Nursery Time

New babies mean new spaces to hold babies!  Jake and I have been excited to work on this space, which used to function as a guest room and second office.  It was the last room to remain untouched by our eager, if inexperienced, hands.  It's a strange arrangement; the main space is a 12 x 10 bedroom, off the back of which the previous owners built a small additional bedroom.  This means you have to pass through the large bedroom to get to the small room; it also means that the rooms are connected by the original exterior passage-ways: double french doors and an exterior window.

Here is a reminder of what it looked like before Jonah came along.

And here's what it looks like now.

Our main goal was to create a bright, clean and modern but sweet & slightly whimsical space for our little guy.  We decided on pale mint walls, with white, navy and grey accent colors.

Here are a few of the design highlights:
1. Walls and trim:  We sanded down the yellow-beige "textured" walls and painted them a pale mint, "Sea Cap" by Behr. We patched the old trim and painted it (and the ceiling) a bright white. (Oh and by "we" I mean we paid a talented friend to do it for us. Aint nobody got time for that.)  The lighting in these photos makes the mint walls look a little paler than it is in person.

2. Radiator Cover: Jake covered the old rad with a custom built radiator cover, which maintains its function (the heat is channeled into the room through the decorative aluminum sheeting) but hides the whole "ugly cast iron radiator" aspect.  Added bonus:  another surface for decorating! Although at the moment it's holding a water bottle, infant gas drops, two burp clothes and the granola bar wrapper from a late night nursing snack.

3. Furniture: How blessed we were to receive my sweet cousin Tera's lovely white crib and dresser/hutch!  It survived her three boys and remains in excellent shape, a testament to its quality.  I love that we're making new memories with Jonah in furniture that already holds so many sweet family moments.  My generous parents bought us this charcoal grey glider, which has definitely been sufficiently christened with countless late night and early morning nursing sessions, as well as a fair share of story times, made up lullaby concerts and spit up episodes.  Also, I repainted an old book shelf in pale grey.

4. Art: We did a lot of home-made art for this space.  Jake had the great idea to print and frame some old patent drawings of classic toys.  Looking at them framed in the space now, we think they need to be about 50% bigger. But in the meantime they'll do.  Other items on Jonah's walls are a framed piece of fabric that had all our favorite nursery colors in it (hung over the rad), an great fox print gifted to us by some sweet friends (on the rad cover), a framed whale collage of messages from guests at one of my baby showers, made by my awesome sister in law (sitting on the changing table) and DIY fabric bunting over the crib.

5. Other notable decorations: Jake's parents gifted us the gorgeous navy and white quatrafoil rug.  My parents passed along the collection of Stieff stuffed animals on top of the hutch, which my German family gave me as a child.  My sweet friend Leslie made the gorgeous star/chevron quilt draping over the glider.   And our one gentle nod to Jonah's name: the whale mobile over his crib.

6. The adjacent space: In the bonus room we just painted everything white, to make the space feel bigger. In addition, we replaced the old windows with bigger, energy efficient windows.  We initially intended this space to be a guest bedroom (or a room for us to sleep in while guests sleep in our bed), but this bed has been the "Jonah-duty" sleep spot.  From 10pm-3am, Jake sleeps here with Jonah while I get a good chunk of solid sleep in our bed; then at 3am he taps out and I finish out the night.   This bed has been a life-saver!

Sleep well, sweet boy. 

We're (sort of) Bath Masters:Takin' it to the Next Level

The second level, that is.  Of our house.  Here's the upstairs bathroom refresh, which was completed several months ago but, of course, had some trouble making it to the blog.  Mainly because of my laziness. 

But regardless. Here it is!  

Here's the "before".  Notice the weird off-center vanity, painted-over wall tile (that must have had sand mixed in because it actually scraped us when we accidentally brushed against it) and out of frame to the right: a peeling cast iron tub that I refused to take a bath in because I was sure I'd get some version of lead poisoning.  Don't let the white on ivory on white fool you.  This was no master bath.  It was barely a bath. 

