Master Bedroom

I've been meaning to post this room for a while but haven't for some reason. This room is not completely finished yet but I'll post any updates. There aren't any window treatments or artwork hanging yet. I am also going to get a new bedspread sometime soon. I'll warn you now that there a quite a few pictures. If you choose to leave now, I understand. :) Oh yeah, and another warning (if you stick around) is that I don't take good "before shots". I always think I have enough and then later regret not taking certain photos. Oh well, no going back.

Here we go! The first BEFORE picture that I'm posting is shot from where this little orange arrow is on the floor plan.

This is what you see when you're entering our room from the sunroom.
My girl Ruth Ann actually took that pic. ;) The room's walls, trim, and window lines were all painted light green. Much like the color below. The ceiling was a lighter shade of the green but like always, my camera's flash whitens things out.
The pictures don't always show what we could see in real life. In this room there were many smudgy, dirty places on the walls and faded paint where pictures hung for years. (These are all before)

This next picture was taken by me and I was oblivious to the fact that people were in the shot. I edited the picture a bit for privacy...and because Cory was midsentence.
The next picture is after we (Jeanne & me) painted the ceiling and primed the molding. It was amazing how much taller the room looked after we did that. This is also a picture of the light fixture. We took off the glass dome to make it brighter.
But it still didn't produce much light for the whole room.
I'm blurred out of this next picture because I was looking rough.
Here's a close up of the fan that Cory installed. We added a medallion to pretty it up a bit.

We had some help painting the bedroom. Much thanks goes to Ruth Ann, Jon, mom, and dad.

The paint I chose for the room was Glidden's Barely Jade.

In the store it looked blueish-green and was called Barely Jade so I thought it for sure was greenish but when we painted it on everyone commented how they loved the blueish-gray that I had chosen. Oh well, at least I like blueish gray!

Here's a shot of the room after it was painted.
The next one is a shot of our bathroom & closest doors. Please excuse the closet mess. We had our dinky stackable shelves and I had my work clothes from the day draped on them.
Now here's what you see when entering our room from the sunroom.



I tried to write on the next photo but it's pretty small font. Please excuse R2D2's cousin in the bottom left corner. He's our noisemaker that we've had since we've been married. Our first apartment's air conditioner didn't work well so we purchased a room air conditioner and we got used to it drowning out noises when we sleep. We just use it as a sound machine now.

Here are some side to side shots. These are the same photos from above.

That's about it. We are really enjoying our new bedroom and the space it provides. I'll try to post some more pictures when we make some changes. Also, as far as the no-blind situation, it's not that bad. I have some ideas of what I want but just haven't made the purchase yet. Our bedroom is at the back of the house and is actually higher off the ground so you can't peek into our windows. We are fortunate to have a very wooded area behind our backyard so only the birds and bugs are getting to see in at night. Also, since it's woody we don't have streetlights lighting our room up at night. Just the light of the moon. It's actually quite nice. And the morning sunlight is also filtered by the trees for those days you want to sleep in. Here's my view in the morning. (sorry I couldn't get the picture bigger for some reason)

There you have it. It's not an extreme makeover but it is a change. I can't wait till we complete more projects so I can actually focus on decorating the rooms. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a blessed day!

The End of an Era

Last night for me was an end of an era. No, I didn't go see Harry Potter. I finally finished watching Beverly Hills 90210. I am talking about the old 90210 that came on television from 1990-2000. When I was younger I remember my mom not really wanting me to watch 90210. I didn't know her reasoning but I was in elementary school and I probably wouldn't have understood it anyway. When I got older when she wouldn't have cared if I watched it I wasn't really interested. Fast forward to the summer after Cory & I got married and I got hooked. That summer Cory was doing an internship in Muscle Shoals & Huntsville so we moved back (from Tuscaloosa) to the Shoals to stay with my parents for the summer. Since I was out of school I could sleep late in the morning which would make me not want to bed until later. Cory, on the other hand, was working and needed/wanted to go to bed rather early. At first I would hang out in the living room and then when I got tired I would make my way to the bedroom but would end up waking Cory up and then he didn't sleep well afterwards. This surprised me because Cory can sleep through LOTS of things but for some reason me getting into the bed did the trick. I then decided to go to bed at the same time and just watch tv until I got sleepy but that didn't work either. Cory (at the time) was used to going to sleep in total silence and the noise from the tv was distracting. I guess I should've changed my sleep schedule and got up earlier but I didn't. Instead I came up with the idea to watch Netflix Instantly on my laptop and use my ear buds so as not to wake up Cory. It worked like a charm! I watched a variety of shows and one night decided to try 90210. That night I got hooked. I watched season 1 in no time. Which a season was usually 24-30 episodes that were each at least 45 minutes long. By the time I was finishing season 1, season 2 became available on Netflix Instant watch. After I finished season 2 though, I had get the dvds sent to me. Yep, Cory was a dear and let me get a cheesy television show shipped to me each week. It worked out alright, though, because we get two discs at a time. I watched pretty regularly but had a few periods where I put it on hold. After three years I have finally completed the ten seasons!
It's been a good run. :) It kind of stinks that I watched this way past it's prime because MANY times I've wanted to talk with people about what was going on in Beverly Hills but couldn't because they wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about. I also would relate what was going on with the show with situations in real life with Cory quite a few times. I know he's probably celebrating the show's end. He was a sweetheart and took me to get ice cream for the last episode. I had to make him promise not to make fun of the cheesiness (because we would make fun of dialog throughout the seasons) and if I got emotional before I watched. Unfortunately something was wrong with my disc and it skipped two scenes! YouTube saved the day, though. It is done and I can move on now. I will have to restrain myself from getting sucked into anymore teen dramas that's available online. Sorry that this post was pretty boring and strange. I'm just dealing with my end of an era. :)

Table Side Project

Warning: this post is rather lengthy and filled with pictures.

