New Rooms!

It seems no June is complete without some sort of indoor painting project! This summer, in addition to a couple of painting project, we decided to throw in some room rearranging as well!

When we found out we were pregnant again, I suggested moving all three of the little boys into Nicholas room, moving Elias downstairs to the little boy room and turning Elias' old room into the nursery. The thought behind that was having all the younger kids upstairs with us. Brandon LOVED the idea and wanted to get to work right away, however I changed my mind before he had a chance to set up help to move the beds. I didn't like the idea of Elias getting the biggest bedroom to himself, I didn't like the idea of Benjamin and Elias sharing a room( BIG personality differences) Samuel wasn't ready to share a room with Elias( maybe in a few years) and I didn't like the idea of moving Nicholas downstairs. This left one option, leave everything as is and have Nicholas and the baby share a room. I was pretty happy with this decision mainly because it required no work and if it didn't work out, we could always rearrange rooms later. 

Around week 28, I had a nesting attack! I was not happy with the room situation after all and it was giving me anxiety! I suggested moving rooms again and within an hour he had help lined up to move beds and a painting plan in place with his mom. He wasted NO time this time around, smart man because I probably would have changed my mind again!

We didn't paint the little boys room but I like the color so its all good. We brought up the bunk beds, moved Nicholas crib to the other wall, brought in the night stand and a small toy shelf and redid the closet system to make room for 3 boys worth of clothes. 

In progress photo

FInished....for now!

 Once Nicholas is done with the crib, he will be getting Annie's bed because it matches. It will be a very bed-y room but there is still going to be some play space. My biggest concern with this set up was the closet situation. Thankfully Samuel and Benjamin are sharing clothes as they are the same size, and there is still lots of room to spare! Plus, their clothes are small for now!

Next up, Elias's room! Grandma got to painting his new room the same color as his old room. We moved some of the furniture down but kept his room pretty open. He has plenty of room for friends, a big open space for his therapy swing...which we still need to set up and its out of the way so no more little brothers sneaking in to destroy it all the time. Elias used to be up with the sun but since the room switch, he is sleeping in past 7 every day whoop whoop! I love the way his room turned out!

 Lastly, the nursery! When I found out I was pregnant with Nicholas, I knew I wanted to do an  actual nursery. I didn't want it to be gender specific so I picked a color scheme and was going to accent with different colors based on gender. The main colors were lime, light blue and white. More navy and light blue for a boy, more pink for a girl. In hind sight this was a fabulous plan since I loved Nicholas' boy nursery and now I love baby girl's pink nursery! It was a no brainer for what color to paint the room and it matches so perfectly with all of the nursery decor that I had in Nicholas's room. I literally just moved it all over after room was painted and boom, instant nursery! The mini crib will eventually be moved in here followed by the full size crib in due time, for now it is finished thought!

In the span of a short week we( Grandma) painted 2 rooms, moved three rooms around and redid 3 closets! It was utter disaster and chaos for a few of those days but we survived and I LOVE the end results. 

Elias' New Room

Elias is really getting some blog time this month! Remember just a few short months ago when I was so excited to share my very own sewing room re-do with my dedicated blog followers? Well that was super short lived,6 months to be exact.  I lost my woman cave to a very sweet 8 year old, good thing he is worth it! 

Elias was having a rough time living with Benjamin and Samuel. His behavior and school work was suffering. We had offered Elias the room many times but he kept saying he was too scared to sleep alone. After a particularly rough day he spent some alone time with Grandma and she convinced him that he really would benefit from having a room all to himself.  In 24 hours we emptied the room out and moved his bed upstairs. Grandma bought him star wars decorations, end table and bedding and Brandon and I picked up a few odds and ends to finish the room off. Like the death star light. We had some major pieces of furniture that we are just making work in his room because there was no other place to put them, like the big book shelf. Grandma plans to paint his room this summer but in the meantime, it is perfect! 

Elias' behavior turned around almost immediately upon moving in. He has a place to go to calm down and his therapy swing is already in there so that is an added bonus. My sewing room has found its new place downstairs in the laundry room but its just as well, I don't have much time to sew now that Mr. Nicholas is here anyways. The things we do for our kids!

 Kellie and I's sweet BB-8 painting. It turned out great!

Nicholas loves big brothers room.

How Elias' room usually looks, I took the swing down in other pictures so I could actually see the room. 

Room Re-Do!

One of the things that really sold me on this house was this big 500-600 sq foot addition. Its original purpose was for a hot tub room way back in 1986. We use it for our dining room and living room. We spend the vast majority of our family time and evening time in this room. There is access to the kitchen to the back yard as well as where the couch and TV and table are located. When we moved in, we knew this room would need a LOT of face lift to get it up to snuff. The windows, floor and walls all needed to be done. This spring, we ( Grandma Mim) painted the room an awesome blue gray. We decided to put off the windows in favor of getting rid of the super nasty carpet! The carpet went from bad to down right awful when we moved in. There were new spills daily! 

