Paint, Bead Board and Corbels....

Today I finished painting the first coat of Belgian Waffle on the top half of the dining room. The bottom half is primed and waiting for the white semi-gloss.

Here is the dining room before. It was chocolate brown. And for some reason, the previous owners painted the wainscoting the same color.


Here is one view of the dining room, partially repainted. See that TALL ladder in the background? I have to climb that to reach the top of the wall.


Here is another view of the dining room. I think after the second coat of Belgian Waffle on the top and the wainscoting painted white it will look 1 million times better.



Here is the powder room....remember we had a flood and had to have the floor replaced. This is the room I am wallpapering the top with black and white toile.

The bottom now has the bead board on! It needs to be painted, but it looks good!!

And remember the tile wall underneath the counter with the skinny corbels?? See picture below.

The tile is gone, new drywall in it's place and the corbels are on.

Things are starting to come together. I can't work on the house tomorrow. I have a lot of errands to do. Stop back in on Friday for the latest happenings....

Welcome Home,

Penny

"Moving" Right Along

Things are moving right along. Today, I applied the second coat of paint to the studio floor. I also primed over the ugly chocolate brown dining room walls. I will post pictures of the dining room tomorrow with the new color.

The bead board has started to go up in the powder room. I am still waiting for the black toile wallpaper to be delivered for the top half of the walls.

Here is a picture (from the company's website) of the tub I ordered for the master bath. I am not sure when it will be delivered. I am calling the company tomorrow.

After all of the painting I have been doing, I can't wait to soak in this tub....Though it looks like it could be a month or so before we finished the master bathroom.
Welcome Home,
Penny

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Did you ever have one of those days? You know, the one where you are ALWAYS in the wrong lane. The one where EVERY light turns red. The one where the store RUNS out of the product you need?

Well, I had one of those days. My day started out meeting our contractor at Home Depot at 8:30 to pick up a lot of supplies. We thought we got enough of everything. But after an hour or so working on the master bath, the contractor realized that we needed a couple more buckets of Thin Set. So off I went to the closest Lowe's....they didn't have it. The Home Depot is in my old town....to far away. So I picked up some more on my way home tonight.

Anyway, here is the current state of the master bath. The dry wall is up and the backer board is partially down on the floor.


We picked up this bead board this morning for the bottom half of the powder room walls.

I put the first coat of paint on my studio floor. Here is a picture of it half finished.

The first coat totally finished. What a difference. I am going to paint a harlequin pattern on the floor. Don't know if that will be finished before we move in or not. Fingers crossed.

Here is my master bedroom newly painted. The color is a golden yellow, called Belgian Waffle from Sherwin Williams. This is the same color that the great room, living room and dining room will be.

As you can see, my master bedroom is construction central....

How was your day? I hope it was wonderful!

Welcome Home,

Penny

Don't They Look Happier?

Every day when I drive over to the new house to work, I bring something over from the old house. It is mostly the things we have outside. Like outdoor furniture, pots, etc. Today, Mr. Comforts of Home came with me and he was able to bring our heavy cement lion urn planters.

Here they are at our old house.....


And here they are at our new house. (The door is getting painted red this week!!).

Don't they just look happier at our new house?

Welcome Home,
Penny

Changes

I am having a little success accessing my internet, so here are some before and during pictures.

This is the powder room after....we now have new hardwood floors installed to replace the ones that got ruined with the water pipe breaking.


Here is the during below. After we had removed the damaged hardwood.


Remember the kitchen counter with the tiled wall beneath it? It had really tiny shelf brackets, too.



Now it has new dry wall in place of the ceramic tile. The new thicker corbels have been purchase and are waiting for me to try to stain them to match the cabinets.

Here is a before shot of my studio. The walls were painted an odd pea soup green. The laminate floor was very dark.

Here is a "during" shot of the studio. I have painted the primer coat over the pea soup green and the laminate floors have been removed. It looks brighter already!

This weekend I hope to get the next two coats of paint on the walls of the studio and maybe the primer coat on the floor.

A lot of other things are happening behind the scenes. The air conditioning ducts have been re-routed in the master bath. The tub spout in the guest room that had a leak has been repaired. The three car garage has been divided into a work shop for Mr. Comforts of Home and a two car garage. I have painted 4 rooms and a hallway.

So things are coming along! I promise, if you hang in here with me you will start seeing some pretty to go along with the whole lot of ugly....

