It all goes by fast...

A little off topic of my renovation journey....

My uncle John's public memorial is today.  Our family traveled to Florida a few weeks ago to gather  to celebrate his life privately.  It was everything I would want my life celebration to be, filled with love, laughs, tears and the people who held him the most dear.  It is impossible to watch my aunt and his four daughters go through the pain and suffering of losing him.  I once asked my mom if she missed her parents.  She said, "yes, I think you miss your parents forever".  I am afraid that she is right. My uncle was one of those people that you always wanted to be around.  He was funny, loving, smart, made you feel like you were the most important person in the world.  He listened intensely. I never felt that he was just waiting for me to stop speaking so he could say something. He loved his family fiercely and I am grateful that I was lucky enough to be part of that love.

When you start having kids people are constantly telling you to cherish every moment because it all goes by so fast.  As my oldest just turned 5, I completely agree.  I feel like I just had him.  His tiny hands and feet have been replaced by "kid" feet and hands. He was just an infant and now he is a boy.  It was fast and I know that it will only go by faster. I realize that my time as a child must have flown by for my parents.  I can now appreciate how it must feel for my parents to see me with my 3 children.  I wonder if they think, "but she was just an infant, how can she have her own infant".

As I reflect on my time with my uncle, I do not understand how his life went by so fast.  I think about his mom holding him as an infant and how he must have grown so fast in her eyes. My time with my parents generation has been so special to me, but I always assumed they would always be around.  There is something so sad that this bubble has been broken.

So yes, lady at the supermarket, I will cherish every moment with my kids, but also with my parents, uncles and aunts.  It all goes by so fast.

Nora Kate's Room

When we lived in North Carolina, we did a nice nursery for Liam.  He was our first and we didn't know any better.  I spent hours and hours looking at boy nursery pictures online.  Spent countless childless hours looking for the perfect bedding for our sweet baby.  I made my parents paint polka dots along the top of the room for a border look, without having to use an actual border.  Then Liam came into our lives and we could not have been happier.  He stay in our room in a pack and play until he was 8 months old.  Billy referred to his nursery as an upstairs living room.  One of the nicest rooms in the house that no one ever used.  Sigh!

matching a plastic form to the bumper

Tracing it on tracing paper to the plastic

My dad's an engineer and did the math to make them perfect

The first polka dots

Painting them on

Fixing the valance

The finished room

Yes, it was cute and I am glad we did it, but seriously, we matched the polka dots to the bumper that you can't even keep in the crib when the baby sleeps there (but since he never slept in his crib, it stayed in there for a long time!). Honestly, when we moved, it was my hardest room to part with. 

So when our sweet Nora Kate came along, we did not do a nursery because we did not want to throw our money away we were moving and then by the time we bought our house, it seemed silly to do it when she was 6 months old.  So I decided to use the "nursery" money and put it into her big girl room and bedding.  My parents gave us my old antique furniture that I grew up with so I didn't need to buy furniture. The room that we made her's was already pink with one brown wall.  It was the room of a pre-teen so once we rid the room of pre-teen angst, we were ready to roll.  I liked the color pink so we painted the brown wall, pink the match the rest of the room.  

                                  

The Brown Wall

I went to pottery barn and sold a kidney to decorate their rooms.  Seriously, why is there stuff so cute?  I think that they merchandise is well made, so that (sort of) lessens the blow.  I knew I wanted to do blue and pink for her room.  I found this set and loved it.  Apparently, college girls were coming and buying the quilt for their dorm rooms! I felt like that was a good sign, since I decorated her room for her to grow into it. 

The Elephant pillow matches her crib bedding

I added this bolster pillow to break up the square and rectangles

She has two window seats in her room that begged for cushions. I imagine her sitting on them with friends gossiping or talking on the phone about how WONDERFUL her mom is, girls do that...right!?!

I wanted to make the pillows out of fabric that she could age with and would not been too young looking.  I had no idea how much pillows cost. The main expense is the foam on the inside.  I was shocked! I found this fabric at an outlet store.  It is outdoor fabric so will do well not to fade in her window. 

A perfect fit!

