The One Room Challenge-Week Three

Well I've been sick for about 9 days.  I finally went to the Dr and turns out I have pneumonia. Damn!  I thought it was taking an abnormally long period of time for me to feel better.  So not a lot got done.  I'll tell you what did go right.  The cushion fabric is out of my hands and is being made as I write this.  Yes!  I also got the rug.  The color is not quite what I was hoping for but the price was just too good to pass up.  It's growing on me though.

Then I found a couple of leopard print pillows for $16 each at Home Goods.  I was going to make them but then I just carried on with my life;).  I'm hoping they work because I really don't have the time (or energy) to do pretty much anything at this point.

When we moved in the house, the previous owner's daughter gave us some old pictures of the house and some information about who first occupied it.  We also have the original blueprint.  I plan on framing these and putting them up as a little homage to the original owners.  

I wonder why anyone in their right mind would have taken the porch off?  Shaking head, rolling eyes.

Now on to the big fat bummer news (besides the fact that I have pneumonia!).  The window treatments. I plan on doing lambrequins.  Exactly like this, to be specific.

Via McGrath II Blog

And no, I'm not tackling these myself.  I'm supposed to approve a template which hasn't even been made  yet so I'm pretty positive that they won't be ready. But then again, never say never.  Whatevs.

First things first though.  I've got to get well.  I haven't had the energy to look at what everyone's been doing, which I'm bummed about, but I'm sure it's all rainbows and sunshine.  So what are you waiting for?  Go check out The One Room Challengers and Linkers.  Go. Now.

The One Room Challenge-Week Two

Welcome back to the One Room Challenge Linking Edition.  It's week two and, ugh, I'm a tad nervous about being able to finish.  I'm pretty sure the cushion will be ready in time, but the window treatments...well?  I'll talk about those next week.  I'm hoping(praying) that I may have some news on those next week.  In the meantime I was able to get some retail therapy in.  Bought this rug on Amazon.

I like that it's neutral and sturdy but the pattern keeps it from being totally boring.  Keep in mind that I haven't actually seen it in person though so my opinion could change.  Hope not.  And I did make a switch in the colorway of the fabric I'm using.  Once I got the Grass (right) colorway in the room it felt kinda tired and yellowed out.  The Leaf colorway was so much more fresh.  When you have two stinky animals and two kids and hence way too much familiarity with poop and you're tired all the time, fresh is what you crave so fresh it is!

Still need to stain this bench.  Oh and we're not slaughtering humans at the house.  That's just a prop for the Halloween party. Lol, must learn to edit.

Ignore my gnarled old lady hand in this one.  WTF!

So just a wee bit of progress.  I've got some other things on order though so hopefully more to share next week.  Make sure to stop by the One Room Challenge Varsity players and all of us linkers as well.  So much eye candy out there and I for one am always so inspired by others.  Have a great week!

The One Room Challenge-Week One

Well Linda's One Room Challenge is here again.  I'm joining in as a participant, but I'm doing the "light" version this time around.  No crazy reno like the last one.  I just don't have the time and I'm planning a huge Halloween costume party at my house so it's going to get crazy around here. This time around I'm doing my foyer.  I'm cheating a bit since we already got the wallpaper in but the room isn't "finished" so that's my excuse.  I'll show you what the foyer looked like originally and a few months ago and what we've been able to accomplish.

Blurry picture of when we first looked at the house

During reno

Mid-painting

And now with the wallpaper.  I'm purposely not showing the whole foyer.  Yes, I'm a tease but you'll get over it.

Anyhoo, I just recently found a little bench on Craigslist that needs a little work.  So you can see that I got a big jumpstart on the challenge.  But there's still a lot to do and some of it will be out of my hands.  Here's the list.

-Stain bench
-Fabric selection for cushion and pillows
-Window treatments for windows going up the stairs
-Area rug
-Console table and styling
-Mirrors and/or artwork

So here's my vision...but don't hold me to it.

Lamp via Horchow, Console and mirrors via One Kings Lane, Fabric Schumacher, Fabric efabricdecor.com, Tape via tasseloutlets.com

As for design, since the walls are very traditional chinoiserie I'm probably going to give everything else a more modern twist.  The first floor colors are going to be greens and blues, and I'm leaning toward greens for the foyer.  I'm also throwing some animal print in there for good measure.  One thing that is not going to happen in time is a stairway rug.  Eventually I want to have a continuous rug all the way up to the third floor.  Unfortunately the third floor staircase has yet to be addressed so it's going to have to wait. That's all I've got so far.  Stop by next week to see my progress, and don't forget to check out all the other ORC challengers and linking participants.

