Living Beautifully...One (DIY) Step At A Time

Painting the Hallway

2013-05-24T07:00:00.000-04:00

We painted our hallway. I *may* have had a minor panic attack the day before the painting began, but thankfully it all turned out great.

Painting a hallway is a big commitment. Its not like a small room that's easy to repaint if you aren't crazy about the colour. On top of that we had to hire someone to come in and paint the open part of our ceiling (since we need scaffolding to reach those high areas) so we needed to make SURE we were happy with the colour...7 tester pots later and 3 days of debating we had finally chosen our colour.

From the day we moved into this house, we had planned to change the colours.

As you can probably tell from many of the other rooms in this house, we prefer light colours (blues, white, light grey's) so the dark, earthy colours weren't right for us.

Here's what we started with:

We also planned to change out the light fixtures, but I'll save that for another post :)

So we chose the colour Blizzard Fog from ICI/Duluxe paints:

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It has a light greenish- grey tone to it, but once we painted it on, we noticed a great deal of blue, which we were still happy with.

So here's how the hallway looks now:

We have a lot more to still do in this space (stairs are still a work in progress), as is the hanging lighting and we need to decorate the space, but it will all come with time.

You might have also noticed that the hanging fixtures that were there before are now gone. We had them replaced with potlights and love the look. There was a big debate on getting new fixtures or potlights, but we finally settled on the potlights. Our reasoning for this, was that the fixtures we wanted were almost $100 each and even still we didn't totally love them. So up went the potlights, down came the fixtures we highly disliked leaving us with a nice clean look in the hallway.

We still need to replace the large hanging fixture and we did purchase a fixture for this (which we've had for over a year), so we're excited to change that out and see how it changes the look.

For now, its so nice to walk into our home, into a nice bright entranceway...we love it.

Have any of you chosen to paint a light colour in your front entrance way? What did you think of it?

Melissa and Ian

Stairs Update

2013-05-23T13:52:00.000-04:00

A lot of you have been asking us for an update on the stairs.

The first thing we have to tell you is that they are still a work in progress....we haven't decided what to do with the railing yet. Do we paint it darker? Save up for a new railing that we can stain? We really aren't sure. The simple solution would be to re-paint it, but finding the right paint has been quite the challenge.

Secondly, we need to deal with the end post and potentially making it larger. We aren't happy with its size in comparison to the stairs (we feel it should be more substantial), so we're working on a plan to build it up.

Here's where we're at:

They are definitely getting there. The new paint colour in the hallway has made a huge difference, along with the new lighting.

So not much of a dramatic update, but we'll keep you posted on their progress as we go!

Melissa and Ian

Nursery Design- The Crib

2013-05-22T13:05:00.000-04:00

This post will be our first in a series about designing our nursery :)

We were pretty thrilled to be able to start this process, as its taken us a very long time to get here.

Designing the nursery was actually something that we started a very long time ago. We've had countless images, inspiration, colours and ideas set aside for years, so this has definitely been a room that has been well thought-out!

There has been one nursery in particular that has hugely inspired us and we have built many of our ideas upon that. Having a great deal of time to think about how we wanted to design the nursery also gave us a lot of time to search for deals and source items for the lowest price we could find. Trust me, this has not always been easy! We are looking forward to sharing those deals with you, and hopefully helping out some of you who are planning on designing your own nursery soon :)

The item we wanted to start with first was the crib. The crib not only plays a large functional role in the nursery, but is also one of the major focal pieces in the room.

We had definite ideas of what we wanted the crib to look like, depending on the gender of the baby. Now I know many people would say, "why did the gender affect your crib choice?", but honestly Ian and I could not agree on the same crib for a girl or boy, so our compromise was to pick a specific crib for each gender. We could both agree on a more modern look for a boy and a more traditional look for a girl, so that helped to narrow it down for us. So, since we're having a boy, the modern crib it is! (annnd, if we ever do have a girl, we'll probably swap out this crib for a more traditional style).

Finding the right modern crib (that fit our budget) was a bit of a challenge!

Our first choice was the Moda Crib from Room & Board. Beautiful lines, storage below the crib and we loved the design, but its way out of our budget at $1099.00.

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This crib, the Nurseryworks Loom Crib, also had a very modern look that we liked, but the high price ($699.00) and inability to ship without crazy shipping charges made it unaffordable:

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We also loved the look of the Oeuf Classic Crib, as well as so many other things about it (eco friendly, etc), but it did not exactly fit our budget at $970.00

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Then we came across the Babyletto Madison crib:

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We thought it looked very similar to the Oeuf crib, and for less than half the cost at $329.00. The only thing was, how would we ship it to Canada? This became a reoccurring problem for us, and often when we did find a crib that we liked, the additional cost of the shipping put the crib out of budget. We discovered that they sold this crib at Target.com for $299.00, however they do not carry the crib in store and they do not ship to Canada.

Then we came across this beauty at Walmart.com, the Baby Mod Olivia crib, priced at $299.00:

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We looked into shipping and fortunately Walmart.com ships from store-to-store for free! The reviews online of the crib looked great, and we couldn't beat the price.

Some of our concerns were that the crib had to have non-collapsable sides, no VOC's, that it was made of hardwoods, etc. This crib met all of those standards for us.

That evening we ordered the crib online and had it shipped to a Walmart store close to the border for us. We planned a weekend trip to the USA and timed the order so that the crib would arrive just before we got to the states. The crib arrived very quickly and Walmart.com did an amazing job at keeping us updated with tracking information. As a backup plan we chose to order 2 cribs, just in case one arrived damaged and we had to return it. The crib arrived in great condition but we have yet to unpack and assemble it (more on that to come in our next update).

The more we searched online for this crib, the more information we found along with tons of images of other nursery's using the same crib:

We love this feature of the Baby Mod Crib, from Project Nursery:

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Melissa and Bobby of "The Barrick Times" wrote about their experience with the crib here:

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Erin over at "Design Crisis" shares her experience with the crib here:

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And we loved this feature of Dave and Carrie's use of the crib on Young House Love:

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and lastly, this nursery that I LOVE, designed for baby Aimee from Hellobee:

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HGTV.ca wrote an excellent post on this exact crib as well, which you can read about here.

So between the great reviews, the amount of times we came across this crib online, and the great information on the crib itself, it seemed like a no-brainer.

Other cribs that ended up on our list (but didn't make the final cut), included:

The Babyletto Hudson crib ($399.00):

The Babyletto Modo crib ($331.50)

So thus comes to an end, the hunt for a crib! Once we have the crib set up, I'll write another post on our experience with that, but for now, I think we're really going to like it...and we hope baby does too :)

Melissa and Ian

Powder Room Makeover

2013-05-15T14:02:00.004-04:00

First of all, we want to thank all of you for the lovely response we received to our last post. We truly, truly appreciate all of your support and can't wait to share so many of these projects we've been working on for the past while, with all of you. So thank you all, xo.

Something else we've been up to (along with all of the other projects going on) is to finally paint and renovate our main floor powder room.

