House of Turquoise

While red is a wonderful color and looks great on many things, my front door is not one of them.  YES, many homes look so charming with a red front door - again, not mine. Guess what? When we bought our home - red door!  Not only did it not look good with the original color of the house, it did not look good with our re-painted house.  When we were house searching I already knew I wanted a turquoise front door.  I was not sure of the shade, but it was going to be turquoise.  I walked up to every door with my eyes squinting, trying to see if I could picture the color change on the door.  We didn't really have that long of a home search before we landed on ours.  Walking up to it - the door color would be changed along with the house color.  So - no worries there.

I thought I had a better "before" picture of the red door, but in all the move and rush of painting - this is as good as it gets.  The bottom right picture is the color of red that was on the outside of the door. A few months down the road after the purchase, when we began to paint the outside of the house - we had a little "snafu" if you will.  I will save you from this story - until another time of course.  Lets just say I was completely re-thinking my whole color scheme including my beloved turquoise door!  Hubby fixed everything (as usual..blah) and I got my door!

We do have a glass storm door that is not pictured.  I have considered removing it (eye sore), but the dogs love it so much when we have the door open because they can look outside and enjoy harass the people and animals that walk by all day! We have plans to paint our porch tile grey.  We will use the outdoor porch paint that we purchased for our striped floors in the craft room.  We had it matched to the outside of the house because we knew we would not use the whole gallon inside.   Don't ya'll just love our gold mail slot?  Yes, that is really how we get our mail!  I have a basket inside to catch everything.

I loved the "after" so much that we decided to paint our side door by the garage.

And our back doors. The dark grey and white trim on our house makes these doors POP! The front door is still red on the inside.  I cannot decide what color to paint it.  Take a look at our living room and give me some help! White, light grey, dark grey, turquoise?  Keep it red? HELP! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Painting our Vinyl Floors

As promised - a little DIY info on painting our vinyl mud room (turned craft room) floors!  Also, a little eye candy for ya - Rosie Posie in all her glory.  As I mentioned in my last post - we were the proud owners of a brown vinyl or linoleum floor - I'm not really sure of the difference.  Our brown floors were faded to a lovely shade of green right by all the doors - compliments of the sun.  These floors didn't really bother me when we moved in - I knew I would be ripping them out eventually.  Well 9 months later, they were receiving an eye roll every time I walked through the room.  Determined to figure out a temporary fix - I went to Pinterest.  This and this really inspired me to give painting our floors a try.  I figured that if we messed it up too bad, we could get to covering them with new flooring at some point.  

We purchased two colors of porch paint and primer to do the job.  We matched our grey paint to the outside of our house so that we can use the same gallon to re-paint our front porch tile.  After a good cleaning, we covered the entire floor in one coat of primer.

We then (after barely letting it dry because I am impatient) covered the entire floor in one coat of our white porch paint.  We let it dry over night...torture for me, and put another coat of white the next evening.  

After both coats of white paint dried, we measured off 8 inch stripes and laid them with painter's tape. This was the tedious part, but having Hubby help me really made a difference.  Measuring and numbers make me sweat and throw things occasionally.  We painted every other stripe with our grey porch paint.  Let it dry ANOTHER night..ahhh...and then finished up with coat #2 of grey paint. I did have a little bit of grey paint bleed under the tape.  Not enough for me to go back over anything though.  Several of the tutorials I looked at said that after you lay the tape, to go over it again completely with white paint.  It sets the tape really well.  Of course I did not do that, because we know why (time, time, time).

Overall, we are thrilled with how the floors turned out.  The craft room is a high traffic area and the paint has held up very well so far.  I have been cleaning it with my Swiffer Wet Jet and the results are great.  If not anything, we have a great temporary fix until money starts growing on trees!  

We have considered looking into staining the concrete that is underneath one day down the road.  Anyone have any experience (good or bad) with DIYing that? Let me know in the comments!

Craft Room Progress

The craft room is under way!  In the back of our house (leading out to the backyard) we have another add on room that we really consider a mud room.  It has 3 great doors that have windows top to bottom.  They let in great light.  The room also came with a built in cabinet and counter top.  Since we moved in, the counter top has really only housed Hubby's tools and projects (pretty much an eye sore).  Let's be real.

