Playroom Makeover

An alternate title to this post could have easily been "Peace out, paneling!" 

When we bought the house one of the first comments I made was "that paneling has got to go!"...yet here we were, nearly 5 years later and we hadn't done a thing about it.  Brian enjoys painting projects and has done other areas of the house for us, but I think we were intimidated by the paneling.  We knew we didn't want to invest in the process of ripping it out and replacing it, but we were also nervous to just paint over it...what if it looked worse than when we started?  There were too many unknowns.  And then there were shelves...LOTS of shelves.  Half of a wall is all built in bookcases which is great for storing toys, not so great for trying to paint. 

Let's start with some before pictures shall we? (don't mind the photobombing kids) I liked to refer to this wall as the place where wood came to die an unsightly death. (sometimes Brian calls me dramatic...I deny such accusations)

Wood + dark brick + more wood + too many toys = ICK

 

 

 

opposite wall of the paneling

So, as you can see, the dark paneling combined with the dark brick wall on the opposite wall gave the room a very enclosed feel.  We both loved the brick so obviously that wasn't going to go....so we decided to wave goodbye to the paneling.  We had talked in the winter about possibly hiring someone to do the painting (see paragraph above about our insecurities in doing it ourselves.  By "ourselves" I of course mean Brian)  Then when Brian injured his shoulder in the spring, that pretty much sealed the deal that we would outsource this project. 

And now, I present to you the after!

 

 

 

 

The pictures don't even do it justice, it seriously looks like a whole new room!  (It also helps that when I had to remove stuff off the shelves for the painter, I secretly boxed up a bunch and stuffed them into the attic instead of putting them back out...shhh....the kids haven't even noticed they're gone!)    We are SO happy with how it turned out, and the painter said he had no issues going over the paneling aside from it needing some extra primer.  I also decided to leave the curtains (which had come with the house) off of the windows and I think that makes a big difference. 

We went with Sherwin Williams Perfect Greige for the walls and the shelves are a white that we already had.  Here is a before/after side by side shot to hopefully give you a better view:

Mums the word.

First sign of fall at my house....my favorite mums are starting to bloom.  Vacation is over, the luau is over, the kids are back in school.....let's just get on with fall already, shall we??

Feeling lucky.

Have you had one of those moments in your life where your heart literally stops and you think about all of the things that COULD have happened in that moment but didn't?  Maybe your little one was just about to tumble down a flight of stairs and you caught him just in time?  Or maybe the car in front of you slammed on the brakes, causing you to do the same and you just missed hitting them? 

We had one of these moments last night when this happened:

Yep, that's a tree.  And it's a pretty big one, even though it may not look that way in the picture. It's hard to see because of the glare, but if you look closely in the last picture you can see that it was more than the top half of a tree that just toppled over out of nowhere (it wasn't windy, or storming, or anything last night...in fact, it was a beautiful night!) 

We said someone must have been watching over us....the trunk of the tree landed within just inches of our house.  Within about 2 inches of our air conditioner and is literally next to our gas meter.  The only minor damage we have is a dent in our gutter from a larger branch landing on it.  There was no one out there.

It could have been a whole lot worse.

The roof that it would have landed on was our playroom.  The area just to the side of the tree around the corner is an outside toy box and our sand table.  I shudder to think of what would have happened if the kids had been out there playing and the tree had fallen slightly differently.  Or if the kids had been out there going around the side of the house to head over to play with the neighbor, and the tree had come down.

Again, it could have been a whole lot worse.

So right now, we are dealing with the headache of insurance companies (2 companies in fact, the tree is on our neighbors' property, so that makes it even more complicated) and we are having our annual luau party next weekend and the side of the house is trashed, it took out some of our landscaping, etc....BUT, I am trying to focus on the fact that we are not dealing with the headache of a damaged roof, broken windows, or injured people.

It's one of those moments where, once your heart rate returns to normal, you breathe a huge sigh of relief.

A super bedroom for a super kid!

I had mentioned in a previous post that Jake's room had started to feel babyish, and that I hoped to update some of the accents with a superhero theme.  We made the transformation this past weekend (and I use the word "transformation" very loosely-really, we just pulled down some of the old animal decor, put up some superhero signs and changed the comforter)-but I was happy with how it turned out, and Jake loved it, so that's what matters.  In typical 2nd child fashion, Liam will inherit the animal decor once he moves to a big boy bed.

Here is the before:

And, the after!! (don't mind the mismatched curtains, they were out of the color that I wanted, so hopefully I can replace those soon)

Comforter from walmart, Spiderman doll was a gift from GG & Pappy for Christmas

LOVE THIS

vintage looking signs that I picked up in NY.

Basketball hoop (Christmas gift from GG & Pappy)

Posters on the back of his door (Thanks, Beth!!)