Welcome Home,

Penny

Hosting Issues

My cable company that we currently get our Internet service from was sold to a new company. They made the switch over last night and today. As of this point I don't have service, except on my laptop through my broadband. All of my pictures/email etc is unavailable. Hopefully this will be resolved in the next 24 hours. The funny thing is, at my new house we are having a different provider.

So no pictures today. The hardwood floors have been refinished and look beautiful! I have finished painting the last couple of bedrooms and hallway. I am heading to my studio next.

In my studio I have to paint the walls and I am planning on painting the sub floor in a harlequin pattern. Not sure how that will all work out. Keep your fingers crossed. I will post it as I work on it.
Welcome Home,
Penny

The Schedule

I ordered the black and white toile wallpaper today for my powder room. Remember, I got my inspiration from the picture below. The wallpaper will probably arrive this Friday. But I am thinking that it won't be installed until after we move into the house. We have so many NECESSARY things to complete first.

So many things are going to be happening soon at our new home. It is hard trying to juggle all of the contractors. Today the hardwood floor is going to have the final sanding and buffing.

Here is what the rest of the schedule looks like. We are cutting it close!

October 1st - Phone Turned On

October 2nd - New appliances delivered and installed.

October 3rd and 4th - Painting contractor is painting the 2 story living room and both stairways.

(I don't have a ladder tall enough to paint those spaces)

October 5-7 - Carpet is being installed in all of the bedrooms and upstairs hallway

October 12 - Movers come and pick up and deliver our furniture.

In the middle of all of this, I am still painting. I have the baseboards, doors and windows to paint crisp white in two more bedrooms, before the carpet gets installed.

Then I have to paint my studio (including the floor - more on that later).

Things I still have to do that can wait until we move:

Paint living room

Paint dining room

Paint kitchen

Install tile back splash in kitchen

Install tile back splash in the laundry room

Tile the fireplace with the travertine tile and build the mantel

We are not sure if the master bath will be done before we move. But we have another bathroom that we can use, so that is not a priority.

I have to remember to BREATHE too. :-) Thanks for hanging in there with me!

Welcome Home,

Penny

Come With Me....

Come with me on what has become my daily drive from my current home that I sold and am renting back from the new owners to my new home that I am remodeling so we can move into it. Every day I drive 3o miles/45 minutes to the new house.....work for 6 hours or so and then drive home. It is like a REAL job!

Today it is raining. It has been raining for about 3 weeks now. Mr. Comforts of Home is coming with me today and driving. Normally he is working at his REAL job and can't come to the new house to work.

I have a nice area of the world to drive through.


Look! Some fall color in the picture below!


This is Hendersonville...Main Street....The town I am moving away from. It is a very charming small town.



Halfway between my old home and my new home is this huge flea market. Today it is raining so not very many people are here. Even though it is huge, it is really like a BIG bad yard sale. Not a great flea market.

See the picture below? Remember my post the day after we purchased the house? We had a pipe burst in this powder room and flood the first floor. We had hoped that our insurance would pay for it, but because they determined the pipe was broken PRIOR to use purchasing the house, they would not pay. Even though the flood happened AFTER we bought the house. We are not very happy with our insurance company right now.

Anyway, this is the powder room. The floor in it has been removed, waiting for the sub floor to dry.

The adjacent floors....kitchen, eat-in kitchen, dining, living and great room all had to be sanded (because they warped and stained with the flood) and refinished. Below is after the first sanding and first refinishing coat. They still have to sand it and coat it two more times. In the mean time I can't get in there and do any painting. Hopefully they will be done by the middle of this coming week.

Here is another picture of the fireplace redo, taken from the great room and without all of the scaffolding in the way. Obviously it still needs to be sanded and painted. Then we will add the travertine tile front and the mantel and corbels.

Hope you all have a wonderful week ahead!

Welcome Home,

Penny

Packing

Today, the hardwood floor refinishers were at the new house sanding the floors. So no painting for me. Today I started packing.

Did you ever notice that once you start removing pictures from walls and books from the shelf, that it starts looking a lot less like a HOME and more like just a HOUSE?

And did you ever notice how much 100's of decorating books weigh?

Welcome Home,

Penny

Painting Closets and the Fireplace Redo

When you are painting a room....say a bedroom....do you paint the closet? Sometimes I do, sometimes not. But moving into this house, I wanted it to look spanking clean. As you can see from the picture below, this walk in closet had a budding Picasso as a resident. You can click on any picture to enlarge.


So here is a before shot....