One day, while standing in the room with my thinking cap on - I decided this was to be my craft room.  I consider myself a crafty person and figured Hubby would like all my crafty things in one spot.  Brilliant.  With built in cabinets already in place - this would be the perfect spot to get messy.

I like to be inspired when working on a project or writing a post.  Nice, pretty, creative things around me usually help!  YES, this room is still in progress, but so far - we have painted of course (this room was an interesting shade of green), we added a solid cedar shelf above the cabinets, I painted the cork board, and we cut out some chicken wire. Still left to do - more storage, shelves for printer and  printer accessories,  I have my eye on some Nate Berkus accessories for the desk.  Also, in time I would like to have this counter top magically turn into a butcher block (maybe when we redo the kitchen).

Painting this floor dramatically changed the look of the room.  Before - the floor was a brown vinyl that looked like tile. HIDEOUS.  It was faded to green from the doors never having window treatments on them.  Hubby and I considered many options before painting.  All those options totally busted the budget we had set for this room.  While browsing Pinterest, I came across several pins about painting the floor.  Showed it to Hubby - we were painting the next night.  I plan to post a tutorial about painting the floor, so if you are interested in that - come back to me soon!

The turquoise stools were originally brown and in my parents' kitchen until they built their second home and finally upgraded.  They sat in the attic for several years until Hubby and I moved into our second apartment and had a bar that needed some bar stools.  Mom and Dad - your stools made another move and live on (with a little face lift)! 

Tripp is making his debut and loving every minute of it.  He is very photogenic, don't ya think?

American Dream Builders

Please tell me you are watching American Dream Builders on NBC on Sunday nights 8/7 pm central! If not - go to your DVR right now and set it up to record. Hubby and I are slightly obsessed with this show.  We are already avid watchers of anything on HGTV, so this is just an added bonus for us on another channel.  In a nutshell - it is another elimination show.  Two teams redesign and redecorate homes in a week and then reveal.  Judges vote...you know the drill.   I have loved every episode so far (there have only been a few, so you are not too far behind to catch up), but the episode on 4/6/14 - had my jaw dropping!  Literally - when they did the reveal I immediately turned to Hubby with my mouth hanging open.  He knew it too - he was already looking at me expecting my reaction.

Please, please, please go look at these Spanish Style homes that they remodeled on the episode that aired on 4/6/14.

Now - I will admit that I was totally smitten with Team Red's living room and kitchen (this is the part of the episode that had my mouth hanging open practically drooling).  I am a HUGE fan of rustic touches in a room.  I love airy and white decoration with touches of wood and steel.  Team Red nailed it - and also kept with the Spanish style of the home.

Some of the things that I am obsessed with in Team Red's  living room are:

- Fireplace mantel and tile

- The color palette (I feel like my living room has this color vibe to an extent)

- The glass and gold coffee table

- Furniture

- and pretty much everything else!

I LOVE the kitchen too - simply put - WHITE cabinets.  That's really all it takes to have me hooked, but everything else in there has me swooning as well.  I have intentions of painting our kitchen cabinets this summer and hopefully in time - adding a butcher block counter top.  We have already replaced some light fixtures, giving it a little bit of a rustic feel.  Here are some ideas that are swirling around in my head (especially after this episode):

Rug

dotandbo.com

AERIN nesting bowl

aerin.com

Alessi cutlery

$84 - madeindesign.co.uk

West Elm rectangular kitchen table

westelm.com

Merola Tile Metro Soho Subway Glossy White 2 in. x 7-1/2 in. Porcelain...

homedepot.com

Home Decorators Collection 1-Light Ceiling Industrial Gloss White...

homedepot.com

Home Decorators Collection 1-Light Ceiling Clear Glass Cylinder...

homedepot.com

NUMERÄR

ikea.com

More swirling ideas for our fireplace remodel:

Just a few ideas.  All it takes is money...anyone willing to donate out there??? Just kidding...kind of..

