Board and Batten in the Front Room

Ok guys, I did this project way back in early September, when Caleb started preschool and before I was pregnant.  It took 3-4 days to do it all.  I'm just now getting around to blogging about it because a) this hasn't been a very smooth pregnancy and it's just hard to get around to anything, and b) I finally have it furnished and decorated how I want it (mostly).  Also, our camera is broken (the lens won't open??) so I finally just decided to use my phone.  Forgive the quality of the pictures.  You'd think I'd at least be able to edit them in photoshop since we get it for free through my hubby's work, but no.  I don't know how.  If you know of a good tutorial that will teach me the basics of photo editing with photoshop, send it my way!

Now, let me tell you how this went down.  Ever since I built the window seat this room has felt so much more cozy and inviting.

Just for a fun little reference, this is what it looked like on the listing we saw when we were going to buy this house:

Yes, seriously.  

This is how it looked on our home listing when we were going to sell our house last spring:

Yes, I do believe that I like my decorating tastes much better.  ;)  But to me, it was still lacking a little something.

It lacks no more!  Let me tell you what I did to make it look like this:

The first thing I needed to do was decide on a paint color.  You can't tell in the middle picture, but the walls were stained from dust and smoke accumulation (from the fireplace) behind all of the pictures that the former owners had on the walls.  I wanted a nice, neutral "greige" (gray/beige).  I found inspiration on pinterest and painted on samples of Revere Pewter and Analytical Gray, keeping in mind that this room gets tons of natural light.  I ended up choosing Revere Pewter (it's slightly lighter than Analytical Gray) and had it mixed at Home Depot, even though it's a Benjamin Moore color.  I left the bottom portion white, obviously, to make my job easier.

For the woodwork, I started with a little inspiration here and here and here.  I took what I liked from these sources to get an idea of how I wanted the spacing and how fancy I wanted the trim to be.  I didn't want it to feel too formal, because I wanted it to feel like it belongs with the rest of the house, so I decided on a plain board for the top.  This is a pretty big room, so I didn't want to space the battens too close for fear that it would make it look too busy.  I taped the battens up and decided that 19 inches from the middle of one board to the middle of the next was just right.  I also didn't want the top to be any higher than the fireplace, and I had to be careful not to go too high to sort of cut the room in half (that would look a little funny).  I settled on just shy of 48 inches for the total height, since the walls are 8 feet and the vault is 10'3".

I had to replace the baseboards, because the existing baseboards were that cheap, nasty fake oak.  If I hadn't needed to do that, this project would have been much cheaper and faster!  But I don't mind.  I love beautiful baseboards and there's something satisfying about making a mitered cut (with an electric miter saw, of course...it would not be satisfying to do that many cuts by hand!).  If you can use your existing baseboards, this project would require no mitered cuts!  All straight cuts, which is less intimidating to many people.  I wish I could remember the total cost of this project, but it's been too long...I want to say it was around $300?  Worth it, in my mind!

To decrease the cost, I used MDF "Bender Board" as the battens, which is only a quarter inch thick and is 3-3/4" wide.  It is the same thickness as the top of the baseboard, so it has a seamless appearance.  The top board is a 1x4 primed trim board (which is actually only 3.5"x3/4"...why do they call that a 1x4?).  It sticks out farther than the battens, but I prefer that rather than having the battens stick out farther than the baseboards.  It's personal preference, I guess.  But it was cheaper this way, which I'm a fan of.  :)

Also, my walls are textured.  I've seen people put some sort of board all along the bottom to hide the texture, but I didn't do that.  I can see the texture when the light is shining on it just right, but it doesn't bother me one bit.  Again, it's all personal preference, but I don't think it's worth it to go to the trouble and cost of putting a whole extra layer on your wall just to hide the texture.  It still looks great if you don't do that!

After putting up the baseboards, I taped up the battens to make sure the spacing was right (I had to make a few minor adjustments to go around outlets--and I can promise you that no one will notice the imperfections).  Then I nailed the top board on (making sure it was level) then nailed on all of the battens (making sure they were plumb).  I had the battens cut for free at Home Depot, and that made my job so much easier.  There were no gaps between any battens and the top board, because Home Depot's cutting machine is so much more accurate than if I had done it myself.  I love that they offer that service!  After everything was nailed in, I countersunk the nails and filled in and sanded the nail holes, then I calked all of the spaces.  Calk makes a huge difference, friends.  Huge.  It's magical stuff.  The calk also helped stabilize a few of the battens that were somewhat loose since very few of them got nailed into studs.  Not a single one wiggles any more.  ;)  Then was the painstaking painting.  Everything came primed white except for the battens, so I used primer on the battens and then I was able to paint everything with one coat of white.  I used high gloss paint, because that's what makes woodwork look so fancy!  It's also easier to clean, and dust is a big problem in my old house.  :)

Here are some more shots of my new favorite room in the house!

