Painted it White

This month has been a bit of a whirlwind on the home front because we finally pulled the trigger and hired painters to take our house from beigey-non white to white!! When we originally moved into this house I was thankful the walls were light and all the same color. It was definitely a vibe we could work with, and considering I was 7 months pregnant at the time I was happy to leave it be at least for awhile. However, as room after room began to take shape, I found myself growing increasingly annoyed with our off-white background. The mudroom was the final straw. We were so excited about the progress we were making on this remodel, but it was SO hard to take progress pictures. The hallways itself was already dark, and even after we changed out our garage entry door to one with glass, those pictures were blah because of the creamy trim around our pretty new blue door. We were over it so we decided it was officially time to go white. Once we wrapped up the actual build of the mudroom, we made some calls, got some quotes, and decided it was worth it to hire someone to do this big job. I have to admit it was a hard pill to swallow, seeing as how we know we are more than capable of painting, but we knew it would take us weeks to accomplish a task this big with a little Croix-Boy running around, so we decided it was worth the investment.

So...the game plan was all walls, trim, ceilings, stair rails and treads on the 1st floor + the stair hall and upstairs hallway were to be WHITE. Benjamin Moore's White Dove OC-17 to be exact.

The crew showed up and in a matter of minutes our house was covered with plastic. It looked like a scene out of Dexter, but to me the whole scene equaled PROGRESS, so it was all good with me. It took the guys 2 1/2 days to get everything completed and one quick return trip to get a few odds and ends tidied up and they were done. It was as if they were never even here, well, except for the fact that now our walls were white! A crisp, clean, beautiful white.

Here's a little preview.....

I know this is only a tiny peak, but oooooh the difference. Makes my heart AND eyes happy!

All photos are my own. 

Our Mudroom Reveal

We have a mudroom! A functioning, pretty mudroom that adds personality and organization to our life. It's a dream! To recap we took our back hallway, that was full of doors and nothing-ness and decided to give it life and purpose.

Over the last few months you've seen us add planks, change out our entry door, update our laundry door with an antique barn door and a few weeks ago I showed you how we revitalized our antique bench. As visually impactful as all of these updates have been, no mudroom has street cred without some storage and organization.

From the beginning we planned to build out storage around the bench. We knew we couldn't do anything super heavy, as we didn't want to make the hallway feel closed in, but I definitely wanted to incorporate as much smart storage as possible. After a lot of deliberation we decided to add 6 open cubbies to the right of the bench with one long shelf spanning over the bench with hooks mounted underneath.

We picked up our supplies from Home Depot and Brent and Croix headed out to the backyard to start building. The overall design was pretty simple and straight forward, so a little measuring.....

......some cutting and then a few nails later.... 

... and our open cubbie structure was built. 

We used the same material to bridge across the bench while simultaneously acting as a "top" for the cubbie structure. We searched high and low for the perfect brackets to hold up our shelf, but ended up  going with these simple inexpensive black ones from Home Depot. Interestingly enough, the same thing happened with the hooks. There are so many options out there at every price point, but the selection that felt right for our space were these simple $5 hooks from Home Depot. I swear, we weren't trying to select the cheapest thing, although we are happy we did, we just honestly liked these the best! Home Depot is full of treasures if you dig a little!

The storage element took a Saturday to complete, so we've had a fully functioning mudroom for a few weeks, we have just been waiting on the paint. Thankfully, all painting was wrapped up this week, so I'm excited to finally be able to show you the finished space.

Now, I'm a firm believer that a reveal isn't nearly as sweet without a little preview of the BEFORE, so let's take a look at what we started with....

And now, here she is today:

Eeeek! What do you think? We are so happy with how this space turned out and can't believe a hallway is officially among one of our favorite areas in our whole house! 

For now we've decided to use our top shelf to display some original artwork we found at an estate sale a few months ago. We opted for simple black frames and I just love the interest and height these pieces bring to the space. Another fun addition to the hallway was the lighting. Originally the hallway had a boob light (very technical design term) and a can light. Early on we switched out the boob light for a semi-flush light we already had from our last house. But as the mudroom began to take shape we decided we wanted to add a second matching light where the can light was for a more cohesive look. Luckily, we already had another light fixture (again, from our last house - remember them from this post?), we just had to buy the can light converter to make the switch.

                                      

Let's talk details: For baskets we did a little mix and match action with 2 woven baskets we picked up at Marshalls and 3 metal baskets from the Hearth & Hand Collection at Target. Our rug is from Urban Outfitters and was a 2016 Christmas present. The little mail holder is from the Magnolia store in Waco, the plant holder is from Amazon and the pot is from Anthropology (old). We ended up painting the walls + trim Benjamin Moore's White Dove OC-17 and couldn't be happier with the crisp, clean background it provides. 

It's so nice to have a dedicated area to corral all of our stuff and help us stay organized and tidy. And who knows, maybe we introduced this whole "put your bag in this cubbie and your coat on this hook" thing early enough in Croix's life that he will maintain these "skills" forever. I just know his future spouse and teachers will thank me someday if he does...:)

All photos are my own. 

