The room is finished for now.... :o)

Well, the boys are back in their room. The finishing touches are not there yet, and I have no nightstand, but their beds and dressers are back in, and it looks nice with the wall color. Special thanks to Susan for her help with both the spot on the comforter and the link for the carpet patch. Dh did the patch and it worked very well! Saved us much money, and he now knows for future reference how to do that.... :o)

Here are a few photos of the room...before and after. I wish I had pictures on the walls etc, but you get the idea of what it might look like.

Just a few pictures....

Here are a few pictures of the closets...before and after....

These are the old closets before dh moved them over... Also notice the old thinner baseboard.

These are the new closets painted white with the new wall color. The baseboard is about 3 inches thicker as well. (Notice the carpet patch is not done yet...) :o)

Here are photos of the windows. I can't get a good after shot... the lighting wouldn't cooperate. I'll try to get a better picture this weekend. I thought I had a before shot of the whole window, but I don't.

Anyway, I guess the thing that strikes me about the new trim is that it looks more custom made than the old. Notice how the window apron (under the sill) comes out to meet the side trim. Dh did a good job!

Here is what we have left to do: install the carpet patch, replace the ceiling fan. Thanks to Susan for the hydrogen peroxide info. That small blood stain is almost all out of the quilt. It is hardly noticeable. It must have really been set in because it took me 4 hours with a small Q-tip just soaking on the spot to get it to where you would hardly notice it. Now I'll know for future reference what to do, so I can get the stain out as soon as I see it!

I still haven't found the nightstand. I even went to a local thrift shop. I've been checking ebay frequently too. Craigs list as well. I'm sure I'll find the right one at the right price eventually. :o) Once the room is put back together this Saturday, I'll take finished photos. I may not have everything I want on the walls yet, but the main work will be done, just the decorating finishes will be left. But, I finally feel like another room in the house is "ours" and not the previous owners. Yeah! (I redid an office into a homeschool room when we first moved in, and that one is definitely "ours" as well as our family room.)

That having been said, I am already excited about the next project. It's not big at all... and it's all outside. Dh needs to fix a few things that have not worked or have been broken recently due to our landscaping. Our lamppost has never worked, the power supply to it must have been cut prior to our purchasing the house. So dh is going to run electric back out to it, and we will be sprucing that thing up. Right now it has a very small lamp on it that is tilted when it was accidently hit by the mower. It's looking quite sad. I'm glad we'll be replacing it, as it was never quite to scale for the post/mailbox. Dh is going to trim some bushes back and generally shape up the landscape. I'm going to be potting flowers in lots of planters that I have. I never got them out last year, so I will be working on some hanging baskets and deck planters for the front porch and back deck. The back of our house could certainly use some color. I'll be sure to take before pictures of that as well. :-)

I'll leave you with one beautiful photo of our raised flower garden that we had before we moved. I wish I had raised beds like that here too, they are so easy to work with!

"Closing in on it".....

That's dh's saying and it is so true for our boys room! Almost all the painting is done. Dh and I found a trim for around the windows that we liked, and it is up and painted and looks GREAT! We both used the word to describe it..."It makes the window look more substantial". I think that the trim looks so good, it's like a piece of art in the room. I will not be putting up any curtains, as it is too pretty to cover. The window has plantation blinds, so privacy will not be an issue.

Dh still needs to patch the carpet, and we decided we will be replacing the ceiling fan. I found one at Lowe's that I like...and it has more of an antique feel to it. I'm not sure if I mentioned why I decided to replace the fan, instead of painting it. The main reason is that it sounds quite sick at a low speed. I turned the fan on one evening and switched it to low...when I heard the sound, I thought, "why am I going to waste my time repainting a fan that isn't even quiet?" So, we will be replacing it this week. And I'll be on the hunt for a nightstand/bookcase for the room. Dh still needs to build some type of shelves/cubbies/trophy case for each boy. But we'll do that after they are back in the room. I also found an old baseball glove of dh's when he was a kid, and I think I might display it on the wall with a baseball and old bat. Very cool vintage.

I hope that dh will be done with the final trim painting, so I can post pictures sometime tomorrow. (At least of the window and closets). I'm excited to show off this new window moulding. lol! It's the little things isn't it?

Door trim, window trim and quilts...