That shelf in the corner was a free score that I refinished for $30.  I have yet to dress the shelves (right now they hold the pictures that I don't know where to hang), but I think it'll be a great place to keep books.

 This room is a great place to enjoy a good book!

 Ah, I love that window seat!

When Nate works from home, he uses this desk.  He hooks up his laptop to the extra screen and keeps a spare mouse, mouse pad, and keyboard in the drawer.

So, what do you think?  I think I can imagine it in every room in my house!

House Woes

Well.  We put our house on the market, drove our horses to Minnesota to stay at my mom's farm (and also left our truck and horse trailer there), and got lots of interest on our house here.  We got many offers and went under contract twice.  Both times the sales fell through for reasons personal to the buyers.  We went to Minnesota three times to house hunt, and weren't able to find anything that fit our needs until the last time.  We made an offer on an amazing house, which got accepted, and then we realized that the house doesn't have very good internet access.  Which won't work for a hubby doing software programming from home.  So we had to back out.  A few weeks later is when our second buyer backed out.  By that point, it was more of a relief than a disappointment.

We feel like this is really where we belong (for now).  When you work so hard towards something and it still doesn't work out, it's usually the Lord's hand watching out for you.  We feel good about this.  For now, this is home.

But I do miss my horses.  :(

Change

Life is changing, right on schedule.

We put our house on the market and we're moving to Minnesota to be closer to my family and live the farm life!  This was the plan from the beginning, and it's actually happening!  I never expect life to work out the way I had planned!  Don't worry, there is still plenty of time for things to go awry.  ;)

Our house has been on the market for two weeks now and we've received one offer.  We countered, and they're still deciding what to do.  We're not holding our breath for them to accept our counter, but since we don't have a new house lined up to buy yet, we're not in much of a rush.

I was really worried about how I could possibly keep our house clean enough to show day after day, and I must say, it's actually pretty great!  Yes, I spend a large chunk of my time cleaning and organizing, but it's not so bad.  I have never been a bed-maker, but now that I am I hope to keep the habit up even after we move.  It's so freeing to be in a clean house!

We've made a whole lot of improvements lately to our house that I'm excited to show you.  The main one is our floors:

before:

after:

I was really concerned about what floors would go well with these light, oak-colored, hickory kitchen cabinets.  After spending way too much time on pinterest, bringing home lots of samples from Home Depot, and reading countless reviews online, I decided on TrafficMASTER Handscraped Saratoga Hickory.  It was the least expensive option out there, and even if it had cost twice as much I still would have picked it because it's beautiful and had great reviews!  It turns out that it scratches extremely easily, but the scratches are easily hidden with a floor marker.

These were the old, original, '70s parquet floors we had in the dining room.  They were so worn that they were impossible to clean.  The finish was mostly gone, so the water would soak right in.  I have hated them all this time, but it wasn't worth it to have them refinished since they're so out of date anyway.  So when our real estate agent suggested putting in new floors, I was more than willing!  We still have these floors in the upstairs bedrooms, but they're not half as bad there since it's not such a high-traffic area.

after:

 Playroom:

 before:

after:

We replaced the floors in the kitchen, dining room, play room, and upstairs bathroom and all together, including floor planks, underlayment, and trim, it cost less than $800!  We're hoping that it will add $20,000 to our home's value!  Even though they were a lot of work to install (I did them mostly by myself--Nate was super helpful by taking care of the kids, and I had help with the dining room from my sister and brother-in-law), it was so worth it!

I also gave the front of the house a little face-life by replacing old, faded, warped, green shutters with some classy black board and batten style shutters.

before:

 after:

I made the shutters myself.  :)  I must say, my favorite houses are all white with black shutters and trim.  It's just so classy!  Maybe some time I'll tell you how I made them.

For now, we just keep our house clean, wait, and try to find a new house to move into.  We already took our horses to Minnesota, where my mom will be taking care of them, and we did a little house hunting.  We didn't find anything that we're ready to make an offer on, so either we will have to rent for a while or we'll have to travel back to house hunt again.  We'll just have to see!  I'm nervous and excited and scared all at the same time!

