welcome to our home!! What a journey it was getting this baby, too! Let's rewind to May 2012.. that's when Tyler and I started throwing around the idea of buying a new house. We were living in a 3-story townhouse, which was perfect for Tyler, me and the [fur] babies. Not so perfect for entertaining larger groups of friends/family or having house guests for longer than a weekend - can you say crowded!  We've always wanted to have holidays at our house, but that was impossible at the townhouse.

A co-worker recommended Matt Norton of The Norton Real Estate Team.. He. Is. Awesome. He is honest, hard working and puts in 150%! Once Tyler and I narrowed down our cities as to where we wanted to start searching, he took us to see over 20 houses in one weekend - literally! And not one had everything that we wanted - close, but no cigar! We are PICKY.. both of us! And we had a long list of wants/needs (pool, outdoor kitchen, 3-car garage, etc.). Fast forward to Memorial Day weekend.. we get a call from Matt on Friday evening saying that he found our dream house. He sent us the listing and Ohh Eemmm Geee, I fell in love! It literally had everything on our list!! Fate?? We get there bright and early for the showing, with our check book, and it was a full house. Just imagine me mean-mugging the competition... In my mind, the house was ours. So we put our offer down, called our mortgage guy and patiently waited. Did I mention it was a holiday?! By Sunday we had discovered that another bid had been put in, so the bidding war was on. We finalized our offer and again, more waiting. They put us off until Tuesday.. We got the call at work and they went with the other buyer. I'll admit - I was pissed and sad at the same time. I was not-so-secretly hoping that their offer would fall through too(I forgot to mention that this house was back on the market because the previous offer went through).. I know, I know - that's not the nicest thing to wish on someone, but I had already started decorating the house in my head! Matt said that they had 10-days for something to go wrong and if it did, the house would be back on the market. A week, or so, later I was doing homework and thinking.. "Wow, I have so much going on right now... Work, grad school and planning our wedding - the last thing I would need is to buy a new house and move! So us not getting the house was for a reason." I literally thought that thought and Tyler get's a call saying that something happened with the other buyer and our bid was accepted (I guess they didn't want to put the house on the market for a 3rd time (happy dance). EEEEKKKK!!! BOOOOYAAAAA!!! Ya, those were my choice words when I found out!! :) So - We leased out our Townhouse and moved into this beauty on July 22, 2012! Just a month before our wedding date!

Here's a tour! 

Warning.. there are some bright paint colors in the former kids rooms.

 Living Room

Entryway

Kitchen

 Breakfast Nook

Dining Room

Office

This is our junk room right now - and no, I didn't clean up for the picture. Tyler's probably definitely mortified.

Master Bedroom
We are doing a complete overhaul on this room! New furniture, bedding, paint, curtains and decorations! It's so bare and we hate the color of the room.

Master Bathroom

Laundry Room

Butler's Pantry

Guest Bedroom 1

Yes, both of these colors are in one room!!

 Guest Bathroom 1

Boring 'Builder's Beige'

Guest Bedroom 2

AKA: Murray's Room

The previous owner's loved to mix flat paint with eggshell...

 Guest Bedroom 3

Even the ceiling is painted.

Jack/Jill Bathroom

Game Room

 Media Room

3 Car Garage

We have lots and lots of room updates and DIY projects ahead for us! Stay tuned for the 'After' pictures - you won't want to miss the transformations!!