Around the House: New Chair and Touch Ups

I know I haven't posted about the house lately, but I wanted to let you know about the few improvements that we made to our house and/or its decor. First on the list, we got a new chair and ottoman for our living room! Our poor recliner had been licked to death by Louie.  The final straw came one weekend when Louie licked the recliner into an oblivion, resulting in him puking all over it. I know that might be TMI, but at that moment we knew we needed to get rid of it...

Justin and I dragged our recliner on the front porch as a final "nail in the coffin" that it was ready to be sent out to pasture. While I was at work, I put up a craigslist post, advertising a "free recliner needing cleaning" (no picture attached either!).  By the time we got off work, someone had picked up the recliner off our porch! Also, Justin was able to find the recliner's replacement on Craigslist! Isn't it neat how things come full circle?  You get rid of something, via Craigslist, and you find an even better replacement from...you guessed it, Craigslist :)

We were able to get the Crate & Barrel Cameron Chair and ottoman, in a beige microfiber material for less than 25% of the full price! I swear, Justin has the uncanny knack of finding some pretty good stuff on CL! ;) 

In addition to buying a new chair and ottman, we figured it was high time for us to touch up some of the paint around the house. As the house expands and contracts with the changing seasons, along with the natural settling of our new kitchen, we have noticed some fine cracks that have appeared in our dry wall. Nothing earth shattering, just something that needed to be fixed for pure asthetics. Over the weekend, we broke out the spackle to fill in the cracks and busted out the paint.

The trail of spackle...

In case you're wondering why Justin is wearing a mask, when sanding the spackle, the dust that is produced gets everywhere! The dust settled all the way on our kitchen countertops that were at least 20 feet away!

Now it's prime time! We learned from painting the upstairs bathroom that paint sticks better on dried spackle if you add a layer of primer first.  This is even the case when using a 2-in-1 paint/primer.

Then we finished it off with the paint. It took a couple of tries to get all the spots with the lighting that we had, but we eventually got it!

Which brings us to the finished product of a nicely painted, crackless wall you see today :)

What about you? Any recent furniture purchases? What about crack-filling or painting? Please tell me I don't have to do this every year!

Let Me See Your Peacock (Bathroom)

If you've been a reader of my blog you'll know that sometimes I like to incorporate song titles into my blog titles. Living on the (L)edge and Walking into Spiderwebs are some examples that come to mind. If you know who sings this song/blog title you get double points as it might be a little obscure, especially for you non-pop listeners. Anyway, onto the bathroom update!

I think I can finally say that one of the rooms in our house is officially done. I think we're done with the downstairs bathroom which is our main bathroom. Yes, it could probably use a full remodel five years down the road, but I think we've made it look pretty nice as it can be from a cost effective standpoint. The glass tile and spa finishes will have to wait. ;)

For some reason, I don't have any pictures of how our bathroom looked before, but it pretty much looked like it did in these pictures below, except the walls were a light beige/off-white. 

If you remember here I recruited my sisters with the lovely duty of painting our downstairs bathroom and they were less than enthused. And as you can guess, you get what you pay for so we knew that we would have go back and touch up the paint. By the way, we didn't pay them anything, so you can guess what type of job we got, lol. Since this bathroom is pretty big I thought we could get away with painting it a darker color. I wanted to go with a peacock color theme with blues and greens and pops of chartreuse. 

Here's a shot of Justin touching up the paint. He hates painting and curses everytime the painters tape lets him down.

In addition to touching up the paint, Justin patched up some uneven spots on the wall...

To prettify the space, I found some art for the walls. At first, I wasn't sure what I should put in the bathroom because of moisture, but I found just the perfect thing online. And they were my favorite price, too: free!

Q.A. Design was offering various state and country prints as free downloads. Unfortunately, you can't change where the heart is located on each state so their locations are kind of random. Since I'm using them in the bathroom, if they ever got ruined by dampness I could easily replace them. I downloaded the states that were nearest and dearest to me and headed to my local copy center to enlarge them and print them out. It seems that I have a thing for state art. I think they complement the United Plates of America I have in the dining room. :)

Here are the prints up close:

The state of my birth and where we got married:

Not sure if that's Sacramento

Justin's beloved Bluegrass state and where we first fell in love...awww...