And here is the after below. This room is an extra room, that we will probably use as an exercise space. We have both put on some weight and tend not to exercise, so we are going to get a treadmill or something for this room. The color of the room is Lowe's,Olympic Paint called Dancing Light. So the closet was painted the same color.



I promised yesterday to show you the progress of the fireplace. It is looking pretty good. This picture was taken from the upstairs loft. The faux fireplace chase has been covered with drywall,, mudded and taped.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I will be working on the house...What will you be doing? I would love to know your plans!
Welcome Home,

Penny

Little Steps

If it seems like I am jumping all over the place with the posts on this remodel, you are right. The reason is that we have to complete many things before others happen. For example, there are many rooms that we removed the laminate floors from that will be carpeted. I have to paint all of those rooms before the carpet gets laid. The new fireplace mantel has to be built, before the original hardwood floors can be sanded and repaired.

Things are moving along. Remember this picture of my master bath?


We now have the sub floors down. The next step is cement board, shower pan and green board....


All of the laminate floors have been carefully removed. We had someone who requested them, so we made sure we were careful when we removed then, so that the floors would be able to be reused. The first donation didn't happen, but someone else wanted them. So they are going to a good home.

I have painted 3 rooms and a hall way so far. I am almost done with a 4th room. I forgot my camera today. I really wanted to show you how the fireplace was coming along....next post, I promise!

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for your great support on this home purchase and remodel. It means the world to me!

Welcome Home,

Penny

Fireplace Happenings

You all remember the original fireplace in my great room? The cabinets surrounding it were really cheap kitchen cabinets and were too small for the two story room. There was black ceramic tile surrounding the fireplace box. Click on any picture to enlarge for detail.


This is what the fireplace looks like now....Say "hi" to Bill, our contractor. He is doing all of the tear out and some of the rebuilding. Both the first picture and the one directly below were taken from the upstairs loft. Bill is building a faux fireplace chase.



The picture below is my inspiration picture. I don't want to duplicate it completely, but get the feeling of it. I found this picture in one of my favorite Country French decorating books.

I love the limestone surrounding the fireplace. I will use travertine tile instead. I love the crown molding type mantel with the corbels. Mr. Comforts of Home will build that for me. Right now we are building a fireplace chase. It is actually a faux chase, but it will give the idea of one like my inspiration picture.

A lot of other things are happening around the house....I will post more in a day or so.
Welcome Home,
Penny

Here Is What I am Thinking...

Some on asked in my last post, how the master bath was going. So far we are still in the getting rid of the uglies part of the equation...So, here is what I am thinking....take one ugly bath and give it a makeover.




I LOVE the tile in this bath below. I also love the mirror above the tub. (click on any picture to enlarge).




I love the idea of two separate sinks with a table/dresser/cabinet/hutch in between. Plus I love the subway tiles on the wall.



I ADORE the tub below with the pedestal base. I like it more than a claw foot tub, because you don't need to worry about cleaning underneath it. Plus, it seems more grounded in the room.

So, I am thinking about taking the floor tiles I love, the subway tiles, the great tub with the pedestal base and separate sinks with a piece of furniture in between them and turning it into MY master bath. It might take a couple of months to do, but stayed tuned and watch the progress.... And in the meantime I will be working on the kitchen, and every other room of the house. So these post might jump around a lot....

Welcome Home,

Penny

Little Things

It's the little things that really change a home. Small little itty bitty things. Take cabinet knobs. In my new home the cabinet knobs were bright shiny brass. Not something that I thought worked with the decorating direction I am going in. So today I replaced them with Antique Nickle knobs. In the picture below the new knob is on the left. And BTW if you enlarge the picture below, you can see my reflection in the old brass knobs I am replacing as I take a picture of them!


Here is a picture with the old brass knobs. You need to click on the picture to enlarge to really see them.


Below is a picture of the new knobs. When I get the new back splash on and paint over the red I will show a closer view.


Oh! And today I also ordered ONE SPECIAL knob....it is going to be different than the rest. It will be on the glass cabinet you see in the picture above. Wait till you see it!

Welcome Home,
Penny

Choices...

Today's post is all about choices....

Do I stay with this mini fridge? Or get a new one? That is an EASY choice! We ordered our new appliances and they will be delivered October 2nd.


See the red paint chip in the picture below? That is going to be the front door color. Not on the window trim. Just the front door. It is called Stolen Kiss from Sherwin Williams. I don't think I have ever had a house that I did not paint the door some shade of red.

What color is your front door?
Welcome Home,
Penny