Bathroom Progress

Hope you had a great weekend! I had to start with this picture of Layla in the swing the other night, I can't bear not to include one nice picture in this post!
Some of you have been asking for pictures of our bathroom progress... I'm not sure this is exactly what you had in mind... it looks terrible to the average person but to me it represents a lot of hard work!

This is what we started with. A teeny tiny bathroom with a leaking sink, tub with plastic surround, and fake tiles on the walls. I painted it Ballet White by Benjamin Moore to see us through until the renovation.
Storage was a big problem. The cabinets you see on the right are literally 3 inches deep.

My husband's brother Scott is working on the bathroom for us. Dave and Scott worked very hard this weekend to destruct the entire thing.

 You can see the sad state of our guest room here... but it will be better soon! There will be a new beadboard ceiling to replace the old tiles, which came complete with a hole patched with paper towel of all things. We are making the guest room a little smaller to accommodate the new bathroom.
Here is the bathroom all cleaned up and ready for construction:

 Scott really knows a lot about old houses and he is a very hard worker. He and his wife Hannah have been renovating an older home and I can't wait to share the beautiful transformation with you soon.


Thank you Scott and Dave, for working so hard!
I will post more pictures soon, even though they are not pretty I want to remember them. 
Have a wonderful week!

Thoughts on Living With Renovations

First of all, yes, the peonies are still blooming here! I hope you aren't tired of them:)
I thought I would write out a few of the things I have learned since we started renovating our house. Mostly to remind myself as we are in the midst of our bathroom project!

($15 antique market planter on our new front porch)
Living with renovations can be exciting, fun, and satisfying as you see a room coming together. It can also be unsettling and stressful if you feel as though your cannot really live in your own home.

For me, the best thing I have learned is to not let the renovation of one room take over the entire house. Before we start the project I store all the items from the room to be renovated neatly in containers in the basement. It is really easy to be tempted to just move all the stuff to another room, but then suddenly you have two rooms that have become less functional. This is a really good time to evaluate what is actually useful and what you want to go back into the finished room. I donate all unnecessary items.

(If you look closely you will see a paintbrush drying - this is a common site here!
I need to get a matching basket on the other side of that cabinet too)
The next thing I try to remember is to keep cleaning! It is also tempting to just stop cleaning and wait until it is done, but this just makes for a very unpleasant house. I don't think it is pointless to clean a room that might get dusty again, it is just less to clean next time. I try really hard to stay on top of the laundry and continue to cook homemade meals, which is another thing that helps you to feel as if your life is not being totally disrupted.
As far as tools that my husband tends to leave around the area he is working on, I just use a big laundry basket and pile them all in to contain them. 

I think that is all... I'm sure many of you are much more experienced with this than I am and I would be happy to hear any advice you have to offer! This particular project is even more complicated since we only have one
bathroom... but I know the results will be worth it! 
I can't wait to show you our progress...
Hope you have a lovely weekend!

An Outside Makeover

I hope you are all doing well, we have been busy!  I thought I would show you what we have been working on. 

We have been working on the front of our little house. When we first moved in we weren't able to do anything on the outside because of a lack of time and, of course, money. We had to focus all our resources on the inside. 
This is what we started with:

It is just a simple little 1 1/2 story cottage bungalow. We were certainly not under any grand illusions of creating an elegant manor! We did, however, think we could make it look a little prettier - with a small budget and a lot of effort.
This is what it looks like this morning:

The very first thing we did was to remove the metal screen door and let the original door shine. We also took out the big shrub on the left to make room for my garden. I showed a picture to a worker at the local nursery and she told me that shrubs are simple to remove and that it should come up easily, just like an onion, so I came home and enthusiastically suggested we remove it.
Needless to say my husband did not think it was just like an onion.
Anyways, I think this is an example of how removing something can often make a huge improvement before you even have to buy anything. 

(The lantern is from Home Depot)
We added homemade shutters to the window as well as $15 corbels from Rona to the sides of the porch.
My husband rebuilt parts of the porch including the stairs and the sides where there was previously lattice. We could have torn up the whole thing but it would have been wasteful since the overall structure and floor are in good condition. We did, however, remove the concrete steps. 
Even more than indoor renovations, exterior renovations can be very expensive if you do not do it yourself. So, a week ago our poor neighbors tolerated my husband doing this to remove the old concrete:

I have to include these pictures because I know someday we will look back on this and smile.

To create the cottage style look I have always dreamed of for the front of our home, my husband thought we should make the steps out of stone. I love the results! We found the big stones on sale at a local nursery and the flagstone was $50 on Kijiji. 

 The wicker furniture was also from Kijiji and I sewed the seat cushions.
Working on this project really was fun. Even our neighbors got involved, donating perennials, extra soil, and muscle for lifting rocks. 

 Nothing teaches patience like a garden. I cannot wait for ours to grow! This is the first garden I have ever had so I did my best to create an English Country look. I lined the pathway with lavender - it should bloom soon! Someday it will spill over onto the pathway. In between the rocks I used creeping thyme. It smells so pretty mixed with the lavender. There are two David Austin rosebushes, one is a climber that we will create an arch for next year. I love old fashioned flowers so there are also peonies, foxglove, and delphiniums.
A few of our donated perennials were diagnosed as having gone into "shock" by my neighbor. I hope they revive soon!

(My husband built the planter boxes at the edge of the porch)
More than ever, I now feel like we have truly made this house ours. Putting actual roots into the ground creates a more permanent bond with a house than painting a room ever could. I hope I can enjoy this garden for years, and when we are no longer here I imagine another woman taking a similar pride in their fleeting blooms.

