Downstairs Bathroom: Spring 2009

We just have one half bath on the first floor of our house, it is off the back hallway/kitchen area. This bathroom started out a peachy-cream color, with cream-colored beadboard. It had an older, light-colored wood vanity, and it's most unique feature was a wall-mounted pull-chain toilet. I don't have before pics, again, so I pulled the one to the left from the internet so you get the idea. Everyone thought this toilet was very cool- except for us. It's main problem was that it didn't flush correctly! In any event, a couple of years ago I painted this bathroom Behr's Chianti, a nice deep wine color, but then we decided to fully re-do the bathroom with a new toilet and vanity, so I decided to change the color again.

Here's the new bathroom now. The color is Benjamin Moore Nantucket Gray and the beadboard and trim is Decorator's White, of course.

The toilet is a super-charged (hehe) Toto, we have the same exact one in our master bath. The vanity I found on a website called www.sinksfaucetsandmore.com. It came in cherry or black as well, and had a choice of 6 granite countertops, with the sink built in. The matching mirror came along with it. The sconces are Restoration Hardware Campaign single sconces in satin nickel, just like in the master bath. The faucet is Kohler Forte in satin nickel. Faux wood window blinds are from Home Depot, and that sailboat print above the toilet is from Home Goods. The floor is the same as it's always been, and works perfectly with everything else!

Living Room: Fall 2008

Finally, I have a "before" picture for this blog. I was so good for so long at documenting everything in Kodak Gallery albums, but when I left Fidelity, I somehow lost all my photos when I changed my email address on my Kodak account. Boo. Anyways, I was able to find this one, not-very-good "before" picture of the living room. It was taken Christmas 2006.

The paint in the room was a solid "cream" much like the rest of the house. Like brass, cream was a main theme that I set out to squash very early on. The big beautiful windows in the room (there are 5, with half-moon windows above each) were covered by very heavy, outdated, mustardy-colored drapes with a striped valance on top. The furniture wasn't bad at all, we had a very big comfy couch, loveseat, and chair that Shane's parents had left for him, and round end tables as well as a matching coffee table. The area rug was most likely from Shane's Lexington house.

The windows without the drapes, plus a test paint color. I literally tried 20-something shades of beige before I found one we liked. Beige is tough! It can be too yellow, too warm, too gray, too purple, the list goes on. We finally decided on Benjamin Moore Cotswold from the Aura paint collection, in 75% strength. Although lightening the base color worked for us in this case, I don't recommend doing it, because even taking it to 75% can change the shade. It's much better/easier to just find a full-strength color you like, I know that now.

Ollie and Kiki hanging out on the old drapes.

The new rug we found at Building #19 in Burlington, MA. This place has the BEST selection of wool and Oriental rugs! They have all sizes, prints, and colors.

A couple pictures of the paint-in-progress. We use a company called Alpha Painting for our big paint jobs. Their foreman is Socrates, you'll see his name quite a few times in this blog. All trim, the fireplace, and the wall from the chair rail down became Decorator's White. The bright white trim against the mocha-colored paint looks amazing, and really pops.

While the painting was being completed, we hung out in our 3 season room, which is right off the living room through the French doors. We loved spending time in this room, it was so cozy! Our eventual plan for this room is to make it a kid's TV/play room, with wall-to-wall carpeting, a sectional couch, and storage for toys, movies, etc. It is already fully heated which is great.

The new furniture, like our master bedroom furniture, is made by Klaussner and was also purchased at Jordan's. We bought a couch, two large arm chairs, and 2 matching ottomans.

We just recently bought a new coffee table and end tables. They are Paula Deen, from Jordan's as well. We love the expanding top surface of the coffee table, perfect for dinner and Jeopardy!

And...the completed room.

Well, ALMOST complete. We still need to replace that brass fireplace door! Soon:) The Roman shades were made custom by Calico Corners. The mirror is from Pottery Barn. TV stand and corner shelf are from Restoration Hardware's Camden collection. The new wall sconces are from bellacor.com....best lighting website ever! Huge selection, and free shipping on most items. I forgot to mention that after the painting was completed, we also stripped and darkened the parquet floor. We only brought it a shade or two darker, but it became more chestnut and less honey-colored, and we like it so much better.