The next thing was the sun bursts over her windows.  The fabric that was there was brown and had pink and orange polka dots. The previous owner had made them herself and you could tell! I had some new ones made which ended up being much more difficult than I had anticipated.  The sunburst is a perfect half circle with an extra inch down on each side. I had it measured professionally and then they made a wooden frame to go around the window and the material uses velcro to attach it.  I had black out material put on the outside of the fabric for two purposes: 1) to keep light out 2) so pink elephants wouldn't be seen from the front of our house. I decided on a "younger" looking fabric to make sure her room didn't look too mature.  I know I will have to replace this print in the future, but thought it was a perfect compliment to the slight elephant theme I have in her room. 

The before

The fabric up to see what it would look like

The elephants up!

Lastly, I wanted to replace her light fixture.  Both of the kids rooms had outdated ceiling fans.  There were two issues, they were hung too low and they were ugly.  So I did not want to spend the time remounting them if I really did not like them, so we replaced both lights.  Billy really wanted to put another ceiling fan in, but I disagreed.  What is it with men and ceiling fans??  I went back to my outlet lighting store and found this adorable chandelier.  I was a little weary of it being pink and wondering how that would "age" with her, but someone suggested I could always paint it later if pink did not match her future room colors. 

The Fan

I had her initials made from a Etsy shop and hung them above her crib.  I am not sure where will be put them once her crib is moved out.  Maybe above her bed? 

I did a picture gallery with some white frames I found at pottery barn that were one sale! I think it is very sweet and I can change out the pictures as she grows. 

I bought these mirrors from Target.  I wanted to do something behind her door and think mirrors are a great way of using wall space without spending a lot of money on art. 

We have ordered a nice chair for her room to replace the glider.  It should be here is about 8 weeks.  I decided on a light cream (almost white) fabric because I want her to use it for a long time. We decided on a slipcover so it can be washed if needed.  

Once we move the crib out, I will probably center her bed and maybe move a dresser next to the bed to double as a night table.  This may give her more play room on the other side of the room.  I love her room and love going in there! I hope she enjoys it as much as I do.  

Half bath Reno

Our half bathroom on the main floor was not my cup of tea.  My mom described the walls as "old skin".  Who doesn't want a bathroom that reminds guests of old skin?  Maybe this could be a PSA about tanning beds.  "Hey you college co-ed, don't go fake and bake or you will look like these half bath walls".  We are the 4th owners of our 1999 house and the second owners had wonderful taste, but the 3rd owners, well, did not.  So when they changed some parts of the house it took away the flow of the decor.  But, dead skin is not in my decor, well, ever. (I have found that I am really bad at taking "Before" pictures, but here is one after my kids destroyed a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom.  I had my dad paint it this neutral color to see if I could live with the faux finish on the walls. Before it was a brown paint. So imagine it darker without shredded toilet paper all over the floor--good times!)

The vanity was a piece of furniture what was turned into a sink.  One of the biggest problems is when water was splashed on it, it started rotting.  This is one of the reasons that we ended up gutting the bathroom.

You can see the color of the walls before they were painted where the vanity was in this picture

The ceiling had a neat faux finish on it, but it was way too dark.  I didn't mind the light fixture. Our handy man traded me free installation of our new light fixture for this one! Score

One February morning, I noticed that under the sink was moldy...ewwww!  So I called our trusty handyman to remove the vanity and he ended up gutting the entire bathroom. The toilet had been caulked around it and it was leaking. Because of the caulking we had no idea it was leaking and this could have lead to a bigger problem.  The floor had started molding and if it had gone unnoticed for years, could have rotted the floor out and the toilet could have fallen through the floor. Can you imagine?!? Billy was quite surprised when he got home and out bathroom looked like this:

The only thing left was the light!!

Due to some unforeseen issues we lived with a gutted bathroom for 3 months.  It was kind of a pain when we had people over, but they didn't seem to mind using a bucket in the yard.  No, our master bedroom is the on the main floor, so people just used our bathroom.

Because of the delay, I had lots of time to think about what to do in this room.  I wanted to do something different in there.  I think you can get away with a lot more "wild" in a half bathroom.  I decided I wanted to do wallpaper.  OH MY GOSH, have you ever looked for wallpaper?!?  It is insane.  I cannot believe how many books upon books of wallpaper choices there are.  It is truly overwhelming. I took my poor mother with me to look.  I needed a nap and a drink after that experience.  I came up with two choices:

When I showed this one to my dad he said, you are kidding...right?!