We had been talking about it for awhile, but when Samuel painted the carpet brown and I split a cup of coffee on the carpet all in the same day, I knew it was time! We are fortunate to have awesome friends as skilled laborers and grandparents willing to watch children. We knocked the project out in one stretch of 4 days off! It was long, crzay and super busy, but I am so glad we did it! The house looks great. 

 After the demolition of the tile and plywood was done, Shawn( super skilled friend) decided some of the really bad sub floor needed to be ripped up as well. What you see left are the good stained areas. in the picture above, I am pretty sure someone died in the top corner, do you see how massive that stain is?! Anyways, This is the polished before picture.

 After four long days, the floors were done! We had to ditch our couch and some old furniture along the way. We have learned to never never buy cheap furniture. With 2,3,4,5 kids...it just doesn't last! Especially when the vast majority of the kids are crazy boys! When the bottom of the couch fell out, literally, I ran out to the store and was able to find a damaged sectional for a steal of a deal. The couch was scratched from pets but Brandon and I figured we could do that damage in 24 hours so we jumped at the opportunity to buy it! I forgot to take a grande after picture so I will have to do that. Just imagine a massive comfy section right where my babes are.

Thanks again to Shawn, Dan and Grandma Mim for helping with demo, floors and kids. and to all my neighbors who houses my older kids crashed. Now we can allow kids back in our house, send em on over!

Nursery Projects 2 and 3

I would like to take a minuet to say I AM DONE PAINTING FURNITURE!!!!! I know there are lots of people out there who love re purposing furniture but I am here to say, I am not one of them! I do not have the desire, patience or artistic ability to deal with priming sanding and painting and making it look decent. I am not a crafty person. Have you ever seen the pictures of pintrest crafting fails? That's me every time. With all that said, I do love the way these three pieces of furniture turned out! I am thrilled to have that mess out of the nursery and garage as well!

The chair was already white so up next was the crib. My before picture is from 2007 when we first bought it for baby Elias. The crib was pretty easy to paint because there wasn't much detail work. It was a huge piece so it took a lot of time but I really really like how it turned out!

After the crib, I was supposed to be done with my painting adventures, thriftiness had me rethinking my plan though. My intention was to leave this brown dresser in the sewing room in case we decide to give Elias that room in a couple of years. I was going to buy a changing table/dresser combo piece for the nursery and call it good. I just couldn't bring myself to either 1. Find a less expensive one I liked or 2. drop $400 on the one I did like. I decided to move the dresser and paint it to match. Instead of buying what I originally planned, I found a inexpensive changing table which will be used for toy storage after the baby is older saving me about 75%. I am hoping to get this changing table as a gift from my wonderful loving parents for my birthday /Christmas HINT HINT, if that happens well then this was definitely the better decision! Either way, it was worth painting for. This was the biggest pain in the butt ever!!!! The dresser itself was easy but those dang drawers with their pretty designs UGH. I am so happy its done and I LOVE it!!! I was going to paint it either navy blue or just paint the drawer fronts a different color( navy and Lime to match the room) but Kellie convinced me to just to white and I am really glad I did!

Now that all of the painting is done I get to begin the really fun stuff, making new coves for the rocking chair! I already ripped off all the old ones and bought fabric so hopefully by mid September, I will be done! Wish me luck

Nursery Projects: Part 1 of ??

When I found out I was pregnant with #5, I asked Brandon if he thought I could have an actual nursery. When Elias was a newborn, I had a room for him, but we lived in an apartment and so we were limited on how crazy we wanted to get. When we moved and prepared for Annie, we eventually painted but the decorations and color scheme remained the same from 2009-2015! We moved in here and the room Samuel moved into, was the SAME COLOR as the old nursery! Anyways, we don't need much for baby so Brandon agreed to let me go all out!

We made the decision to have all three boys share a room( which is going great) So I even get a sewing room! Imagine that, we will have 5 kids and I still get my own crafting room, which I will share as a makeshift office with Brandon, but still!

So, back to the nursery, we weren't going to find out the gender, so I was going to go with a aqua and white theme, then, once baby was born, accessorize with either navy and lime green or pink. Well plans change and we decided to find out, boy it is! We are going with a aqua, lime green, navy blue and white nursery and I am getting really excited about all the things that are slowly coming together for it. Step one, was painting the existing nursery furniture. We needed a new dresser for the baby's room and I wanted a white one. We had light furniture before so I thought it would be easy enough to paint. I hauled the rocking chair out to the garage , set up my primer, paint and foam brushes and got to work! 

I immediately regretted my decision to paint. After the first coat of primer I switched game plans, spray paint all the way. I have made so many trips to mendards, because apparently this furniture soaks up paint like you wouldn't believe. I have to prime, then spray ( multiple coats of both)then protective coat, all 5 pieces of crib and the rocking chair. I finally finished the rocking chair, so in all its glory, here it is!

