Monday, January 9, 2012

Room Updates

I have never posted a "home tour" on this blog, mostly just bits and pieces of the house. Someday I will get around to that. However, there are a couple of rooms that I would like to show our progress on and that is the nursery and the office.

I am so, so happy with the way Eleanor's room turned out and I hope she will enjoy it too. I will have to use words to explain the transformation because we didn't take a picture of this particular room when we first moved in. All the trim in our house was wood, so the chair rail was wood with a bluish-gray paint on the top and a navy blue on the bottom. Very depressing and dark. We had company coming to stay just a couple of months after we moved in so we needed to brighten this room up ASAP. Cue in me thinking ahead and choosing the gender neutral bright, cheery color of yellow. We painted the trim a shade of white and painted the walls yellow. Instant happy.

Fast forward three years later and we are getting ready for a baby. The yellow had become just a little too bright and I thought it needed a little balance. We painted the bottom half of the wall under the chair rail gray because after I had painted the office gray (more to come on this) I loved gray.

Over the course of my pregnancy, the look of the room developed and evolved. We mostly chose second hand, borrowed or handmade items. I feel this made the room very personal and I enjoyed the project while trying not to obsess and count the minutes before we met the baby girl. We also chose to stay fairly neutral on the colors instead of choosing the traditional "girly" pink so that we can re-use items if I ever decide to pop out a boy. Or, wait, I guess the dad chooses gender...? Anyway.

Here she is in all her glory (she and her being the room):





The frame collage has a Corinthians bible verse, scrapbook paper, a picture of Ben and I (separately of course) as little kids, and two maternity pictures. I love how it is coming along. There are a couple more additions I have in the works.

Moving into the room next door, we have our office. I am embarrassed to say that I reported on beginning to update, rearrange, paint and decorate this room last year in February. I wouldn't say we have made tremendous progress, but I definitely enjoy the room a lot more. We painted the room Valspar's Notre Dame and when it was finished I absolutely loved it. We painted the trim different that the rest of the house because we realized white pops more than the other color we had chosen in the rest of the house. It looks so clean and nice up against the gray.


The decor on the walls is aiming for a hodge podge but I think if we keep it organized enough, it will look good on the gray backdrop. Right now all we have are Hub's Spurs flags and our college diplomas. We have a picture hanger and Hub's grandpa's flag to hang up. You can see that sitting on the corner of the desk.

As far as my "craft corner" that I had discussed organizing, it kind of just got shoved placed on the top shelf of the closet in a bin for now. I haven't been crafting too much lately but it is easy access in case I need it. We got some shelves for the closet which helped a lot.
I am embarrassed proud to say that most of that is Christmas decor. It may look messy, but it is way better than it was, it is nice to have shelves that house multiple tubs and it is pretty organized in real life.

So there we have it, a lot of progress over the last year in the rooms that were basically "catch alls" that housed a lot of junk we never used and had icky carpet. Oh, that's right! We got new carpet in both rooms. We were pretty sure the carpet in those rooms had been there for about 20 years. The age of the house. It was so nice to get new carpet in those rooms. 

Very happy with our results in both of these rooms.

What has taken you almost a year to update? What room updates do you have going on lately? Do you fall in love with a paint color and want to paint everything that color?




1 comment:

Holly said...

Her room is adorable! My favorite is the green dresser/changing table. :) My weakness is Christmas decor... So no judgement from me. Happy Monday!