Home Improvements: Master Vanity

Our master bedroom doesn't have its own bathroom, but that's ok!  Because what it does have is a door directly into the shared bathroom and, most awesomely, its very own vanity and sink.  But the mirror and light fixture desperately needed some updating.  I don't have a picture of the old light (it was a hideous swirly gold thing from the 70s), but here is what the mirror looked like:

 Straight out of the 70s.  Awful.  Hideous.  Terrible in every way.  Also, huge and expensive to replace with an equally huge mirror.  So what did I do?  I took it apart, discarded the frame and built a new wood frame around the old mirror.  Hooray for being handy!

How did I pull it off?  I found baseboard trim that I liked, measured my pieces to overlap the mirror about halfway, and cut the ends at a 45-degree angle.  Then I stained the wood, front and back (make sure to stain or paint the back, too, since a little bit of it will be reflected by the mirror), and used super strong glue (the kind you use in a calk gun) to adhere the new frame to the mirror.  I had the mirror laying flat on some stools so gravity and I could work together to keep the frame from moving.  Once the glue was mostly dry, I used wood filler to fill in the imperfections on the corners, stained the wood filler, and put on a few coats of protective polyurethane.  To hang it, I screwed two "d" ring hooks on the sides, strung some wire between them and hung it on the wall.  I also put on a bunch of mirror sticker things to the back to help hold it to the wall (the whole thing weighs 20 lbs, so I wanted all the reinforcement I could get).  Here is the result:

 While I was at it, I removed the old towel holders (also from the 70s) and replaced it with the one you see above.

 This lovely light fixture was a pain to install.  Let's just say if you don't close your sink drain before dealing with lots of screws, you may end up replacing all of the plumbing under the sink.  And by all, I mean all.  I'm pretty thankful to have a handy, helpful, and kind father-in-law who is willing to sacrifice his Saturdays to clean up my messes.  ;)

 Aaaahhhh, just lovely.  So worth it.  It makes the whole room feel so much nicer.  And it cost around $30.  Not bad!

While I was at it, the adjacent bathroom had the same vanity mirror.  Ugh.  So I planned on doing the same thing to the mirror, but when I was on my way to the trim department in Home Depot, I spotted this lovely little mirror on an end cap, marked down to $30 from $140!  I snatched that sucker up (it was the perfect size!) and while I was at it I bought a little floating shelf to go under it and give it a little dimension.  

 I also replaced the light fixture and the sink faucet (the old one was ugly and dripped).

 It looks like a new bathroom!  And the beautiful new shower curtain seals the deal.  I love it.

 The curtain covers our giant 2-shower-headed corner tub, which received an amazing cleaning recently.  I'll share my secrets some day.  Believe me, you'll be glad to know.

How do you like it all?  It's so worth it to do these little things on your own.  If you've never changed a sink faucet or a light fixture, go ahead and try it!  Light fixtures especially are one of the easiest, cheapest, and most transforming home improvement projects that you can do!

Home Improvements: Magnetic Chalkboard Wall

Remember how I said in my kitchen blog post that there wasn't anything that I would change in my kitchen now?  Well, I was wrong.

This wall, to the side of the fridge.  It bugged me.  It was big and plain.

And it had this water damage on the bottom ( don't know what from).  It just always looked dirty.  Yuck.

Soooo...I turned it into this!:

(Yes, that is my husband scrubbing the dishes in the background.  Yes, I hit the jackpot.)

I first painted it with magnetic paint.  The directions on the can say it needs three coats, but I literally put on about 10.  It was a huge pain in the rear and I was afraid that it would be my first official DIY disaster.  But!  It turned out great.  It doesn't hold all magnets, but it holds lightweight ones with a strong pull.  After the many coats of magnetic paint were dry, I put on two light coats of chalkboard paint.

And now the entrance to the kitchen is much more welcoming!  We use it for keeping shopping lists, hanging the boys' artwork, working on ABCs and fine motor skills, and allowing creative expression!  I'm excited to use it to display Christmas cards this winter.

If you've got a spot in your house that's begging for a little bit of creativity, magnetic and chalkboard paint is a great way to go!  Just search "magnetic chalkboard DIY" on pinterest.  So many cute ideas!

Home Improvements: The Bookshelf/Hutch

Our area has the most awesome online classifieds.  It has a whole free section, and when I'm feeling like doing a project, I keep an almost constant eye on it for a few days and snatch up some free furniture when I find something I like that's close by.

