The Boys’ Rooms

Feb 25, 2011 by Lindsay

I have decided to share pictures of some incomplete rooms, because I know it could be awhile before they are completely complete!

Our house has 3 bedrooms, so Andrew and Joshua are in one room and Zachary is in the nursery. Someday they will all be in the same room and we will either have a guest room or a girls’ room!

This is the current big boys’ room

People are always shocked when they see 5 beds in the room when they walk in, but someday all 3 boys will be in a twin bed so we figured we might as well have an extra for a friend or cousin that might stay the night. Once no one is in the crib I hope to get a dresser for that wall. All beds and cribs are from Furniture Warehouse, twin bedding is Nautica from Burlington Coat Factory, wall art is from Beall’s Outlet, crib bedding is from Target, bedskirts and the banner were made by me!

Things that are still missing - monogram prints for the frames above the crib, mattress and bedding on the 4th bunk, closet doors and curtains. I will be sure to share once it’s finally complete!

Here is the current nursery….prepare yourself, it’s pretty exciting!

In case you are wondering, we are not intentionally going for the “simple” look here! This room was our catch-all while we moved in and I finally dug myself out from the boxes and now it’s just really empty! We have a twin bed that we plan to put in here and I hope to find a dresser or chest of drawers to re-do as well. I would love to do a scripture or something on one of the walls, along with getting some floating shelves for pictures and knick knacks.

The bed and bedding matches the one in the big boys’ room and I made the curtains. Things that are still missing – well, almost everything!

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Helping Hands

Feb 20, 2011 by Spencer

Today was a nice February day in Florida, a perfect day for some yard work. My parents got the boys a little playset for the new back yard the only problem was that yard looked something like this:

With the help of some friends and family we have cleared much of the yard but still had the orange tree stump right where the playset will go. So today was the day to get rid of the stump. I had promised Andrew and Joshua they could help me outside. They always want to help mommy and daddy with special projects. So here are a few pictures of them ‘helping’.

We also found lots of buggies, including rollie pollies.

Before the working commenced we walked over to grandmom’s house and pickup some special toys, trucks that I played with as a boy.

With their help we got this 2 hour job done in a cool 5 hours.

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Our Kitchen – Before & After

Feb 14, 2011 by Lindsay

This is by far the part of the house I am most excited about sharing! We bought this house knowing we wanted to make quite a few updates to it. At first we talked about just painting the existing cupboards and replacing the appliances but when it came down to it I insisted that the kitchen be the first priority. We want to stay in this house for a long time and I wanted my kitchen to be a room that I love for a long time too! It literally is the very center of this house, it’s where I spend most of my time and it turned out exactly like I hoped it would!

So, here you go….before and after!

We removed the wall you see by the fridge to make it feel more open and moved the fridge to another wall.

We expanded the wall to the end of the protruding counter top so we could add more cabinets.

I love the decorations I found for my countertops, they are a combination of stuff I already had with a few new things mixed in.

This corner is seriously one of my favorite parts of our house, it makes me happy when I look at it. I think it’s the pink flowers, literally the only pink thing in our house that’s not hanging in my closet!

This is my favorite picture ever of my Mom with Andrew, I love having her in the kitchen with me. And a picture of four little beach babes, brings a smile to my face every time I look at it!

Hope you enjoyed the tour! For those interested, our cabinets are Shenandoah Winchester from Lowe’s. The countertop is formica from Lowe’s. The backsplash is Wolfe Creek subway tile in the color “bone” from Lowe’s. Paint is Valspar “Cliveden Gray Morning” from Lowe’s. Appliances are Whirlpool Gold from Lowe’s. (Yes, the employee’s at Lowe’s know us by name! haha!)

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Our Weekend

Jan 23, 2011 by Lindsay

Thank you everyone for your sweet comments on my furniture re-do! I love the way that blogging allows people to share ideas and inspiration as well as allowing us to encourage one another!

This past weekend was full of more around-the-house projects for us! Saturday morning Spencer got to work on our kitchen backsplash, I am so very excited to see it completed! Here’s a teaser for you….

He had a little shadow all morning that was super helpful!