Today I ran to Lowe's after the ballgame to get some wood trim for the boys bedroom. Now remember, I wanted that cottage trim so badly..., however when dh put it up around all the doors and window, I just didn't like it. It looked like someone had tacked scrap pieces of wood around. It also didn't compliment the crown moulding very well. SO, I decided that we will just use the trim that was originally around the doors. I don't mind it too terribly, and it will save us much money in the long run, as we won't have to replace it throughout the house. The window trim will be a different trim, and that is proving to be a tougher decision. It was the window trim that dh and I have never really liked, so we will be redoing this (once I find what I like). I may have to post pictures of each trim, so that I can get opinions.

I promised dh that I would make a decision by the weekend, so that he can finish the room. He just wants to "get it done", as he said to me yesterday. I completely understand, I want that room finished too. Feels like we've been working on it forever. I can't wait to be able to pull the finished room together, even if I don't have a nightstand yet. And speaking of finished rooms, I have two quilts for the boys beds....I have had them on a rocking chair in the spare bedroom that the boys currently occupy. When I grabbed a quilt to check colors in the room etc, I noticed a small drop of blood right in the center. It's pretty small, about the size of an eraser on the end of a pencil. I'm sure it's from one of the many scrapes they get playing football, or biking, skateboarding whatever... It's right in the middle, of a cream swatch of the fabric. Any suggestions for getting blood out without ruining, fading or bleaching the colors? It's got some red quilt squares and I wouldn't want the red to run and turn the quilt pink. It would have to be right smack in the middle of the quilt, which lays right in the middle of the bed, so you'd be sure to notice it. And even if you didn't notice it..... I would notice it. So, I have to try to get it out. Any ideas?

Still working.....

I haven't had an update to post in a couple of days.... we've actually been focused on the outside of our house lately. Trimming back the cottage roses, and weeding around the pansies and daylilies. The liriope is doing okay, but I probably should have trimmed it back again after that April cold snap. The crape myrtles are also slowly coming back with new growth. We still need to mulch everywhere...so many projects so little time. ;-)

My friend Jeannie asked what our next project is after the boys room. Well, I've been thinking about that. We have some maintenance issues to deal with concerning our landscaping. So we will have to handle some outside things first, but then I was considering renovating the boys bathroom. This should be a good before and after. The wall color is bright blue, and the cabinets are a worn oak, that have seen better days. I was originally thinking of painting the cabinets creamy white, but then I saw some painted black, and I thought it looked rather sharp. I may paint mine black and the boys the white. Dh says we need to hold off on our bathroom, as replacing the fixtures will be expensive. We will start the boys bathroom, and I plan on pricing some fixtures I saw at Southeastern Salvage. Hopefully I'll find a great deal!

We are still working on the trim around the boys room. Dh has cut it all, and it is primed. He has it on the wall (tacked up) so I could take a look at it... I'm not sure I love it. That's not a very good first reaction if you remember from my previous post. It's really simple, and while I do like that, our house just doesn't lend itself to that much of an era change. I think we will try to add a little more detailed trim on top of each header. I saw some doors and window trim in an old Home magazine I have (from 2004), and we may try to mimick it. What am I doing with a Home magazine from 2004? I pretty much save all home decorating and remodeling magazines.... unless they are way out of style. I have some from 2001 still. :-) I found some vintage suitcases a few years ago that are the perfect storage spot for my magazines.

I've also been on the hunt for some type of night table or small bookcase to place between my children's beds. I haven't found what I am looking for yet though. I know I could find it at a new furniture store, but I refuse to pay a high price for it. I went today to a furniture outlet and saw a very simple one with a price tag of $175! Yikes!! I'm on the hunt for something around $40 or less. Where we used to live, they had an awesome furniture consignment store, and I would always find stuff for the house there. Maybe I'll find some furniture items at a yard sale.....I plan on making this a regular activity soon!

As promised updated pics....

Well, I can't say that I'm feeling a lot better.... but maybe a little. My stomach seems to be gurgling less, and I managed to eat two pieces of toast and 12 oz of Gatorade. I truly hope by tomorrow I will feel more like myself. I did manage to take pictures of the boys room...and what we have done so far. There is no trim on any doors or windows yet, and the baseboard trim, (which I love), is just cut. We still need to paint it and install it.

Here is the first shot of the closets, shelves and all. It's hard to see, but above the top dowel rod of clothes are two more additional shelves that run the width of the closet. These will come in handy for storage. Of course I had to take a picture of the closets now, as their is no guarantee that it will look this neat when I turn it over to the boys!

These photos are of each side of the closet, and the last photo is of the bins I was talking about.

They can be labeled, and should hold all of the boys treasures that are currently being stored in the bottom drawers of their dressers.