Comforter: $24.99 at walmart
Shams & Skirt: $16 at walmart
Signs: $20
Vinyl decal on wall: $12
Spiderman trash can (not pictured): $4 at Target

Total cost for makeover: $76.99

Jake approves:

Superhero room remodel ideas

When Jake transitioned out of his crib 2 years ago, we gave him an animal themed room (which you can see here); and even though I specifically chose decorations that weren't too "babyish" so that the room could grow with him, the room has looked babyish to me in recent months.  The best laid plans, right?  I don't feel too bad about having to change the room so soon, because whenever Liam moves to a big boy bed, he'll inherit all of my hard work on the animal theme :) 

I'm going to go with a superhero theme because I think (hope!) that might stick with him for a little while before he outgrows it.  And my plan is to just find a solid color comforter that we can just continue to use once he's moved on to other ideas. 

Here are some of the ideas I've been thinking about; his walls are yellow, and he has a red Pottery Barn anywhere chair, so I feel like just doing a general superhero theme with lots of primary colors will be easy to blend into the room. 

I only have a few things so far, including these metal, vintage-looking signs that I picked up while in NYC a few weeks ago (gotta love bargains from street vendors!):

I also scored this Spiderman trash can from Target the other day, marked down to $4!!

 Other items I'm considering:

I did these free printables for Jake's bday party and had them on the front door; I'm thinking they might look cute if I printed them out as 8x10's and framed them in white frames?? (just one of each, obviously, not 12!)

This vinyl decal from VinylKrazy is a must ($10!), I love this phrase and it's so perfect for him (I'd probably order in red or blue):

Bedding options:

Mainstays Bed-in-a-Bag ($30, walmart):

Mainstays reversible comforter set-comes in blue and red ($24, walmart):

Guest Bedroom: Lighten Up!!

The bed that's in our guest room used to be the bed in the master bedroom; when we moved we upgraded to a king-sized bed (one of the best investments ever, by the way) so our old bed (queen) and bedding moved into the guest room.  The bedding was a set that I had picked up from Target for $20, to temporarily replace the bedding that I was madly in love with, but had sadly met its demise during a very unfortunate incident involving the washing machine.  Like I said, it was supposed to be a temporary replacement, but then we decided to sell our house and upgrade to a king sized bed, so the bedding stuck around longer than anticipated.

For $20, the bedding had served its purpose, but it was dark and I'm kind of over the blue/brown color scheme at this point.  So I was on the hunt for new bedding, something bright and cheery since the walls in that room are white and we don't have any desire to paint them at this point.  I was able to score this set on overstock, and I'm quite pleased with the difference in the room.

Don't mind the pile of stuff on the floor, that's my stockpile for the BEACH!!!!!!  The countdown is on....

Flower Power

I'm going to toot my own horn here for a minute, because I'm quite proud of myself....I took full responsibility for our potted flowers this year.  This might not seem like an achievement, but it's the first time I've done that. We have a general unspoken rule in our house that states Brian takes care of the outside in the summer, I handle the inside.  This year, we changed that up...not because the former system wasn't working, but because I'm kind of a control freak and wanted to do the flowers myself for the first time.  So I bought them all, and planted them myself (*insert back patting here*)  I did step up and helped spread mulch one day, too, but that motivation lasted about an hour before I thought I was going to die.  But I still get points for trying!

Anyway, back to the flowers.  I'm pleased with how a lot of them turned out, and some I'll do differently next year.  My #1 goal was to buy only flowers that required very little maintenance aside from watering (read: NO DEADHEADING)  I wanted to plant them, water them, and admire them...that's it. 

Pots on the patio out back:

From L-R: Calibrachoa, Geranium, Vinca

Gerbera daisy that Jake picked out for me :)

Gerbera daisy with a tiny bloom, butterfly that Jake painted, and more geraniums

Impatiens and Coleus that both went crazy in their pots!!

Impatiens and begonias 

more begonias

The flower beds behind the retaining wall off of the patio needed a little bit of attention and love this year. The previous owners had a lot of nice perennials in there already, so we really haven't had to plant much at all; however, a lot of those plants were completely taking over the area.  Brian spent a lot of time clearing it out and relocating some of the flowers this year.  It looks much better now!

I didn't take any actual before shots this year, but here are some from last year at the luau...you can see how overgrown it was at that time, so it was even worse more recently:

After!

We have some mums in that bed that came back from last year:

And some other unexpected surprises of flowers that popped back up from last year:

not sure what these are called, they came back up along our driveway, and beside our patio

snapdragons that came back up in the front of the house

 I planted some other flowers along the driveway, but sadly, none of them did very well and I'm not sure why.  It's a sad little area right now.

More mums, I'm still hoping maybe these will bloom again in the fall, and sad begonias.

Sad vincas.

Onto happier looking flowers, I have 2 big pots on the front porch with double begonias...one of the pots did better than the other, but they're both still pretty:

See these weird plants that are growing in front of the bushes in front of our house?  I'm not sure what they are, but for some strange reason, they're unevenly spaced (which makes me twitchy) and frankly, they're just not that nice looking.  Sure, they get white flowers in the spring...but those last for all of 2 weeks, then we're left with this heap of green and brown the rest of the year. 

Brian isn't a fan of ripping out plants that are perfectly healthy, but I'm really hoping maybe we can figure something out next year.  I wouldn't be opposed to transplanting them to another area that isn't....oh, directly in front of our house.  I'd love to get something with some color in there instead! 

So there you have it, my friends, the complete outdoor tour of my hard work.  Not too shabby for my first time!