Remember when I shared TGI-Friday in the past? I know it's been a little while, but I really like the idea of sharing some behind the scenes peeks, as well as new things I find and love. It's a random post, but it's real and full of good stuff! In house news, we've been spending our weekends working on the yard. If you're following my Instagram stories, you've got a good glimpse at what we've been working on. Just like the rest of the house, it has been severely neglected. The grass that was once there is long gone and we have a ridiculous amount of sticks and tree saplings everywhere. Todd brought his skid steer from work and we've been doing demo on the landscaping. We've scooped up ... Read more
The Kitchen Design Plan
The kitchen design plan has been one of the harder rooms to really nail down. Overall, I've known what I wanted to do, but there were still a few key elements that I just couldn't decide on. Elements, that I felt really needed to be picked before moving forward with the final plan for our kitchen. Since we have so much work to do with the entire house, we've really tried to do a healthy dose of "high and low" finishes all blended together. We've splurged a little in some areas, while staying budget focused with other things. It's been exciting to see it all come together in such a beautiful way. The kitchen is going to be a very happy balance of budget friendly items, with a few ... Read more
Replacing The Kitchen Sub Flooring
If you ask either one of us what our least favorite project has been to date, we'd both probably answer with replacing the kitchen sub flooring. Don't get me wrong, we were thrilled to get the nasty, rotted sub flooring up and out, but the process of actually doing it left a lot to be desired... Remember when I shared all about demo'ing the kitchen? And when we found mold around the sink? The previous people obviously didn't care about the leak, because not only did they let it start growing mold, but it also rotted the main layer of sub flooring. (Palm to the forehead...) When we broke up the kitchen tile, and pulled up the thin layer of wood underneath, we could ... Read more
How We Quickly Painted The Interior of Our Home
Last week I shared all about our process of choosing the right paint color to paint throughout our home. We really wanted to pick a main color that would look great in the natural light, but also enhance all the custom touches we'll be adding over time. After a week or so of looking at the paint samples in different lighting, we landed on Gray Mist by Benjamin Moore. It's a lovely creamy color that has a light green undertone. It looks amazing with white, black and wood tones... all of my favorite things. We couldn't wait to see the instant transformation this would bring, so I'm sharing how we quickly painted the interior of our home. Nearly every single surface of this house has a ... Read more
Our First Home Tour
I'm here sharing our first home tour in the Willow House! I've always loved looking back on past home tours. It's fun to see the progress that's made and all the changes that happen year after year. This tour will be one we'll really enjoy looking back on. We have so many projects in the works, and so many unfinished projects, but even through the chaos, we are loving living in this home. We love going through the house, piece by piece, making it ours and really putting our stamp on things. As we've been living in the house, we keep coming up with new ideas and plans for the future. And I'm sure it will change 100 times over, but actually living in the house always brings a ... Read more
Picking Our Interior Paint Colors
When it came to picking our interior paint colors, I knew I wanted to keep a clean, bright interior. So many of the fun and custom touches we'll be adding to the house will come over time, and not knowing exactly what we'll want to do down the road, I wanted to give the house a blank slate that would encourage some creativity. As you might know, picking interior paint colors can be tricky. I've learned over time, through trial and error, that nearly every single paint color looks different in different lighting. Depending on how much natural or artificial light a room has, will change (or highlight) the undertone of the paint color. I have my tried and true colors that I tend to turn to ... Read more
A House Update: We Moved In!
