Let’s add some pink

Baby girl’s room is getting some pink!

I think I’ve mentioned before that our plan is to keep the walls the same teal that they’ve been while the room has served as our office. We’ll be adding touches of pink to make the space a little more girly.

Last week, I painted some Ikea spice racks after seeing an idea on pinterest to turn them into bookshelves.

They still need to be filled up, but I love adding this first touch of pink!

I just put what I could find on hand in the one for now, but I can’t wait to add all my favorite children’s books!

Next up, I made new curtains with some fabric that I ordered offline. I absolutely love how they turned out!

It makes me so happy to walk into the room and see the pink. Nursery progress is in full swing!

Maptastic

It’s no secret that we are a big fan of maps in this household. So when we were looking for some art to go above our fireplace, we turned to etsy looking for a 24×36 map that could fit into an existing frame. We scored what we consider a map jackpot.

Not only is it a modern map, but it even combines one of Lance’s other areas of fascination -public transportation. This map is a depiction of our world made up of subway lines. It’s modern, colorful, and just makes us happy.

The frame was an old one that we had around and spray painted blue to add some more color. We’re happy with this new edition and we are getting so close to having a finished living room space.

Here we go again!

The past few weeks have been a total whirlwind with my work schedule. So amazingly, we are leaving for St. John tomorrow. Time has been flying so quickly that I haven’t had a second to update the blog with our new floors (gorgeous) or with the news that has been developing over the past few days…that we are pregnant again! Two days ago I got a you-have-to-hold-the-pee-stick-at-just-the-right-angle to see a supremely faint line. Yesterday, it didn’t require squinting but didn’t look pink. But today, there it was, a nice pink line. I’m really early on, as in only 3 weeks and 3 days. My due date is January 9th.

For now, I’m not really feeling too much, which is letting me not freak out. I called my doctor’s office and I’ll be making an appointment for 7-8 weeks, which is the last week of May. I feel extremely blessed to be able to get pregnant on essentially our first try post miscarriage, and I hope beyond anything that all goes well and we will be welcoming Baby R in January (or December 31st in Lance’s dreams!)

I’ll write more about this when we get back from vacation, but here’s a sneak peak of our new floors!

Making a gallery wall

Ever since seeing this post, on my favorite blog, Young House Love, I’ve really wanted to create a gallery wall on the giant, empty, diagonally sloped wall in our living room. The wall has been blank since I moved in, mostly because the space is so large and tall that we haven’t known what to do with it. With our walls freshly painted (Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter), the time to undertake this project was here.

I began about a month ago, using an online floor planner to create a scale model of my wall space.

I first added in the white frames that I already owned, and then used my knowledge of Ikea frame sizes to figure out how to fit things together. After several iterations, I was happy with the way things were fitting together. When we visited Philly a few weeks back, I picked up the Ikea frames that were needed.

Using the magazine template method from Young House Love, I laid everything out on the floor.

Then, using painters tape, I tape the plan that I developed on my computer up onto the wall.

For the frames that had picture hooks, I hung the frames on those. Anything that had something that was going to be too intense to hang got the command picture hanging tape treatment. This made things soooo much quicker.

In the end, I’m really happy with the finished product.

 

There is still much work to be done in filling the frames. I’ll probably add in some temporary artwork while we work on the finished product. My goal is for each frame to be filled with something significant that makes us smile.

In a future post I’ll detail the different pieces of art and how I created them.

 

Our floors are getting installed on Thursday, so this week will be filled with moving everything out of our living room and dining area to get ready for installation. Can’t wait to see how the dark wood floors look with our bright white kitchen!

We have drains!

While thankful for our gorgeous new white solid surface counters, I was a bit stressed while we struggled without a sink for a few days. But luckily, Lance was able to solve the plumbing puzzle and we were up and running in short time. We had already removed our old sink before the installers showed, but they also undid our garbage disposal and dishwasher hook-up during their hour in our house. So we had to start from scratch with the plumbing. Unfortunately, the new holes in the sink didn’t match where the old holes were. Long story short, we ended up needing a new garbage disposal and a few new pieces of pipe to make everything work. After a little testing and patching of some leaks, we ended up with a working dishwasher, garbage disposal, faucet, and drain. Oh happy day.

