Bringing It Together

A while back I gave you guys a sneak peek of the grain sack stripe table. It is one of my favorites and I have now had requests for similar stripes to be done on other pieces from many different people. Yesterday I had the chance to deliver the chairs and to photograph the set in its place.

I love this set - love it!

As you can see there are 5 chairs, a bench, and a cute little kitchen footstool. All hunter green and stained wood.

We needed to jazz them up to go with the awesome table! Enter Benjamin Moore's Burnt Peanut Red. One of the BEST reds of all time in my opinion. It never fails me.

I love a good Windsor chair and these are definitely great Windsor chairs.

I love this set so much! How can you not love the bright cheery red and classic look?

I love how everything looks with her cherry sign. It just POPS!

I also have slight house envy on this project. This is a fabulous 2-story character house here and I absolutely adore it! It makes me fall in love with red all over again ;)

A Tale of Two Pieces

Have I mentioned that I LOVE furniture?

No, really I am actually obsessed! It bodes well for my job for sure, but it can also be considered an occupational hazard. I end up wanting to keep so many pieces. I've had to start telling myself "no" a lot more lately. 

That's why I love client pieces so much. It's not something I found and bought because I loved it, it already has a home and I just get to be creative and have fun.

Adorable little wash stand - but it needed some love

Pretty mirror, with a crazy loud paint job. Just needed a little sprucing up!

We are selling our house right now, so all of my pictures are quick and most of them are taken with my phone. I know, bad little blogger! But, we do what we must.

I love the worn texture the mirror has and the two colors make it so dynamic.

Now as for the wash stand, I snapped these pictures with my phone very quickly on the sidewalk in front of my clients house as I dropped the pieces off. Someone was viewing our house at the time and I had furniture, boxes, and children all smushed into my car. Like I said, we do what we must!

I kind of fell in love with Annie Sloan's Old Ochre with this piece and the mirror. 

It was a quick turn around with some fun pieces and the client was very happy and that always makes me very happy as well.

Now on to the next 27 million things...it's never dull here folks ;)

My Crazy Life

Life can be so crazily unpredictable really.

One day you're sitting around with one of your best friends, just chatting about how much fun it would be to be neighbors and how beautiful their neighborhood is. The next, your friend is running and she prays that something will come up for sale in their neighborhood and later that same morning a sign shows up at a house five doors down from hers.

Calls are made, house is looked at, and from that Thursday morning to the very next Monday, the world is suddenly at warp speed. We listed our house and put a contract on the other one in 5 days! It's crazy - and we love every second of it.

I have a ton of client work, we are finishing up some little details at this house to make it perfect, and meanwhile our children have dance, boy scouts, and other after school events. House showings, cleaning, laundry, kids, cooking, painting, schedules...

There is this intense emotional attachment to this house. I made this house. There isn't a single place in this whole house that doesn't have my mark; the spin I put on it for our family. Don't get me wrong, I am SOOOO excited about the "new house", but I'm also am taking my time to have some emotional moments thinking of where we are.

Kitchen

Living Room

Dining Space

Entry

Jade's Room

Kids Bath

Dylan's Room

 Master Bedroom

 It's so very US and I'm hoping that someone else can see their family in this space now.

But for now, I have this amazing, blessed, busy, becoming successful, crazy, beautiful life!

Kids Bath

This project was a turning point for me. This was when I found my own personal style of decor. When we moved into this house I was 5 months pregnant with my daughter and my son was 16 months old. This is our first home and I was in love with having a first home. 

This was the tiny little bathroom between the children's rooms.
There will be a million pictures, sorry about that. But, we love pictures so it should all be okay.

Builder basic yellow oak, a giant shower (no tub for washing babies), linoleum, and laminate. But, it was clean and a second bathroom which were both pluses as far as we were concerned.

Then I got super sick of it. All of us used the master bath for bathing and I was sick of moving bath toys out of the way whenever I wanted a relaxing bath. So, while my husband was at the fire station I just ripped out the wall above the shower.

We needed to know where the drain was located so we could put a budget together for the bathroom and I could be realistic about what we could put back into the space.

So my husband came home to this:

It stayed that way for a while. Then I went to town with the reciprocating saw and tore out the whole thing.

The shower base was heavy! I didn't think it would be because it was fiberglass, but man that was hard work all by my petite lonesome!!!

Me and my baby girl grouting

Me laying tile and the unfortunate red hair phase I went through

Even before grout I was enamored with my tile job!

So after 18 months of starting and stopping, problems with plumbing, burning my fingers on a just torched pipe under the sink, and finding 8 inches of wasted space behind a wall - I was finally finished!!!

Something sentimental for Dylan

And for Jade

Ending with one of the best things of all: A pencil drawing of a lighthouse done by my very talented niece Erin. 

This renovation sparked me finding my own style and taught me that I could do anything I wanted myself. I could have things like pine v-groove panelling, marble, mosaic tile, and Kohler even on the tiniest of budgets.

It inspired me to tackle other things in my home and make it a place just for us!