The Office (or Beer Room) that Became a Nursery

Wendhurst Castle has a main floor, a second story, a finished attic and a someday, hopefully, finished basement. We’ve worked hard on the second story to make it a comfortable place to spend our sleeping hours.
We’ve made over the master bedroom, a peachy pink, woodsy, metal window blinded room into a comfortable and cozy room for our daily (nightly?) use. You can read more about that process here.

We took the bunkbed filled, wallpapered, grass green carpeted second bedroom and turned it into a light and bright guest room with lots of contrast and class. Go here to see more before and afters.

We’ve even transformed the landing from this depressingly dark area to a fun and bright space.

Someday, we’ll also renovate the bathroom, but at least it’s not a dark brick filled fluorescent cave anymore.

So all that remained on the second floor in need of our attention was the “office/beer room/future office/eventually became the nursery” room. It’s a tiny room that was in okay shape structurally and had a lot of really functional built-ins, but like every other part of Wendhurst Castle, cosmetically it was a wreck. The only thing this room had going for it when we bought it was some nice Berber carpet, but we tore that out along with all the carpet in the first few weeks because living with someone else’s pet stained carpet is gross. :)  Oh and btw, the hardwood floors underneath were the most paint speckled, abused and ruined floors in the house. Except for maybe the guest room. Or the dining room. :-) 
Here’s what it looked like on our first walk through. Immediately on your left was the little closet.

It, like all of the walls not clad in cork or paneling, was painted a lovely shade of highlighter blue. A neon, bright, hurts-my-eyes to look at it shade of blue.

The back wall sported one window, a paneling clad wall, and above the paneling, where the ceiling slants a bit, a lovely stretch of cork. (Exactly like the cork in the living room)

The south wall was clad in more paneling, a funky builtin shelf, and the second window. I need to mention here that both windows are “custom made” windows that desperately need to be replaced. When we had a window guy out to quote us on new windows, he politely said “I’ve have never seen such… interesting, custom windows.” The back window does not open unless you unscrew the entire frame and literally pull it out of the wall. It’s genius I tell ya.

The west wall is entirely taken up by a builtin desk and cupboard. They are very functional, but again, more paneling, and more cork. And last up, the crème de la crème.

The wall mounted builtin beer fridge. Yep, you read that right. One of those small beer fridges was screwed into the wall with a lovely little builtin table below it. For setting your beer on, of course.
Funny story, after removing this fridge from the wall, we used it for a little bit and then decided to sell it. I put it on Craigslist for $40, and a guy emailed me about it within a couple of hours. He came with his family to pick it up, and told me he was going to put it in his garage to be, wait for it, his beer fridge! :-) No lie.
Anyways, so that’s where we started in this room. Initially this room was going to be my office/craft room, but renovating it got pushed to the back burner until I got pregnant, and then the need for a craft room was much less urgent  than the need for a safe, comfortable place for a baby. :-) Next up I’ll show you how we fixed up this room and made it into a cute, fun little room for our little man.

New Dining Room Curtains

 As I mentioned last time, I moved the painting that was previously in the dining room into the living room. I’ve been tweaking a few other things in the dining room too. This room just never seems just right to me, so I’m working on a couple of little things.
Previously, the curtains that hung in this room were ones I had altered; I added a couple of yards of steely blue sari fabric to ready made gold silk curtains.

At first I had the sari fabric gathered with a tassel,

I tweaked the tab tops on the gold curtains and painted the rods to freshen them up, 

Then I decided that I was tired of tweaking these curtains and just went ahead and replaced them with something simple and crisp – cream panels.

Lover really liked the gold/blue curtains, so I really tried to make them work – for almost four years. I really like the way the new curtains make this side of the room look lighter and brighter, but they are a little plain compared to the previous ones.

I liked the sparkle and shine that the previous ones had. So now I am stuck. Do I leave the cream panels? Dress them up a little? Go back to the blue ones? Do something else entirely? Am I asking too many questions? :)  No seriously, I’d love to hear your opinions – I obviously need the help!

Paintings, Photos and Pianos

 Remember the painting that Lover commissioned for my birthday a couple of years ago?

Well I moved it. :)  Up until now it has hung in the dining room, over the built-in desk. But I removed the desk last year (and never showed you! Bad blogger!) and it just looked lonely hanging over top of nothing. :) And I always worried that whatever we were serving on the buffet would somehow damage the painting right above it. And I just don't need any added stress in my life, ya know? 

