Living room redo

Heading into 2012 I had three things I wanted to accomplish, or rather three rooms: finish the major parts of the kitchen, paint the living room and install the ceiling there and redo our guest room for the baby. My plan was to do the kitchen in January, the living room in February and the baby's room in March. Like usual, my plans didn't pan out, but as of April the majority of those things have happened. Andrew made a little more progress in the kitchen (we still need trim, a couple of outlets, knobs/pulls and eventually a backsplash), he painted the baby's room while I was in Alabama over President's Day weekend and we did make progress in the living room, though that didn't happen until a few weeks ago.

While I was at my baby shower here in Mass, Andrew and Brett got started on installing the ceiling for the living room. A couple of the other husbands came over to help, so by the time I came home from my shower, the sheetrock was all in place.

We decided we'd rent a lift this time around--putting up the ceiling in the kitchen was definitely a test for our marriage! The lift seemed to work really well for the guys, and I got a couple of pictures before I left for my shower.

Then the following Saturday of Easter weekend, we had a few friends over to help us paint the living room and the hallway. We chose a color called "driftwood" from Ben Moore's low VOC line (so I could help). It has brown in it, but it's sort of different. Under certain lighting it has a purple-ish tint--this is usually seen more at night. It goes well with the blue in the kitchen, too.

Painting went really fast--we started around 10 and were done in time for a late lunch. It helped that Andrew tore down all the trim and crown molding--we'll eventually replace that, but Baby Floyd will have made an appearance by then.

 I mostly painted near door trim and around our bar supports, 

then went to pick up lunch for everyone :)

 Our friend Dan was amazing--he did most of the painting around windows and door trim, 

and we saved time by not having to tape

 We just moved everything to the center of the room and knocked it out!

After lunch, Andrew and I ran a couple of errands, then came back to quickly touch up a few spots. We had enough paint to redo the dresser we bought to use as a changing table in the baby's room--so not only did we finish painting the living room and hallway, we also finished up our final piece of furniture for Baby Floyd!

Many many thanks to our friends Brett, Jim, Ryan (ceiling crew), Laura, Kristin and Dan (painting crew) for giving up their Saturday mornings to help us get this project done. I feel a lot better knowing that the major work is complete. We still need to tape, mud, sand and paint the ceiling, but I can help Andrew with that after the baby is born. Then we'll also finish painting the trim around the windows and install new base trim and crown molding. Just the little things! And now, should our child decide to suck on the wall, the lead paint has been encapsulated. Threat level = majorly diminished!

Another plus: I can finally get curtains in the living room! (Many of you are thinking...why did you wait? Now I can get something to match the colors in the living room and kitchen, and had I done this a year ago, I totally would've changed my mind on colors by now!)

No Longer a Halfway House...whatever that means

While visiting family in Alabama, a cousin of mine that shall remain nameless, commented that he would come visit, but he was waiting until our home no longer looked like a halfway house! I'm assuming he felt that way from the pictures seen here. Well no longer!! Our house actually resembles a home at the moment, and for that, I am very thankful! Here are a few pictures of the updates:

gray walls that have a touch of blue in them in certain light; hopefully I'll find a new bedspread and another bedside table soon

we still need crown molding, which we plan to recycle from the living room, closet doors and eventually we'll paint the bedroom door

Just after Thanksgiving, we moved back into the master bedroom! Hooray!! No more sleeping against a wall! And I will say, always use a bed frame. You may not think putting the box springs and mattress on the frame makes much of a difference, but let me tell you it does. It's also nice to be able to sit on the side of the bed and not have your feet touch the ground (or maybe touch a little if you're tall like me!) as opposed to being able to knee yourself in the face when getting up without a frame.

sort of blown out (sorry...weird lighting) but here we have a complete living room! 

We also put our living room back together...finally! The floors are 95% done in the house (we need to touch up the hallway and transitions...and if you were to count that we haven't done the carpeted areas I'm sure the percentage would drop...but let's not think about that!) so we can now live in the living room! We bought a rug at Lowe's on clearance and put the original furniture back in. Oh, and we got a nice deal on our first flat screen on Black Friday! What can I say, we're extremely late adopters when it comes to technology :) All those extra digital channels came in handy for the Iron Bowl when our local CBS station decided to show infomercials instead of the game...don't get me started on that blessed event--the fight with CBS, not the actual game--though we shouldn't talk about that either.

Anywho, all that to say, the bedrooms are done minus some minor changes and decorating so we can now focus on the next headache, er joyous improvement: the kitchen.