BEFORE

  We originally had planned to bust this whole thing out, steal some space from the adjacent master-closet (behind the tub) and the linen closet to add both a walk-in shower and new tub.  But when the plumber gave us the estimate to re-route all the plumbing (and alerted us to the fact that he'd have to come in through the ceiling of our dining room), we decided to reconsider our plan.  This was when the "let's re-do BOTH baths and add a second shower DOWNSTAIRS" idea was born.  We are so glad we went with plan B.  Now we can boast "two full baths" and we got two refreshed bathrooms for about the same price as our original plan to overhaul just the master bath.

To save money, we kept the layout the same in the upstairs bath.  We just decided to upgrade everything.  Floor tile, wall tile, tub, toilet, paint, etc.  And we veered off our usual color wheel (which only contains colors like "dove grey" and "gravity" and "porpoise grey") to embrace a dusty plum.  It's "Gothic Amethyst" by Behr. 

As usual, Jake found some unused space that we decided to re-claim.  This time it was in the wall to the left of the toilet (which was empty space under the eave).  We boxed it out, insulated around the box, added doors and made it an 18"-deep built-in medicine cabinet.  We also replaced the fancy second-hand shower curtain "door" to our linen closet with a wood bi-fold door. 

In another storage-claiming move, we added a shelf extending all across the back wall to connect the vanity and left wall, giving us extra countertop space which is currently holding my cosmetics, most of which are Clinique free samples from my grandmother.  Thanks Nana!

We went with the same carrera marble wall tile that we installed in the downstairs bathroom.  And again we extended it window sill-height along the wall behind the vanity.  

We used the same floor tiles as downstairs.  And, once again, we installed a heated floor underneath.  Given that tomorrow's high is a record -2*F, I can confidently say that we are in love with the heated floors.  

Another intentional design decision we made was to install one big wall-width mirror instead of a regular vanity-width mirror (which was all Jake; I resisted at first).  The space is a little awkward because of where the vanity and window are placed, making any mirror above the vanity necessarily off-center.  So after finally finding a mirror with the right dimensions (although the wrong color; we would have preferred something closer to cherry), we gave it a try and really liked how it made the room feel bigger. 

We spend quite a bit of time in this room. And now we don't cringe while we're there. 

Happy New Year! 

Bathroom half empty or half full? Downstairs study/bathroom

The layout of our house is very similar to our Bellevue neighbors.  Except our house has a fabulous bonus room:  an addition off the back of the dining room.  This is our pass through to the backyard deck and it has traditionally functioned as a study for us (although one day we hope to make it into a playroom for some kiddos).   In addition, this room had a coat closet (in the southeast corner of the room) and our main floor half bath (in the northeast corner).

Half baths are great for function, but this one left a lot to be desired; it was dark, smelled a little funky, had a wobbly toilet and just wasn't very welcoming to guests (or us, for that matter).   When we started planning our bathroom renovations, we knew we wanted to put some money into updating this half bath.  New floors, new vanity, a fresh coat of paint.  Then we decided, why not just upgrade it to a full bath while we're at it?   So that's exactly what we did.  We moved some walls, added a shower and moved the coat closet from the alternate corner of the room to squeeze in between the new full bath and the back wall, thereby flushing off that wall.

The reno also gave us a chance to refresh the back room, and paint over the hunter green paint with a fresh coat of a cool grey.  Here are some before and after shots:

Back room BEFORE,
looking from dining room through back window. 

Back room, looking from back window into dining room.
The coat closet is just beyond the desk and the 1/2 bath behind
that bookshelf. 

Half bath BEFORE (gag). 

AFTER:  sink and toilet in same position. 

Porcelain "Carrera" 9x14 wall tiles (for shower and taken all the way around).
18" x 18" light grey floor tiles, with a heated floor pad beneath. 

