A few favorites

We have lived in our townhome for a little over 5 years.  We purchased this place right after we tied the knot.  Well, not right after.  It took three months to find this place, but it felt like a lifetime to me! I remember looking at all different types of homes (capes, split levels, ranches, colonials).  We then switched gears and decided to purchase a townhouse as our first home.  Boy are there are lot to choose from! Some with yards, some with garages, some with basements, some that sagged, some that felt like a tomb, some that were so open they were missing doors, some that were so dirty I wanted to shower afterwards.  But, alas, when we stepped foot into our townhome for the first time, Dave and I looked at each other and just knew!

We are not people who agree easily on big purchases.  It took four trips to Fortunoff to pick out our wedding china.  We saw more wedding reception locations that I can count and purchases our first home was not an easy feat for us.  But something about this place stole our hearts.

It wasn't a pretty place, but it had potential.  The location was great, too.  We back up to the woods, so it's peaceful and on a few occasions we have spotted deer lurking in our driveway.  It's been a place that we can call home, find comfort and discover ourselves.

These walls have heard our laughter through good times, watched our tears flow in times of sadness and cringed during moments of anger.  These walls have watched us grow as individuals and as a family.  These walls have seen some hideous decor decisions and have taken a beating by nails and paintbrushes and some bunny teeth chewing the moulding.

For this post, I wanted to share my three favorite rooms.  I'll break down each of them in separate posts, but just wanted to introduce them today.

First is our half bath.  Here is it on the day of our inspection.

YIKES!!  I forgot how much beige was in crammed in that room. This was our first big project.  With the help of my dad we gutted this room and gave it a new life.  Ugliness went out and a calming oasis went in.

Here's the finished project.

So much better!  I love this bathroom.  Is that weird to say? I love the colors, the flooring, the sink, and most of all, the fact that we did it!!

My second favorite room is our kitchen.  Here it is on the day of inspection.

Looks like a typical 1970's kitchen. I actually forgot how much brown there was.

Here it is after a little paint and some decorating.  We added the island, which has made a HUGE difference for Mr. Pal and I.  We enjoy cooking meals together and the island added much needed counter work space.

Ignore the green tape on the island.  Baby Girl Pal was sticking her fingers between the slats and getting hurt.

And I saved my favorite room for last.  Here's the spare bedroom when we moved in.

This room gets great light from the two windows.  The downside is that it's above the garage.  This means it's kind of chilly in the winter and a bit warm in the summer. We finally found that by leaving the door to the room open all the time regulates the temperature, so it's more comfortable.

Here's that spare room as our Nursery for Baby Girl Pal.

 I LOVE THIS ROOM!!  This is my by far my favorite room in the house. I love the design direction we went for the nursery.  We stepped outside of the norm and decided to just create her space, instead of buying the usual "nursery theme in a bag."  It's completely personalized and so much love went into designing this room.  I love spending time in this room with my little girl and creating memories and just watching her grow.

So what's the deal with showing just my favorite rooms? Well, we are leaving our first home.  We bit off more than we could chew when we first went house shopping.  We never looked ahead to possible income changing factors (job loss, new baby, etc).  We walked in with blinders on and our checkbook open.  We have learned a lot from this experience and appreciate how much we have grown.

Mr. Pal and I already allow ourselves to daydream about our "dream home."  We know now to be more realistic.  We also know potential can go far, but only so far.  We have decided to make a list of our must haves and a list of what we can do without.  We know now that being a homeowner means there are compromises and surprises.

We aren't sure yet when we are going to go, but we are ready to start a new chapter in our lives and press the "reset" button.  Life should totally come with a "reset button!"

Who wants more space?!

Who doesn't want more space, right? Whether it's in a garage, a closet or just in the house in general, more space is always welcome.

Space is definitely what we had in our full bathroom cabinet.  But it was empty space. As you can see from this post, I tried to keep it orderly, but to be honest it was an uphill battle. It was just too much stuff crammed into one shelf with a bunch of air about the mess.

Don't get me wrong, I tried to keep it clean, but when you toss extra toilet paper under there, or when we were in a rush, putting things back neatly in it's place wasn't happening.