The current state of this bathroom is not the greatest. I mean, it functions fine, but the toilet is old, the sink is starting to slightly rust and Im not even going to address the colours, since once you see it you'll know its not our style:

Plus we sold the toilet paper holder and towel bar on Kijiji over 2 years ago and haven't installed a replacement, so its not that convenient for our lovely guests that come over :)

It's definitely one of those rooms that we've been itching to make over since we moved into this house. Its another project we plan to finish before the baby arrives and since its such a small room, and we already have a few of the things we need, we figured we could fit it into the budget.

Ian challenged me to design the room on a budget of $1000.00 or less, and I'm determined to do it.

My inspiration for the power room is this room I found on Pinterest:

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We love the colours, the feel and it will go nicely with the hallway and the other colours in our home.

Although I'd love to do something with fancy tile and all kids of other things, its not in the budget and I need to find a way to make the room interesting without spending a lot. I think installing a chair rail will definitely help with that!

I created a quick inspiration board to lay out all of our ideas:

As you can see, we're still unsure of lighting options (I've posted 2 options), however most likely we will need to go with the long pendant since there isn't room on either side of the mirror for sconces...boo. We do have that long crystal light installed in our small upstairs bath though, and we love it, so it should do the trick.

There aren't really that many things we need for the space. We already have the new toilet, mirror and paint, so the vanity, lighting, fixtures and accessories are all we need.

For the paint we've chosen "Antique Sterling" by ICI/Duluxe paints (its just a bit darker than what we have in the hallway) so we know it will match well.

So on with another project...aiming to have this one done in the next few months, so we'll be updating you on the progress as we go :)

Melissa and Ian

p.s for those of you wondering about the stairs...they are still a work in progress! Hopefully I'll be able to update you all soon with a pic :)

An update... :)

2013-05-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

The cat's out of the bag. We'll at least for those of you who know us personally. For those of you who don't know us outside of blogland...this may come as a surprise (although a few of you noticed a clue to this in our master bedroom reveal post) :)

Ian and I did not really plan on sharing this news on the blog for a few reasons...however after discussing it, we decided to spill the news. We're expecting, and we couldn't be more thrilled or thankful :)

The main reason why we chose to share this on the blog, is because one of the most exciting parts of preparing for the arrival of the baby has been designing the nursery :) We want to be able to share all of the projects that we've been doing over the last while, and that's kind of hard to do without letting you all know that we're expecting.

We will be sharing nursery design plans, idea boards, and projects with all of you, but we're going to keep it limited to that. For personal reasons, we are choosing not to share a lot of the details of the pregnancy and want to keep the blog focused on the design aspects. We hope you're all cool with that :)

So for now, I'll leave you with a few nursery photo's that have inspired us...oh and one more thing.

Its a boy :)

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We're very excited and have a lot of projects on the go...looking forward to sharing them all with you!

Which one is your favorite?!

Melissa and Ian

Master Bedroom Reveal

2013-05-09T07:00:00.000-04:00

You've seen bits and pieces of our master bedroom through our nightstand and headboard posts, and we're finally ready to show you the full reveal!

So here it is, our long awaited master bedroom reveal! We chose to keep a light and bright colour palette, similar to the rest of the room's we've made over in our home so far and also keeping in line with our master ensuite.

The walls were painted a light grey blue and we stuck with a white, blue, green and grey colour palette. We actually painted the walls after getting some chairs for the bedroom and used the fabric as a jumping off point for colours. We then found the curtains at Ikea on clearance and liked how they grounded the space with a darker teal colour in the same colour family. Our only mistake, was that this made it very hard to find a fabric for the headboard that incorporated all of these colours. We finally came across this fabric from Tonic Living:

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So that fabric, fortunately for us, had all of the colours in our room in it...and matched pretty perfectly, so it was a no brainer. We used it to upholster our headboard and create a few pillows with the left over fabric. All we have left at this point is to hang the photos sitting on our nightstands, and maybe to put something above the headboard on the wall. I have a few ideas in mind, but we'll see what we end up with.

Before we show you the reveal, lets look back as to how this room looked when we first moved into this house:

Very red, very yellow and very much not our style. So we pretty much started over. The laminate floors were ripped out and replaced with dark bamboo, the walls were painted, window coverings replaced, light fixtures changed, all door hardware replaced...it was a complete overhaul.

So here it is, the master bedroom reveal!

You might remember our post on when we re-did this dresser, but if not you can refresh your memory here. The dresser is from Ikea and it was not originally white, so we painted it ourselves in Benjamin Moore "Simply White". All of the trim, doors and baseboards in our house have also been done in "Simply White".

We added in a rug from Costco, which we had planned to move to our family room, once the new floors are installed. However, Clover loves the rug and so do we, so if we replace it, the new one will need to be just as cozy! The curtains are from Ikea, and although they look quite blue in the photos, they are actually much more of a teal colour.

Our nightstands were made over with a fresh colour and new knobs. We blogged about that transformation here.

We get a great deal of light in this room (and the light colours certainly help, but I love how the room always feels light, bright and relaxing.

Our vanity chair was also made over in the same colour as our nightstands, you can read about that here, and we love how these pieces nicely fill up this corner of the room. Plus it's a great space for me to use when getting ready if the bathroom's occupied.

We chose 2 slipper chairs for the space by the window (both from HomeSense) and they became a starting point for the colour palette for this room.

Another few shots of the gorgeous natural light this room gets (and how BLUE they make the curtains appear!).

Overall, we absolutely love this space. The bedroom, ensuite and closet colours all work perfectly together and we definitely gravitate towards light bright colours. We feel relaxed and happy when coming into this room, and that's most important to us.

Many of the projects in this room were purchased second hand and we re-did them ourselves, as well as many of the major aspects:

- Painting the entire space

- Designing the space (as well as the master ensuite which you can read about here and closet which you can read about here)

- Installing the floors

- Painting the dresser

- Creating the headboard

- Painting the vanity table

- Painting and upholstering the vanity chair

- Painting the small table between the side chairs

- Hemming the curtains

We truly feel our hardwork has paid off and the change is exactly what we were hoping for:

We only have a few things left to do: hang the photos beside the bed, finish up with what we want to do to the wall behind the bed and that's about it!

We've compiled a source list of everything in our master bedroom. If there is an item we have not listed and you would like to know where we got it please post a comment and we will reply!

