Some REAAALLLLY Before and After pics

Posted in House Tour by Christina

Guys.

Sheesh.

I’m fed up with our desktop.

I took some “after” pics of one of the projects I’ve finished lately (About 5 more projects to shoot… Heehee! Not sure why taking “after” pics has been such an issue lately…).

And my desktop wouldn’t load them. Arg! Something’s been up with it for months now and it’s driving me batty. I need to take it somewhere to get it looked at, I’m sure. I just haven’t gotten to it yet.

Anyways, in the meantime, I’ve been trying to do some research on our house to find out what it looked like way back when. Supposedly, our wet-bar actually had a peninsula at one point and I’m positively DYING to see it. Unfortunately, although I’ve turned up several before-our-time “before” pics from old realty listings, that wasn’t one of ’em. (sadface)

But, here’s what I’ve got. Are you ready for this???

I give you our house in 2004:

Whoa!!! Right??? It actually looks cottage-y with that wood shake roof. I always imagined that our house originally had a tile roof. It would’ve definitely explained why they chose to put an orange roof on the house upon replacing it. Turns out, they came up with the orange on their own. It was chosen to go with the gold and green color-scheme. You can kind of see it in this blurry aerial shot…

Our. Poor. Neighbors.

Once the house went into foreclosure for the second time in 2012, the bank had the house sprayed beige, which is how it looked when we purchased it 2 years later…

And the last time I actually took pictures of our house’s front exterior it looked like this…

Now, keep in mind… we’ve since replaced the front door (I still have one more coat of paint to apply before I take pics) and I’ve given that green gate a nice, crisp coat of black paint (one of the projects that I’ve yet to photograph). But, in this pic, we’d painted the exterior, added landscaping and a rock border, and (in this shot) had painted our old front door.

The crazy thing is that in 2012, when the owners before us bought the house, the front courtyard had not one, but TWO metal gates…

Anybody else picturing every haunted house movie ever made??

The owners right before us removed the second gate after they moved in. This is on the day that we closed…

And the courtyard the last time I photographed it with our old door still (new pics coming soon)…

It definitely doesn’t scare the children as much. (Though, we still got no trick-or-treaters to my knowledge)

As a reminder, here’s the new front door (kinda… this shot is from when they’d installed the door with incorrect door-swing and I’d only partially painted it). The correct door has since been installed. It looks the same, just with the door knob on the other side and is currently in the process of being entirely painted that charcoal color…

I can’t wait to show it to y’all now.

In 2012, the backyard had not one, but two chain link fences…

The first, which was next to the patio, had been removed prior to us moving in, but the posts hadn’t. So, Joey had the fun task of extracting those guys. I was also surprised to see in these pictures that there were park benches on top of the nasty railroad ties (which had also been removed by the time we came into the picture). We removed the railroad ties and replaced the retaining wall with stone. And here’s that space today…

This view of the backyard looked pretty much the same as when we bought it. I just forgot to take “before” pics prior to Joey removing the second chain link fence seen to the left of the pic…

And the space now…

Inside, the kitchen looked pretty much the same in 2012 as it does now with the exception of the popcorn on the ceiling and paint color (which the owners before us removed/changed)…

The surprising thing here was that the slate floors were already in. I thought that the owners right before us installed them, but apparently it was the owners prior to them.

Our kitchen now is still kind of a mess. We haven’t gotten there yet, but we anticipate a full reno down the road. Our next big purchase, though, will likely be new appliances since the current stove and dishwasher are constantly on the fritz (and the fridge is a total black hole visually… but at least it’s a black whole that actually works (knockonwood!))…

Remember how I mentioned a while back (in this post) that there was a flood last year that necessitated a full gut of the laundry room by the previous owners? And how I griped about the lack of storage we currently have?? Well, there used to be some…

Too bad they didn’t reinstall those uppers, but they did replace the doors. And I guess we now have a blank slate to work with, which could be good…

Here’s the living room in 2012…

It’s amazing how a view of a chain link fence out the window makes one feel imprisoned. Like Morgan Freeman should be narrating your tale of woe.

The owners before us painted the walls, de-popcorned the ceilings (blessthem), and replaced the slider. We installed the floors and painted the built-ins…

Another view…

The master bathroom had pretty amazing black sinks in 2012, no?

Mighty epic commitment to the black bathroom fixture in this house (you know what I mean if you’ve seen our guest bath).

