The Breakfast Nook

The breakfast nook was the last room with wallpaper, and we finally peeled, steamed and scraped it off. Thankfully, it came down rather easily. This room had light blue toile wallpaper, which was something we felt like we could live with for a few months as opposed to the other rooms.


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I bought all three of these Napoleon-style chairs off of Craig's List for $20. The woman had discounted the price because she only had three chairs, and most people don't want just three. But in my case, three was perfect. They were old and the paint was chipping, so I sanded them down and then painted them red for a pop of color in this very neutral space. I'm currently looking for an old, round, oak or pine table to give this small space a little more room. The window treatment in this area will match the ones in the kitchen because the rooms are so close.


I really like this fabric from Williams Sherrill. I don't know the name of it, but it's Asian, whimsical and has monkey and elephants on it. I asked the woman if most people bought this fabric for a child's room, but she said no, which made me feel better about using it.


I just hung this picture in the breakfast nook a couple of weeks ago. I love gold frames like this, and Michael's was having a 50% off sale so I bought an 11"x14" frame. I put this old NC map in it for now, but I bought a few pieces of canvas with the idea that I will paint a picture for this space and then frame it in gold.

The Attic Bathroom

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This is our (very) small attic bathroom. There's a claw foot tub on the left and the sink and toilet are on the right.

I made the sink covering because the pipes below were an eye sore to anyone using the bathroom. I bought a yard of this green and white fabric at Williams Sherrill. I then measured and cut the fabric a couple of inches longer than what I actually needed on each side. I folded the sides back so that the skirt would fit exactly around your sink and so you'll have a clean edge. Sew the edges and then sew a piece of Velcro at the top. Very simple!

The Yard

The great thing about our yard was that it was well established and we had a lot of great plants to work with. The problem was that many of them were overgrown and in need of some serious pruning. So, that's exactly what we did this past fall. In fact, I'm a little worried that I cut too much off of a couple of our bushes, but we'll see what happens this spring.




Back patio


Left side of our backyard; hydrangea, rosemary, zinnias, tomato plants, climbing vine w/ red flowers (attracts hummingbirds)


Back right corner; hydrangea, hostas and caladium


My herb garden; basil, rosemary, oregano, sage, parsley, cilantro and lavender. I planted mint at the very back of our property because it tends to spread easily.


Right side of our backyard. This white picket fence has been here since at least the 1950s when our neighbor moved in next door-- it seriously needs to be replaced sometime.


Back of our yard


Back of our house (this is the office); we had two trees taken out on either side last spring because they started dying. It wasn't a complete loss because I never liked them, and we'll probably buy two crepe myrtles next spring (you have to wait 1-2 years so that the roots and stump can completely decompose) to fill in the spaces.

The Stairs

The stairs have been an eye sore since the second or third week we lived in our house, which is unfortunate because it's the first thing you see when you walk in our house! The previous owners put a stair runner down that was a nice rug in good condition, but it didn't match anything in our house. Just after we moved in our house, Shiloh was nervously waiting by the front door for us to get home one day, so she decided to start chewing on one of the edges. And so the problem began. Little by little, the rug continued to fray until nearly the entire side of the first step had been unraveled. It looked awful.


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This past December (2008), Daniel and I decided to host a Christmas Party. This was our motivation to do something about our stair runner. We could either buy a new one or refinish the steps. We chose the latter and knew we had to work quickly because we only had one week until our party! So, exactly a week before the big day, we started refinishing the steps. After making a run to Home Depot, Daniel started pulling up the old rug as well as the tack strips and leftover nails in the wood. That afternoon and the following day, I spent hours sanding. I used an electric hand-held sander, which got the job done, but took hours!

Each day after work, we would work for a few hours on the steps to ensure they would be done by Saturday. Daniel was called to Atlanta for work Tuesday through Thursday, which meant I was now in charge of finishing them. One day I stained every other step (since I needed to be able to go upstairs when I wanted) and painted the vertical risers the color of our trim. The next day I stained the other half of the stairs and then painted the risers again with a second coat of paint.


I'm smiling in this picture, but I'm really not that happy.


Sanded and ready to be stained

The good news is that the stairs looked great by Saturday and most of our guests didn't even know that we had been up late the night before making food and staining our stairs! We did, however, run out of time to put a clear coat on them, but that could wait until after our party was over. It was a lot of hard work I wouldn't have wanted to do in a week, but in the end it was worth it, and we're very glad we took the plunge. The great thing is, we were able to refinish the steps for about $100!


After; complete with garland for our Christmas Party!


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The Office

This is Daniel's retreat, although for almost a year after we moved this room was more like a dark blue cave where we'd throw anything if we weren't sure where it should go. We were finally able to clean it out (and sell the curtains on Craig's List), paint and turn this catch-all into a useful office.


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We found this door in the garage, and with a good cleaning and a new coat of paint Daniel now has more privacy when he needs it.


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Guest Room #2

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This room was also fun for me because I had a blank slate to work with-- no fabric or paint that I had to match. After taking down the blue and white striped wallpaper (that I actually liked, but didn't want to use), it was time to get started.





It was not long after we had moved to Richmond that I went in Printer's Alley. They happened to be having an end of the year fabric sale, and I ended up spotting the perfect fabric there. It was a clean, contemporary design of circles and squares with robin's egg blue, brown and cream. I loved the fabric and found out that it was even more perfect at $3 a yard! There were 8 1/2 yards on the bolt-- just enough to make two curtains for the room.


Printer's Alley fabric



I later found a brown comforter and painted the room a light aqua by Behr. My mom even found some chocolate brown, aqua and cream fabric with birds on it to make an accent pillow for the bed.



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I recently took the three wood and iron frames off the walls and replaced them with two framed pictures of birds, which match the bird theme on the accent pillow.

Guest Room #1

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I had a lot of fun in this room. Daniel calls it my "Spanish room" because it has several things that I brought back from my semester in Spain in college. And the colors-- red, yellow and black-- may remind you of the Spanish flag. Honestly, it was not my intention at all to make a "Spanish room." The red bedding and the yellow chair in the corner were both in my room in college.



It took me a while to find some fabric that had red, yellow and green and complimented the "fun" and almost whimsical feel of the red duvet with the decorative red tufts of fabric and the yellow chenille striped fabric on the chair (which my mom made!), but I finally found some. It's a tropical style fabric that we used as accents in the room.





When my mom came to visit last year, she helped me make a fabric headboard. They are much easier to make than you think!


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To make a fabric headboard:
We bought a piece of plywood the width of a queen bed (or whatever size bed you have) and several feet high. Then buy a piece of foam several inches thick the same size as the plywood. My mom sewed the fabric for the headboard so that it was about a foot longer on all four sides. First, we laid the fabric on a table face down. Then center the foam on top of the fabric and then the piece of plywood on top of the foam. Pull the fabric as tight as possible and staple it to the plywood with a staplegun. It's best to have one person holding the fabric on one side and another person pulling and stapling the fabric down on the opposite side. We then hung it on the wall with picture hanging tools. Just center and hang!

My mom made the curtains in this room as well. Two of these were in my college bedroom, so she just made me another for the extra window in this room.

I had originally painted this bedroom Benjamin Moore's Hawthorne Yellow, which I love. The yellow matched the fabrics really well, but I (once again) changed my mind after a few months. The yellow was very bright and was too much with the other intense colors we had in the room. I recently painted it a very neutral color using Benjamin Moore's Linen White. I think it suits the room much better because instead of walking into a room with intense, bright colors all around, your eye is just drawn to the reds, browns and yellows on the furniture.


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After; we just need to rehang the window treatments.