Are you sick of hearing all about our wallpaper?  Because I am surely sick of talking about it.  Jeff does most of the dirty work when it comes to the removal.  I'm a short tempered girl and spending 8 hours removing wallpaper is not on my favorite things list.  I normally keep myself occupied with cleaning and doing laundry and making meals, but a couple of weekends ago I convinced myself that in one Saturday I could knock out the kitchen wallpaper and do my part to help Jeff.

The kitchen currently looks like this:

This wallpaper is roughly 24 years old...as old as the house.  And as in every other wallpapered room, they covered the switch plate covers.  Factor in 24 years of hands touching those buttons and the result is disgusting:

My favorite part is unlike the covers in the master bathroom, these were handily covered with some lime green masking tape:

On the Saturday that I decided to help, I began the process by using a wallpaper scorer and saturating the first section of the wall with a fabric softener/water mixture.  I'd soak a section, move to another and soak that, come back and peel the first section until I hit a dry spot, soak it again and let it set while I worked on the other section.  This went on for 8 hours.

I began working on this section:

8 hours later, this is what I have to show for it:

Minor progress, but come Saturday night, I felt like I had wasted an entire day working on this with very little to show for it.  Jeff assures me it was an accomplishment as it was a day that he could dedicate to other projects, so maybe I'll revisit wall paper stripping in the future.

In addition to the kitchen, we have one border in the living room and floor to ceiling wallpaper in the bathroom to remove before we're officially a paper free home and I cannot wait for that day!

So we left on Friday with a bathroom that was ready to be primed and painted.  Jeff had Friday off from work, and today, lucky guy, and he got the room all ready to go.

this fog is why you don't blow into the camera to remove a piece of lint

Over Friday and Saturday we contemplated which paint we were going to choose for the walls and ultimately ended up with Dorian Gray.

We chose this one for two reasons: we wanted a color that contrasted the walls in the bedroom (Dovetail) but wasn't too dark that it made the room feel smaller.  Keep in mind, we're making the bathroom functional until after March--after that all bets are off and some serious demo will be happening.  We also wanted to keep it in the brown-gray family so it  didn't look "off" when compared to the bedroom.

Jeff began by painting the closet and then working his wait out into the bathroom.  And the finished product looks infinitely better than what we had to start with:

We also decided to paint the vanity white with the rest of the wood work and make it more uniform.  Just in case you forgot what the original bathroom looked like:

I will say the pink tile appears to pop more, now that the walls are darker, but I love the gray that we chose and look forward to finishing off the bathroom completely.  

Despite all of this work, we still have the same to do list:

1. A new toilet

2. Relocating said toilet

3. Expanding the shower and including a built-in bench area

4. Removing large mirror

5. New vanity/sink space

6. Finding a solution to the French doors and/or the closet door. 

(Too many doors in one room!)

7.  New tile floors

8. New tile around the bathtub

9. Eradicate any trace of pink 

But in the meantime, we're picking out new hardware for the vanity and desperately searching for an affordable window treatment option so the bathtub can be functional as well! 

Hello, friends.  Last Thursday I left you with the before pictures of the pink bathroom.  Jeff spent the weekend working on that wall paper monstrosity and removing the ridiculously low toilet paper holder.  As of now, the bathroom currently looks like this:

I have to say, anything is better than that overwhelming amount of wall paper.  

After much discussion, we have decided to paint the bathroom for now and leave the demo until after the wedding.  We took one look at our March calendar and saw that we would have family staying with us for three out of the five weekends and all of us relying on 1.5 bathrooms just wouldn't work.

Jeff has some extra time off this holiday weekend so we are hoping to have one painted bathroom come Monday.  That is, if we can decide on a paint color.

I would like to stick with something in the same color family as our bedroom, Sherwin Williams Dovetail.  So I put together a swatch of the two colors I'm debating between:

These grays have a tint of brown/green to them which I love because the Dovetail in particular matched up perfectly with our espresso colored bedroom furniture while still looking gray enough on the wall.  The debate now, however, is whether to go darker with Gauntlet Gray or lighter with Dorian Gray in the bathroom and subsequently the walk in closet.  

Conventional wisdom tells me to stick with lighter so the dark doesn't make the two rooms feel smaller, but something about that Gauntlet Gray, combined with white wood work and some sharp window treatments appeals to me.  And priority number one, after getting the painting done, is making sure that window above the bath is adequately covered.  No free shows going on at this house!