The paint looks white in the above shot, but it’s hard to tell if that’s correct since if you look in the reflection next to the coffin-shower, the wall does look peachy. In any case, someone painted the room peach. ON PURPOSE. I mean, I know peach was really popular in the 80’s, but it was never really my thing. Especially when paired with navy/purple/mauve swirled marble. As a reminder of how it looked when we took possession (after the previous owners changed out the sinks and faucets)…

PEACH.

I couldn’t take it, so in a burst of unconstrained rage, I painted the room white…

A full gut will happen in this space if it’s the last thing I do!

(And yes, I’m constantly crossing my fingers that Bath Crashers magically appears at our doorstep)

The remaining rooms were basically the same in terms of upgrades. Prior to our buying of the house, the owners before us de-popcorned the ceilings, painted the main living spaces, changed out the doors, as well as a few lighting fixtures. The rest, we did. Now, I know I’ve been emphasizing this throughout this post, but just keep in mind as you’re going through these pics that these “befores” are from two years before we bought the house. Our “befores” that I took on closing day, can be found in our House Tour page.

The dining room, then….

And now…

(We added laminate flooring, shelves and curtains, I painted the table white, added some vintage-inspired art, and styled the shelves)

The master bedroom, then…

and now…

(I painted, we replaced the carpet and windows, and started decorating. Lot’s more to go. But I like where we’re headed.)

The guestroom/office then…

And now…

Believe it or not, those are totally different wall colors (peach vs. greige) although the photos look somewhat similar.

And finally, the hangout room, then…

And now (well, now-ish… this is another space that I need to photograph as it currently is)…

(Check out this post, which incorporates painting and decor for this room. )

The carpeting in the bedrooms was the same in 2012 as when we bought the house, so apparently the asphalt we found poured beneath the carpeting in this room was done before then. Remember that???

I still think it’s the weirdest thing EVER. I mean, what the heck? #stopthejimmyhoffajokes

So, anyways, I hope to find more pics somewhere along the line of the house further back. I would LOVE to see it as it was originally, actually. It seems like the house changed significantly just since 2012 (let alone that exterior shot from 2004) so I can’t imagine what it used to look like at the get-go. Also, it’d be remiss of me not to mention that this house seems like a total team effort. It’s slowly gotten it together, first with the slate floors from 2 owners back, then the improvements made by the previous owners, and now us. Despite any differences in taste (or lack of maintenance over the years), I feel like (at least in the recent years), good intentions were had to improve the house and bring it back to life. And hopefully, we’ll be able to continue with that mission for a time to come. Because I love our house. I’ve never felt so grateful or “at home” than I do now.

So, tell me is anybody else nosy like me?? Trying to snoop around in your house’s past to see what it looked like? Any ideas on how I could get my hands on older pics??

6Apr2015

“Get over it!” – Our Master Bathroom

Posted in DIY by Christina

Sometimes my Type A personality is a tough thing to get past. I’m a detail person. Details must mesh with one another, especially when it has to do with a project that I’ve worked on myself. And when a project feels half-done (or like it doesn’t flow) I can’t think of much else besides fixing it until it’s actually complete. Which explains why our master bath has been a huge mental pain in my arse for the past 5 months. My Type-A-Ness has been hitting the crazy-meter. And no, it’s not because it’s ugly. That’s a fact that I accepted when we bought the house. It’s a detail thing. A paint detail thing to be exact.

Just in case you haven’t seen our master bathroom, allow me to introduce you (prepareyourself)…

This room is decked out with navy blue and purple cultured marble (with swirls of mauve… we must not forget the mauve), 80’s floor tile with stained grout, peach walls, and what I like to refer to as our “coffin-shower”. I mean, just tell me that doesn’t look like I’m buried alive…

Not to mention the cramped, poorly thought-out layout with zero natural light. It’s quite the gem, really.

Honestly, nothing short of a full gut is going to save this room. We know this. So, the only things that I could think to do to freshen it up as we save for a complete renovation was to give it a good scrubbing and paint those awful peach walls.

And my color of choice was white. It was really the only option. I refused to give that terrible marble the satisfaction of trying to match it in any way.

My goal was to match the trim paint but use an eggshell finish (as opposed to the semi-gloss that was on the trim). Since we didn’t have any trim paint on hand, I basically just held up a bunch of color swatches to the trim and ended up with Behr Ultra Pure White 1750, which according to the swatch I had was a nice true white. Not too bright and blue, not too yellow. Just nice. Or so I thought.