I was so proud of my accomplish and was feeling good when Kellie kindly reminded me that I have an ottoman that goes with this chair....It was hidden in the extra room under massive piles of stuff while we were redoing the walls and I totally forgot about it. Darn you Kellie!! I dug it out and began that today. Uff, well I love how the chair turned out, now I just need to get to reupholstering the cushions for it. 

So, Part 1 of operation new nursery is complete! kinda..

Room Re-do

On the main floor of our home, there are three bedrooms...or at least there is supposed to be. The previous owners, knocked out a wall, put up french doors and closed off the entrance into the master bedroom creating a suite if you will. They apparently had twins and thought it was a good idea. Well, guess what, it wasn't! I assume they did the project themselves because they knocked out a load bearing wall, didn't get a permit( which they lied or "forgot to include"  on the property disclosure statement) and the ceiling was sagging 3.5 inches! They used glass blocks as a header and the header that was below the blocks wasn't even attached to the boards that were supposed to support the weight of the wall. I am so thankful we tackled this project now rather then wait and end up with our attic in our bedroom! We knew it wasn't ideal but didn't know how bad it was until we started to take everything down. 

Anyways, with the baby coming, we wanted an actual nursery that wasn't attached to our room. Brandon has a friend/work buddy who is amazing at all things construction and we hired him to help out! Before he started work, he gave us a few easy assignments.The first one being, knock down the drywall at the end of the hall where the new door to our room is. Knocking down walls, totally up Brandon's alley.

 Mirror at the end of the hall, we shall miss this mirror, it was the "skinny" mirror :(

 Bye mirror

 doing a little scoring before the big kick down

 Brandon practicing his sweet door kicking skills. We have it on video too, it was impressive 

 Ta da!

Look what we did! 

Next up, take down the french doors and get the rooms ready to go for the next morning

Official before shots:

 View from the nursery looking into our room

View from our room looking into the nursery, notice, there is no regular door leading into our room

Next up, let the work begin!

I'm not sure of everything Shawn and Brandon did( thank you to Shawn for unbelievable patience in teaching brandon lots of new skills!) but I know it was something in this order

1. Take down french door frame,for anyone who knows anything about holding walls up, this photo makes you cringe. Note to self: glass blocks are not enough support!

 2. Take random pieces of wood that I'm sure served some purpose, out of the door hole

3. Take down the awful terrible blocks, but first, set up a fake wall to support the wall...or something like that. 

 4. Construct a sturdy load bearing wall, the correct way! Then apply dry wall. Yes Brandon got to use a nail gun and we was super excited. 

 5. Look mom, a wall!

 6. Fix carpet to fit to new wall

 7. Show off new wall

 

 8.  Install door and frame. Shawn had to create the inner part of the door frame because something was wanky with the way the door hole was( as was almost everything the previous owners touched). 

9. Final step, install baseboards, fill nail holes, PAINT( THANKS grandma Mim) and Show off!

 Elias is standing in the nursery ( in his jammies) where the french doors used to be

Our room, with our new door and wall :)

I am over the moon with how this project turned out! It took 5 days of tear down and build up plus 2 days of painting with 4 kids and a sometimes working husband, but it was so worth it. I feel much safer and now we officially have a 5 bedroom house. 

2015 Home Improvements

When we moved into our house in November, we knew there were a couple things we had to fix asap, and some that were going to be delayed until the summer, or future years. We took care of anything leaking and the electrical asap and saved the rest for later. The list for what I want/need updated is long, it will take a decade to finish it all. For the summer, we are focusing on the rest of the cosmetic changes( hello new paint) and turning our weird bedroom layout back into the three bedrooms upstairs is was originally built with. Mim was here for a couple weeks painting two of our biggest spaces and our soon to be nursery. I love how everything turned out! The downstairs and upstairs living room look so much more open and spacious and I can't even describe how much I love the nursery room color!!!  We are re-doing three of our tiny closest by adding organizing systems as well as new windows ( and hopefully new carpet) for the upstairs family room. Also,stay tuned for the big changes as we make a nursery and sewing room at the end of the summer! Slowly but surly we are making this our forever home!!

Note: All these pictures were taken with my iphone, its hard to see the colors and obviously my rooms aren't curved, thanks panoramic view! However, you get the idea!

 Bye sea foam green, hello light and refreshing( bad lighting!) soft cream

Good bye tan, hello the most awesome shade of blue EVER!!!!,this will be our nursery in just a few short months!!

These walls were in rough rough shape when we moved in, lots of holes and gouges and the paint was in rough shape as well. Its amazing what a fresh coat of paint and some freshened up base boards can do to a room.

Thanks Mim on all your hard work in our house!!!!