Master Bedroom

Right after we did the master bathroom, we figured we should have the painters paint the bedroom while they were here. I had attempted to do it myself and it wasn't going so well. It was formerly painted cream with a deeper cream sponge paint-type pattern over the base color, from the chair rail up. The chair rail and wall below it were cream. The draperies were cream as well, and were long and made of heavy silk. We selected Benjamin Moore Montpelier for paint for the top part of the wall, which is a nice deep blue-gray, and the chair rail and wall below it are now Decorator's White.

Although we loved having the king sleigh bed, our master bedroom is divided into two halves, separated by a wall and 2 steps. The 2 steps lead to a sunken sitting area, which the bathroom is off of, and this area contains 6 huge built-in drawers, and 2 large closets as well. The king bed really crowded the upper, sleeping portion of the room. The new bedroom set we selected is Klaussner, and we got it at Jordan's Furniture. It's a queen bed, large armoire, and 2 nightstands. We didn't need a dresser due to the built-ins and our ample closets.

The Roman shades are from Pottery Barn and are chocolate toile. Bedding is chocolate stripe Italian stitch from Restoration Hardware.

This is Andrew Wyeth's "Master Bedroom", a print I have loved since seeing it at someone's house while babysitting when I was a teenager. We have most of our framing done at Art and Frame Source here in North Andover, but some of it has been done at Marjon in Hyannis.

For the lower portion of the room, we bought 2 dark leather chairs and a matching ottoman, also from Jordan's. The rug in that area has been one of my favorite purchases thus far- it's a damask chocolate and beige wool rug from Restoration Hardware.

Bedrooms 2006-2008

We have 4 bedrooms upstairs, and we've made changes to all of them. We started with the two larger rooms on the opposite side of the house from the master. The front bedroom used to be Uncle Derek's and was painted a bright blue color. The rear bedroom was painted pink. Again, I don't have before pictures. We painted the front bedroom a khaki color- Benjamin Moore Kangaroo. The furniture in there used to be Shane's parent's bedroom furniture- it's a complete matching set with a king sleigh bed, 2 nightstands, a dresser, and a small armoire. We originally tried to use it in the master but the bed literally took over the room- more about that later. This is the room now.

We dubbed this front bedroom the "Cape Cod" room, for it's nautical theme, as well as for it's "oceany" artwork on the walls- my Cape Cod girls and boys prints, a Centerville print, and a Jamestown print as well. The stripe and seashell bedding is from Pottery Barn, and the banded rattan rug is from Home Goods- PB has the same one for a lot more $$! This bedroom has it's own bathroom with shower stall, pictured here:

The back bedroom we painted a Behr color whose name I cannot remember at all right now, but it's a blue-gray-greenish color. We bought the bed from Ethan Allen, and all the black furniture is from Target. The bedding is from Macy's hotel collection.

It has great closet space as well:

This bedroom has a bathroom that also adjoins to the hallway.

As of now we have no plans to change either of the bathrooms on that side of the house, we're pretty content with the design of both, although it's odd that we only have a jacuzzi tub for a bathtub upstairs! The only regular-size tub in the house is in the basement bathroom.

The 3rd bedroom on the left side of the house is very small, and was painted a bright green color. We had Shane's old full size bed in it until January of 2010, when we made several wonderful changes to that little room in preparation for our newest family member's arrival! Definitely more about that to come:)

Winter 2006-2007

First Project: Master Bath

Shane and I started dating in June of 2006 and by that winter I was ready to get started! Not to be presumptuous or anything...:) I don't think I still have the "before" pictures of the master bathroom unfortunately, but to sum it up, it was a large section of the master suite divided into 3 smaller sections/rooms...1 had a sink, 1 had another sink, the toilet, a closet and the shower stall, and the 3rd area had 3 steps up to a large sunken jacuzzi tub. The sinks, toilet, tub, and tile were all a LOVELY mauve color, and all the fixtures were brass, brass, brass. (You'll see the word BRASS show up a lot in this blog, it took about 4 years, but there is finally almost no brass left in the house. I think.) We had the interior bathroom walls ripped out, and the raised area where the tub was dropped to floor level. The result was one very large bathroom. All fixtures became white, and the tiling is beige. The walls are now Benjamin Moore Quiet Moments. Trim is Decorator's White, which has become our staple color change for all the trim in the house. This was one of our more expensive projects as everything was done custom- cabinets and granite countertops, and moving some of the plumbing around. Clicking on the photos makes them larger.

The project in progress:

The finished bathroom now:

Faucets are American Standard Town Square in Satin Nickel. Mirrors are from Pottery Barn, and lighting fixtures are Restoration Hardware Campaign double sconces in Satin Nickel.