I figured since I've been MIA lately, a house update was definitely due. All I can say, is time sure does fly by when you're having fun, doesn't it? I feel like I blinked and the month of February is over and we're already into March. It's been busy. Really busy. Needless to say, we didn't move into the Willow House on February 1st. We could have, but there were so many different things that had us hesitating. We really didn't want to move in having so many major projects still left to finish... the floors being one of them. Ultimately, we both knew we didn't have to move in by February 1st, but it sure would have been nice. Instead, we decided to pay an extra month of rent and ... Read more
Demo’ing The Kitchen
If you've ever bought a fixer upper home that had really gross rooms, you know the thrill of demo'ing the space and taking it down to bare bones. Demo'ing the kitchen was just like that... it was so refreshing to get everything out and to have a blank canvas. Remember the kitchen? The picture makes it look about 100 times better than what it actually was. The cabinets were falling apart and most of the drawers were broken, not to mention loads of mice droppings everywhere. There was also a big water leak underneath the sink that had gone on for so long, it caused mold on the wall and all over in the base cabinet. The stove had burners that didn't work, and the room was just ... Read more
Black Tile In The Laundry Room
When Todd and I were dreaming up the design plan, the one thing we were both really excited about, was the installation of black tile in the laundry room. We both loved the look and the texture it would bring into the room. I mentioned before that with the push to move in at the end of the month, we had several things we were hiring out to speed up the process. Since neither of us have tiling experience, we really didn't want to try and attempt it with such a time crunch in place... not to mention, the upstairs bathroom still needed tiled as well. With so many things to do, we decided to let a professional handle the job... and we're so glad we did because this "simple" ... Read more
New Walls In The Laundry Room
In order to make the downstairs bedroom into the new laundry room, we had to separate the space from the previous closet by adding a wall. We also needed to have a way to bring plumbing and electric into the room without tearing into the existing walls and causing additional dry wall repair. Because we want to move in at the end of the month, there were certain things we were willing to hire out that would speed up the process. One of them being, building the new walls in the laundry room. I didn't get to take pictures of the entire process since I couldn't be there all day while they were working, but you can imagine my excitement when I saw this... A new wall that ... Read more
Demo’ing The Laundry Room
With the design plan in place, it's officially time to start talking about demo'ing the laundry room. There are three rooms in the house that we're trying to have done in time to move in by the end of the month... Yes, I said the end of the month, as in January. We may be slightly crazy, but I think we'll be able to make it, knowing as soon as all of our stuff is moved in, the real projects begin. In order to move in, we need the kitchen, hall bathroom and laundry room to be complete... which basically means "finished enough to function". With that said, we're moving full steam ahead, making sure all the major demo work is done and we can start putting those rooms back ... Read more
The Laundry Room Design Plan
If you remember the first tour I shared of The Willow House, downstairs there was a teeny, tiny bedroom with it's own walk in closet. Big enough for just about a twin sized bed, it was another room that didn't really make sense. And why the smallest room in the house was the one with a walk in closet, we'll never really understand. The one thing we did know though, from the first time walking through the house, was that we'd be turning this room into the laundry room. I guess I've really been working on the laundry room design plan since that first day, knowing things were going to change. With the existing laundry space in the garage taking up needed parking space, there was no ... Read more
Demo’ing the Hall Bathroom
There's something fun about completely taking a room down to the original studs and starting over. That's certainly the story of demo'ing the hall bathroom. It was interesting to say the least, and because of everything we uncovered during demo, the design/ layout plan for the room changed. With one of the weirdest layouts in the house (actually, every bathroom in this house had the oddest layout), everything about this hall bathroom had us wanting to pull out what was previously installed. We both agreed there was no way we could possibly go to all the work, or demo everything out, to put it back in the same bad layout. Especially when we discovered yet another water leak ... Read more
Scraping Popcorn Ceilings & Removing The Carpet
When we initially bought the Willow house, it was really stinky. It wasn't really a smell you could identify as just one thing, but rather layers of odd smells combining into this gross odor. As soon as you walked in the door it hit you, and everyone who walked through it in the beginning would always tell us how bad it smelled.... and we agreed! It's just one of the fun perks of remodeling a neglected home. Our initial plan to tackle the smell, and to start demo'ing the house, was to scrape the popcorn ceilings. All that texture holds bad smells, and several parts of the popcorn ceiling was coated in either grease (in the kitchen), or soot from the downstairs fireplace. A few spots also ... Read more
The Hall Bathroom Design Plan
There are several rooms in the Willow House that are getting completely gutted down to the studs, with walls moved and rearranged for better functionality. The hall bathroom is one of them, so today I'm sharing our design plan. Since we're planning on finishing this bathroom first, and will be using that primarily until we get around to the master bathroom, we're going full steam ahead on getting it put back together in time to move-in. First, let me refresh your memory on what this bathroom originally looked like... Not only was this bathroom disgusting, but incredibly outdated with the most awkward layout. We couldn't wait to start demolishing everything in the ... Read more
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