See how we installed vertical planking & open shelves in the kitchen to make it feel bigger and brighter! Our kitchen has come a long, long way. After we had our backsplash installed, it was time to add vertical planking and open shelves in the kitchen. From the very beginning when we were designing the kitchen, I knew I wanted open shelves to make the kitchen feel larger. We don't have a big kitchen, but the new addition of the open shelves makes the kitchen appear bigger and less crowded. Before we could have the shelves installed, the first step was adding the vertical planking. Todd and I decided to tackle the project a few weeks before I was due to have our baby ...
DIY
Easy DIY Raised Garden Beds
Looking to create your own garden? These easy DIY raised garden beds are the perfect solution and can be customized to fit your space! One of our big goals this summer, is to get our backyard in shape. It's a scary mess of dirt and weeds and we're both so over it, we could cry. That's what we signed up for though when we bought our fixer upper. This is the year though... we're both determined to get this large yard in shape! Our first big project this year for the backyard, was to build some easy DIY raised garden beds. Last year our garden was in a small area of the yard, but since the property had been severely neglected for several years, I spent so much time hoeing and pulling ...
Wall Moulding In The Nursery
Today I'm sharing how we installed wall moulding in the nursery. It's added the perfect amount of character to the bare walls, really bringing this room to the next level. We've been hard at work getting ready for baby girl! It's been a real team effort, but her room is looking so good and things are coming together beautifully! Today, I wanted to share the wall moulding we just installed in the nursery. It's made such a huge difference and it's added the perfect amount of character to her room. If I'm honest, I've been a little bit indecisive when it came to what exactly I wanted to do in her room. The one thing I knew for sure, was that we would be installing wall ...
Customizing Our Ikea Pax Dining Room Cabinet
Today I'm sharing how we customized our Ikea Pax dining room cabinet. It's the perfect way to add character to Ikea cabinets while staying on budget. Our kitchen is small. We don't have a ton of storage, and that's something our entire house lacks as well. Getting creative and adding places to store our items has been on my project list since we moved in. In order to help add storage space to our kitchen, we added an Ikea Pax cabinet to our dining room. It instantly solved the problem of adding more storage space to our kitchen, but it also stuck out like a sore thumb, not really blending into our kitchen. With our kitchen and dining room essentially one space, I really wanted the ...
DIY Towel Hook Rack
This DIY Towel Hook Rack is the perfect addition to our master bathroom and a great way to store towels! We've been busy working in our master bathroom and I was hoping to be able to share the full reveal with you at the end of the month, but since I haven't had the easiest time shopping for all those pretty finishing touches, things have been pushed back for a while. One thing we were able to create, was our DIY Towel Hook Rack. This was such a fun project to put together and I love the finished product. Believe it or not, but the wood is actually a left over stair tread from when we did our DIY staircase makeover. I loved the stair treads so much, that I wasn't willing to ...
DIY Staircase Makeover
Are you ready for a big transformation? Our DIY staircase makeover has made a huge difference for our home! If there's been one project that's been glaringly obvious that we need to finish, it's our stairs. When we were knee deep in demo'ing the house, we went through and removed all the old, super gross carpet, but other projects became more important and we ended up moving in with the stairs still in pretty rough shape. We've hated them, but we've dealt, just as anyone does when living in a fixer upper. With this project being one we wanted to complete this year, and the fact that it's been holding us up from finishing any base trim that connects to the stairs, we decided the ...
How To Install Wall Moulding
We've been doing some work in our master bathroom and it's coming along beautifully. When coming up with the design plan for this bathroom, I really wanted to add some extra character, especially with the bathroom being such a small space. Wall moulding was an essential part of my plan, and we just recently installed a few walls, with one more to go. Today though, I wanted to share our method on how to install wall moulding. It's such a beautiful way to add character to any space. How To Install Wall Moulding Before we get started, if you haven't caught up with progress in our master bathroom, you can read my last update here. This bathroom has come such a long ...
Adding A Front Window Box
See how we added character to our home by adding a front window box! My love for this house update ranks high up on the list. Adding a front window box to our big living room window completely transformed the house. I couldn't stop dreaming about adding a window box... I say that with all seriousness. Before we finally pulled the trigger and bought it, Todd heard all about every possible combination of items that could find a home in this window box. I went on about it for days. Since getting the window box installed, that list has only grown as my love has gotten deeper. Now, there's no way we could have just one window box... no way! We'll be adding several more to the ...
How We Installed Our Floating Vanity
When we were looking at vanity options for the hall bathroom, I kept going back to the idea of having a floating vanity. I liked the subtle, modern vibe it would add to the bathroom with some of the more traditional items we'd be incorporating as well. I also wanted a vanity that had a thicker top, so when I found this one, I was basically sold. It was the right size, the right color, the right style, and the right price. Today, I wanted to share how we installed our floating vanity. While it should have probably been easier than it was, we finally got it installed and anchored to the wall. It's not going anywhere, that's for sure. Right out of the box, the vanity had ...
How We Painted Our Exterior
Admittedly, I'm late in sharing all the details on how we painted our exterior. When we bought the house almost a year ago, there were several areas with peeling paint, and for the purpose of our loan, we had to repaint those areas in order to close on the house. We both thought it would be pointless to just slap some paint up without just painting the entire exterior... especially since it was so ugly to start. Let's flash back to last summer. This is how the house looked the day we closed... Let's just say, we couldn't wait to give the house a complete paint job. A new roof, soffit and facia were all things we knew we'd be replacing quickly as well, but ...
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 ...