Plus, I wanted to create a little area in the living room to display some pictures of the little monster that joined our family a few months ago. So I did a switcheroo.
This is what the area over the piano looked like last time I showed you.

It’s basically stayed that way, with a few minor tweaks here and there, mostly because I am incapable of leaving things completely alone. :) But here's what it looks like now. 

I replaced the big picture with the painting, and replaced all the pictures in the skinny frame with pics of the little man.
On the piano itself are a few more frames – one we received from our wedding that’s filled with pics of Lover and I, a picture of my parents with Javi, and my Willow Tree figurines. I was so touched to receive the little family one for Christmas from my sister in law. She knew that I really wanted it, and I cried when I opened it! :) Thanks Steph!

So now this area is our little photo corner, and I am trying to keep it semi-updated. Not an easy task when your four month old is growing by leaps and bounds. Did I mention that he is in all his six month clothes, and he’s really pushing the length of some of those outfits? We’re hoping it means he’ll be tall. :)

Nightstand Revamp

 When I moved back to the States a friend of the family gifted me with a set of bedroom furniture – a dresser and a nightstand of lovely honey colored wood, very solid and in great shape.

I was so grateful because I needed everything and all of my money was going towards a car. :)  I used that nightstand for all of my single years, at our apartment, and in our master bedroom of this house up until last summer. You can sort of see it in this picture. 

Last summer I found a set of matching nightstands on Craigslist for a steal, so I scooped them up for the master bedroom. Which meant that I now had an extra nightstand without a home.
At the same time, I was trolling Craigslist for a skinny little nightstand for the guest room. I had the white curvy one in there already, but whoever slept on the opposite side of the bed was both lamp and nightstand-less. So I was on a mission to find a little table for that spot.
You see where this is going, don’t you? :) Yep, I put on my thinking cap and realized that I had the perfect piece sitting in the attic. So I hauled it down to the porch and got started making it over to work in the guest room.

I had a free quart of satin black paint that I used to paint the whole nightstand. Then I used a gallon of white paint we also already had to paint the drawer. It took me an hour or so on a summery afternoon, and I left both pieces outside to dry in the sun.

Then the wind started up and literally threw my drawer and nightstand twenty feet across the porch! So I repainted. :) And let them cure again, this time on a non windy day.

Hobby Lobby has a great selection of interesting knobs, much like Anthropologie but without the ridiculous price tag. I took a drive out there to select the perfect knob for my freshly painted table, and came home with a fun geometric looking one. In black and white of course!

So here is the finished product. Normally it sits nice and straight in the corner, but our bed is currently out on loan so you got the nice and pretty angled shot. :)

I let the paint cure for a million years before setting that lamp on it, so hopefully it will keep its nice painted finish for a long time. I also want to point out what a nice black this paint was. It's really rich and beautiful.  

And while we are talking about this little corner, I found the lamp at Goodwill, put a fresh white shade on it, and also hung up some black and white postcards I bought years ago in Paris. They were just the right touch for this room.

I’ve also gone back and forth for some time now on painting those reddish brown floors white - this IS the black and white guest room after all! And the floors in here are in really bad shape. But that’s a project for another day. Today’s project was the nightstand, and it’s all done! Yay me! :)

Gallery Wall

 One of the projects I worked on last year was filling our stairwell with a gallery wall. I showed you a preview months ago of the first few frames hanging up. I just worked on the wall a few frames at a time as I came across pictures that I knew I wanted on the wall. It was a great opportunity to go through old prints, pictures I had saved for scrapbooking, and the myriad of other memorabilia I had squirreled away.

By working on the wall a little at a time, it forced me to take a much more organic, laid back approach to hanging everything. I didn’t plan the whole wall out in advance, I just worked on about 4-6 frames at a time. This helped spread out the cost (although I did catch a killer $1/frame sale at AC Moore) and ensured that things didn’t look too planned.

That’s why you see a few funny little holes and spaces throughout the wall. They don’t bother me though, some I’ve filled in with tiny little pieces, and others are just empty. And I am surprisingly okay with it!

I was able to include some postcards from our travels, original watercolors (some by me, some by pros) pictures of family and friends, cards we received when we bought the house, pictures I’ve taken, some of the pictures that used to be on the stairs themselves, cards Lover has given me or I’ve given him, quotes we love, information about the places we grew up, and most recently, some pictures from my pregnancy and a picture of little Javi’s feet.