Now, here’s where things got a little hairy. As I just mentioned, the color I was going for was a soft creamy white. But the color I was painting appeared to be brighter… more blue. I figured that it just needed to dry, so I gave it a chance. But after spending all day painting (it took three coats… yeah, not super impressed with Behr’s coverage in this case), I stepped back and realized that the paint was definitely more blue. And that blueness was making our trim appear yellow in comparison. Ugh. Not good. And then I held up my color swatch…. Yup. Wrong.Friggin.Color. You’d think I was crazy if I showed you the photo I took to demonstrate this. It just didn’t capture the difference as it was in person.

Now, did the paint color look completely terrible? Not completely. Did it look better than the peach? Most definitely. Some may be able to look past it, but I’m an undertone person. Colors either need to intentionally contrast or match exactly. The almost-matches-but-not-really thing is NOT cool with me.

So, I purchased new paint, this time emphasizing that the color needed to match the swatch exactly.

And time passed.

And nothing happened.

*coughcough* I probably should mention that the painting of the bathroom happened in OCTOBER. I even alluded to it in this post back when I painted our bedroom. I just didn’t want to post about the master bath until I got it repainted again.

But then, the repainting didn’t happen. And it kept not happening. For a long time. And then I realized something….

NOTHING will make this room look good shy of a full gut. (pause. rinse. and repeat) Nothing.will.make.this.room.look.good.shy.of.a.full.gut.

I mean, I know this. I’ve KNOWN this… So, after this statement bounced around my head for, like, 5 months I finally had a break-through: If nothing will make this space look good, then why am I stressing over a slightly different shade of white??? Lame, Christina. Totally lame. I guess sometimes it just takes time to realize that you need to step back and look at the big picture, ya know?? And I finally did. I weighed the amount of time and energy I’d spend repainting this hole (and mind you, it’s not a fun hole to paint thanks to all those ridiculous nooks and crannies. (Heehee! Gross.)) versus the reward (slightly different white paint), and I just.said.NO. Now, don’t get me wrong… If this were the final space, I’d totally do it. But really, this bathroom is gonna be ugly no matter what color white it is. So, we’re gonna rock it as is for a while.

Here’s how it looks now…

Remember how I discussed the difference light bulbs can make on a paint color? The above picture is a prime example of how a light bulb can make a space seem yellow. That’s a quick switch that I’ll probably make at some point.

You can also see in the pic below that the coffin-shape of the black-shower-of-doom is replicated in our toilet area (…you can even see the shower in the mirror’s reflection! Nice touch, right? Haha!) …

I’m just imagining someone in the 1970’s wearing bell-bottoms and a a large-collared shirt, planning this bathroom, and thinking how clever and groovy it was to carry the coffin-shape throughout the space. Heehee! And ya know what?? I just realized that our bathtub (which is oddly vortex-like)…

Is reminiscent of something else…

Remember that wallpaper that we found behind our wet-bar mirror?? And instead of peach walls (like in the bathroom), they had peach countertops! Way to tie it all together. This house must’ve been the place to boogie in its heyday. 😉

So, anyways, that’s the master bathroom. I have a hard time seeing us doing anything else to it until it’s renovation time (aside from a bit of accessorizing and some hardcore grout-cleaning). The awkward layout and the fact that both the shower and bath tub plumbing fixtures are set on the weird partition walls rather than exterior walls…

And the fact that the step that leads to the bathtub (??) was tiled around and grouted in (as seen three pics up), mean that only major changes will make a difference in this room. If the plumbing was placed differently, we could at least take down some of the partition walls to open up the space. But we can’t. So, we wait. I’m excited to someday take a sledge hammer to this joint (given that I can actually LIFT said sledge hammer… I might just kick the walls a lot instead. Heehee!). 🙂

In the meantime, I’m (well WE’RE — Joey’s hatred of this bathroom is as vast as my own) daydreaming of adding a solar tube for natural light, a HUGE glass-enclosed shower with gorgeous tile, maybe a clawfoot tub, and completely reconfiguring the space so that it makes more sense. It’s actually a pretty large bathroom… The space is just used so inefficiently (and the tub is so massive) that it seems small. This project will literally be a gut down to the studs once we’re able to do it. And we wanna do it right, so it may take a bit of time to save enough, but we’ll get ‘er done eventually.

So, tell me… what’s your favorite part of the space? The coffin-shower? The vortex tub? Any design ideas or suggestions? Anybody been through a full gut of this magnitude? Any tips or tricks?