We'll have some space cleared out now for clothes, which... surprise, surprise.... is what a dresser should hold!

A bin for all

stuffed animals...

The photo to the right is a pretty good picture of the color of the room. It will look great with the cottage trim around the doors and windows. Dh also replaced all the switch plates and outlets with white to go with the white trim.... Can't wait until I can pull the whole room together!

Finally- a color I love!

Yes, it is true I found a paint color for the boys room. But I'll get to that in a minute. Let me rewind just a day or so. Dh and I had a date night and had a lovely dinner out by ourselves. After dinner, I wasn't feeling quite right, but we ventured on anyway. We planned on going antiquing afterward, but the antique center was closed. So we headed to return the bins I mentioned in the previous post. Now, I have to tell you, I'm at this point not feeling very well. Not a good thing for date night and the start of our weekend. We pick up the boys and head home and I head to bed. I wake up Saturday, nauseous and not feeling real well. It's some kind of stomach virus. Gurgling stomach the works. I am not hungry, although I tried to eat a little toast etc late in the day. So it's now Sunday late afternoon, I've been in bed all weekend long with a stomach bug, and my stomach is still literally gurgling as I type. So not fun!

That being said, how could I possibly have picked a paint color? Because I have an awesome dh! He went down to get every beige brown color strip of Benjamin Moore at our local hardware store. He brought them up to our room and we each picked the ones we liked. He told me I need to go with a darker color, so I listened to him. We narrowed it down to two colors. He then drove back to the hardware store, got samples and came home to paint them on the walls. We each liked a different color, so we called the boys in and they chose the one they liked the best. (Mine) :0 Within the 1/2 hour dh was back down at the hardware store picking up a gallon and while I slept he painted the room. (He is a great man!)

Late Saturday evening, I went in to check the color with the quilt I bought for the beds. I heard something fall, but didn't pay too much attention.... when I went to leave not a few minutes later... a whole quart of white paint had fallen and spilled onto the middle of the carpeted floor!!!! Sick or not, I ran downstairs to get dh to do something. He was not his normal optimistic self, which did not bode well for the carpet. His immediate response was, "We'll have to replace the carpet." What?!?!? The carpet I was going to patch to save us a whole lot of money? Nu uh, not if I have anything to say about it. So, dh cleaned all of the top spill off with a paint spatula, and the he told me to go get the steam cleaner with warm water. I did and we went to work. I went online to to find out how to get large paint spills out of a carpet. We were doing everything we could, except we should steam the whole room, so there wouldn't be a light spot. So, we had to move everything out of the room (tons of all his tools, it looked like the garage). When that was complete, I told dh to go watch his movie, I'll finish the room.... he had done enough for the day as it was. We left the fan on and the windows open and you can not tell that a whole quart of white paint spilled on the carpet at all! Dh gave me a great compliment on how well I did cleaning it up. ( I was steam cleaning for over an hour). ;o)

So, now everything is out of the room, the carpet is clean, the closets are done, the paint is on the wall....and we are "closing in on it", as dh likes to say. Not a bad accomplishment for a totally sick weekend. I promise I will take pictures as soon as I feel better.

New growth....

Just a little update, I still have not ventured to look for a paint color. Not quite ready to do that yet..... :o) However, the closets are almost together. Dh is putting the final coat on the shelves this evening, and then he will spray them with a clear enamel protectant tomorrow. The dowel rods are up and I actually have clothes on them. (yes, I'm a happy camper!) This evening, dh and I will be exchanging some bins that will go on the closet shelves, and tomorrow evening our closets should be d-o-n-e done. Yeah!

We still have the paint color to select and the trim to do. Perhaps we'll find a color this evening. I'm not as rushed to move the kids back into that room, as I want to take my time and get it right. Today we plan to go look a night table...at an antique center nearby. The boys enjoy to go there and check out all the old stuff. I love that they are developing an interest in old things and history. I hope to post updated photos when the paint color is finalized.

Finally, I have some good news! (Small really in the scheme of things, but good none the less).... our crape myrtles that I was so concerned about after that cold snap...are finally showing new growth! What a joy to see that every time I drive by! Unfortunately the lace leaf dwarf maple, has begun to look even more pitiful than the picture I posted a few weeks ago. So, I'll be reading up on what to do to help that little tree out. Overall, while we don't have the splendid spring we were originally on track for.... it won't be a total loss either. Our daylilies have begun to bloom (those hardy things), and I think the cottage roses will soon boast some new blooms as well. I'll take some pictures in a few weeks when they really flower out!