The big, giant, catch up post (AKA- I'm bad at blogging!)

Wow, has it been a very, very long time since my last post!!!
I've tried this blogging thing a few times in the past, and have always been really bad about keeping up on it. Seems that hasn't changed. I just really need to figure out how to do this from my mobile phone- I would actually keep on it if I could do that!!

In my defense, I started a new job in February - FULL TIME, BABY!! (lol) -that keeps me very busy. Plus, the kids are constantly doing something now, so I'm just not home much.
Still, it has been a very productive summer around casa de Bouc.

Right around the time of my last post, our basement flooded. We got crazy rains this spring, and the river about a mile from our house swallowed several houses, so I feel very blessed that we ended up losing nothing more important than some carpet we hoped to eventually tear out anyhow. Still, it was a mess to clean up, and once we tore the carpet out, we needed a break from working on the inside of the house, and chose instead to focus on the exterior for a bit.

You may remember from a while back that our house had a hedge of ewe bushes - evergreens- that were completely overgrown and very out of date. There was also a large Holly bush that made it difficult to open the front door, and some very leggy azalea bushes close to the garage.

 

 Those are now gone. It took us roughly a month of work, and a broken sprinkler line, but we pulled them all out. In their place are several hostas, peonies, and columbine. It's not much to look at right now, but I have high hopes for the spring. You can't see it well in this photo, but you can tell the bushes are gone.

 

We also repainted the front door. It was a wine red color. It didn't look terrible with the siding, it just wasn't a color I like very much. What did look terrible was the faux stained glass vinyl garbage that was applied to the sidelight windows. (Excuse my reflection in the window)

I removed that, as well. I wanted to leave the sidelights "blank", but hubby was concerned that people walking by on the sidewalk would be able to see into the house, and since it's a straight shot from the entry door, up the stairs, into the kids' bathroom, he had a valid point. I replaced the stained glass stuff with more stick on vinyl (groan), but this time in a rice paper look. Much more neutral. The door got a fresh coat of slate blue paint, and all the trim got fresh white paint to brighten it up. We replaced all the hardware with oil rubbed bronze because we're just not shiny brass kind of people. Still need to do the exterior lights, but we're not decided on what we want for that yet.

 

 

We spent probably a month cleaning up debris in the back yard over the summer as well. The back yard was bug infested- we couldn't even spend time out there. There were years and years worth of leaves that had been blown against the back fence and just left there. Removing all of those, plus trimming up the bushes and trees in the back made a big difference. The apple tree, in particular, was completely let go- trimming that up gave us a huge harvest of apples that we've been able to make sauce out of and enjoy! There was beach grass (tall, thick, nasty) all around the deck that had to come out as well. I removed all of that, and planted Foxgloves, hostas, columbine, and violets all around the deck. So much better. I removed several large, overgrown bushes from the back yard, as well, and replaced them with flowering dogwood. Again, not much to look at this fall, but should be spectacular come spring!

 

 So, that's been most of our summer. We still have a long, long way to go to make this house everything we want it to be, but every little bit helps and it's come so far already!!

The boy's bedroom

Remember the disgusting dog pee carpet photos from a while back on the post called PROGRESS?? Well, that carpet came out of the boy's room, and THAT project is what stalled my progress, and the reason nothing got updated for a long time here.

After pulling all that disgusting carpet and pad out, I let the floors dry out for a couple of days, then mopped them with a bleach solution. The room still smelled overwhelmingly like dog pee. The next step was to paint the floor with Kilz

I then let that dry for a couple of days while we looked at our budget and decided that new flooring simply wasn't in it right now. I thought about just painting the floor with porch and floor paint, which I've had luck with in the past, but decided that something a little more creative was in order. I set about searching Pinterest (THANKS, PINTEREST!!) for ideas, and decided to go with the paper bag floor. I'm sure you've all seen the post before- if not, search it out. I knew this process worked because my lovely sister in law had done this same project in her kitchen and it's held up quite well for a couple of years, even with kids and a large dog living in the house!