Dresser- Ikea

Headboard- DIY Project

Headboard Fabric- Tonic Living

Nightstands- HomeSense

Vintage style Telephone- Sears

Picture Frames on Nightstands- Wal-Mart

Lights on Nightstands- HomeSense

Slipper Chairs- HomeSense

Side Table- Second Hand

Picture Frame on side table- Gift from Shannon at Burlap and Lace :)

Small Hydrangea Plant on side table and on nightstand- HomeSense

Vanity Table- Second Hand DIY Project

Vanity Chair- Second Hand DIY Project

Mirror above Vanity Table- Second Hand DIY Project

Plant on Vanity- HomeSense

Light on Vanity- HomeSense

Jewelry box- HomeSense

Bench- HomeSense

Tray on bench- HomeSense

Rug- Costco

Fireplace- Canadian Tire

Vase on Fireplace- HomeSense

Judy- HomeSense

Plant Pot- Ikea

Wooden Box- HomeSense

Throw- HomeSense

Pillows- HomeSense

Ceiling Fixture- HomeSense

Mirror above dresser- Sears

Lamp on Dresser- HomeSense

Vase and flower on Dresser- HomeSense

Love sign- gift from our friend Lauren at our wedding :)

Picture Frame on Dresser- Indigo

Curtains- Ikea (clearance)

Curtain Rods- Lowes

Knobs on dresser and nightstands- Home Depot

Paint Colours:

Walls: "Reflecting Pool"- ICI/Duluxe Paints

Trim/baseboards: "Simply White"- Benjamin Moore

Dresser and vanity table: "Simply White"- Benjamin Moore

Nightstands/Vanity Chair: "Polar Jade"- Benjamin Moore

We hope you all enjoy this space as much as we do! Now off to relax :)

Melissa and Ian

Linking up to:

Better After

Liz Marie Blog

Dream Closet- Installation

2013-05-06T18:44:00.002-04:00

Our closet system was definitely an excellent investment and fairly easy to install. In my previous closet post, I mentioned that we had chosen the Martha Stewart Closet System for our master bedroom walk in closet. The price was reasonable, but the best part for us was the option of inputting your own measurements into the online design board and allowing the closet to be somewhat custom designed to your liking.

We placed our order for the system and it took about 3 weeks to arrive. When we received the shipment, it came in about 25 boxes- each box contained specific pieces of a certain type, so the pieces were not grouped together, according to how they should be installed.

We chose to assemble the first section (the back wall) in a spare room, and then move the built section into the closet, so we had more space to work with.

The back section was fairly easy to install. The instructions are included and you can also print them from the Martha Stewart website if needed.

We designed the back wall to look like this when finished:

After a few hours, the first section had been assembled:

At this point, its just the basic frame, without drawers or shelves, but you get the idea. We then moved the frame into the closet.

The closet is designed so that the entire frame hangs from brackets that have been securely screwed into the wall. Once we secured the brackets on the wall, it was just a matter of lifting up the system and placing it onto the brackets. You can see here, how the system basically hangs from those metal brackets.

We then installed the drawers and shelves:

The shelves are adjustable and when designing the closet, we indicated how many shelves we wanted. You can choose more or less, depending on your preferences and can always change around the configuration once its installed.

The drawers can also be modified. We decided on 5 drawers for our system (one additional one that you cannot see in this photo, we added later), however the drawers can also be removed and shelves can be put in their place. The drawers came with metal knobs, but to tie them into the rest of the room (and because I think they're pretty!) I changed them to be the same crystal knobs on our dresser.

The drawers are one of the most costly parts of the system, so if you are trying to keep costs down, I would suggest limiting the amount of drawers you include.

We then put together the left side of the closet in the spare room, which we designed to look like this:

We installed the brackets, moved it into the closet and installed the hanging bars and shelves:

The left and right sides of the closet were designed to be mirror images of each other, so after installing the right side, it looked like this:

So after a few days work, and once our clothes were organized, folded and put back into the closet (my favorite part!) we ended up with the final product:

Its hard to get a picture of the full view since the closet isn't that large overall, but the system helps to create a perfectly organized closet for us and we are able to fit everything (plus have some extra space) in the closet.

To be honest, the closet still looks exactly like this. We don't seem to have any trouble keeping it organized and clean, since there really is space for everything and we think it looks great too.

The brackets were the one thing I worried about, but once your clothes are on the shelves, you aren't able to see them at all, so its really not a concern. The drawers slide and open nicely and we are overall very happy with it.

We did have a few set-backs and had to rig a few things up ourselves- such as adding a top to the system (which we did by simply buying some melamine pieces, cutting them to size and attaching them to the top of the system), but overall, it was fairly easy to install.

So there you have it, dream closet finished! We just designed and ordered the system for another bedroom in our house, so once we have that installed I'll blog about that and let you know if the system went as smoothly the second time around. This time, its not a walk in closet so I'll be able to give you the perspective of designing the system for a standard closet.

Have any of you installed this type of closet or something similar? How did it work out for you?

Melissa and Ian

**The opinions on this system are entirely our own. We were not paid or endorsed to promote the Martha Stewart Closet System.**

Gilt

2013-05-02T09:45:00.003-04:00

A while back, I heard about a site called gilt.com. I hadn't really checked it out until recently and wow am I loving it!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Gilt, its a members only website, that gives you insider access to designer labels, at up to 60% off retail prices. You need to register for free, and upon doing so, you'll be able to see previews of sales and purchase items on the site. They sell clothing, decor, baby items, jewelry, pretty much anything you would shop online for.

I recently came across a few items on Gilt I had been wanting to buy (that were fairly expensive elsewhere) and managed to get them for about 50% off...the best part is that shipping is a flat rate to Canada ($9.95) and duties are included in the prices (which they also display for you in CAD).

Here are a few of my recent favorites from their site:

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Amazing stuff!

So if you're interested in checking out Gilt, you can sign up here.

Happy Shopping!

**These opinions are completely our own. We were not paid or compensated in anyway to endorse gilt.com**

Dream Closet- Martha Stewart Closet System

2013-04-22T15:34:00.001-04:00

You read what we did to our small closet, but the small closet was peanuts compared to what we did to the walk-in closet. I'll be blogging about its progress in a few separate posts as there is a LOT to write about for this closet!

In our bedroom, we have 2 closets- the walk-in and the small hanging closet. You can read about what we did to our hanging closet here. However, the hanging closet was actually done after we finished the walk-in. The walk in was a major project for us, one that took about 8 months of planning, saving and designing.

When we moved into this house, the walk-in closet had wire hanging shelves that we weren't crazy about. They hadn't been planned out very well, and we found that things fell through them, and it didn't help us to keep the closet as organized as we would have liked. So we started to plan our new closet design.

We first needed to decide what kind of system we planned to install. A custom system was out of the budget (and didn't make sense for the size of this closet), we didn't feel we had the time or expertise to build a closet ourselves, and most of the systems we found did not allow us to input our own measurements. Eventually we came across the Martha Stewart Closet System. We found this system best suited our needs.

The system allowed us to choose from multiple options, to include the actual measurements of our closet and make changes and additions online. The first step we took was to obviously take everything out of the old closet and strip it down to nothing. We then measured the closet and took note of the kinds of storage we needed the most.

We began designing our closet online. We determined that each of us would have one side wall, and we would share the back wall, but wanted to keep the design balanced. So each of the side walls would look the same. Here's how the first side wall (wall A) began:

We could have added more hanging, more shelving, drawers, etc, but this seemed to be the best option for us. We planned to dedicate the entire back wall to shelving and drawers, so we wanted to include more hanging on the side walls.

Wall C, looked the same as Wall A:

Wall B (the back wall) was then designed as follows:

When we looked at the plan all together, we had enough shelving for everything we needed, enough hanging storage and drawers to hide things we didn't want visible.

Although this system was affordable, it still took us a while to save up for it. After about 8 months, we felt it was time to just go for it. We ordered the system and away we went. In total it took us about 4 days to put together (however, we only did a few hours at a time each day).

We're actually working away on another bedroom in our house right now and once again used this system to design a closet for it...it literally took me about 10 minutes, so easy, and Ian's not too worried about installing it.