 

That might be Frankfort?

This one is obvious...

Why there's a heart over the Palisades is beyond me...

 And the lovely place where I spent half my adolescence...

And I am completely baffled at why the heart is in Salisbury and not Annapolis...



Here's a shot of Justin putting up the pictures...

One over the toilet...

...and the other three near the door. I love them! They really add a pop of color!

Sorry I'm not able to get a good shot of the bathroom (I'll try to get a better shot next time), but with teal walls, our bright shower curtain, and the state pictures, I think our bathroom is now complete!

Our Super (Handy) Man

**WARNING!! Super Long Blog Post!**

Hello Everyone! As I alluded to in this post, we got more work done our house. Nothing structural or anything, just some things that we wanted to check off our list. For the most part, you all know Justin and I as DIY'ers. We've tackled most of the smaller issues with our house ourselves, but there are certain things that we can't do (or just don't want to do) that we leave up to the professionals. Or in this case Bobet.


Bobet is our family's handyman. He's a jack-of-all trades. (By the way, that's not his real name, it's his nickname. I feel like all Filipinos have Filipino nicknames, right?). When we went out of town for the holidays I asked my parents if they could "loan" us his services for the week and they were happy to oblige.

The three things that we wanted him to handle were:


1) Patch the framing and install the deadbolt in the basement door
2) Patch the holes in the basement left by the plumbing incident
3) Paint the upstairs/downstairs hallways, the stairway, and trim


Let's start with the first item.  We have had an ongoing saga with the basement door ever since we purchased the house. We had the contractor who was working on our kitchen replace the door, however, he didn't bother to fix the framing around the door or install a deadbolt so he basically left the door looking like this:
 

Yes, I know our contractor it sucks, but more about him some other time.


One day I came home and the basement door was open. It totally freaked me out. It was probably due to the fact that we didn't have a deadbolt and knob lock wasn't secured. I knew from that point we needed to get the door fixed ASAP. Bobet to the rescue.

Isn't it amazing? It looks so good and professional! He installed the deadbolt just like we asked and not only patched up the framing around the door, but added molding around it to make it look more like proper interior door. Justin and I probably wouldn't even have done that. Wow!


Now onto the second item on our list...


A few months ago we found some some mold in our basement, but before you get your panties in a bunch, it wasn't because of water/moisture issues in our basement. It just so happened that our toilet on the main floor was leaking and it was leaking into the basement.

Gross, huh? We have since gotten it fixed thanks to our home warranty, however, in order to diagnose the problem, the plumber had to cut holes into our basement wall. Not like our basement is fnished or anything, but it was no fun to look at.


The holes (and mold, yuck!) up close:

And from a distance:

With the materials we provided (a piece of drywall, drywall tape, mortar, etc.), Bobet was able to fix it--just like that. When he patched the holes he even painted the entire wall so that it would all be uniform.

From another angle:

A pic of both the door and the former holes repaired. Ta da!

Lastly, we had asked Bobet to paint the hallways, the stairway, and accompanying trim.  Justin and I (with the help of our friends) usually do all the painting, but we felt like the stairs would be a little tricky. We had no clue no how to paint the tall walls of our stairway (a long pole? a ladder? scaffolding?!). 


Here is the upstairs hallway:

Here is the stairway:

Here is the downstairs hallway:

Although you can't really tell (darn flash!), the hallway/stairway is actually this really dark, ugly, tan/olive green. Why the previous owners chose a dark color palate for the entire house is beyond me. Interior Decorating 101 states that dark colors make small areas/homes feel even smaller and this flat paint wasn't doing the hallways and stairway any justice.

Bobet's specialty is painting (he painted the entire first floor of my parents' house), so we figured he could best diagnose the correct way to paint the areas with high ceilings and awkward angles.

Here are the after pictures (you can see someone wanted in on the photo shoot):

I love the glossy finish of the paint. The shine really opens up the space and makes it feel a little more airy. We used Valspar's Paint and Primer in One and color matched it to Benjamin Moore's Wickham Gray, which of course is one of their Historical Colors (my fave).

