Holiday House Tour 2017

Merry Christmas Eve's Eve's Eve!

I can not believe we are only 3 days away from the big day! I've decided I'm all about Christmas falling on a Monday. I love that we can work a full week this week and still have two days to prep for festivities! Speaking of prep, I'm very excited to tell you all that I made dressing! ME! The girl who literally learned to boil water like 2 years ago made two big pans of dressing! I'm praying its good because if it is, my street cred in the cooking department is going to quadruple.

This has been a busy month, full of gatherings, shopping, wrapping, cooking, work and planning for 2018. Lucky for us we got started on our decorating right after Thanksgiving so we have been able to enjoy the happy scene all month long! I look forward to decorating for the holidays each year, especially now that I'm a mom. It's fun to transform the space you already deem as your "happy place" into a magical version of itself. Each year we tweak the decor we have and have fun planning out how to spruce up new areas in our house that have recently come to be. This year those areas include our brand new mudroom and our dining room!

Come on in, let me show you around...

As you know the mudroom is the newest space in our house and we are really enjoying it! The area oozes charm without even trying, so throw some plaid, a wreath and a little twinkly tree in the mix and POW. Happy city over here. 

Up next is the dining room which houses the antique mantle we revitalized earlier this year. I have been itching to throw some garland on this beast from day one.

Sigh....so beautiful right? 

This room has been totally transformed as we make way to host a Christmas dinner for 21 this year. 

We really loved the idea of having everyone at the same table so Brent and his brother Scott worked together to add plywood to some folding tables we already had, to act as an extension to our dining room table. Thanks to Brent's Dad for this awesome idea! We threw a table cloth over everything and now it's just one big, giant happy table. 

We've been doing a little bit each night to prepare and I'm happy to say we are in good shape. The goal this season has been to slow down and really enjoy the moment and that's just what we plan to do! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

All photos are my own. 

Our House - Year 2

It's hard to believe we are in the last month of 2017 already! This year has truly flown by, but before it's gone I want to take a minute and look back at all we've accomplished here on the home front. Back in October we celebrated our two year anniversary in this house and I'm happy to say we feel 100% more accomplished this year than we did after year one.

Our house is feeling more and more like a home and more excitedly our home with each project we complete. Some rooms are finished and some still have a ways to go, but a lot of them underwent some type of improvement this year.

Let's get the party started with The Living Room:

Earlier this year we added a chandelier, curtains and a coffee table to this space and man does it feel good in here. We definitely spend a lot of time in this room, so it's nice that it's one of the more completed areas in our house.

Up next...The Dining Room:

This room definitely saw a lot of action this year. We wrapped up our antique mantle restoration, figured out our chair situation around the dining table and added curtains. We also incorporated antique brackets to separate the dining room from the foyer which really elevated the whole space.

The last area we dug into this year was our mudroom. 

We touched every inch of this space and after adding planks, replacing our entry door, updating our laundry door and building out mudroom storage over the antique bench we reupholstered I would say we can officially consider this room D O N E.

And lastly, the never-ending project - The Outdoor Kitchen:

This is the most updated shot we have. It's from April and we haven't made much project since then. Next year is our year to finish this beast, I can feel it.

The process of updating, furnishing and decorating a house can feel overwhelming, exhausting and expensive. If you all are anything like me you know it can be hard to work through spaces, one at a time when what you really want to do is blink and it all be done. But in all honesty, I'm a sucker for the process too. Even if I had an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, I know I would still take forever because often times the best rooms are those that are collected and perfected over time. As we wrap up year two I'm feeling excited and proud that more rooms, especially on our first floor, feel like "us" as compared to the empty caves they were this time last year. So, cheers to progress and embracing the sloppy, tiring, expensive and rewarding journey!

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. 

New Entry Door

Confession time - I'm a freak about lighting. An honest to God highly opinionated, overly critical freak about it. On one hand I love lighting and believe in the power of a great light fixture in a space, but most of the time I don't actually want to see that light turned on. Especially for a photo. I hate when the only light source in a room is from a fixture. The shadows, the light bombs, the coloring, oyyyy it makes my blood boil and my eyes hurt all at the same time. Now, I'm aware that task lighting is necessary, but to me, the happiest spaces are those that are primarily lit with natural light.

Well, guess what - the hub of our current project - the hallways right off the garage was a great example of a bad lighting situation. I've known it since the day we moved in. It has cans, it has a pretty little pendant, but it has only second hand natural light (powder room window and laundry room window) which makes it dark and shadowy. Annoyingly, it's not just the hallway, the breakfast room and stair landing are in the same boat. The latter two sit in the center of the house, and the garage is on the other side of the hallway so there has never been much hope for integrating a window BUT a few weeks ago a sliver of hope occurred to me.

Enter the existing door. 

This is the entry door from the open air garage which means just on the other side of this solid beast is sunlight. Glorious, glorious sunlight. This door needed glass. It would change everything, I just knew it. 

As I mentioned the idea to Brent I honestly had no idea how involved this change would be. Turns out, the whole thing was relatively simple.  The first step was to pick out the door so we perused the Internet to find that Home Depot actually had a pretty wide selection and their prices were pretty good at just over $200. As much as I was desperate for the natural light, I knew we didn't want a full lite door. Not the right look, plus we didn't like the idea of being that exposed from a privacy standpoint. We ended up selecting this 9-lite door and within the hour, the old door was off and the new door was on. 

Boom:

Just look at that light.

As excited as we were with the instant happy this little change had already made, this door switch-a-roo was not without some hiccups. The first, the door hardware. Brent measured the hinge location of the old door as compared to the new door before mounting and while that was all good, the latches in the door way were way off. Nothing is ever simple, sigh. Brent used his drimel to cut out new latch locations to match the new door and we used wood filler to cover the old holes, creating a seamless look. Next, it was time to paint the door. Initially we thought about painting the door white to match the shiplap walls (all just primed as of now) but then we decided NAY, let's do something fun. So, we settled on this dusty blue/gray color called Flint Smoke from Behr.

It took a few coats but I could tell we had a winner after just a few strokes. 

It's like the door was meant to be this color. So happy and so warm at the same time. And the natural light from the glass is a game changer y'all, not just for this mudroom area but for the breakfast room and stair landing as well.

We are so happy with the results, but I will say the one negative to the pretty new door is the fact that it just magnifies the ugly creamy trim color. We are still weighing options as to how to attack this. Do we paint the entire downstairs with a fresh clean white? Or do we go back with the creamier color to keep costs down and keep things consistent throughout the house. Perhaps with the new natural light flooding in the old paint color won't seem so yellow. What do you think?

All photos are my own.