The next step, then, was to find a LOT of paper bags. I did my major grocery shopping trip and ended up with about 20 bags, which I figured would be enough. I tore them up into different sized pieces, and set about gluing them down using Elmer's Glue All. The bottle in this photo is extremely deceptive- I started with two of these bottles thinking it would be enough. I ended up going back and buying the huge, teacher sized gallon bottle.

Once I got all the bags glued down, I decided to go ahead and paint over it all with the porch and floor paint, since all the bags were not the same color and I didn't like the variation.

Of course, once that was done, I decided that the variation was actually BETTER than a sea of pukey brown (I let the boy pick the color, and it didn't turn out so well- I don't recommend camel beige for a floor!). That meant I had to start the process over- I went to the hardware store and bought a big pack of lawn and garden paper bags, tore those up, and started gluing again.

I then put polyurethane over the floor to give it a gloss and to protect the paper. Three days and six coats later, the floors looked fantastic!

We proceeded to move all of his furniture BACK into the room, and hang art and let him start living in there. Of course, you can't really SEE the floors that took me three weeks and hours of labor (a boy does live in there, after all), but the room no longer smells like rotting dog urine, and his allergies aren't driving him crazy any more. Here is how the room turned out when all was said and done.

As you can see, he's a huge Iron Maiden fan. He gets that from his dad, not from me.

Finished formal living room

I posted in progress photos of our formal living room when I was painting it, but now art is hung, the room is fully furnished, and it's all done! Here's how it turned out.

First completely finished room

I have officially finished a room in the new house!!! Several are close to being done, but the dining room is completely done- all furniture is in it, walls are painted, floors are how they are staying, and art is on the walls. This was no easy project.

When we moved into the house, the dining room had a plaster faux finish on the walls above the chair rail. Below the chair rail, the walls were painted beige. The plaster faux finish also included grapes and leaves on the wall.

 

I'm not into Tuscan, but clearly the lady who lived here before was. My first task was to remove the grapes. I figured they were some kind of plaster grape, so I prepared myself to sand them down if need be. First I decided to pick at them a little to see if I could just peel them off. Turns out I could, because they weren't plaster grapes- they were plastic fruit bowl grapes and leaves that had been Gorilla Glue-d to the wall and plastered over!

When I peeled the grapes off, the plaster faux finish started coming off, as well. I had to peel off all the loose plaster, which completely messed up the walls.

The next step was to spackle and sand the walls smooth, so the paint would apply nicely.

I chose the Sherwin Williams color Pussywillow for the walls. This gray looked very blue on the swatch, but once I painted the walls, they were VERY drab. Putting our walnut furniture in the room helped, but the room was still seriously lacking.

So, I found all of my brightest, most colorful art, and added it to the room. Now it is PERFECT. I absolutely love the way this room turned out! It makes me even more excited to see the other rooms finished!

PROGRESS!!!

This has been a week of a LOT of progress on the new house.

The boy's room got painted this week. He wanted to keep the green shag carpet that was in the room (shudder), so when he chose bright red for a paint color, I made him pick a second color to kind of tone it down. He chose a really nice gold color to contrast, and it looks awesome. I don't have pics yet, because right around the time I finished painting, he got sick. My kids rarely get sick -they're the healthiest kids I know!- but he started coughing every night when he went to bed as soon as we moved in here, and after sleeping in the room for a week, he was really sick. We noticed a definite correlation between his cough and going in his room, so we decided that he probably is reacting to the dog, just like hubby and I are, since we're both allergic to dogs. We decided we needed to tear the carpet out.
This is what we found.

Yeah, those are all dog pee stains. And the last pic? That's the sub floor- it's soaked with dog pee,  and dogs haven't lived in this house in 3 weeks. Yuck. Yuck, yuck and double yuck!! Why we agreed to let the boy keep the carpet, I can't answer for you. We were trying to give him some say in the matter, I guess. But that's just disgusting.
Now that the gross carpet is gone, I will be mopping with a strong bleach solution, then painting the floor with Kilz, before we put new flooring in. We're thinking of going with sheet vinyl in this room. I'm currently working in a flooring store and can get a decent price on flooring, and really love the IVC Flexitec sheet vinyl, and I think since it's just temporary, I'll order in something decent looking and just loose - lay it for now. Anything is better than dog pee carpet!