Since Daddy was trying to work inside I took the boys outside to let them play and I decided to do a little landscaping demolition. I worked for about 3 hours on one corner in the front of the house and literally had 4 trash cans and 1 bag of yard trash. I only encountered one snake and half a dozen lizards! Our yard had been so neglected it’s crazy. When we first bought the house you could drive down the street and almost not notice there was even a house here because it was so overgrown! I kid not! Then Spencer’s cousins husband (haha!) come over with his commercial yard tools and did some MAJOR demo in the yard. I am sure the yard trash guys will be happy with us this week!

Here is what the front of the house looks like now, all exposed! In need of a good pressure washing, some paint, new landscaping and maybe shutters!

Of course this post would not be complete if I didn’t share some pictures of all the boys!

Joshua found a new way to carry around all his loot!

Look who is 6 weeks old! I had to snap a picture of him at 6 weeks old in the outfit he wore home from the hospital. I am secretly glad he is still wearing newborn diapers and clothes. But we are down to a few diapers and when they run out I am moving him up to size one and today at church I noticed that his little wrists were hanging out of his sleeves, so it might be time to bust out the 0-3 month clothes!

If Zachary is awake his eyes usually look like this….I figure he knows he better keep and eye one his crazy big brothers!

Working out his neck muscles!

“Hey, how you doin’?”

Happy Sunday night to all!

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Master Furniture – Before & After

Jan 19, 2011 by Lindsay

I finally finished re-staining our master bedroom furniture! Wahoo!!!

Let me recap for you. Spencer and I got married 4 1/2 years ago. A very sweet couple from our church was getting ready to move and no longer wanted their bedroom furniture. They offered it to us for FREE and we accepted.

Then this past September we buy a new house and I get so excited to re-do our master bedroom including buying new bedroom furniture. After browsing online and looking at the price of a king bedroom set I realize that there is no way we are buying brand new furniture! Then I stumble across THIS blog post from my favorite decorator blog and I think, “Hey! I can do this!”

So, here you have it….BEFORE

And….AFTER

I followed Centsational Girl’s instructions exactly, but I will give you an abbreviated re-cap of the process anyways.

• First I removed all hardware, the doors and hinges, handles and the decorative panels from the doors.

• I then sanded (some by hand, some with a rotary sander) all surfaces. I did not sand down to the raw wood, it wasn’t neccessary.

• Then I primed the surface using Minwax Wood Conditioner.

• I then applied two coats of Minwax Gel Stain in Walnut. (Waiting 24 hours in between each coat.)

• After the last coat of stain was completely dry I applied two coats of Minwax Wipe on Polyurethane, waiting a few hours in between each coat.

• Since my decorative panels weren’t wood I couldn’t stain them so I spray painted them with a color that was as close a match as I could find.

• I re-attached the doors using the original hinges and new knobs and pulls.

I refinished our nightstand, the dresser pictured and a huge armoire. Total I spent under $100. The new knobs and pulls were most of that because I needed so many. One can of the gel stain covered all three pieces with two coats each with none left over, but the wood conditioner and poly will last me for many more projects. This project really was easy, just a little time consuming! I recommend it to anyone wanting to give their old furniture a facelift!

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First of Many

Jan 6, 2011 by Lindsay

I am finally going to share pictures of part of the house! I know my family has been patiently waiting for updated pictures of completed rooms, unfortunately we don’t have any completely completed rooms! But I did take pictures the other day after I cleaned our bathroom to at least show you how it looks so far.

So here you go, our master bathroom….ignore the lack of lightbulbs, a plug cover and decorations. Also, the mirror is not going to stay, it’s just one I had, I am hoping to find one that is as wide as the vanity.

Rugs and a shower curtain are also missing!

The tile in our shower is probably one of my favorite things in the entire house!

So hopefully I will be back soon with a completed master bathroom, and before and after pictures for comparison purposes! I am currently trying to make a decision on fabric for curtains in the playroom. I went to Hancock Fabrics the other day and they have a whole section of decorator fabric on sale for $5 a yard! I need to hurry up and choose before the sale is over or someone buys all of the one I want! It’s hard to decide when the sample they give you is so teeny tiny!

I’ll be back soon with more updates, but let me end with a few pictures of my baby boy!

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