I can't wait to fill you in on what we decide and {hopefully} have an updated bathroom come Monday! 

There are two stores that  I frequent that I could spend hours in: Target and Jo-Ann Fabric.  Target is self explanatory.  They have everything you could possibly need and aisles upon aisles of stuff to look at.  Who cares if you didn't need that cardigan?  It was 20% off!!  And that picture frame?  Surely there's a wall in need of some decor in your house.

But Jo-Ann is a different beast in itself.  I often find myself getting overwhelmed with project ideas.  I need throw pillows.  And canvas for a wall project.  And picture frames at 60% off.  And maybe I should make some curtains for the every room in the house.  Surely there's someplace to put a dried floral arrangement?  Maybe I'll start my own stationery Etsy store so I'll need some stamps and embossing materials and paper products for that.  The possibilities are endless! 

But the one thing I have to look at every time I visit the store is the home decor fabric section.  I'm a novice when it comes to sewing.  I've made burp cloths and a coupon wallet and some no sew curtains.  But I adore fabric.  I love the textures, the colors, the patterns.  The potential of making those pillows or curtains or cushions.  

So on a recent trip through Jo-Ann, I figured I should start taking pictures of the fabrics that I love so I'll actually remember what I had my eye on when it comes time to make the projects.  Here's the top three:

That navy and white houndstooth is thick enough for some beautiful throw pillow covers for one of our two living rooms upstairs.  Just a matter of getting those rooms furnished...

The light blue is a perfect canvas fabric that I would love to use for some patio furniture cushions.  Just need to get that patio set....

And that purple and gray looks similar to the Solar Flair fabric I picked out for my office curtains.  I could see this one as a roman shade or even a pouf for a little girls' room.  (I have high aspirations there)

I've also got my eye on this lime green printed fabric but I'm keeping mum on that one until I know for sure what my plan is.  Regardless, the goal for this house is to have far more color than we did in the previous house and I'm looking forward to incorporating my love of fabric along the way! 

A little light reading for your Monday since I spent the weekend focusing on the wedding planning and not setting up quality blog posts...

As you've all seen by now, Jeff and I added to our family last October by adopting this little one:

We've been working diligently at things like potty training so she can be trusted to roam the house while we're gone instead of being put in her crate, but we're not quite there yet.  After her recent spay surgery, Minnow had a cone around her neck (or an Elizabethan Collar as it's formally known) and would not fit comfortably in her crate, so we had the brilliant idea of using a portable play pen that Jeff's brother and sister in law had left in Columbus.

the patient post-op

She did fine for the first eight days.  She had to keep the cone on for ten days so we figured we'd keep her in there and then back to the crate once the cone came off.  We went about our business; I'd put her in before I left for work, Jeff would take her out when he got home.  And each night she slept in there with lots of blankets and her stuffed animals.

Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon, one week after her surgery.  I had taken her for the follow up appointment and confirmed the cone could come off at the end of that week.  I took her home, put her in the play pen, and off to work I went.  Three hours later I receive a phone call from our alarm company that motion had been detected in the living room, do I want to dispatch the police?  My heart sank, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach and all I could think about was the thief stealing my precious child and I'd never see her again.  So I authorized the police.

At this time, Jeff was on his way home from work for the day and he received the same call from the alarm company.  I called him and made sure he stayed on the phone until he was inside the house.  I kept going on and on about how I refused the microchip offer when she was getting her spay surgery and I'd never forgive myself if she was stolen and not microchipped.  

He arrived home, grabbed a hammer from the garage, and went inside....only to find that Minnow waiting for him on the steps like "Glad you're here, can you shut off that loud noise?"  The damn dog had escaped the play pen and triggered the sensor herself.  Which would have been my first thought, but the alarm installation guys specifically set the sensors so they wouldn't be triggered if someone her size were walking around.

I promptly hung up with Jeff and called the vet to get her microchipped a couple of days later.

Now our escape artist thought it was fun to get out of her play pen so she has now been relegated to the laundry room.  And just in case we weren't sure how she managed to escape, she showed us later that night when we put her to bed:

So, conehead and all, she was put back in the crate for the remaining three nights so as not to have this happen again.