We made some very intentional design choices in this bathroom: 

1. Light colors: cool greys and whites, to help it feel bigger, cleaner and more "spa-like".  Couples massage, anyone?  We started with the "Carerra" look-alike porcelain tile from Home Depot, which we got for only $2.20/sq ft.  Our splurge was the slate hex tile for the shower floor and the shower inset.  This we found at The Tile Shop for around $13/sq ft.  We only needed about 15 square feet for those spaces, so it seemed like a decent place to splurge.   The wall color is "Gravity" by Valspar.  The floor is 18"x18" light grey ceramic, which we found for a STEAL at $1.90/sq ft at a local discount flooring outlet.  

2. We decided to take the shower wall tile all the way around the room (at least to chair-rail height) to help make the space more cohesive.  What we didn't want was a small room to feel even smaller because the shower and non-shower spaces felt separate.  (Which is also why we chose a simple white waffle shower curtain.)  We also hear it's nice to have easy-to-wipe tile on areas where dirty little kid hands tend to touch. 

3. Since there was no source of natural light (further contributing to the dark, cramped feel) we installed a sky-light (a Sola-tube, actually) in the ceiling.  I forgot to photograph it, but it does such a great job of bringing some natural light into the space.  On a sunny day you don't even need to flip a light switch; your business is perfectly illuminated by the skylight :) 

4. Speaking of making the room feel bigger, this was the main reason for such a big inset shelf.  Since it sets that shower wall back another couple of inches in the area where it counts (shoulder and arm room), we wanted to make it pretty big.  We intended to put a glass shelf somewhere for extra product storage, but decided against it since we didn't need the extra shelf space. 

5. Finally, another small splurge: we added a heated floor!   (That small panel next to the light switches is the control panel.) Because there is no radiator in this back room (yes, we still use our trusty rads for cold weather heating), it tends to get pretty chilly in the winter, especially when your bare tootsies are on a tile floor.  We haven't had an occasion to turn the heated floor on yet, but we'll update you on how it functions once we do.    

New shower!  Slate hex tile used on the shower floor and in the inset shelf. 

Gotta love your Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap. 

Vanity and toilet both from Home Depot.  

View from back door.  Coat closet on left, bathroom door on right. 

Love the function of these shelves added to the
wall between the bath and closet doors.  

View from the bathroom door, of the backdoor. 

A Fresh Coat of Pantry

We are still thrilled with how awesome our kitchen renovation turned out.  It feels bright, clean and modern.  Exactly how we wanted our kitchen to feel.  But this newly reclaimed fresh feeling in the kitchen only heightened the feeling of nastiness that remained just beyond the basement door.  Behind this door...

was this...

and this...

So we recently decided to tackle this dark, ugly space and make way for some of that clean fresh kitchen feeling to seep into the pantry/basement steps.  Aside from a LOT of paint, we had to do a little bit of structural work to reclaim some of the space that used to be enclosed for the radiator, but ended up being dead space because we removed the rad.  

Enter: my manly husband and his power tools.  With the help of a hammer and a reciprocating saw, Jake had the space opened up in no time, and then built new shelves to span the reclaimed area.  

Then, of course, came the 8 hours of prep and painting to finish off the space.  It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't exciting. It wasn't even photo-worthy, evidently. (Have I mentioned lately how much I dislike plaster walls?)  But it was worth it.  We went with a semi-gloss white in the pantry and a cool grey on the walls down the stairs.  

 

In addition, we decided to change up the flooring a little bit.  We covered the closet floor with cheap peal and stick vinyl tiles (just for a slightly more finished look) and we "carpeted" the top steps and landing.  I say "carpeted" because we literally took old carpet remnants, cut them to size and staple-gunned the edges to the wood.  Don't look close, cause it's a little ghetto.  But it was cheap and now our footsies are a little more comfortable when stepping into the pantry.

And then of course I got to reorganize the pantry shelves. My favorite part.  Nothing too special here. Just a couple stacking baskets for onions and potatoes, and a few new containers for other random things.  

 

Hello clean(er), bright(er) pantry.  You aren't the glamorous walk-in pantry of the magazines, with great lighting and perfectly squared walls, but you'll do fine.  Just fine.