The first one is a much "safer" choice and I really liked it, but again, I wanted something different, something I wouldn't do in any other room of the house.  So we decided on the pink!  It took some convincing of Billy.  But once he realized he didn't really have a say, he happily agreed! The wallpaper is from the UK so it took a few weeks to be delivered.  

Our handy man put the walls back up, painted them with 2 coats of paint and painted the ceiling.  We decided to go with a gray color to complement the wallpaper. The brown and gold was much too dark and I did not want plain white. 

Then the day came to put the wallpaper up! It was pretty amazing watching the wallpaper hanger do his magic.  It is all about repeats. He did a great job, but what exhausting work!

It took him about 3 hours

I picked out a vanity from pottery barn.  I looked at Lowes and Ferguson but did not find something I liked for a half bath.  I really liked the look of the hammered sink and liked how it brought out the metallic in the wallpaper. 

My neighbor found this amazing mirror on Horchow.com, it is a perfect compliment to the space!

The last thing to find was a light fixture.  I knew I wanted to replace the one we had. I liked the existing one, but felt I need something with more "sparkle".  There is a great outlet light store near me and the women who work in there are always really helpful.  They suggested this fixture and it was a great price and it is definitely sparkly enough!

We are really happy how the bathroom turned out and its an unexpected pop of color for our guests! 

The best place to start is at the beginning...

We moved back to Virginia from North Carolina in the summer of 2012.  We had a 6 week old so of course, the timing was perfect for moving.  Who doesn't like to watch all their stuff be packed up with a screaming infant in their arms and a 2 year old wrapped about their legs?  But, hey, we live on the edge.

We moved into an apartment since we did not find the "perfect" house before the new owners of our NC house demanded that we leave.  Can you imagine how excited the people above us in the apartment building were to see us coming? A toddler, infant, a dog, and two exhausted parents--we were the perfect tenants! But don't worry, our 2nd child screamed every night from 5-10 pm, so it got even better for our neighbors.

Moving into our apartment

The days and months slowly ticked by as I waited patiently for a house to come on the market that we liked.  I only called my realtor, Anna, every other day and checked realtor.com every 36 minutes.  But one September morning, Anna, called me and told me that I needed to come see a house ASAP.  Could it be the house? Our house? Our answer for getting out of the apartment that reeked of smoke and I could be reunited with the other half of my crap that got put into storage?

We had a few requirements for our house.  We wanted all brick, a basement, a nice kitchen, 5 bedrooms (we knew we wanted 3 children and room for guests), and no 2-story rooms.  We had a 2-story family room in our house in NC and did not like it--hard to heat, cool, and it was noisy upstairs (Billy would be watching a football game downstairs and my Real Housewives of name a city would be disrupted).

I met Anna at "the" potential house.  Brick, check. 5 bedrooms, check.  Basement, check.  But it did not have a nice kitchen and it had a 2-story family room.  I told Anna maybe we should keep looking.   Anna, a wise woman, encouraged me to look at the house again and think about the things that it has that I cannot change--brick and a basement--and the things that I COULD change like the kitchen and the 2-story room.  So I called Billy and told him I found our house, being a trusting soul, he insisted on seeing it before putting in an offer. I guess if you are about to make the biggest financial decision of your life, you like to see it in person.  But he approved and loved the house as much as I did (minus the kitchen and family room).

Our offer was accepted and it all went really smoothly, the inspection was really "clean", we only did minor negations with the owners, easy peasy.  So then I started looking into kitchen remodels.  Ummm...do you know how much renovations cost? Yes, I'm sure you do.  Everyone seemed to know but me.  So my kitchen got tabled (kitchen tabled?!?) to a few years out.  These contractors, they want money.  I know--I was as shocked as you are.  Crazy.

So here starts our adventure in slowly making this house our home and getting ready for a huge renovation.  We are going to gut the whole existing kitchen, expand it into the existing dining room, create a small office at the front of the existing dining room (new kitchen), move the dining room to the existing formal living room, close the family room off and create a media room above it, add a bathroom to the new space above the family room. Wish us luck...we will need it!

Home Sweet Renovation