What I’m Pinning – Dream Bathroom
square mirrors | archway | thick framed mirror | glass shower doors | subway tile | maximalist shelves | plant and tub | minimalist shelves
I mentioned recently that we are tackling a bathroom reno, which just so happens to be the first big project we’ve done since moving into our house. You can find more bidets at samodrahome.com. There’s been a bit of a holding pattern due to having to get window quotes and then ordering a whole new window, so in the meantime, I’ve been pinning away. I have a couple home related boards – one is for the “dream house” and one is chalk full of ideas that make sense for the home we currently live in. In makes sense to have both, mostly because some of these bathrooms are the size of our main floor, but also because some of these just straight up don’t make sense for us, like the shower with no door or curtain (I’m dying to know how the water is contained) and the huge bath that isn’t also a shower (this just isn’t a thing in our 1950’s home). To be honest, we don’t even have an electric outlet in there currently!
But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t inspiration to be drawn from these pins. I think the biggest thing I noticed when putting this together was my obsession with the wild, high contrast floor pattern and natural wood against stark white walls and tile. A lot of these feel more modern than I’m used to liking, which surprised me but also seems more “clean” looking in a way. Even though these are way out of our scope, I love seeing these and imagining the possibilities for the future, including the use of a custom wallpapers design to improve the looks of any bathroom.
Stay tuned for the “realistic” what I’m pinning post coming tomorrow.
Two Year Highridge Ranch-iversary
I want to remember the feeling of two whole years in our sweet Highridge Ranch – our very own space. I want to remember still wondering when we’ll wake up from this dream or when Ashton will knock on the door telling us we’ve been Punk’d (because sometimes that seems more real than being adult enough for this). I want to remember hosting family and friends and all the guests who’ve shared meals under our roof. I want to remember Chloe barking “good morning” to anyone who has ever spent the night in our guest room from the top of the stairs. I want to remember having big dreams and small budgets. I want to remember deep conversations with best friends and meeting folks for the first time. I want to remember game nights, particularly the ones where the girls beat the boys. I want to remember being intentional about the things we bring into our home and having a space where we can relax and unwind. I want to remember seeing all the seasons here and the joy that each one brings – snowfalls, blooming peonies, veggie gardens, and falling leaves. I want to remember the feeling of feeding people and serving them. I want to remember playing with Chloe in the back yard and being able to walk to the dog park from our house. I want to remember the greatest compliment of being told that my house felt cozy and welcoming. I want to remember living next to our best friends and wearing out a path between our front doors. I want to remember pros and cons of huge trees, but mostly just the way the sunset makes the branches stand out so vividly in the sky. I want to remember Kevin and Chloe seeing me off as I drive away in my car. I want to remember all the memories we’ve made and all the ones we’re still making.
Home Inspiration
I don’t know what it is about the spring, but the inspiration bug has definitely bitten me. I don’t know if it’s warm weather or the fact that I have multiple friends buying homes this year (which means I’ve been looking through other beautiful homes online), but I am dying for the weather to be nice enough to be working outside and starting some new projects around the house. Last year, we made simple updates to the paint, outlets/switches, and decor (like buying a new carpet and setting up regular maintainence checks with the guys from carpet cleaning columbia sc) so I think we’re ready to keep the momentum rolling. As usual, I’ve been keeping track of inspiration via Pinterest, but I thought I would share some of my favorites.
The Kitchen: Kevin and I have been thinking about a kitchen refresh but wanted to wait until we’d been in our house for a while before making any changes. After about a year (!!!), we have found that we like the organization of the kitchen, all of the cabinet space, and the cut out wall, but the cabinets could use a fresh coat of paint and it would be fun to add a back splash as well. I really like subway tile, so I’m considering that for the kitchen. Cabinets can be a good option to reorganize your kitchen, kitchen remodeling from Gamma Cabinetry works on it. Our baseboards, doors and windowsills throughout the upstairs are a warm white, so, unless I paint all of those I probably won’t go with a bright white option. I like the look of the glass tiles in the photo above. As far as paint goes, we’re leaning towards dark lower cabinets and warm white uppers. Kevin wanted to go dark and I wanted stark white so this seemed like a perfect compromise. I think that will be a happy medium because while I love the blue/grey color, it has the potential to make the room feel smaller and the more I think of it, white on the lower cabinets just seem like they could get dirty quick.