Still Trying To Repair The Sunroom

My poor husband is still at it.  Good news is that the sun porch hasn't fallen over. I kept expecting the walls to just fall flat like you see in the movies. So we've got that going for us.  He's been able to put up some new supports for the walls, do the wiring and add insulation.

I bought something recently that came with a ton of styrofoam so he's using that as the bulk with some spray insulation to fill in the gaps.  Yay, recycling!  He also fit in a new sill.  Next week the new knee wall will get drywall and then it's on to baseboard.  Of course there's still the prep/painting to do.  Wah-wah.  Progress is progress though.  I'll posting on thursday also for the start of The One Room Challenge.   Anyone else doing it?  I can't wait!

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

Yep, it's been a while since I posted.  Enjoying life I suppose.  Things seem to move in slow motion over the summer but now that school's back in session we've picked up again as well.  Finally found someone to fix the crown.  It's not perfect, but after waiting for what seemed like an eternity to find someone to do something, I'm calling it good.  Sometimes you just have to say f-it and move on.  The good news is that we finally got the wallpaper up.

I have to admit that at first I wasn't sure about it.  I think it just felt so different and traditional, but now I adore it.  I definitely have some plans for the foyer but I'm saving them for the upcoming One Room Challenge....maybe....if I can get motivated.

 We also found some doors in the attic that use to close the sunroom off which were just painted and hung.

Now on to the bad and ugly.  No, it's not the mess you see in the room above.  That's just reno and real life people!  Anyway, remember when we started on the sunroom?  Well it's turned out to be a total cluster you know what.  I feel like I've spent a ridiculous amount of time scraping off flaking paint, meanwhile my husband has removed the lower plaster and baseboard to add wiring.

And then he noticed this.

 Hmm, termite damage.  We don't have active termites, but just how bad is the damage?  Well after removing the plaster we found that the wood that is supposed to be holding up this structure has been practically devoured by termites and is not even really attached to anything anymore.

This is the wood that was removed.  It's so chewed through that it's light as a feather.  And now we can see right to the outside in the corners.  Great.

So, needless to say, my husband's got his work cut out for him.  Just one more thing to add to the list.  I have to say that in my head, this room is going to be amazing when it's done.  I have plans to do a ceiling to floor bookcase with a library ladder and eventually french doors out onto the porch.  It'll be great, but this one step forward two steps back crap is getting old.  Plus it's going to be one expensive room to finish.  Why oh why can't anything just be easy (and cheap) in this house?!?!

Scratching My Head And Twiddling My thumbs

So getting the molding fixed is on a major hold which means so is wallpaper.  Major drag.  We've searched high and low for someone to fix the darn thing.  We may have to start looking in another city! Let's pretend for a second that things were moving forward.  This is the wallpaper that's going in.

And this piece of furniture that we bought on Craigslist is also going in this space.

It's currently in our dining room but is really not the right size for the space.  It has the same tones as the wallpaper so I think it will look really nice and has some storage too which is always a plus!

Now back to reality.  Since a big fat nothing is happening in the foyer, I decided the other day that I might shift my focus to the sunroom.  Ugh!

And I thought the foyer was bad.  Apparently the last person to paint this room had something against primer.  Since it's flaking off everywhere I can only imagine that they used latex over oil.  Fun times ahead...

Finally Getting To The Foyer

You might think that my long break was just that.  A break from everything.  Nope.  Turns out we've finally started to work on our foyer.  It was starting to get embarrassing having people come to the front entrance.  It's not quite done yet, but there is some definite progress in the right direction.  It's gone from this,

to this.

Better, right?  I mean it's not done, but it already looks tons improved.  But what a pain!  Really the whole thing needed to be stripped and repainted, but that was just not going to happen.  We tried to scrape as much as we could but in the end we said screw perfection and just got to painting.  Character.   After all, the house is 120 yrs old.  So that's what's happening over here.  We should be done painting (hopefully) next weekend.  The only thing then that will truly hold up getting wallpaper is that we need some plaster repair of the crown and apparently there is no one still alive in this area that knows how to do that.  Awesome.  So we may have to get it made out of wood.  I'm sure that will be cheap...not!  In the meantime, just in case anyone is interested, no, I didn't finish the craft room and the desk is still pink.  After the One Room Challenge it was like a bomb went off in it and I just haven't had the energy to get back to it.  And after all, it is about 85% done which is about the time that I get bored and start something new.  Ha!