Cory & I interrupted our house painting with a side project. We really only have trim and doors to go but in my opinion, those are the worst things to have to paint. We needed a little break and we also needed wanted a new table for our dining room so that’s exactly what we did.

Here’s our table at our old apartment.

And in our house:

Nothing was wrong with our old table. In fact, I actually really liked it. Cory & I got an old sewing machine base from my grandfather right after we got married that we converted into a table. And when I say “we” I mean Cory and his dad. J David actually made a table top for us out of some wood that Cory had left over from a bookcase he had built. He also added some trim around the edge to make it look more finished. Cory attached the table to the base and all I did was paint it light blue. We loved that the table was rather large and have had up to ten people fitting around it before. When we moved it into our new dining room we realized that we would rather have a rectangular table instead of a square one.

I have been in love with farmhouse tables for a while now. I like the old rugged look to them. Here are some pictures I have collected over the years. I’m sorry I do not have sources to site these pics (I saved them before I found Pintrest). These are just a few of the photos that have been saved.

As soon as we decided to get a rectangle table I began searching for a farmhouse table. I checked furniture stores but the two that I found were VERY expensive, I searched on Craig’s list, and antique stores.(Side note, Cory & I just got back from visiting friends in Atlanta and there were farmhouse tables EVERYWHERE---I guess I should’ve checked there) I had no luck until one day I was reading Dream Book Design about how to make a farmhouse table. (if you haven't seen this blog, you should check it out. It rocks!) I showed Cory the tutorial (along with some others I found online) and he said he would make one. I really liked the one from Dream Book because they used a different base for the table as oppose to four table legs. That’s exactly what I wanted. I love pedestal tables because you can fit more people comfortably around them. I also really wanted to use our sewing machine base because I like the look of it. By using the base we also can keep our old table top and use it again if we ever want to.

Cory went to his mom’s house to look for wood from his dad. He found some Cypress planks (Cory’s favorite type of tree) to use. I love how our first table was constructed by Cory’s dad with leftover wood from Cory and this new table is constructed by Cory with left over wood from David. Although, I really wish David could be here to help construct this one. Using this wood does give the table special meaning though. I know David would be SO proud of Cory and his skills that he acquired from watching him. Anyway, before I get into full on crying, Cory got the wood and got to work. I was going to document each step but this is all I got.

Whoops! Anyway, Cory put the table together and it looked great! To get the old “farmhouse” look, though we had to beat it up a bit. If our neighbors saw us they probably thought we had anger management problems because we were hitting our table with blocks of wood, tools of all sorts, nailing screws and nails to make holes, and throwing things at it. It was actually pretty fun. After we banged it up we stained the table and then put a coat of polyurethane on it. We accidentally put a gloss polyurethane on it so it’s a bit more shiny than we had thought but I actually like it better because it protects the surface better.

Here it is.

And a close up.

And from the side. Please note that we’re in search for a large rug. This one is here for floor protection purposes.

Now for the chairs. Cory and I were so kindly offered a few tables and chairs when we moved into our house. One of those tables was from my sister who lives several hours away. We probably would’ve been fine with getting her old table but it would have been a while before we could’ve gotten it. My mom has actually taken her up on the table offer, which she was the one who bought it for her in the first place. Mom just wants the table to put in her sewing room so she said we could have the chairs. All but two of the chairs to her table are here in town. We actually had two of them at our house. There were four black chairs and two red ones. I didn’t really want too “matchy” of chairs and wanted them to look kind of worn like the table. Here’s an inspiration chair from Restoration Hardware and is about $350 a chair, actually it’s on sale for $229.

Here’s the black chair before. I recovered it back in the fall (here)

I’m usually painting furniture around here but this time I stripped the paint, which isn’t a fun process. Here’s what I used to do that. This stuff works really well. I recommend it if you’re stripping paint. You have to make sure to paint it on rather thick, though.

Here’s the chair after paint stripping, sanding, staining, and polyurethaning it. Oh, and covering the seat with a linen type fabric.

As you can see I left a few places with a little paint and imperfections. It was kind of like “distressing” furniture opposite way.

For the red chairs I decided to skip the paint stripping and just paint over. I really liked the red chairs and it was hard to paint over but they just didn’t fit in our home. Here they are before.

I tried to go with a puddy color but they ended up more blue than green. I also glazed them to get an antique look.

And here’s how it looks all together. I know it may look like junk picked up from side of the road but it’s exactly what I was going for. A little eclectic, if you will. We may add a bench for one side of the table because each side can actually hold three chairs. We'll see, and if we do, you know I'll post a picture.

I’m being stingy and not showing the whole room because there’s a little more tweaking before it’s picture worthy.

Wow, that was long. Thanks for stopping by. J

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