However, the installation of this closet, wasn't the easiest :S. Stay tuned for our next post about the progress of this closet!

Melissa and Ian

Nightstand Makeover

2013-04-17T11:22:00.001-04:00

Part 2 of our dream closet makeover is coming up (as is more progress on the stairs), but I wanted to share this little bedroom makeover with you in the meantime.

A while back I found these perfect nightstands (end tables) for our master bedroom. We have a fairly good sized bedroom and I knew we needed substantial sized pieces for the space.

First we attempted to incorporate these:

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The beloved Ikea Hemnes dresser. However, it was too tall and just a bit too large for the space. So back to the store they went.

Then we found these:

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Although we loved them (perfect size, perfect design and they were meant to act as nightstands), they were WAYY out of our budget.

So one day I was out shopping with my mom and I came across these:

Perfect size, perfect height and just the right price...plus there were 2 of them. I even factored in the cost if we decided to get them professionally sprayed and they were still within budget- sold. They originally had black hoop knobs on them, but I quickly replaced those with crystal knobs to match the decor in our bedroom.

Although they were green, they were not the right shade to match our decor, and we finally decided to give them a makeover.

We picked out a colour that we found in our headboard fabric, called "Polar Jade" by Benjamin Moore and it matched the curtains, fabric and all other decor perfectly (its the same shade we re-painted our vanity chair in here):

<div style="display:none;"> <a href="http://www.benjaminmoore.ca/en-ca/paint-color/polarjade">polar jade</a></div>

We had each of the nightstands sprayed professionally (we figured it was worth the cost since we didn't spend a ton on the pieces themselves), and they look awesome!

Here are the finished pieces:

The colour in the photo looks a lot brighter than it actually is (I would say its truer to the swatch above), however it matches perfectly with our new headboard (which you can see a sneak peak of beside the nightstands). (p.s I really need to replace my childhood alarm clock...yikes!)

So there you have it, our updated nightstands painted to match our space. We love the size of them, the number of drawers and how the style matches our dresser- they fit perfectly. We'll be posting about the finished space soon, but for now this gives you an idea of our colour scheme and how we went about it. Hope this inspires you to think outside of the box for nightstands...there are so many options out there!

Melissa and Ian

Wallpapered Closet

2013-04-09T07:00:00.000-04:00

Some of you may have seen our sneak peek on our Facebook page of the Wallpapered closet that we finished a few weeks ago, and here's how it all went down.

Ian and I are pretty much able to work together on almost every project in our house. We've done it all- building, painting, designing, etc., but wallpapering has not yet been one of those projects. Although we could have attempted to try this incredibly 'bonding experience' together, we decided to bring in the experts. Call mom.

My mom and I had wallpapered a room in our house together before- the dining room, which we haven't posted about much since that room is still a work in progress, but here's the wall we worked on together:

So I knew mom was the perfect person to call when I decided to wallpaper our small bedroom closet.

Our master bedroom has 2 closets (I know awesome eh?!) one walk in and the other just a small hanging closet.

Its a bit difficult to get a picture of the 2 closets since they face each other and there isn't much room for photo-taking, but here's a picture of the small closet so you can see what we were working with:

That picture also gives you a sneak peek of our Master Bedroom (which I will be posting the reveal of soon!), and shows your our wall colour, so I wanted to choose a paper that went with that.

We didn't need to wallpaper this closet, so this became more of my project...mainly since Ian has never wallpapered and didn't really think we needed to.
I chose to take on this project since a.) it was an easy space to wallpaper, b.) an inexpensive project - since we only needed 2 rolls c.) if we messed up in the closet no one would probably ever know. Well except you all of course, but I'm sure you wouldn't judge :) So on with the wallpaper!

We chose "Blue Mountain Blue and Silver Strippable Non-Woven Paper Prepasted Wallpaper" that we found at Lowes. Between the 2 papers that my mom and I have worked on in this house, this paper was by far the best. The paper we used in the living room cost more and was much more difficult. The paper from Lowes was easy to install, less expensive and appeared to be good quality. I would definitely recommend this paper.

The first step to wallpaper this closet was to set up the room. I used old sheets and drop cloths to cover the floors and actually taped a drop cloth to the baseboards in the closet (with painters tape), to avoid any drips or anything getting on the floors.

I also 'sized' the walls with wallpaper size. For any of you who have wallpapered before you may know that this step is considered optional, but makes putting up the paper much easier in the end (and easier to take down). This isn't the exact size we used (the one we bought isn't available to view online), but this one from Lowes gives you an example of what the size looks like and does.

The room then began looking like this:

We also made sure to patch any holes in the wall and sand everything down first before sizing.

After measuring and cutting all the pieces first, we put up our first piece:

And after smoothing it out, it looked much better. It took us about 3 hours to finish the closet and in the end, we ended up with this:

So once again the mother-daughter team did pretty well! (I think we wallpaper pretty well as a team!) When Ian came home, I can honestly say he was very pleasantly surprised.

The next step was to build shelving and a hanging rod. Since the other closet in this bedroom (the walk-in, which I will be blogging about next) has tons of shelving and drawers, we decided to dedicate this smaller closet to just hanging.

We went to Home Depot and had some melamine particleboard sheets cut to the size of the closet. We then brought home the scrap pieces to use for building support for the shelves. Up first went the side braces:

Then the middle and the other side:

Then we attached the hanging rod to the side braces:

placed the wood shelf on top and done!

Finally time to move our clothes back in:

So there you have it!

This closet has been waiting to be finished for almost a year, but in the end it only took us a weekend to finish it. We now have ALL of our clothes in our bedroom instead of spaced out throughout the upstairs closets (yea!) and its a nice surprise when I open up this closet and see the beautiful wallpaper poking through.

Have any of you wallpapered lately?!

Melissa and Ian

*The opinions on this post are entirely our own. We were not endorsed by Lowes to recommend any of these products*

Chair Update

2013-03-29T07:00:00.000-04:00

Remember our vanity chair that we made over a whiiiiile back?

It started out looking like this:

and we made it over to look like this:

Well, we loved how that chair turned out, but once we got our headboard fabric something had to change. After searching for months for our headboard fabric, we figured it was probably easier to change the chair. So we did.

First we had it sprayed a different colour. We chose "Polar Jade" by Benjamin Moore:

The first time around I painted the chair by hand and was really happy with the paint and the results. This time, we decided to get it professionally sprayed. We figured since we were getting the nightstands done, that we might as well do the chair at the same time to save us money on buying a can of paint and the time. We didn't need to prime the chair since it had already been painted. The painter just gave it a light sanding and then it was sprayed. This colour worked perfect with our drapes, new headboard fabric and nightstands (which we had had sprayed in the same colour...post on that coming soon).

After spraying the chair, we reupholstered it with what we had leftover from our headboard fabric, "Fleur, Summer" from Tonic Living:

and soon we ended up with a chair that matched everything perfectly:

The chair actually looks a lot brighter in the pictures than it actually is. The colour is actually closer to the colour of the drapes which works perfectly.

So there you go. A quick and easy makeover that didn't break the bank.

Costs:

Chair- already owned (so FREE! kinda?!)