Overall, we are super happy with all of the work that Bobet did. So, in honor of our family handyman, I'll end this super-long blog post with the video "Bebot" by the Black Eyed Peas. Bebot, Bobet...no relation, but hey, it's what my sisters and I immediately thought when we first met him. :)



It's a Paint Party!

One things for certain, we are not paint experts. It took us several coats, to achieve color and consistency that we wanted in the living room. And at times it seemed almost like we were going in circles (e.g.: paint the wall - get paint on the ceiling, paint the ceiling - get paint on the wall - "It's a vicious cycle!"*) But we got it done...finally...

Here's our friend, TB,  Justin & Jill in action...

The living room, painted in the creamy, warm color of Manchester Tan (from the Benjamin Moore Historical colors of course!). Don't mind the ugly white ceiling fan, it will be making its exit shortly.

And here is the finished product...

Another angle of the paint job.

I love how the color changes from grey/beige/white/cream depending on the light. How versatile!

Anyway, while the painting in the living room was going on, I assigned my sisters to paint the downstairs bathroom. I picked out this really dark teal color called "Swizzle Stick."  I was hoping for a peacock theme in bathroom with teals, blues, chartreuse, and brown.

Here are some pictures of my sisters looking less than enthused.

In hindsight maybe this paint color wasn't the best idea. 1) My sisters can't paint within the lines! (but what do you expect from free labor?) 2) Their mistakes (e.g.: paint on the ceiling) were blinding obvious due to the dark color and 3) The glossy finish of the paint combined with its dark color made every hole and bump in the walls stand out. Why I picked a gloss finish for the bathroom (as opposed to satin or eggshell), I have no clue.  Oh well. I guess this is a learning lesson for me, but heck! We are keeping it! I'm a frugal gal at heart and too much time/money/energy/paint was already spent on the bathroom paint project. And who knows? With the right accessories it might turn out nice!

*If you know what movie that line is from you get a thousand cool points! :)

Week 15: It's Primetime

While the kitchen is getting finished up, Justin and our friends (with a little help from myself) have been hard at work painting our living room. Remember how it looked?

Yup that me in our dark hunter green living room. The paint color was not doing the room any justice. It made the room appear smaller than it actually was--almost like a cave. wop wop. Justin and I decided that before we any furniture in the living room (besides the recliner and chair), we would paint the so we wouldn't have to go through the hassle of moving everything around. Yes, I know that people say that you should see how all your furniture and accessories coordinate before you pick a paint color, but since the color I picked is a nice neutral  (Benjamin Moore's Manchester Tan) I doubt that it'll cause any surprises.


But before we got to painting we had to prime the walls to hide the dark green paint. Boy did we have to prime!


(You can still see a bit of the green in this pic...)

And prime so more...

Stay tuned to see the finished product!

Week 12: Green Paint Overkill?

Here I am backtracking on blog posts, trying to get you all up to speed on what's going on with the house. Anyway, this week the kitchen and room formerly known as the pink room* got a new coat of paint. In the kitchen, I selected Benjamin Moore's Gulliford Green and in the pink room I chose Kittery Point Green. Unfortunately, I can't find a new pic of the "pink room" now "green room", but here are some pics of the kitchen...

The picture is kind of dark but Gulliford Green is more of a green with a tint of grey which I thought would be nice for the kitchen...

I chose both of these colors from the Benjamin Moore Historical Colors palette.  According to the Benjamin Moore website, "This palette of 174 time-honored colors is our most popular. Inspired by the colors found in 18th- and 19th-century U.S. architecture, these classic, inviting hues continue to serve us well today." I don't know about you, but I think that screams Capitol Hill rowhouse don't you think?

 

The thing about the Benjamin Moore Historical Colors is that they are timeless and traditional, however, they are a bit muted. And...through no fault other than my own, I just picked shades of green for two of the rooms in our house. Hopefully it won't be green overkill. As much as I love the look of the historical colors, I'll try to mix it up with some new colors. For a house that was

built in the 1900s, I still gotta keep it fresh for the current era. J

*We named our third bedroom/den the pink room because it was painted pink and it used to be the room of the daugher of the previous owners.