I didn't really give it much thought and figured I could deal with the disaster until we had the money to gut that full bathroom. But that reno is very, very far off in the future.  So, one night I was scrolling through Pintrest and discovered some cool ideas.

Via here

Via here

I love the shelves in the cabinet!!! I figured I could give this a try.  We have a bunch of spare wood in our garage from the previous owners, so I dragged a piece out, cut it down and added brackets.  And here we have a shelf in our cabinet!

I even added moulding to the back of the shelf to act as a lip so that nothing would fall off behind it.  You can kind of see here here if you look closely.

Now I have room to see all of my girly stuff instead of digging around knocking stuff over.  It's nice to just grab what I need instead of taking stuff out and searching for my nail file. And I am totally putting everything back in it's rightful spot now.  We don't have an excuse to get messy now that the shelf adds space to organize.

And now Mr. Pal can see all of his....ummm brush and hairspray.  I guess he doesn't need two shelves of crap like I do to get ready in the morning. Lucky him! haha 

Now we've done a renovation and I've done an instillation! It was such a great feeling to show off the new shelf to Mr. Pal when he got home.  I do have a funny story to share about this shelf.  The photo below is the cell phone pic that I sent to Mr. Pal with the caption, "Notice anything new?"

His first response was that I removed the doors.  Ummm, why would I remove doors from the bathroom cabinet? Even though it's organized, I don't want everyone seeing my stuff all the time.

His second guess was that I had organized it. I'm afraid he may need glasses soon.  I had to tell him that I added a shelf. That I went and used a saw and measured and cut the wood down and drilled it into the shelf. I then felt like I was fishing for a compliment. (which maybe I was?)  After he took a second look and noticed the shelf he liked it. He said I did a nice job.  :)

Our first renovation!

When Mr. Pal & I first looked at our town home, one of the things I personally loved was the half bath on the first floor.  I liked that it was located where guests would most likely be hanging out and that it was just a half bath.  No extra tub to clean. (I kind of have a love-hate relationship with tubs. I hate cleaning them because of the effort, but love when it's all nice and clean.)

The looks of the half bath was really nothing to write home about.  It was screaming 1970's and the beige color made me nauseous.  I hate beige; it reminds me of apartments and offices. I need color in my life. I did like the shape of the floor tiles, but again, the beige was just not right.

As soon as we moved in we painted it blue, changed out the mirror and added art. (The previous mirror was a hideous medicine cabinet). It was livable for the time being, but we knew we wanted to do a complete overhaul.  The floor and the cabinets were just too ugly for the serene blue on the walls.

There are a lot of rooms that needed updated in our townhome, but being first time home buyers, and first time renovators, we were a little hesitant to get our feet soaking wet. We figured the half bath would probably be a good place to start since it was small. (unlike the kitchen, which is also stuck in the 70's.)
So I looked online for some inspiration and boy did I find some great ideas!

Via here

Via here

 Mr. Pal and I both agreed we wanted to keep the blue walls. We both loved the look of wainscoting and agreed that a pedestal sink would be perfect for the tiny half bath. It would free up the floor space unlike that hunk of a formica cabinet we had in there now.

We took a weekend and priced out toilets, sinks, tile and wainscoting at our local home stores to find the best prices. Once we found the best prices we went shopping! That's my favorite part!! We got a beautiful pedestal sink, a white toilet (hello new millennium!) and this tile that we both fell in love with.  The blue in the tile really tied into the blue walls, but if we get tired of blue walls, the tile is neutral enough to switch out the bathroom color.

Please excuse the horrible cell phone pic. I couldn't find the tile on-line.

We brought home our goodies and I called my dad for his help.  Growing up my dad had gutted and redid just about every room in the house I grew up in so I knew he'd be perfect to help us out with our half bath renovation.  I was so excited to start I could hardly sit still!

Once we knew when my dad would be coming to help us, we decided to get a head start and do the demo work ourselves.  Love demoing all the old, ugly stuff! Here's Mr. Pal getting rid of the beige toilet.