Paint and spraying- $60.00 Polar Jade by Benjamin Moore

Fabric- leftover from our headboard fabric (Fleur Summer from Tonic Living) (also free since we already had it)

Total cost: $60.00.

Woot!

Im thinking of adding some"bling" nailhead trim around the seat base where the fabric meets the chair...what do you think?!

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul...Part 3

2013-03-27T07:00:00.000-04:00

After we had the railings and posts painted, the next step of the process was to get the treads put on. We had hired a stair builder to do this for us- they came and measured each of the current stairs in order to build the treads to size and then gave us a sample of the stain to make sure it matched our current hardwood floors.

We were pretty happy with the sample stain, but the hardest part of this decision was which wood to choose. Do we go with maple or oak? We actually have dark bamboo hardwood in many of the rooms in our house (those that aren't tiled) and wanted to make sure the stair treads matched up with that. We originally thought maple, as the look of maple wood (very little grain) is more comparable to the bamboo, however the railing for our stairs is oak. So oak it is! We figured we should keep consistency within the stairs and keeping it all oak was the best way to do this.

So we crossed our fingers, met the guys on the day they arrived with the treads, went to work and prayed that we wouldn't come home to the biggest mistake we'd ever made.

We left our stairs in the morning looking like this:

and came home to this:

Phew! The treads looked fabulous. The stain on the oak is so dark, that its hard to see a lot of the grain (which works well with the bamboo) and the stain colour is pretty much a perfect match. HUGE sigh of relief!

However, we were met with a few new challenges. Notice the difference in the end posts on the railings?

We had talked about cutting off the end of the bottom stair so that it didn't round out, and wanted the railing made into a straight line to the bottom. In doing that, the stair builders had to cut the railing fairly short to deal with the curve at the end, and this resulted in the end post being mounted higher up than we had hoped. Whomp whomp.

You may have also noticed the gap of tile that now exists beside the bottom stair. We did think of this before and have extra tile lying around, so we'll be able to fill that hole up. One day we would LOVE to replace these floors (not really our style), but thats a huge (and expensive!) undertaking since these floors carry through our entire main floor into the kitchen. One day...one day.

We also found that the bottom post itself was no longer substantial to hold the weight of the stairs (not literally of course), but it no longer looked large enough. Strike 2.

So the best way to resolve this? Build up the bottom post. This also poses the problem, that we need to build up the 2 posts at the top of the staircase as well....hmmmm...so we're in the process of working on this.

Issue #2- railing colour does NOT match with the treads. Sigh. Our last post filled you in on how much time we spent trying to find the darkest brown paint we could...and apparently its not dark enough! So now, we need to get the railings all repainted...ONCE we find a darker brown or colour match something else that we have that is a very dark SOLID brown colour.

So there you have it. I truly feel that these stairs will look great once we get everything right...its just taking longer than we anticipated. Go figure.

We've still come a long way so far...

I also wanted to mention that the walls will all be painted (the current colours are the choices of the previous homeowners) and the hallway light fixtures replaced (not exactly our style), so a lot more work to do!

The staircase saga continues...

Melissa and Ian

What we were up to...

2013-03-25T10:35:00.002-04:00

Just a sneak peek at what we were up to this weekend...we had some fun with wallpaper and finally finished up our second closet!

More to come on this project soon :)

Melissa and Ian

DIY Headboard

2013-03-21T22:42:00.002-04:00

Hi Everyone,

So we've been posting about our staircase overhaul lately, and wanted to take a bit of a break from that to tell you about one of the many other projects we've been working on.

In the midst of the dust, paint and everything else going on around here, we had a headboard sitting around for months that we had been meaning to upholster. Honestly I think anyone who has been to our house in the last year and come upstairs, has seen that wooden headboard sitting in one of our spare rooms just waiting to be madeover.

The main reason why it took us so long, was because we were waiting for just the right fabric to come along. Designer rule #1, always pick your fabrics first and design your room around them. Well, we may have gone against that rule with this room. We found some chairs that we loved, used the fabric on those chairs to pick our paint colours and everything else for the room, however this made it difficult when we needed to pick a headboard fabric. We wanted this fabric to tie everything together- the paint colours, drapes, furniture, floors, etc. Yes, we know that was expecting a lot, but guess what?! We found it! One day we were checking out the Tonic Living site for some fabric for another project and came across this fabric: "Fleur, Summer":

This fabric perfectly combined the teals, whites, greys and brown in our floors together.

So we started with a plain wood headboard, which I thought I had taken a picture of to start, but apparently did not (oops!). We bought the headboard off Kijiji thinking we would paint it if the upholstering didn't work out, since we liked the shape of it.

Once we found the fabric, it was actually a lot easier to do that we thought.

Here is a list of supplies that you'll need:

- Old headboard OR piece of plywood cut to the shape and size you want

- Fabric (we bought 3 yards just in case, but only really used 2 and a bit)

- 2 inch thick foam (enough to cover your headboard plus a bit of extra)

- Batting (enough to cover your headboard)

- Hammer

- Spray glue

- Staple gun

- Marker or pen

- Utility knife and scissors

- Dust mask

- Iron

- Optional: Nailhead trim- we got ours from Lee Valley Tools here

- Mounting hardware

The first step you want to take, is to iron your fabric and set it aside. You want to make sure its wrinkle free when you place it on the headboard for attaching.

I would then suggest placing your foam on the floor and tracing out the shape of your headboard onto it. Then cut out your foam shape and trace the shape again, but move in 2 inches from the edge all the way around. So the shape you end up with, will give you a boarder of 2 inches all the way. This is really only necessary if you plan on adding the nailhead detail. If you're not adding that, then skip the second part of this step.

You then want to spray the foam with the glue (use a mask) and attach the foam to your headboard.

Place your batting on the floor and set the headboard on top (face down). You now want to stretch the batting all the way around and staple it tight. Make sure you pull it around to the back and staple into the back of the headboard all the way around. Cut any excess batting from the back of the headboard.

Next step is to carefully set your fabric on the floor face down (make sure its clean first!) and then set your headboard on top, again face down. Staple your fabric onto the headboard again pulling it tight as you go all the way around. Cut away any of the excess fabric and use a glue gun to glue any other excess fabric to the back of the headboard.

Lastly you will want to attach your nailhead trim (if doing so). Simply place the trim on the headboard and use the edge of your foam as your guide (you will feel it through the fabric and there will be a noticeable space where you edge your trim up against). The way it works, is that every 5th nail or so, they provide you with a tack you will actually have to hammer in, so you will not need to hammer in each and every nail.

You're done! You'll want to mount your headboard to the wall using whichever method your prefer (brackets, etc), but make sure the hardware you use can support the weight of your headboard. We chose to use the OOK Hangman 200 lb. French Cleat Picture Hanger from Home Depot, which worked out really well for us.

We found this tutorial from The Marilyn Denis Show really helpful as well.

Here is our finished product:

The nailhead trim turned out a lot better than I expected it to:

We also chose to mount it slight up from the top of the bed, based on the height of the headboard itself:

We also wanted to make sure the top of the headboard was close to the same height as our bedside table lamps:

For us, this seemed to be a good height for the room and wasn't too far up from the top of the bed. Plus, its not noticable from the front, once the pillows are on the bed and everything is all made up.