The end result is a lot like us. Eclectic, a mishmash of our travels, a lot about our relationship, a little bit of our baby, all mixed in with our loved ones. The pictures have already evolved a bit since I finished hanging everything up, and there is still plenty of space to keep adding on to the wall.

All of the frames are those simple black plastic ones that the glass clips into. I hung the vast majority of them with command hooks and strips because they are so light. They’re actually really secure there on the wall, we’ve yet to lose any and only the ones hanging from screws get crooked. I may even switch those to strips so that everything stays in place. And it is really easy to just pop out the glass on any of the frames to put up a new picture.

I love the final look. I love that it is personal, doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it’s not overly planned out. It always makes me smile when we have guests over, and they stop on their way up the stairs to look at all the pictures and artwork. That’s the greatest compliment in my opinion!

Greek Key in Gold

 When we bought Wendhurst Castle, the front door needed to be replaced. Like really, really needed to be replaced. It didn’t lock or close, and the window was broken. Very safe. :-)

 When we replaced the door over Father’s Day weekend a few years ago we put up new trim on the inside and out, painting the outdoor trim and finishing the indoor trim to match the existing woodwork. I’m still inordinately proud of the stain matching that I accomplished in there.

Then, the next summer, we hung up a new light in the entryway, painted the ceiling with a fresh coat of white, and put a light gray blue on the sliver of wall above all the doorways. (The same blue that is on the back of the door and in the staircase.) My intention was always to do something decorative above the doorways, but it took me a while to figure out what to do.

Finally, this summer it hit me. I settled on a simple Greek key design in a metallic gold paint. I’m going to guess that I completed this project in May or June, because it wasn’t very hot, and I wasn’t very pregnant yet. Which was a good thing because I spent about eight hours up on a stepladder, staring at the ceiling.

I bought a stencil blank at the craft store. It’s basically just a piece of clear plastic. I printed out the design I wanted and traced it onto the plastic, and then cut it out with an x-acto knife. I used repositionable spray adhesive on the back of the stencil, which really helped make things go much more smoothly. I had measured an even amount down from the ceiling all around, so I just made sure to line up my stencil top with those marks every time.

Then it was just a matter of stenciling little by little, moving the stencil over a few feet and repeating the process. I ended up doing two coats because I liked the coverage better.

A few things I learned:

• I would buy a longer stencil next time. I think mine was about 18in long, which meant I had to reposition it constantly. This meant I needed more spray adhesive, which ultimately made the stencil really gummy and difficult to work with.


• Stencil paint dries incredibly fast. I liked the coverage of two coats but made it more difficult on myself by going all around the walls twice, moving the stencil each time. It would have been much easier to simply wait a couple of minutes and add another coat before moving the stencil.

In the end, I really like the finished product. It adds a little bit of interest and shimmer above the doorways, and it only took a day to complete.
What do you think?

P.S. I waited to take pictures of this project until after I had the baby because I knew one of the shots required me laying on the floor, and it would be too much effort to get down on the floor and then get back up again. How terrible is that? ;-) 

Messy House, Quiet Heart

 Last week Javi went down for an unexpected nap around 9am. (He usually doesn’t go to sleep until 10 or 11am. That day he took both naps! Hurray!) When he dozed off, I immediately started to plan out the tasks that I could accomplish in the next 30-45 minutes. I had laundry to get going, dishes to clean up, and clutter all around the house.

As I walked into the kitchen, a little voice in my head said “This would be the perfect opportunity to spend some time with Jesus!” See I had just been telling Lover the day before how I’ve yet to really find enough consistency in my schedule to work my morning quiet time back in. and now I was faced with an unexpected nap.

So, I reigned in my inner neat freak, grabbed my notebook and Bible and sat down for some distraction free study time. I’ve been working on a study about living a victorious life and it’s been really awesome. I’ve been struggling with the feeling that “I can’t do this (whatever this may be)”, “it’s too hard”, “I don’t know how to live victoriously” and the like, so the dedicated time to really study out some verses was really awesome.

My favorite realization from my study time? The definition of the word “overcome” means “get the better of”. So when I read
“be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” I imagine Jesus saying with a smile – don’t worry guys! I’ve got this!
At the end of my study time, signaled by a two foot tall little man in the other room, my house was still a wreck, but my heart was at peace. I’m so glad I let the dishes sit a little longer. It was so worth it.