All gone!  There was still a little bit of water in the toilet that we couldn't get out which is why there are towels on the floor.  Also, we needed to make sure that we cover the hole in the floor due to gasses released.

Next it was time to kiss that formica cabinet and beige sink good bye!!

Our bathroom looks so much bigger without that formica cabinet taking up half the room. I just want to mention here that I didn't play a big part in this part of the demo.  Our toilet & sink came out pretty easily so Mr. Pal just plowed right through it.  I was a little upset I couldn't get my hands dirty/frustrations out, but we still had that beige floor to remove.

Here's our shell of a half bath.  I got to participate in the demoing of the floor.  It totally made my day!! The tiles came up pretty easily. I guess they knew they were ugly and needed to go! haha!  The glue was another story though. I think Mr. Pal & I scraped the glue for about three days.  When we had a free moment we would just go in there and scrape away.  We need the floor to be smooth for our new floor.

Now it was time to lay down the law tile. Here I am putting down the tile in our bathroom.  I was so excited that we had completed the floor with our own hands...with the help of my dad of course.  I'm sure if Mr. Pal & I attempted this on our own the tile would not be in a straight line. haha

And here is where I totally slacked off.  We moved so quickly with putting up the wainscoting and installing the sink and toilet that I totally forgot to take pictures along the way.  So, without further ado, here is the finished product.  Our very first renovation!

I'm in love with the wainscoting  the floor, the white appliances, I just love the whole room!   I'm just so happy with how our little bathroom came out.  See that toilet? That was one expensive toilet! We tried to keep our renovation under 500 bucks, but because the rough in for the toilet was 10" instead of the normal 12", we had to special order it, which cost more.  It also set us back a few days since we had to wait I think a week or so for it to be delivered to the store. I think when we move I'm going to measure all the toilets in the new place to make sure they have a normal rough in!

Here's our first "expensive" purchase from HomeGoods.  It was about $75, but it was the most we've ever spent in that store. I usually run in there to get small items, like hand towels or decor stuff, all of which never came to more than $20.  It was nice to finally use HomeGoods for what it's supposed to be for, which is discount furniture! I love this cabinet. It's the perfect size for this corner and holds our spare toilet paper and other bathroom necessities. 

And I can't show the bathroom without the best part.  And why is the light the best part?? Because it was F-R-E-E!!!  Yup, I totally love free and I'm not ashamed to take hand me downs.  This was from Mr. Pal's mom. She was completely gutting her own bathroom and was upgrading her lighting, so we got her old one. It fits perfectly in the room and the price always makes me smile!

So that's our first renovation.  I'm sure there's more to come. We learned so much and were so happy to have my dad lend us a hand and for Mr. Pal's mom to supply the lighting. On to the next reno!! :)

Quick bathroom change

A few months back...ok, honestly, it was like a year ago, not a few months.  So about a year ago Mr. Pal & I were shopping and came across this bathroom set.  

Nice, right?!

We toyed with the idea of revamping our full bathroom since we've had the same bath set since we got engaged (2007, yeah, that's not that long ago, but we get tired of decor stuff quickly!) Here's the set we used to have.

Via Bedbathandbeyond.com

So we checked the price of this Parisian themed set and decided it was worth it and so we bought it.  In the car on the way home we talked about possibly doing some kind of faux finish on the walls.  Maybe something to look like stone or maybe something more in the red family.  We were just so excited to paint and have a new look to the bathroom.

After dropping off our goodies at home we drove to Home Depot and started looking at paints.  Faux finishes, textures, deep colors. You name it, we grabbed it! We were so excited and couldn't wait to redo the bathroom.

When we got home with our paint chips I taped up a few of the paint chips with the solid colors and the faux finishes on the wall so we could live with them for a few days and pick which we liked best.
Well, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months....you get the picture right?  So those paint chips started to just blend in with what we had on the wall.  I forgot they were there until someone would come over and ask if we picked out a color.  Yeah, it got embarrassing when the same people started to ask when we were going to paint.

As for all the bathroom supplies they sat in a box on the floor.....in the dining room. Great spot, right? I forgot we had them actually.  My nephew would repeatedly ask me when I was going to do something with the box in the dining room, but I was too lazy/disinterested/busy/enter any excuse here/etc.

