It should surprise, um, no one, that I have a blue dining room.

New light and new curtains and I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!

While we were in NY, John put in a new floor in our little office/den/school room.
It is gorgeous!

“It was supposed to be an easy project.”

When have I ever said that before?

All I was going to do was paint the shelves so they didn’t stand out so much.  Normally I prefer wood to white, but these just didn’t fit with everything else going on in the house (kitchen cabinets are white and the rooms open to one another, too).

After consulting my friend Diane, I intended to paint these shelves white and paint the back of them a deep grey.  Then I intended to paint the fireplace a deep grey as well.

Without a basement, I had to do the shelves and doors in my bedroom, AND I could only do one shelf at a time b/c space was at a premium.

I bought expensive paint, like the kind I had used in NY to pain my kitchen, my laundry room, and Nan’s kitchen.

And then the paint wouldn’t stick.

Turns out it wasn’t ALL real wood.

Once I’d started there was no turning back.  So I had to just use plain 123Primer and wall paint.  I hope it holds up!

The shelves were made of the same fake wood (who knew!) so we decided, instead, to get new shelves and leave them wood toned. 

I am very happy with the results. 

I decided not to mess with the fireplace and back of the shelves because I was just D.O.N.E. at that point.  It’s almost time to start my new job.  And I want to move on the the den and the dining room updates while I am at it.

And I forgot to share the kitchen update.  Just a wall, and we painted the hardware for the shelves a deep gold.

Sometimes paint is just okay. Sometimes it is good.  Sometimes it is a HOME RUN.

This one is a home run in my opinion.

If you’d asked me last Christmas if we would still be in this house this fall, I would have said, “I doubt it.”

If you had asked me at Easter if we would still be in the house this fall, I would have said, “Oh.  Absolutely not.”

And then – the economy broke.  Interest rates are double what they were last summer.  Even though there are a lot of houses on the market that could meet our needs better, we are staying put.

The answer to that?  I’ve been doing some updates.

Our friends gave us a gift card last Christmas that we put to good use and we bought this gorgeous light.

After all the updates we did on our Pannell Road house during the last 12 months we lived there, we have somewhat enjoyed not doing all that many home updates since we’ve moved in.

The one part of the house we didn’t care for, and indeed, they didn’t even show on the real estate websites, was the ugly powder room.

We had intended to tackle the project in November, but every time I ordered a vanity we’d get a shipment delay or a product cancellation.  We needed a certain size and we had a very hard time just finding a light wood vanity.

In the end, we love what we picked out.

The snowy weekend in January offered me enough time to get the wallpaper up.

We spray painted the light with the plan to reuse it.

We had to finagle the trim wood a bit.

Then John started on the shiplap look for the bottom.

Once we got the vanity in place, we realized the light was going to be way off-center.

So we had to hold off til on the light til another light arrived.  We needed a light that would cover the current electric openings in the wall.  The first one came and was bent so we had to reorder.

Finally the new light came and John hung the mirror.

I still need a towel bar and some jade towels.

The first clue the painter would be coming soon was when paint cans appeared on my doors step.

Then Thursday morning at 8AM I got the call just as men were showing up to the door.

the den, kitchen, master bedroom and Johanna and Katriel’s bedroom are getting painted today!