 I hope you enjoyed the outside of our little home!
(I'm linking this to Frugal Friday)

On Paint Colours

I thought it would be a good idea to answer some questions I have been asked here, just in case anyone else was wondering the same thing. 
The first one is about paint colours. I think it is kind of funny for me to be writing a post about choosing paint colours, because I have great difficulty with this! I am definitely not a colour expert, but I will share what I have learned and the steps I follow.
1) Ask yourself, what do you want the room to feel like? While this is a somewhat vague question I do think it is really important in creating a room you love. Words that I sometimes think of are beachy, farmhouse, cozy, airy, clean, pretty... This is where inspiration photos can be helpful as well. I don't think there is any shame in seeing a magazine photo and wanting to create a similar feeling in your room. It involves really looking at the photo and analyzing what you think the overall feeling is, and then using your own furnishings, ideas, and style to bring it together. Also, I don't think the feeling has to be exactly the same throughout your whole house. I wanted our family room and dining room to be cozy, but our kitchen and bathroom to be clean and airy.

I wanted our bedroom to be pretty and airy.
2) Decide if you want white or another colour. I think that whites can achieve virtually any feeling you are going for depending on how you pull it together. A clean white with light blue and pink accessories can be pretty. A warm cream can be cozy and comforting in a room that has lots of texture.
White provides a backdrop to let your furnishings and accessories shine. Of course there is a reason that Pottery Barn and other catalogs use white backgrounds to display their furniture. With a white background furniture becomes almost like art or sculpture.

In this photo the books and flowers really stand out against the white backdrop. 
To select a white decide if you want a pure white or a warm white, depending on the overall feeling you are trying to achieve. Don't forget to consider what you already have that will be going in the room. If you have natural wood furniture, especially if it is darker, I think it is safer to go with a cream colour. White and dark can go together nicely but there needs to be some mid-tones to bridge the gap.


  In our kitchen I selected a warm cream to bridge the gap between the darker floors and bright white cabinets. Texture in the form of the sink skirt and breadboards also helps to add some mid-tones.
 However, sometimes you just want to have a little bit of colour. In this case I would decide what colour, for example, light pink as I used in Layla's room. If you stick to light colours I don't think that your whole house needs to be 'warm' or 'cool' colours, I think that light colours flow together nicely regardless of their temperature.
3) Consider the amount of natural light in the room. White will often appear grey in a dark room, which can be a beautiful look, it just needs to be taken into consideration. I discovered (after painting our staircase ceiling the same shade of blue as our bedroom) that a light room will enhance a light colour and the true shade of the colour will be seen. In a dark room, such as a hallway, a light colour will often appear white or grey.  To select a shade I always avoid the middle section of the paint chips, which are way too Crayola-ish for my personal taste, although some people do a great job with these! I go straight to the whites and neutrals and then I find the general colour I am looking for. For a room with a lot of natural light I then choose the colour at least one shade lighter than the colour I am trying to achieve. For example, I wanted a pretty, airy blue for our bedroom, just like Ocean Air:


But our bedroom gets a ton of light so I chose Sea Foam (which looks white on the paint chip in real life) and it looks like this:


I wanted the hallway ceiling to be the exact same shade. But when it was on the ceiling it still looked white, since the hallway is so dark. So I chose Ocean Air instead and it looks like the same blue:


I think the key is that for a room with lots of natural light, the shade you choose should look white in the paint can. It is really surprising how bright the colour will be once it is on the walls.


4) The final step would be of course to paint a sample pot on your wall and make sure that you like it in all different kinds of light. But if you do all of this and paint the room and still don't like it?
Well I personally think it is worth doing it again, after all, choosing colours is very tricky! You don't have to pretend to like the colour if it is actually not what you envisioned, I think it must happen to even the best designers! And to save money the paint store can retint the colour for free as long as you are not making drastic changes. I believe it is easier to go from a light colour to a dark one, so again I would encourage you to pick a shade lighter than you think that you will like.
And finally, since some of you asked, here are the paint colours in our house. I almost always use Benjamin Moore colours but often get them mixed wherever paint is on sale.
Guest room, living room, dining room above beadboard - Ballet White by Benjamin Moore. This is a lovely cream, not too beige or yellow.
Guest room, living room, dining room, below beadboard, nook walls and all our trim - Oxford White by Benjamin Moore. A clean and crisp white.
Layla's Nursery - Benjamin Moore Pink Cloud #887. A cotton-candy very light pink.
Kitchen - Benjamin Moore Devon Cream
Bedroom - Benjamin Moore Sea Foam
I hope this helps some of you, I know I am not a colour specialist. Let me know if you have any more questions!

Friday Thoughts

I hope you are all enjoying your weekend. I have a few random thoughts to share today!

 Right now my we are working on the exterior of our house, improving the porch and landscaping. I am beginning to love gardening. It is so fun to see how the plants change every day. 
My peonies and roses are in bloom right now, although there are only a few flowers so I haven't been able to bring them inside. My Mom is so generous and gave me some from her garden!

We made this frame out of some old wood we found in our garage, left by the previous owners. The picture is from Kimberly of Mimi Charmante. 


I am also including this picture of my window mirror for the Saturday Night Special theme of old windows. I know it is a typical use for an old window but it is something special to me because my husband and I worked on it together and filled it with family photos.


But by far the most exciting news I have to share is that I am now an aunt!
I am so proud! My sister is such a good mother already. 

Isn't she a gorgeous baby? It was so fun to photograph her today.
Welcome to the world little Charlotte!