Then, I lost my job.  Now, there was no excuse for why we weren't painting the bathroom.  I decided I was over the faux finish idea. It was too time consuming (yes, I know, I'm not working, what else do I have to do, but I tend to lose interest in things quickly, so it needed to be a quick revamp.)

In November, we were going to be hosting Thanksgiving so I needed to get the dining room in tip top shape.  I moved that box of stuff and saw that we had a whole new bathroom set.  Yay us! And, as luck would have it, I was standing in our dining room while holding up the shower curtain package.  Here's a picture of the dining room.  Maybe you can see where I'm going with this?

Yup, I loved the colors in the dining room and they looked like they'd be great as the backdrop for our bathroom stuff.

So, I picked on day to bang out this little project.  First, I wiped all the walls down with a mixture of vinegar & water since there were light stains on the walls from the steam.  Then I spruced up the ceiling with a fresh coat of white paint.  No picture since really, it went from white to cleaner white.  Speaking of which I totally love fresh painted white trim and doors.  Always makes everything look so brand new and fresh!
Then I just painted my little heart out! I did three walls with the tan color and one wall with the red/maroon color.

I love it!!!

I even have a spot to display my perfume bottles.  I love perfume bottles. I think they're so beautiful.  I'd love to add to this collection, but they can get pricey since I like the antique ones, so the addition of perfume bottles will be a slow process.
 

Speaking of antiques, we picked up these fleur de lis pulls at an antique dealer and added them to the doors of our cabinet.  We just had plain gold ones that were gross.  

Here's a close-up of one. I'm not sure that they are antique, but I love how they look!

Oh and here's my pride and joy of the bathroom! Is it weird to have a pride and joy of a bathroom?  Well, it doesn't matter, here is The Mat!

Yup those are wine corks and no I didn't drink that many bottles on my own...maybe half? I'm kidding!  My family & my in-laws helped out with donating their corks to me about  two years ago.  I had more than enough to make the mat. Oh, and please excuse the pieces of my hair on the floor. No matter how many times I vacuum the bathrooms my hair is still all over the place!

The mat was really easy to make.  Just slice the cork in half with a knife (be careful of your fingers! I spliced mine a few times doing this). Then lay them out in your desired design on a shelf liner. Then hot glue those suckers down!

I have to be honest though, some of them are getting a little wiggly and one did fall off. I have to re-glue, but I ran out of hot glue sticks.  But for just Mr. Pal & I it works! And we love it!
So any quick changes to any of your rooms that became a year long project in the making?

A place for everything, everything in it's place

I'm such a firm believer in the title of this post.  I love knowing exactly where everything is.  I love knowing that there's a designated spot for all of our stuff.

Take our closet for example, shirts are all color-coded.  Including all of Mr. Pal's t-shirts.  I know it's a bit messy, but I need to purchase another one of those hanging organizer things.  Even with the mess, on weekends when we're ready to go out, if Mr. Pal is looking for a specific shirt, he knows what "color cube" to look in.

That being said, our desk and craft supplies were really, really irking me.  I had desk supplies in a three drawer cabinet but there was no rhyme or reason to any of it. Plus, the cabinet was in the closet of the spare bedroom, which is no longer were the computer is.

All my craft stuff was spread out between three different bins.  I tried to keep some sort of peace with my craft supplies by keeping paints together and ribbons together, but it just annoyed me that if I was working on a project I had to stop and get another bin if I needed a ribbon or a ruler.

Plus, I was constantly forgetting where my glue gun was.  This resulted in me being the proud owner of two glue guns. (just in case I get really crazy crafty I can go double-fisted with my glue!)

So, after moving the new improved desk to our bedroom, I figured now was as good a time as any to get all the desk & craft supplies organized.