DIY Delicate Rings

Another DIY, man I'm feelin' crafty!  My good friend and fellow blogger, Abby came to visit this weekend and we concluded our weekend with some Pinterest projects.  We came across a TON of good tutorials on making some little delicate, dainty rings and we decided to tackle the project.  These little babies almost didn't come to be: fingers+thin wire+small stones+VERY tacky glue = patience overload (which I CANNOT handle).  I never thought I had big hands or fingers, but geeze after doing this project I feel like I have dinosaur hands!! But, do not fear, we pushed through and actually got into a good groove after throwing the first few across the room.  We also ended up pretty much making it up as we went (sometimes that is when the best projects form) and got what we got...AWESOME new jewelry.

Materials:

- 22 gauge wire

-16 gauge wire (thick)

-E-600 glue

-wire cutters, needle nose pliers (if you have jewelry making tools then use those!)

-stones of any color and size

*all items were purchased at Michael's and Hobby Lobby

1. To create the actual ring - cut about 2 inches of the 16 gauge (thicker) wire.  Then cut about 2-3 inches of the 22 gauge (thin) wire. 

2. I used a crayola marker to create the mold for the ring.  After making a circle with it- just mold it to fit whichever finger you want it on. Using the pliers I clamped the ends of the wire around each other so they would not poke.

3. The stones that I used had a tiny hole in each of them, which ended up coming in handy.  I slid the thin wire through the hole.

4. After the wire was through the hole, I then created the pattern I wanted on top of the stone.  I created an "X" in the stone pictured.  You can really get creative with this if you desire! Make sure to leave enough wire on each side to attach the stone to the ring.

5.  After some trial and error of creative patterns - start with one end and wrap it around the ring that was created.

6. Pull nice and tight and wrap the other end around the rest of the ring.

7. And there you have it - a new ring...or 10!

8.  I also created some rings without wrapping the wire around the actual band (this actually happened BEFORE I figured out that I could just make the wire longer and wrap it around the band).  I made my pattern and just tucked the wire under the stone, dabbed some glue and attached it to the band.  I leaned the ring up against the wall to let it dry.

9.  The left ring is with glue and the right ring is the wrapped wire.  I really like how they both turned out - personal preference I guess (and if you are impatient and cannot stand waiting for the glue to dry you have another choice)!

Considering the nature of my blog - OF COURSE these will reside on the vanity that Hubby built me in our master bedroom.  The vanity will be introduced shortly once I have found the perfect light to hang over it!  For right now - the vanity is housing my nail polish and headband collection.  Not to mention a few Birchbox samples scattered about.

Don't forget to head over to my good friend Abby's blog and get some fabulous fashion tips!

DIY Side Tables

After posting my Movie Room Inspiration and receiving our couches - I have turned it into high gear in the decorating department.  I was licking my lips and rubbing my hands together as those couches were being moved in.  The wheels were turning and Hubby was tightening his hands on the wallet.  We immediately went to Target to get the Threshold side tables I had my eye on.  Well, OF COURSE they did not have them in-store.  That is okay - I am just as good of an online shopper.  Since we struck out with the tables, we took a peek at the rugs.  I had actually been eyeing this rug for outside by the pool, but it is the size we needed in the movie room, surprisingly soft,  and it was on sale - score and SOLD! Before I could even ask if we could get it, Hubby had pulled it off the shelf and had it on top of his shoulder - that was a good sign, so I went with it. As we were walking out of the store Hubby let me know that he had two old wooden stools at work that were going to the thrown out - would I want them? UM DUH. I can always do something with those.  Before we made it to the car we had decided we were going to make our own side tables for the movie room - with the stools!  Wheels turning I tell you!

Materials:
- white spray paint
-metallic gold spray paint
-Polyurethane clear coat
-sand paper
-circular saw (any type would get the job done)

1. We  Hubby used a circular saw and cut all four legs to the height we wanted (we measured another table in our living room to get the correct height)

2. Using a sander, we sanded all four legs, top and bottom of stool to get a good surface for the paint to adhere to

3. We actually spray painted the whole stool white first (Hubby thought I wanted the whole thing white and just the bottom of the legs dipped in gold) then we taped around the legs so we would not get gold all over the white and went to town with the gold paint

4. Ta- da! Removed tape and sprayed two coats of Polyurethane on top for a glossy finish (and to prevent water rings)

Now, I know it is not my Threshold table I originally wanted - but I am happy with it! The other stool is in the workshop awaiting sanding. She will join her long lost twin soon enough.

The movie room is making it's transformation as we speak and I am excited to show you the final product hopefully soon!