Stairs and Hallway Progress

I've been waiting to post photos of the final stair case and hallway for a long time.  It really never feels like it's going to end.  Today I finally finished painting the stairs after almost a week and a half of naps.  2 hours seems like a long time when you want to take a nap, but not so long when you want to paint your stairs!  So, I just decided that I'd post progress instead of waiting for the final product.

You may remember from earlier posts or Facebook that my stairs originally looked like this:

I suppose they could have removed the railing!

started taking the carpet off before photos

Then, my mom and I tore the carpet off and I paid someone to come in and make the banister look like this:

Thanks Terry

In the mean time I had the bright yellow walls painted Navajo White (although it still looks yellow). Can you tell?

After much thought and a side project painting the living and dining rooms, I decided to prime and fill the staple holes.  Then it looked like this:

Then today I put the last coat on the last step of my aqua ombre project.  It's subtle and even more subtle in photos than in person but I LOVE it!  I rant into a little issue today when going back with the wall color to touch up.  Turns out the wall color that I have in the can doesn't match what's on the wall.  Sometimes from gallon to gallon the colors can vary a little.  This one varies quite a bit, but I'll fix the problem.  So, it's not done, but it looks pretty done for now.

The banister still needs a final coat of white, the steps need to be varnished to protect them, and I may paint the railing and end post a charcoal gray.  Haven't decided yet!

The upstairs hallway has been a mess since we got carpet in January.  The installers removed the hall carpet and hauled it away, but I didn't have them lay anything down in it's place.  There were a lot of staples left over that I had to remove and some carpet tacks as well.  Since then it's been a patchwork of rugs protecting our feeties from splinters.  I hoped so much, considering the house was built in the '30s, that there would be something other than plywood under the carpet, but no such luck.  Plywood it is!  Here's what it looks like now (new railing upstairs too!):

The plan is to paint the floor with this stencil in a combination of charcoal, aqua, and white:

Paint Colors

I'm finally making some choices around here.  Thanks to my mom for pushing me because seriously we're sitting in a pile of crap with mismatched furniture, half torn up carpet, and lots Lots LOTS of yellow walls.

A Norse Legend
My palette for my living/dining/kitchen is really what I'm most excited about because I'm going gray.  It's not something I've ever done before as you all know.  I'm always bold with reds, blue, greens, and every wall a different color.  We're quieting down this time.

Gray walls with Martha Stewart's Bedford Gray (or something close to that),

and a beautiful almost purple but not quite called North Cascades in the dining room, 

 

and Martha Stewart's Gray Squirrel on the cabinets in the kitchen.

As far as the kitchen goes, I'm toying with the idea of keeping the counter tops to save some money.  They're formica and they're not attractive, but they are plain and in order to make them work, I think I can paint the top cabinets a creamy white color and the counters won't be so bad.
 
I posted a really dark picture of the blinds last week, but these are the blinds that I chose for all of the windows in the dining and living rooms, and up the stairs in the hallway. (that is not the view out of any of my windows)

The fabric for the dining chairs that will eventually be white, or some shade of that, is also gray.  I know this all seems really boring, but the accent color is aqua and all of the wood is cherry colored. It's so yummy!!

I also made a decision on the paint color in the bedroom.  We finally put our black platform bed together yesterday now that we have new carpet.  We got a gray and gold bedspread and I have a cute chair that I will recover with gray and gold as well.  I am going bold with the wall color in the bedroom because most of the walls will be covered with cabinetry from Ikea, windows, window treatments, bed/headboard and closet doors.  In the end there won't be very much wall showing.

Gallant Gold

Bedding

chair fabric

headboard and roman shade above bed

wardrobes

So, those are all of the decision I've made so far.  I will update with pictures of the real thing soon!

New Things

Wow, it's been such a long time that I don't even know where to begin.  Lets start with the big news.  There's going to be another bunny in this burrow at the end of August!!  This pregnancy is totally different than the last one in pretty much every way.

1.  I'm sick...actually feeling sick all day long every day.  This morning sickness is actually all day and all night sickness.  It's not debilitating, but just enough to make me want to lay on the couch all day and never get out of my pajamas.

2.  I feel different mentally.  I think that because I have Ryter to take care of and so much stuff going on with the house I forget I'm pregnant.  It's probably true for everyone that your first pregnancy is filled with book reading "what's happening now", Baby's R Us online shopping day and night trying to find the perfect everything, and worries about whether you're having the right amount of protein, vegetables, and fruit.  This time I don't need to read the books, I have everything I need except for a couple of poor choices the first time around that will get replaced, and my food consumption is fine even if I only eat macaroni and cheese for dinner.  I figure with the way I've been feeling, I'm pretty lucky I'm managing to eat anything at all.

3.  My weight gain doesn't exist yet...thank goodness!  The first time, it was like as soon as I took the pregnancy test, size 2 was no longer an option.  My hips popped out and my thighs started to grow.  Believe me, after having Ryter I am no longer a size 2 and my hips are already where they need to be so my jeans still fit and for some reason my stomach actually looks flatter than it has for the past year and a half.

All in all, I'm pregnant, we're grateful and excited despite the nausea, and someday I'll get out of my pajamas.

Ryter:
"A monster" as the doc put it.  35" tall and 31 lbs.  He just had his 18 month appointment and everything is great.  He was really scared when we went back to the room and the nurse closed the door.  He cried, didn't want to get on the scale, and would not let the nurse measure him.  It took a little while but a cup of "breezys" (raisins) and mommy's cell phone with a video of himself did calm him down and make him more comfortable. 