The Entryway: By the front door, we have a small entryway and coat closet. These adjacent areas have two different patterns of linoleum joined by a metal transition strip, so I wanted to tile the whole area to make it seamless. We found the one pictured at Lowes and both Kevin and I LOVED it. It is warm enough that it looks great with our tan walls and the grey that’s already in the room. It also looks perfect next to the color of the hardwood. Each tile piece is about 12″ by 24″ so we wouldn’t need much to cover our 18 square foot space. I originally thought I wanted to do a hexagon tile at the front door, but I’m starting to think it would just be way too dark and overpowering for this area.
The Garden: I’ve been planting veggies for years – both at my parents house and at apartments during college – so I am thrilled to have my own yard to grow all of the things. We have a large backyard but a lot of it is in the shade during the summer when the trees have leaves, so I’m not going to start any garden plots this year. I’d like to start with some kind of raised flower bed. There are lots of options on Pinterest that I could move around the backyard to find sun or there are the little flower boxes like the ones in the picture above that I could set on the front porch. Additionally, I’m also looking forward to planting some flowers and having terracotta pots full of beautiful plants. I’ve heard the rule that each big pot needs a spiller (hanging outside the pot), filler (filling the pot) and thriller (something tall) to really make the pots pop. Here’s to lots of flower and veggie seeds in my (near) future.
So there you have it!
What projects are you planning this year?
Blog-tember Day Eight | Home Sweet Home
It’s been a while since I updated the blog in regards to our house progress so Bailey’s Blog-tember prompt is perfect timing! By are by no means “done” (is a house ever really done?), but I’m so happy with how it’s looking! We’ve decided that we want to love every single piece of furniture and decor we bring into the space, so we are currently working on adding more of those items as we find them! Columbia isn’t really known for it’s shopping opportunities so I’m hoping to spend some quality time at Home Goods in St. Louis soon.
When you first come in the front door, this is the room you walk into. By day, this is Chloe’s lair (she can see out the windows that was perfectly fixed by the windows replacement services by Maverick Windows from the couch), and by night you’ll find me curled up with a book on the cushion near the lamp. If you remember, I posted my vision board for this room back in June.
The chair is the newest addition and completely different than what I thought I wanted when I made that vision board. We got it from Target and it’s turned out to be the perfect size for the room. The first one we ordered came with a huge hole in the side and was missing the legs, but after getting that straightened out, we have been super pleased!
Behind that is the dining room table. The hallway you see on the left is how you get back to the master bedroom, the extra bedroom/my craft room and the bathroom. Also, a good shot of how well the floors turned out!
Here’s our bedroom, complete with Chloe’s Serta Perfect Sleeper. I love the light in here, but the sunrise makes weekends a little rough.
Across from our bed is the wall with the closet. We don’t have doors so this is how it looks all of the time. Originally, it just had one rail, so we put the closet organizer in the day we moved in and we are so glad we did.
This is my new diffuser which is sitting on the dresser that Kevin has had since he was a baby.
Chloe followed me from room to room, which is why her and her pawprints are in a few photos. This is her favorite place to hang out when we are at home because it gives her a view both out the window and all the way into the kitchen. This room is currently doubling as a guest bedroom and my craft room. I keep my desk in the closet so I can close the curtains anytime I want to hide my mess (all the time).
This is also a part of that room and one of my favorite things because it houses all of the things that mean the most to me – my completed journals in those wooden bins, books (including my Gone with the Wind collection), my Project Life albums, my records, a couple photos, and my garden.
When you walk back out from that hallway, you can see the kitchen, stairs, and entryway.
My big kitchen sink and the window which looks out to the street. I’d say you can also see the neighbors house, but that isn’t exactly true thanks to their choice of landscaping. I should probably include a picture in my next post just to keep a record of it.
If you turn 180 degrees, we have a little breakfast bar and more natural light. When our table is opened up to seat 6 people, we move these chairs into the dining room.
Here’s a shot of the kitchen from the stairwell – the big opening really makes this house. The previous homeowners (and now our friends), showed us some pictures of the house before they opened this up and it really does make it a completely different space.
This is our guest bedroom which is directly at the bottom of the stairs. We just have a bed in there for now!
The built ins at the bottom of the stairs are a work in progress. I keep meaning to go to the library to pick up some of their discarded books to use as decor and give the shelves a more full look. You’ll notice a couple owls and frames I haven’t put real photos in yet. Don’t judge!