Here’s the view looking into the corner.

Another shot of the sink. I’m loving the undermount and the extra space that comes with it.

Next up, floor installation and backsplash.

Hallelujah

Finally…8 weeks after we learned about our miscarriage, my HCG is under 5. After a nice long weekend in Philadelphia with my family, I went to my OB for the third week in a row to have my blood drawn. When I called in today, they let me know that my number was now “less than 5”. It was 6 last week, but apparently once it is under 5 they don’t give you a number.

We’ve had a good distraction so far this week, as our remodeling is in full gear. Today our countertops were installed.

While they look great, they’ve created a host of other projects including installing our new faucet and drain, replacing our garbage disposal, attaching our dishwasher to the new counters, and patching the giant gaping hole left behind in the drywall behind the sink. Lance only has two weeks left until his big exam, so finding time to study and patch up the kitchen is proving to be difficult. Hoping to tick as much off of that list by the end of the weekend as possible.

White and Bright

Oh what a difference some white paint makes! Please don’t pay any attention to the giant mess or the ugly green countertops. That’ll all be fixed in time.

We still have some spots that need touch up, and we apparently can’t count, so we need to pick up one more handle. I absolutely love the hardware. The thick handles really help modernize the space.

Next up on the list:

– White countertops. We’re trying to do this whole makeover on a small budget, so we’re picking the least expensive option. Knowing the resale value of our home, splurging here just doesn’t make sense. The Allen & Roth white counters from Lowes that we are looking at will look very similar to the photo below.

– Laminate floor throughout the living room and kitchen. It’ll be 12 mm thick, wide plank, dark wood. I’ll be adding a sample pic later.

– Backsplash like the one we saw at Home Depot here:

So that is where we stand. Happy to have made so much progress over the past week and can’t wait to watch it continue to unfold!

Covered in Paint

Well that is how I’ve been feeling. Like no matter how I think I’ve scrubbed off every spot, it is still there. We’ve been busy working on our kitchen cabinet painting project. Yesterday I had a severe headache for the entire day. It is one of those headaches that motrin and tylenol are not touching. Even my trusty diet coke caffeine solution that I pull out in dire circumstances didn’t do the trick. So I’m just dealing, and hoping that it passes shortly.

But, back to our painting story. We’ve now finished the backs of the cabinet doors and a first coat on the fronts of the doors. The island frames are finished and the bottom cabinet frames are finished. We still need to do two coats on the top cabinet frames and molding, but we are hoping to finish that by tomorrow. Then everything will dry until Sunday (yay for Friday and Saturday with no painting!) when we’ll attempt to re-hang all of the doors and put the drawers back in. Surprisingly, the dog has yet to try and eat everything out of the open bottom cabinets. It’s a good thing sometimes that he doesn’t have a strong sniffer.

Our Therapy

Dealing with our loss is still a struggle. I’m finding that whenever my mind isn’t occupied, my thoughts are wandering to to what “should be” and the loss hurts all over again. The more still I sit, I go back to the doctor scanning and scanning with that look on her face, and those horrible words coming out of her mouth. It is driving me crazy and I can’t stop from breaking down at different moments throughout the day.

To help occupy and distract me, we’ve taken on a project that we’ve been wanting to do for a while….painting our kitchen cabinets white. The project is the biggest we’ve undertaken. So far, we’ve taken off all of the cabinet doors and put on a coat of primer and the first coat of paint on the backs. We still need to do another coat on the backs, two coats on the front, and two coats on all of the cabinet frames. We’re hoping to have the painting finished by Wednesday. Then they’ll sit and dry until the weekend so that we don’t risk messing them up when we re-hang. The project is at least masking my back pain with the soreness from bending over to paint the cabinet doors.

I’m excited to see how it will turn out and eager to finish so that we can put our kitchen back in one piece!