The Evolution of our Mudroom Bench

We are thiiiis close to finishing up our mudroom, but before I do the big official reveal I wanted to circle back and show you the progress we made on the element that kick started the whole project....THE bench. 

Here she was when we got her home. 

The bones of the bench were good but the finish had definitely seen better days. Re-finishing/ Re-viving the bench was a must but to help us figure out the best approach we decided to start by sanding the finish off so we could see what kind of wood we were dealing with. Now, sometimes the act of sanding can be relaxing and rewarding as you see the beauty of the wood beneath shine through, but this was not one of those times. Nay - the size of the bench + all the twists and turns made the process take forever while the realization that the wood buried underneath was pine took about 3 milliseconds. WOMP, WOMP. Don't get me wrong, pine is a fine wood and given that this bench was made over a 100 years ago for a church, it actually makes a lot of since, it just doesn't bring a whole lot of excitement to the table visually. Here she is all naked....

This is where life gets real. So, I don't know how any of you guys go about projects but for us, we typically have a few happening at one time. During this particular time we were working on the new laundry room door at the same time we were working on the bench. So, while one of us sanded the door the other was busy working on the bench. We talked through our vision for both while we worked and ultimately decided we would sand the door down and leave it raw and exposed (mostly because it's finish was beautiful underneath all of that paint) and we would stain the bench in a complimentary hue. Well, the door finished up before the bench and we LOVED the results of that project. With the door up we were ready to stain our bench. We ended up selecting Briarsmoke by Varathane. A warm, brown-gray hue. The staining process was pretty fast and we left it outside to dry all day.

That night, we brought it inside and set it in place and instantly we could tell something was off. We decided to wait and see it in the light of day, but unfortunately that didn't help. The bench + the laundry door didn't work, the colors were too close to be in the same space. It looked like we tried to match and we missed. Plus, I honestly think the laundry door was so pretty and organic looking it made the bench look like it was trying too hard. It was obvious that one of them had to go and we both knew it wasn't going to be the door, so it was back to the drawing board on the bench.  WOMP WOMP x 2.

So, at this point we were not about to sand the bench again, but even if we were willing to, what would we do to it? Staining wasn't going to work and while we could paint it, no color felt right or obvious. The bench needed to have personality and flair without competing with the other elements in the space (shiplap, blue door and laundry room door). As we discussed options we kept coming back to an idea we had talked about way back at the beginning, during the time we actually thought the bench was going to go in the dining room...upholstering it. I had seen an image awhile ago of a seating situation in a restaurant. It was a set-up where one side of the table had a booth and the other side had a chair. Are you visualizing? OK, so on the booth side the seat was upholstered as was a strip of cushion that had been installed up towards the area your middle back would hit if you were to sit there. The lines of the design, while totally different kind of reminded me of our bench, specifically the thin back rail piece, and Brent and I agreed upholstering the seat and the back of the bench could produce a similar aesthetic vibe which could be cool and different. So, we loaded up the Croix and headed to the fabric store.

There are a lot of fabric stores in the Atlanta area, but one place we love to go when we don't want to spend a fortune is a place called Fabric & Fringe. The place is huge and full of fabric at great prices. We didn't know exactly what we wanted, but we kind of had a thought that we wanted a leather (pleather/vinyl) look and they have a lot there.  Lucky us we came upon a really pretty camel option that was $10/yd (what!!!) and decided it was the one. Fabric & Fringe also sells all of the parts and pieces you would need to upholster a piece like this so we bought some batten and a cushion there too and headed home to give DIY upholstering a whirl.

Before we could do anything we painted the bench white. While the seat and the back part of the bench would be upholstered some wood would still show and we really wanted that to just kind of go away visually. So, we painted it the same color of white we plan to paint the rest of the downstairs (eventually) - Benjamin Moore's White Dove, OC-17. Next, we traced the bench seat with a sharpie onto the cushion so we could get a perfect fit and then used some fabric glue to attach it to the seat.

Then, we wrapped the cushioned seat and the back rail in batten and secured with staples. 

With the prep work done we were ready for the fabric. 

Let me start by saying if you've been reading this blog long we all know Brent has mad skills but he really showed off on this DIY. I was there, sure and every now and then I would use the staple gun to shoot a staple or two where he told me to, but for the most part he upholstered this entire bench by himself, whilst watching a UGA game. Now, he did have Croix helping, so of course that's probably the magic ingredient (ha!) but in all seriousness he had the majority of this puppy covered in vinyl in less than an hour. He would of finished the whole thing but about halfway through upholstering the top portion, the fabric ripped (womp, womp x3) so we had to get more fabric which delayed things a few days.

One final detail was the addition of two leather belts. 

Yes, you read that right...belts. We picked two black belts up from the fabric store with plans to install  them to the bench seat and the back for a little added flair. And whoa, what a difference this made!

Another idea we had on the fly was to wrap the foot rail in the fabric as well and I'm so glad we did! 

Well, there you have it. The longest post ever written about a bench. It had painful moments, no doubt, but Brent now has a back up career as an upholster and we have an awesome 100 year old bench that adds a layer of cool to our mudroom I don' think we could of gotten from something store bought. 

Unless otherwise noted all photos are my own.