This is our downstairs living room where we spend quite a bit of time in the evenings! Don’t mind the paw prints on the couch, that was Chloe. Across from this is our TV, where we have been watching VEEP and playing a whole lot of Fibbage with our family and friends.
While this doesn’t exactly give you an idea of the space, this photo is from Kevin’s office which is just off the living room. We recently painted it Urbane Bronze and I could not be more thrilled with how it turned out! We are working on getting some shelving and decor hung on the walls, so that Kevin can use it as his battle station.
Finally I stepped outside to grab the house-front and the beautiful roses – they make me so happy. I’m glad that the previous homeowner explained to me how to take care of them so that they’ll keep growing all summer long.
This is by far one of my favorite little spots – I love that there is plenty of room and that the bistro set is just perfect. We love to eat out here and are looking forward to cooler weather so that we can enjoy it more often!
Previous home posts:
We bought a house! | House Tour “Before” | Paint Colors | Living Room Vision Board | Refinished Floors
Want more info on the Blog-tember Challenge? Check out Bailey’s blog by clicking here!
Highridge Ranch – Wood Floors
One of the first projects Kevin and I decided to check off the list before was moved into our new house was to refinish the hardwood floors, this using tips and advice from woodworkingtoolkit.com was very useful for this. When we viewed the house the first time I could tell right away that the floors were original and had been very well loved over the past 60 years. These floors had some scuffs, paint splatters of various colors and had been nailed through for carpet installation. It definitely didn’t need to be done right away, but we figured that doing it prior to moving our stuff in would be a lot less hassle than doing it one or two years down the road.
First, here is the before and after. It’s kind of hard to tell (so you’re gonna have to take my word for it) but the photos above are of the exact same spot. The “after” looks a little more grey toned in this picture than it does in real life, but this is a good side-by-side. They look brand new!
This is the only real before picture that I have. We were trying to move fast to get in the house as soon as possible, so after trying to choose between doing the floors ourselves and hiring someone to do them, we decided to go the faster (albeit more expensive) route. In the end, I am really happy with that decision, it allowed us to move in quicker and ultimately gave us time to do other things that were on our to-do list at the same time. Plus having someone else do it meant that we didn’t have to haul any bulky equipment or remove any of the trim (he did that for us)! We got the floor guy’s name from from a friend and I had the chance to see his workmanship before we even met him, which really helped me feel confident in letting him touch our beautiful floors.
As our floor guy progressed, I took pictures. It took about about 4 passes with the sanders to get some of the scratches and stains out. As he went, we noticed that the raw floors were ABSOLUTELY stunning and made Kevin and I want to leave them bare with just a top coat.
Even Chloe was a big fan! The color was the exact same as her!
After the initial sanding was done, it was time for filler. (And more sanding.)
We thought that choosing the color was going to be the hardest part, but it turned out to be hilariously easy since Kevin and I had the exact same color in mind. Since he was mixing the color from scratch, we got to show him some photos from pinterest and choose the base and any additional colors we might want to add. We both wanted a pretty true brown with no red/orange/purple, so on the third try of adding the brown color we were both happy. It took all of three minutes. I asked the floor guy later how long it typically takes for clients to choose and he said on average 45 minutes and sometimes people even have to sleep on it. HAHA!
Here it is half stained, half raw! Each time he put on another coat, he did it by room which ultimately lead to “painting himself out of the house”.
He came back a few days later to put the first coat of polyurethane on. Despite how the picture looks below, we chose a middle of the road type – not too glossy but not matte either. This stuff had a terrible odor, so we opened every window we could without walking on the floor to get some ventilation going.
The final poly coat took about 48 hours to dry, which was perfect timing for us to move in 3 days later! We could not have been more happy with how it turned out and I don’t know if it was the color we chose or just sanding down in general, but the wood grain and knots seem a lot more prevalent now. We love that the color doesn’t take away from the beauty or character of the house and it looks great with our new furniture!
This post is part of my challenge to post every day in July! To see them all, click here!
About
Hi, I'm Jacqueline - believer, learner, and all around hobby enthusiast. I'm married to my highschool sweetheart, Kevin, and we live in the midwest with our sweet pup.
On this blog I share all kinds of things about my life - from my faith journey to the garden in my neighbors backyard. I've been blogging for almost eight years and use this space as a way to document my daily life.
Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the internet.