We're really happy with how it turned out and think it really helps to finish off the bed in this space:

And a sneak peek of the headboard in our finished bedroom (which we'll also be posting about soon!)

Here's the cost breakdown:

Costs:

Solid wood headboard: $50.00 (purchased from Kijiji)

Fabric: $60 (3 yards purchased at $30/yard, but only 2 yards used)

Nailhead trim: $15 (4 bags at $5.00 each, only used 3)

Foam: $10.00

Batting: Had on hand (free!)

Mounting Hardware: $15.00

Total Cost: $150.00 (approx)

Definitely a cost savings in our books...since most of the headboards we've seen have been at least $200+. You could still cost costs by using a piece of plywood or wood on hand, going with a less expensive fabric and cutting out the nailhead detail if you choose.

Sources:

Headboard: Kijiji

Fabric: Tonic Living

Nailhead trim: Lee Valley Tools

Foam: Len's Mills Stores

Batting: my mom's closet :)

Mounting Hardware: Home Depot

Have any of you upholstered anything lately? Have you used nailhead trim? If so, we'd love to hear how it worked out for you! Its almost Friday everyone! Happy weekend :)

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul...Part 2

2013-03-19T16:19:00.001-04:00

Bring in the painter! In continuing our staircase overhaul saga once we had ripped out the carpet, staples and cleaned the floors, the next step was to bring in our painter. If you missed the first part of our staircase project, you can read that here. Since we were working with a special paint and really didn't want to mess this up, we figured it was best to bring in the pro's.

Our plan was to paint the posts and railings, since they had already been previous stained and we didn't want to go through the work of stripping, sanding and staining them. So we went on a search to find the darkest brown colour we could find. We wanted the stair treads, railing and posts to all be a dark brown (the same colour as our wood floors), but it was almost impossible to find a perfect brown colour to match. We actually went to 3 different stores for paint chips and ended up going with Behr "Bitter Chocolate"- the darkest we could find without going black:

Here are the railings and end posts painted with the dark brown and all of the small posts re-painted white (we use "Simply White" by Benjamin Moore for all of the white paint in our home) :

You can see in this picture, the section of curved railing is the original stain colour and the post has been painted with the dark brown. This was done as we decided to get rid of this curve in the staircase and straighten the bump at the base of the stairs. The plan was to cut part of the railing out and straighten it, so we didn't need that one section painted:

Once the paint was on the railings we thought it matched fairly well with the floors...until the treads were put on. Once we treads were put on, the railings and posts looked much too light, and we didn't like the contrast of the painted areas with the stained areas. As well, the brown paint was not dark enough. I would recommend either going with a black paint or getting something colour matched if you have that option. We wanted to do a colour match, but they were unable to colour match to a piece of stained wood (the wood grain has too many variations of colours in it and the system would not pick it up properly) so we had to go with a premixed colour.

Back to square one. We are now debating on stripping, sanding and staining the railings (using a tester piece of wood elsewhere in our house) and seeing how they react.

Oh and I also forgot to mention we weren't happy with the post either. Once the railing was cut and straightened it looked fine, however the end post itself is not substantial enough. We are now thinking of replacing it, or finding a way to build up the post to make it larger.

So this project took a couple of unexpected turns. Its going to be more work than we were anticipating, but once its complete I think it will look great and totally change the look of our entrance.

Expect many more posts to come on the progress of these stairs!

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul

2013-03-15T13:29:00.000-04:00

We decided to redo the staircase.

It wasn't that we didn't like the function of it, but we are slowly updating this house one room at a time and the staircase was one of those things that constantly kept nagging at us to change it

We knew we didn't want the carpet on it anymore, so we decided to take a risk and rip the carpet off, hoping there could POSSIBLY be nice wood treads underneath. Then we would simply stain them and all would be right in the world. Nope plywood. So we knew we needed to stick with full carpeting of the stairs or go for the overhaul. We went for the overhaul. Not without a ton of planning and inspiration pics of course.

Here are a few that inspired us (all of which you can find on our Pinterest here, and one that we actually posted to our Facebook page yesterday):

Via: Contemporary Staircase by Cambridge Architect LDa Architecture & Interiors

Via

and the image that has inspired the overall look that we want for our hallway:

Via

So, after seeing all these beauties we couldn't really keep the carpet. One day after work I came home and the carpet was pretty much gone. Ian went to town and ripped it up, staples and all...well most of the staples. Him and I spent another 4 hours one night taking out ALLLL of the staples on these stairs. I can honestly say, there could have been a tornado that destroyed our entire home and that carpet still would have been firmly attached to those stairs there were so many staples.

After the staple removing party, we ended up with this:

And if you didn't see it on our Facebook page, here was the before:

So we're in it now! Carpet is gone, and there's a lot to do to get these beauties made-over. We've actually come quite far this week, and we're almost finished (with a few set-backs of course), but we'll share the next phase of this project with in our next post.

Have a great weekend everyone!
Melissa and Ian

We're Back!

2013-03-14T09:33:00.001-04:00

Hi Everyone!

Wow, it's been a while...but we're so happy to be back.

Over the past few months, Ian and I have been focusing on some other things and the blog unfortunately took a bit of a back seat. Keeping up with projects, photos, postings and the other things going on in our lives became too much and the one thing we knew we could put a hold on (unfortunately) was the blog.

The funny thing was, we really didn't think many people would miss us. Now, we know we have incredible readers out there, but we figured that people might occasionally check back, but not really miss us. We never expected to hear from so many of you: "are you going to get back to the blog again soon?!" and to have so many questions as to what projects we were working on, or what we planned to post about once we returned to blogging. We cannot thank you enough *HUG* for all of those comments.

It truly helped us believe that although we started this blog as simply a way to document what we were doing to update our home and to keep a journal for ourselves, it has evolved into so much more. We heard from people, that they liked learning about the projects we were doing, to get inspired to do something to their homes and to realize that they too, could do things themselves.

We thought about it, and realized how much we really missed documenting these things and sharing these projects with everyone. We never stopped working on projects...we may have slowed down a bit, but I don’t actually think we could have fully stopped. At least one conversation we have every day starts out with "soooo I was thinking for the kitchen..." or "what colour were you thinking for the hallway...” etc. It's literally something we not only enjoy doing, but truly have a passion for.

So in getting back to the blog, we've set a few parameters for ourselves. We're blogging for multiple reasons- for us, for you and for those who we hope are inspired from what we do. We're not going to say that every day we're going to post a new project or that every week we'll have a series or posts or anything like that. We're going to post as much as we can...so that we still love blogging as much as we always did. We're not blogging to make money or to advertise products we don’t support- we're just blogging to share ideas and to keep our creativity alive.

We hope you'll continue to pop in every once in a while and read about a project that hopefully inspires you to fix up that old item in your garage, paint a room you've been thinking about for months, or try doing something you might not have thought you could. Most of all, we truly thank you for your support and encouragement. Less than 3 years ago, neither of us realized how much of a passion we have for working on our home together. Completing these projects and blogging about them has brought us closer, helped us to share in successes, learn from those "not so successful attempts", and actually keep us focused on the positive things in our lives.