I started by dumping everything out to see what I have.  Let me tell you, we will never have a shortage of paper clips in the Pal household.  Seriously, why do we have to many. And honestly, there are times like I feel I can never find a paper clip. (i'm beginning to see a trend here: multiple glue guns, multiple paper clips, ugh! before your know we'll have multiple bunnies. kidding.  maybe)

Since I really didn't want to part with anything (hoarder maybe??) I decided I would just keep the like stuff together.  In the top drawer I have all our desk supplies.  This includes the many paper clips, rubber bands, index cards, rulers, razor (in case the scissors don't work?), etc.  I made sure there was a spot for everything so there wouldn't be a mish mosh of supplies every time we open and close the drawer.  I like it.  It's not as convenient to get some of the supplies as I would like, but hey, it never killed anyone to move one item to get to another item.

The second drawer became my craft drawer.  I was able to fit all my paint, my brushes, my ink pads, even my fancy scissors in this drawer! I'm thinking of adding a dab of paint to the top of the paint jars so I know which color is which.  I have tons of time so I'm sure I'll be able to get it done.  Maybe this week. Maybe keep your eyes peeled for an update.  Maybe.  But don't hold your breath, I don't want to feel pressured.

The third drawer is for all my leftover fabrics and ribbons.  It also stores my graphing paper and the two glue guns.

With the drawers all filled up, I just moved the dresser next to the desk and added the drawers.  Now all our supplies are next to our desk.

Oh and see that basket on top?  That's my holding area for projects that I'm working on at the moment.  I love that I have space for that.  Usually my "in-progress projects" were just left out on the dining room table or something.

Now they're tucked away in a basket and I can eat dinner without an unfinished project staring me in the face!  :)

Desk love

So we had this desk that we got as a hand-me-down from my parents.  It's just a simple desk with a slide out drawer for your keyboard and a little drawer. It looked like this, just ask a desk.  We got the little printer table with it too.

It was good to us for about 3 years and then something changed.  Jealousy.  I was looking at everyone nice desks in blog-land and was not digging our hand-me-down anymore.  What to do?!

Did someone say paint it?? That's correct! I decided to paint it.  I've read enough "how-to" blogs to believe I knew how to sand and paint a desk. I was ready! I got my sanding sponges, I laid down some tarps, I changed into sweats and an old t-shirt and started sanding away!  I sanded.  And sanded. And sanded some more.  Then I noticed all my efforts weren't doing anything. The desk wasn't real wood. Ugh! So I did what we Pal's do here when we have a home reno project question: call my dad!!

Growing up my dad pretty much gutted our house and rebuilt the inside of it.  He expanded rooms, created closets, insulated walls, built stairs, painted, pretty much, you name, he did it. And now that he's retired he does some handyman work.  It's great to have someone to go to whenever we have questions about house stuff.

My dad suggested priming the desk and then painting it.  So, Mr. Pal went to our local hardware store and picked up a can of primer.  I crossed my fingers and got to painting.  It worked! The paint stuck to the primer! I was so happy I got to refinish a desk just like all the other bloggers to.

Originally, my plan was to have the desk white and then paint blue circles interloping on the top.  It would have looked really cool, but also would have been pretty time consuming.  Also, I'm not that great yet with painting straight lines, so I knew my circles would be a bit wonky, and not really circles.   So, the desk sat, plain white for a week, a month, then a few months, until finally Mr. Pal asked when I was going to finish the desk.  Ok, I can take a hint!  And, now with all my free time I can get it done!

So I went into the garage and stared at the desk.  Circles were out, but I wanted some kind of design on the top.  Hmmmm, I got it! I'll do a Chevron-type pattern! It's easy and I can use painters tape to keep my lines straight! Oh happy day!  So I just measured out my lines, taped it off and painted alternating colors of zig-zags.  I chose blue & green since those are the colors of the master bedroom, which is where the desk is going.

Once the lines were completed I added a pull to the little drawer on the desk to class it up a bit and Mr. Pal & I lugged it up stairs.  Here she is in her little nook!

I love it! I know it's not perfect, but I'm proud to say I did it.  Here's a close up of the lines.

Here's the new pull I added.  It's just an acrylic pull found at any hardware store.

 Now all I need is a lamp.  Since the desk is in an alcove not much light hits it, so I'm on the hunt for a lamp I can refinish.  Yeah, I got bit by the refinishing bug! :)