Painted Guest Bedroom Wall
Well, I finally painted the guest bedroom wall. I knew it would probably be a little bit tricky since I was going from a white plank wall to a dark black/green wall... and I was right. This was one of the more time consuming walls I've painted lately, but it was worth the extra time! When I first shared my design inspiration and mood board for our new guest bedroom, I envisioned a dark plank wall that would tie in with several other dark accents throughout the room. I want the room to feel warm and cozy. The dark paint color helps create that warm feeling... but it wasn't the easiest to make happen. Back when the room was our office, we installed the plank wall and I painted it a ...
Updating Our Hallway Lighting
A few weeks ago, I shared how we updated our hallway with board and batten... talk about a transformation to the space. One day it was a plain and basic hallway, the next it was bright and full of character. But shortly before we added the board and batten, we decided it was time to update our hallway lighting too. When we built the house, we installed two basic can lights in the hallway, and while there wasn't anything wrong with the lighting, I felt the hallway would benefit from two pendant type lights to add extra character. We also happened to have two pendant lights sitting in our garage. A few years ago, when we gave our fixer upper a makeover, I had bought these two ...
DIY Board And Batten In The Hallway
Our house really only has one hallway. I guess that's what you get when you have such a big, open floorplan... all the rooms seem to flow right into each other. And other than adding a new rug, I haven't done a single thing to this hallway since we built the house. What?! So today, I'm finally sharing our tutorial for the DIY board and batten in the hallway. We actually finished the project right around Christmas, hence all the greenery and red pillows, ha, but it's making it's debut on the blog right now! ;) As far as projects go, this was a pretty simple one. Board and batten isn't overly hard, and our hallway isn't very big, so we were able to get it done quickly. Here's how we ...
DIY Leather Pulls
Want to make your own DIY Leather Pulls? See our full tutorial below and customize them to fit your space. Cabinet hardware is always such a huge way of transforming a piece of furniture, or an entire space. Thing is though, cabinet hardware can be down right expensive. Lately, I've been loving all things leather, so when it came down to finalizing the cabinet hardware for the new office desk and filing cabinet, I couldn't stop myself from incorporating leather. So, we made our own DIY leather pulls! I honestly couldn't be more thrilled with how the pulls turned out, or how easy and budget friendly they were to make. Not kidding! DIY Leather Pulls Affiliate ...
The Office Desk: The Finishing Details
All week I've been sharing our tutorial on how we've built our new office desk, and today I'm sharing the last part, which is all about the finishing details. I couldn't be happier with how the office desk has turned out. It solves so many of our past office issues just by providing a bigger work space and more storage options... both of which we desperately needed. Here's the final installment on how we built the desk... When we left off earlier this week, I shared how we installed the countertop portion of the desk... After the countertop was installed, we had a few projects left to make the desk look "finished". You can see from the picture above that our filing cabinet ...
The Office Desk: The Countertop
Since the tutorial for our office desk is pretty lengthy, I decided to break it up into a few different parts. On Monday, I shared how we built the base, making a riser for the filing cabinet and determining the overall height of the desk. Today, we're talking about how we chose, and attached the countertop for the office desk. Here's where we basically left off: We decided to remove the actual "top" of the Ikea dressers, which created a more seamless look for the desk, and we built a riser for the filing cabinet, which made everything the same height for the countertop... For the actual countertop, here's what we bought: 2- Ikea Saljan Counterops, in white, at ...
The Office Desk: The Base
When we began the design process for the office, I wanted to make sure I'd have plenty of work space, as well as storage. The best way to do that, was to maximize the room by having the desk run along two of the walls, giving me plenty of work space. Because this is a pretty lengthy tutorial, I'll be sharing how we installed the office desk throughout the week, but today it's all about the base. As I mentioned above, and in this post, I really needed to have ample storage space for both office supplies and files. The base of the office desk needed to be a work horse too, and that's why we decided on using two IKEA dressers, plus a lateral filing cabinet. Here's what we used for the ...
The Office Shelves
When I was designing the space for the office, one of my major focuses, was making sure we had plenty of storage space. Our current office lacks in that area, and it seemed papers, projects, tools and office supplies were stacking up in every corner. I tried so hard to manage the chaos, but without a place for everything to go, it basically took over the room. I swore that wasn't going to happen in our new office, so I made sure to add plenty of storage space. Here's how we added the office shelves... I had originally thought that we'd build our own floating shelves for the room, and I was going to have them be a little bit thicker than what we ended up doing, but because we changed ...
Dining Room Changes
I'm pretty excited about today's post! I mentioned last week that I felt the house was feeling stale, and that I had some fresh ideas for a few different areas in the house. One of those rooms was the dining room. I've always loved our dining room. The shelves, the layout, all of it... but lately it's felt kinda dull to me. I knew the shelves were definitely staying, but I kept seeing a darker paint color behind them. I wanted to make the room pop, to have it feel a little more dramatic, and switch up the shelving display. Here's what we're looking at right now... like, this morning! I knew I wanted a dark paint. Something almost black, but not quite, and something that had clear ...
DIY Closet Door Tutorial For Our Home Office
I'm sharing our DIY closet door tutorial for our home office. See our full, step by step DIY tutorial and how these closet doors transformed our space. I'm back today with another update on our home office... the closet doors! When we started converting the guest bedroom into our home office, I knew the closet doors would need some help. When we built the house a few years ago, we didn't want to spend any extra money on fancy closet doors. We didn't really have it in the budget, but knew we'd update them when the time came. So today I'm sharing our DIY closet door tutorial for our home office. The difference in unreal! Before I share the tutorial on how we built them, let's ...
