Thursday 11 July 2013

And The Walls Came Tumbling Down!

Do you remember when I mentioned a little while ago that we were planning on making the closet in the blue room/nursery bigger?  Well guess what I came home to on Tuesday?




A giant mess! I was torn between exasperation about the mess, and excitement that the closet is now bigger. There was this giant, naily, dusty mess in the hall and bedroom - I almost broke my neck climbing over it to get this picture haha - plus drywall dust foot prints all over the nice new kitchen floor. It was a little overwhelming, but the early stages of a demo project usually are.
    Jason did clean up his mess after he got home - he took the windows out, and threw everything out the gaping window less holes into the backyard haha. He had to build a header on the left hand side, and he put up some drywall and attempted to slap some tape & mud up. Now it's looking a little less overwhelming, and a little more like a closet.


I say he attempted to mud, because the mud was like soup. Because our air conditioner decided to crap out during the most humid and rainy weeks our basement was super damp and warm, apparently the bucket 'o' mud thought it was its job to act as a dehumidifier and suck up all the moisture in the air. So Jason was essentially trying to make the tape stay up with mushroom soup. Now that the weather has decided to back away a bit from Hades, and be a bit more reasonable, we're hoping the mud will thicken back up a bit, making like a bit easier.
   We still have to close off the old opening of the linen closet from the hallway, as well as a number of patches here and there, but Jason is motoring right along, and he tells me I should be able to paint by this weekend. We knew we wanted a light, warmer toned gray, something subtle so we could have fun with accents and accessories. We landed on "Gentle Rain" by Behr.


I really like the swatch, so I'm hoping it translates well to the walls. We need to get the paint up asap, so we can put the floor down and have it actually look like a bedroom for our final visit. (two weeks, yikes)

Tuesday 9 July 2013

Brain Dump

We've been working on a bunch of little things, unglamorous things, mostly un-fun things haha in order to make short work for ourselves when we finish the nursery. Jason picked up some spackle, and filled all the holes in there, then proceeded to go around the rest of the house slapping spackle on everything, which means I now have to repaint pretty much every room in the house :S  Then he lost the spackle, can't find it for the life of him which is unfortunate, because there's a few holes that were bigger and could use another go 'round with it. We cleared out all the trim, and doors and everything that we took out of the blue room and shoved in the beige room because it close - so now it's possible for someone to actually sleep in the guest room again. We took a desk, all the baseboard and trim, along with about 1/3 of the door collection we've slowly been amassing to Habitat, and they only took one door and the trim! We were a little annoyed because there was nothing wrong with anything else, but apparently they won't sell them. So far our donation count with this house is pretty low, we either can't seem to salvage it, or they don't want it...I think we'll take the hint. We found a great door there, we need a new front door, so we always check to see what they have, this was was exactly what we were looking for, but alas, too short. Our front door is an odd size, so we're pretty sure we're going to have to cut it to fit no matter what we get, but it's a little harder to make it grow.

   But we've got rooms cleared out, and the house is actually starting to look like a home more and more, I'm painting the nursery today and tomorrow, and we plan to get the floor done in there this weekend. We also put in our base and trim order, so we should be slap those up in the dining room and kitchen this weekend as well. I'm excited for that step, because I know it'll make a huge difference. This time around I feel more confident that our social worker will approve of our
 house and not have to do any more updates before we're approved. (Here's hoping) Two weeks until our final assessment, we can't wait! Projects should start to get a bit more exciting now.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

Inspired By : Art

Now that the dining room is all painted and (mostly) looking pretty my thoughts have been drawn to how to fill up the picture ledge. A lot of the what will be going up will be pictures of us, and family and friends, but I do want one or two great pieces of art to go up in there, so I've been having fun looking at all sorts of different great pieces that I can make (or someone who is infinitely more talented than I) So without further ado some great art inspiration.

Nocturne: Woodland - Original Oil Painting in deep blues and fresh summery greens (37.5x21.5 cm - app. 14.8x8.5 in)
I love me a great pallet knife painting. The colours in this one blend so fantastically together. I want it. Who wants to make me one hehe.



I love watercolours, they're probably one of my favourite mediums. This Samantha Sano one is gorgeous.


 
I love this painting by Paul Kasmin, because it looks so simple, but I can imagine it was very difficult to do.



Watercolour by Jean Haines
I love pretty much anything by Jean Haines, but I think this owl is my favourite. He's even got some purple in his wings, so he'd totally fit in hehe.


Inspirational Life Quote Print, Retro Poster A3, Handwritten Typography Vintage Print, Black White Wall Art Decor, The Best Is Yet To Come
And no art wall of mine would be complete without some sort of quote art. I love great typography, plus this would be pretty easy to DIY...come to think of it, I just might have to.