He's talking like crazy saying so many words and working on phrases.  Some of his words are correct and some are his own version, but either way he's communicating and I can understand him.  He's got the shape sorter down no problem, so we're working now on what the names of the shapes are.  He knows moon, heart, oval, and dione (triangle).  It's so adorable when he comes up with his own version of words.  Sometimes I wonder just exactly what he heard that makes it come out that way, but his brain is working, thinking so hard all of the time.  It's really amazing!

The House:
Oh, the house!  It's coming along slowly, but we finally got our new carpet installed in the basement and the upstairs bedrooms.  It was a long time coming from the measuring/quote process to choosing the perfect carpet for the right price to the Christmas holiday installation stall to the surprise electrical work that required a hole in the floor upstairs to finally getting the installation this week.  The carpet is beautiful, our choice, and most importantly CLEAN!  I'm having a very hard time believing the people that lived here before ever vacuumed or cleaned anything at all!  The house didn't look dirty when we looked at it the first time, but seriously, it was gross!

Besides the carpet, I don't think the place looks much different than it has over the past month or so, but we had to take care of some little noticed things before the obvious wall painting could be done.  The crown molding and trim had to be caulked and the trim needed to be painted.  Now that those two things are done, the rooms can be painted and then pictures can be hung.  That will make it feel so much better!

One thing that did happen last month is that I lost all of my pictures on my phone from when we moved in until about the first week of January.  My stupid fingers and lack of thorough reading of error messages caused the problem.  I lost lots of photos of Ryter and videos too, and I also lost all of the "before" photos of the house.  As I start to post the final photos, you'll have to trust that it's better than it was before!!

Here are my new blinds.  You can see in the first photo that they were gross mini blinds and the biggest problem besides them being dirty was that they weren't the right size for the window so they just looked really tacky.  I replaced them with cordless cellular shades from selectblinds.com and I LOVE them.  They look so nice, plus there aren't any cords, and when the blinds are up you don't even notice them because they're so tight to the window and the same color as the trim.

this brown linoleum covering the whole basement was under the gross carpet

new couch/old gray carpet

new carpet

Progress

So, here we are again.  I know I said we'd discuss the stair project next, but I wasn't planning on posting so soon again.  My rug arrived today, yay!

And we stopped at my aunt's house and picked up the dining room chairs.  I can't wait to find some fabric and get going on that project!!














On a side note, this kid rocks my world!




















And this is my Christmas mantel

The First Week

What I wrote last week and never posted:

We've owned the house for a little over a week now.  Vain stayed at the house because he was so excited to finally have a home of our own, but I kept Ryter at my parent's house until I could get his room ready to go.  My mom and I painted on Sunday and then Monday through Wednesday I unpacked most things and put them in the appropriate room.  It was and still is a mess!  On Friday was our first night in the house as a family.  Vain's parent's were here too for the weekend to help us out.  Ryter didn't sleep so that means I didn't sleep.  He's still having a problem going down for every nap and at bed time, but I think it'll get better.  I think he really likes the house though.  Since we don't really have any furniture it's just a whole bunch of space to run around.

Update:  I've already rearranged the living room with all of the mismatched furniture.  I ordered a soft gray rug that will arrive Friday and now I'm looking for all of the small pieces to go along with it.  There are so many things that need to be done, but I think we'll get there.  The crown molding has to be caulked before I can paint...when the heck will I have time to do that?  Maybe during Ryter's nap today I'll start.

Here's the rug I ordered.

We got a new dining room table so now we can appropriately seat more than two people.  Here's our new table:

I'm hopefully getting some hand me down chairs that I plan to paint white to give an electic look like this picture:

Ryter is up for the day now, so this time I will post instead of save.  Next time we'll be discussing the stair project.  Here's a sneak peak:

What's Your Name?

Here's a quickie...

Busy Times

For those of you that can't read my mind, here's a blog post to fill you in.  I really honestly don't even know what's happened over the last month.  I can really only retain about a weeks worth of information at a time.

I went to New York with my mom and Ryter to visit Amanda.  We had a really great time!  I ordered a pack-n-play and booster seat and had them shipped to Amanda's apartment so we'd have some baby goodies when we got there.  We spent a lot of time checking out the city, riding the bus or subway, and eating out.  Ryter was amazing for a traveling baby!  He slept in his pack-n-play in the hallway of Amanda's studio, napped in his stroller on busy NYC streets, and powered through late sushi dinners.  New York is not the place for a baby in diapers though because there isn't anywhere to change them.  I embarrassingly changed his diaper at the back of a junk purse store and got really good at changing wet diapers while he stood in teeny tiny bathrooms without changing tables.  Ahhh, it is what it is.

coffee at the airport

backstage pass

breakfast at Auntie Manda's

trade choochie for whiskey

late night shoe shopping

Central Park

wiggle worm

Ground Zero

more shoes

Cuban food

back at the airport

...and Done!

I went to Indianapolis for a dear old friend's baby shower with many of my childhood friends.  We had such a great time driving, catching up, and being together for longer than an evening!

On my drive down there was when I really put my new smart phone to work signing amendments for the home sale in Chicago traffic.  I know I'm lame, old, and behind the times, but I seriously legally signed papers on my telephone with my finger!!!

Vain and I bought a house so stay tuned for a moving day post and decor photos to come!!