So this message has a few purposes. The first is really just to thank you. To thank you for supporting us, for sticking with us and for being so positive about what we do. The second is to let you know that blogging is a part of our lives, but not our entire lives. We have jobs, families, school, and other commitments just like everyone else, and we'll continue to blog, but we're not going to let it take over our lives.

Over the next while, we'll be posting about several projects we've been working on, sharing news and things that have been happening in our lives. We're excited to share all of that with you and to reconnect with so many of you whom we've met and developed relationships with through our blog.

We've missed you, and we're happy to be back!

Melissa, Ian and Clover

The White Mag

2012-09-09T10:39:00.001-04:00

Hey Everyone!

Its been a while since our last post, but I can honestly say projects are being worked on....just unfortunately still in progress. I could give you a list of set-backs, but it would be boring and just remind me of the many times I've wanted to pull out my hair in the past few weeks.

So in the meantime, we wanted to share with you our latest little project.

We were recently asked to write a short DIY article for a magazine called The White Mag. The editor Sara contacted us personally and gave us the freedom to write about whatever we wanted, as long as it had a fall theme. The first thing that came to my mind when I thought of fall was leaves and how much I am going to miss fresh flowers from the garden, in my home. And what better way to decorate for the holiday's than to make your own artificial flower or decorative arrangements?! We actually posted about making your own artificial flower arrangements here, and wanted to share that with the readers of The White Magazine as well.

You can check out the online version of our article here...

http://issuu.com/thewhitemagazine/docs/september2012?mode=window&pageNumber=1

Check out some of the other great articles in there this month...including working with small spaces!

Like a Rock

2012-08-21T23:10:00.003-04:00

Hi Friends!

Dont worry we haven't forgotten about you :) We've actually been quite busy with work and a few other things lately and have to deal with some unfortunate family things this week, but we'll be back next week sharing some projects and "How To's" with you all :)

I wanted to show you how far we've come with our patio beside our deck. Ian worked many many hours on this, and Im happy to say its finally done!

Let me remind you of the before:

and after many hours of carrying INSANELY heavy rocks back and forth from the car to the backyard, hours of cutting and levelling and and only a few injuries, here's the after:

Ya, can you see Ian poking out beside the house on the left? Oh wait, I'm sorry, you're probably focused on the MASSIVE DUST CLOUD that filled our backyard while Ian cut the rocks/stones. Even his eyelashes were white.

However, it looks pretty good doesn't it? :)

I love the side-by-side comparison:

So its much cleaner, the space is much more usable and once the deck and shed are stained/painted it will allllll match. Finally :D Im excited for that. We'll be posting on the process we went through to get to the final patio reveal, next week.

p.s LOVED reading all of your comments on our last post....TGIF really WAS the best, wasn't it!? :)

TGIF Sneak Peek

2012-08-10T11:35:00.001-04:00

TGIF! Friday is my favorite day of the week. Not Saturday, Friday. Why? Its like the week leading up to a vacation...all the anticipation and excitment to come...I love it.

I also have fond memories of Friday nights as a child. Did you ever watch the Friday night family tv line-up? Family Matters, Boy Meets World, Full House, Dinosaurs, Step by Step?! Ya. Best night ever! Not only did my younger brother and I get to watch those shows and stay up wayyyy past our 8:00pm bedtime, but got to pop homemade popcorn (in the popcorn maker of course), and drink pop...Wink used to be my favorite ;)

So ya I love Friday's. This weekend I am in a wedding for a very good friend of mine, so we wont have much time to work on projects however, I wanted to show you a sneak peek of our guest room headboard I just finished this week....

I wanted to touch it up a bit and I'd like to even out the paint, but Ian seems to like the patchy look. We'll see. So there you have it- a sneak peek for a Friday.

Happy weekend everyone!

p.s Readers Choice results from our last poll are in! You wanted us to pain the sidetables in this room. So guess what? We're gonna do it! Check out our Facebook Page to get your vote in for the colour we paint them ;)

Loungin'

2012-08-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

As LL Cool J would say, we are loungin people! Yes I grew up in the 80's and yes I probably listened to a few LL Cool J songs in my day...common Mamma Said Knock You Out....you know it ;)

Anyho, the true topic of this post is to fill you in on some tips for buying patio furniture, or in our case, patio loungers. We had been looking for loungers to match our patio set since last summer, and hadn't had any luck. We got super lucky with the rest of our patio set- totally scored at HomeSense last year.

I saw this dark blue/navy/black resin wicker set one day and convinced Ian it was a great find. He eventually agreed, and we lugged the entire set home somehow. I like to think its navy, but everyone else tells me its black...the wicker and colour looks pretty similar to this:

Image via Pottery Barn

However, our dining table is square and so are our chairs, and its not from Pottery Barn's gorgeous collection...Pottery Barn considers this set to be "black" too...so I guess they win. I will finally admit ours probably is black.

Anyho, we wanted to find matching loungers, but struggled to find the right ones.

We first came across these babies from DOT Furniture...

However the money tree in our backyard hasn't sprouted yet and $775.00 EACH was definitely not in the budget.

Then we came across these ones from Overstock:

Which I actually liked better, but were still $528.00. Nope.

We found these at Target, which looked great:

They were $199.00 each, but we would have had to take a trip to the USA, find 2 of them in the store and somehow get them back over the border...riiiiiight.

Somehow last weekend we just happened to look on the right site at the right time. We were checking out the DOT Furniture site again, and came across these:

They're the right colour (black of course), have the same metal base as our dining table, and were on SALE. Regular price was $425.00 each, and they are on sale for $170.00 each. SOLD! We went out there on the holiday Monday and they happened to be open. They had 2 left in the warehouse. Now tell me that isn't super lucky, so we bought them- I think I practically threw my credit card at the sales lady...in a nice friendly way of course.

Im SO happy we found them. Now I dont need to to try and spray paint our old plastic loungers...which to be honest, Ive been avoiding ever since the little I-found-a-honeycomb-in-the-chair-and-can't-clean-it-since-I'm-having-a-panic-attack, incident happened.

So there you have it. We're loungin' peeps.

I honestly have to say though, that I absolutely love the resin wicker. Its very durable, looks great and has a clean, modern look to it. Since we practially look at patio furniture every time we go out lately, we've learnt a few things along the way about purchasing patio furniture:

1. Try to buy something that has an aluminum frame. Steel will rust and platic bends and doesn't last as long. Aluminum might cost you a bit more, but its worth it in the end when you aren't using CLR to get rid of all the rust on your furniture every year.

2. Wait for a sale or buy at the end of the season. We bought all of our furniture at the end of the season last year and this year got the loungers and an umbrella hugely on sale.

3. Think of your patio furniture in the same way you would furniture for your home. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, then you should be able to relax and enjoy as much as you would indoors. You might consider buying a table, dining chairs and a seating set if you plan to sit outside a lot.

4. Pick a colour that will stand the test of time. We like grey's and whites (obviously!) so when I saw the ~~dark navy~~ black set, I loved it right away. I envisioned a dark set with white cushions and a grey deck, and thats exactly what we are going for. It goes with the colour scheme on the inside and what we'll eventually have on the outside of our home.