Now on to the progress! I started working on the living room. This room was just dark and depressing before. The walls had poorly done chair rail separating a wine red from a beige color- just not my style. I had hubby remove the chair rail, and got to work patching, sanding, and painting. Removing the chair rail caused some damage, but nothing my handy dandy spackle and a putty knife couldn't handle!

 We have a lot of antique furniture. My husband's grandfather was a cabinet maker, so we have many pieces he made, plus other family pieces that were handed down to us over the years. Many of those pieces are oak. Normally I'm not a huge fan of oak, but when it comes to antique furniture, I NEVER say no!

So, what do you do with a room full of oak furniture? Paint it blue!! Blue contrasts beautifully with the orange tones in oak, really making them shine. If you're going to have antique oak furniture, you have to make it look as beautiful as possible. To me, that means playing up the natural color, not hiding it. I selected a Benjamin Moore color, Tranquil Aqua to accomplish this. Here is how the room looked after 1 coat.

SOOOOOO PRETTY!!!!! My next project is the dining room. Once that's done, all the walnut furniture will leave the living room, and I will take "completed" pictures. Still, things are moving along!

Busy and productive week in the new house!

We finally moved in to the new house! We've been here a week already, and it has been a BUSY one! When we moved in, we found quite a mess. The house was very dirty and required some serious scrubbing before I could even start to think about making any cosmetic changes. Step one, as it always is, was to clean the bathrooms and kitchen to make them usable. You'd think this would be fairly straight forward, but with a house this big, it turned out to be more work than I'd anticipated! There's still one bathroom I haven't even touched- it's in the basement, and while it's a nice big bathroom, I just haven't even bothered doing anything in there yet- the three on the main levels of the house are working out just fine for the time being.

The kitchen was a whole other ball of wax. Not only did it require a lot of cleaning (I'm a bit of a germ a phobe when it comes to other people's ick, but this place was dirty by anybody's standards!), but it's also TINY!! It didn't seem small when we looked at it, but I had more than twice as many cabinets in my old house, so finding homes for everything was a serious challenge. Only one of the kitchen cabinets has adjustable shelves! I still haven't figured out where I'm going to put my crock pots or my veggie steamer, blenders, mixers, etc.

Carpet cleaning was a big project, too. The house only has carpet in 2 of the bedrooms, and the living room, but the lady who owned this house before us had dogs, and my whole family is allergic to dogs. The carpet smelled like dog, as well, and that's a scent I simply can't tolerate. So, a couple of rounds of carpet cleaning (Thank goodness for my cleaner that my mom bought me as my last house warming gift, 7 years ago!), and the smell and allergens are gone from all but the master bedroom- we haven't gotten to that one yet.

Finally, after 3 days of doing nothing but scrubbing and cleaning and unpacking, I was able to do something a little more fun. As promised, we made the kids' bedrooms the first priority, and I got to work on those right away.

First up was the girl's room. We painted all of her bedroom furniture (with the exception of her dresser, which is a beautiful fruit wood piece we bought when I was pregnant with the boy) Sherwin Williams Fancy Pink. We had planned on a bright pink bedroom when we picked the furniture color, but she changed her mind once she saw the room, and chose a turquoise color instead.

Her first pick was Sherwin Williams Raindrop.

We loved it, but because of a bump out architectural detail in her room, I felt like she needed a second color to accent it. We stuck with the same color strip in the Sherwin paint deck and went one shade lighter, Meander Blue.

Her room turned out SO pretty!!
Here's the before shot- She actually has pretty decent looking laminate floors in her room, which will stay. She loves to do art, so it makes sense for her to have hard surface flooring that is easy to clean. This room was painted a salmony color- I'm not sure what to call it- I just know we didn't like it!

Here's a better representation of the true color.

Here is her room color now. I'll post pictures once we have the furniture moved to give a better idea of the entire vision of the room.

The turquoise colors are so pretty with the trim and the color of the flooring. I can't wait to see what it looks like once her room is unpacked and all of her things are in place!!