This little hutch (or is it a bookshelf?) was only a few miles away, and I could easily see its potential!

I love how some nice crown molding can so quickly dress a piece up, so I picked some up, cut it to fit, and attached it with liquid nails.

Then, like all of my painting projects start, I sanded it down just enough to scratch up the surface, sprayed it with Kilz spray primer (only one can--about $8), and painted it.  I used pure white paint, and it took two full sample cans ($6).  Then I taped the inside back and painted yellow stripes.  The color of the stripes is Warm Muffin, by Behr.  I think it's perfect.  :)  I also used my trusty Rustoleum Decorative Glaze to give it an antique feel.  I was worried about the glaze making it look like a dirty white, especially being placed against a white wall, so I used baby wipes to wipe it off instead of just a rag.  And then, of course, I finished it off with a good coat of wipe on poly in clear satin.  I must say, I'm pretty pleased with the results.  And for less than $30, I couldn't be more happy!

We plan on hiding a few kitchen appliances in the bottom cupboard, since it's being used in the dining room.  The top is also working great to display my pretty clear vases, which frees up some cupboard space in the kitchen.  It also gives me a place to feature that awesome antique fan from the '40s or '50s that I spotted in my dad's garage.  It immediately caught my eye, and he told me to take it!  Yay!

I love that I have the confidence and opportunities now to use different techniques.  I'm so glad that I put on some nice crown molding!  I think it completely transforms it.  I'm also pretty excited about the stripes.  This piece has some character and it fits perfectly on that big, empty wall in my dining room.

:D

Home Improvements: The Window Seat

We have one room in our house that we barely use.  We call it the "Front Room" because it's at the front of the house, just off of the entryway.  It's a shame we don't use it more, because it has a vaulted ceiling, a big fireplace, and tons of natural light.  But there was always something a little awkward about it.  It could be that it has a much more formal feel to it, thanks to the formal couch and wing-back chairs that I fell in love with many years ago.  Now that I've defined my style a little more, I would probably choose different furniture if I had to do it all over again, although I still think they're beautiful.  It could also be that it's kind of separated from the rest of the house.  We have to walk through the entryway to get to it.

There is one project that has been begging to be done ever since we moved in.  A window seat.  The big 6-foot space was made for one, with the heat vent being set out and all.  So my darling 20-month-old, Russell, decided to build me one all in one Saturday.

He started by prying off the existing baseboards:

 He was left with this glorious space:

Then he built a frame out of 2x4s.  His electric drill ran out of juice, so he tried a hammer and nails before giving up and borrowing our kind neighbor's drill:

Then he put on the prefabricated cabinets that he bought at Home Depot.  They are 12x12x36 inches and are meant to go above the fridge.  They were 20 percent off, which saved us about $40 on all three of them.  Awesome!:

After the cupboards were screwed onto the base, he put the top seat part on:

Then painted the first coat on the top before going to bed:

In the morning, he admired his handiwork:

He was pleased:

Then is when his 3.5-year-old brother, Caleb, stepped in.  He helped out with the sewing.  We just replaced our old mattress with a new one and were left with a foam mattress topper.  Instead of buying the extremely expensive foam from a craft store, we used this to greatly decrease the cost:

Ta-da!  The fabric isn't as taut as it would have been had I used craft foam, but it was worth it to save the $$.  Caleb just sewed the fabric into a tube and inserted the foam.  He didn't make it removable because he promised that he wouldn't spill food on it, crawl all over it with dirty hands and feet, or throw up on it.  But if he does (we all know that sometimes this kid just has to vomit), then I'll be ok with removing the stitching on one end so we can take off the cover and wash it:

Then the boys removed the doors and painted two coats on the fronts, then screwed them back on:

Then the only thing left to do was make the pillows.  So Caleb cut them out to size:

Sewed them:

And enjoyed his handiwork:

The beautiful variety of pillows:

The finished product:

The whole room...vaulted ceiling, fireplace, sunlight, desk (that I refinished) and all:

Didn't my boys do a great job?!:

They sure enjoy laying there, watching for a firetruck to pass:

It does, after all, have a beautiful view of this lovely tree:

All together, the built-in part of the seat cost about $200 and the fabric for the pillows and seat cushion cost about $50.  That's a pretty huge bang for our buck!

How do you like it?  Not bad for a weekend project, eh?  I have a feeling we'll be enjoying this room a whole lot more.

:)