5. Make sure you have room for storage. We put some of our furniture in our pool shed for the winter, but I wanted to keep some things inside over the winter. Thankfully we had to space in our basement for that, but if you dont have a lot of extra space in your home or garage, consider that when you are buying.

Lastly, make sure you enjoy it! This year, once the deck was finished, we moved our furniture around so we now have a dining area and a seating area (pics to come later), and we love it. We sit outside more (when we do actually sit down to relax!) and have made better use of our space.

Hope that helps with your patio furniture shopping ;) Have any of you bought resin wicker or aluminum? How have you found its been keeping?

Projects Update

2012-08-01T06:00:00.000-04:00

We're in the middle of multiple projects, but for some reason we're finding it hard to finish any of them right now...maybe its because we're not getting home from work until 8:30pm or something like that...not too sure? Anyho, I wanted to give you a bit of an update on everything we're in the midst of.

1. Finishing up the Guest Room Headboard

You all voted on us making this change to the guest room, so we did! Here's where we're at...not much change from a few weeks ago, but they are coming along:

Once they're done we'll fill you in on how we did them with the whitewashing process we began a few weeks ago...its a very time consuming process, but creates a really nice effect.

Our next project for this room, was also voted on by you...our fabulous readers! We'll let you know what we plan to do next, once this first project is complete ;)

2. Staining the Deck

So we finished off re-building the deck:

Our next steps for the deck, are to wait for it to dry out completely and then stain it. Its been quite the undertaking and we can't wait to share the before and after of this project with you. We're planning on staining it a light grey, and then painting our shed to match, which brings me to project #3...

3. Painting the Shed

This is the shed right now:

Its pretty much a light tan colour with bright blue trim. Our plan is to paint the tim this colour:

and paint the main parts walls of the shed this colour:

and of course match the shed wall colour to the deck.

4. Making a Roman Shade for the Kids Bathroom

I have this fabric...well actually its 2 curtains I picked up a while ago:

but I have enough fabric to work with, to make it into a roman shade. It works well with the colours in the bathroom:

I've found a great tutorial on how to creat the shade, but I think it might be a bit more difficult than I'm anticipating, so we'll see!

5. Shelving in the main Master Bedroom Closet/ Wallpaper in the smaller closet

We've been living out of 3 closets in different bedrooms for the past 6-7 months. We've gotten used to the idea of our underwear being in one place, pants in another and shirts somewhere else, but its getting a bit old.

Right now our closets look like this:

So after they're done, we know they're going to look pretty awesome. VERY excited for the day when most of our clothes are in one place!

6. Finishing off the Guest Room:

The curtains have been completed:

However, there is still a LOT to do. Headboard, lamps, sidetables, accessories and artwork. Lots to go in this room!

7. Gardens, gardens, gardens.

The planting never ends around here. We're working on fixing up all of our gardens, and planting everything in the fall, so this project is going to be on the go for a while:

So there's our project update: lots to think about, lots to share and lots to do! Hope to share one of these completed projects with you all soon :)

Marilyn!

2012-07-30T06:00:00.000-04:00

Hi Everyone!

Ian and I are in the midst of various projects right now that Im waiting on sharing with you all, so I thought in the meantime I'd fill you in on a fun experience I had. A while back, I took my mom to a taping of the Marilyn Denis Show. We've been to a few tapings before, yet every studio is a totally unique experience. We had a great time, despite the fact that we were stuck in traffic for 2.5 hours, ran in 5 minutes before the live show actually started taping and therefore didn't get to sit together, but beggers can't be choosers!

The show was great- we had a great time watching the guests, including Chuck, from Chuck's Day Off, whom the ladies in the audience seemed to love (obviously).

We scored some pretty great swag, including some Pottery Barn bath towels (that are super thick and soft and actually the exact colour of our master bath towels), and some Jonathan Adler bath accessories:

and even a Jonathan Adler Design book:

Seriously there couldn't have been better swag package- I was pumped!

If you ever have the chance to go see a taping, I'd highly recommend it! There are tons of great shows filmed in Toronto and tickets are often free. It's such a fun experience and you usually get a bit of free swag too ;)

Happy Monday everyone! Only 5 more days till the weekend! ;)

The jungle has been TAMED

2012-07-27T06:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday Everyone! I hope you all have great plans for the weekend. Lets be honest, who doesn't live for weekends during the summer?! We're still spending our weekends working away on our backyard jungle, however some spaces look more like a desert now... Its odd to think we went from this madness:

To this vast open space:

The ground has actually all been levelled and our next step is to lay patio stones. Ian also sealed up the side of the deck and included a little door in order to access underneath. You know, for when we need to play hide and go seek. Seriously though, it allows us to store wood and other things under there.

So much better:

Melissa and Ian- 1, Jungle - 0.

However, our taming was not complete. We also had the sides of the house to contend with. Remember this?

Yikes. This was not the only jungle let me remind you. We have many. I mean can you IMAGINE what was living in our backyard? Well, let me tell you. Multiple bunny families, the usual chipmunks and squirrels, the odd raccoon and a family of turkeys. Heck, I wouldn't blame them. Who would ever find you in THAT? That, plus all of the other former jungle options in our backyard for homes. Its like a freaking palace back here. They even have a pool to bathe in. If I was an animal I'd live here. Well, not anymore...now they can all live under the deck- they pretty much have their own door in and out of it now :S

So we cleaned up the other jungles, working on one at a time...we needed to pace ourselves with this! We started with the biggest one by first clearing it out:

Then we removed all the weeds, and raked the dirt to break it up and level it out. We then moved a FEW plants (hostas since they require minimal maintenance and look nice) that we had in other gardens and actually wanted to keep, over to this garden and mulched around them:

We wanted to make the gardens smaller and more manageable so we laid sod. The dry, dry sod. Just a tip when you are laying sod. Its best if you can do it at night or when the sun isn't as strong. Make sure you water the ground BEFORE you lay the sod down, and I also like to water the bottom of each piece of sod before laying it. Lay your sod, and then water generously. You should water it every day (unless it rains) to ensure that its getting the water it needs to root itself into the ground. Also, if you are planning on laying a lot of sod in a large area, make sure to stagger the pieces. Sound as if I know a lot about sod? Well Ian taught me all I know- he actully laid sod for a summer job once and said it was the worst job ever. However, I thought it had its perks: not only do we know ALL about sod now, but Ian was super muscular and tanned all summer because of it, so I personally thought it was an excellent work experience ;)

Anyho, here's the sod after about a week. We watered it every day. Notice how green the new sod is? Ya, thats because its been somewhat dry here this summer so we hadn't been doing the best job at watering all of the other lawn. Our bad.

We did the same to the other gardens behind this one, they just need to be finished off with some mulch:

We're actually going to have a privacy screen installed on this side of the deck to block our lovely neighbours from listening to our late night Settlers tournaments and to spare them from seeing us in bathings suits on tanning days...

So now that we've got the gardens mainly cleared out, we'll begin to plant in the next few months.

This backyard has pretty much consumed us, but its definitely coming together.

Have any of you been working on your yards? What flowers would you plant in a garden?