Living room with new paint and trim

My parents offered to come up to Portland for the weekend and help us get some home improvement projects out of the way.  Most importantly, we wanted to build a temporary fencing system to keep Basil in our back yard and out of the neighbors, and finish painting the livingroom, breakfast room, and downstairs 'office'.  We had painted the walls in those rooms before we moved in, but the wall trim and windows were so dingy and yellowish, the rooms still felt kind of wierd. 

On the walls in the living and breakfast rooms, we chose a light, warm gray from Olympic Paints called 'Whispering Wind'.  We chose a darker paint in the same family called 'Quill' for the office area.  And for the wall trim, doors, and windows, we chose a bright white color called 'Delicate White'.  The old dirty wall trim was so yellow, that it was making our wall paint look very pale blue.  It wasn't bad, but it was a little too blue for my tastes.

Completed breakfast room with vintage table.

Mom and Dad showed up around noon on Saturday and we immediately began finishing painting the office, and Dad and I built the fence.  Then after a quick break, we began painting the second upstairs bedroom the 'Alpine Shadow' color....kind of a muted seafoam green.  We ended the night by cleaning all the downstairs trim and windows with Spic n' Span.

Living room from entry hall.

Sunday began with taping the floors and walls, and lightly sanding all the wall and window trim.  Then we wiped the trim down with a wet rag and painted two coats of our 'Delicate White' in semi-gloss trim paint.  There was a lot of trim in those rooms, particularly around the windows, but we managed to finish all the painting and remove the tape and rearrange the furniture before meeting some friends at a neighborhood bar and grill that evening. 

We've still got a lot of work to do, but I'll be glad to have the living areas completed.  Andrea is still insisting we paint the kitchen cabinets, but I like them as they are. 

Old kitchen looking into updated breafast room.

We should have some electrical work done this week, and then have cable and internet service installed Friday.  By Saturday all initial work downstairs should be complete!

Many thanks to our incredible friends who helped us move, clean, pack, and take stuff to the dump! 

I'd say we're about halfway to getting settled - meaning we're halfway unpacked, halfway painted, halfway feeling comfortable in a new house, etc. 

Basil is having a hard time adjusting to his new digs.  He's not quite sure of the whole situation and we suspect that he thinks we'll be leaving him alone for good every time we put him in his crate.  He's been pretty clingy the past few days.  He spends most of the night looking at us like this:

Anyways, here's some pictures of the house so far.  These were taken before we brought the last of our stuff over from the old house - there's a lot more unpacked boxes in the house now.  Mom & Dad Hodney are coming up this weekend to help us get settlted - we could use the help, so we're very grateful to them for volunteering their services!

What we're loving:

• Large master bedroom - our last home had barely enough room to walk around the bed.
• Closets! - I'm talking linen, under the stairs, coat closet, plus large closets in all three bedrooms. 
• Windows - downstairs has a lot of windows and natural light...something the previous owner kept covered up with heavy orange curtains.

What we're hating:

• Outdated electric - the bathroom has the old two-prong sockets, so I'm currently blow drying and straightening my hair in the kitchen.
• Tiny utility room - the furnace takes up a large part of the space so there's no good place to keep Basil's crate that's not in the way.  We may have to downgrade him to a smaller one :(
• Water heater - we have to take super quick showers or else we run out of hot water.  I've resorted to showering at night so that we're not fighting for hot water in the morning.  The water heater looks newer, so hopefully there's just an adjustment that needs to be made or that it needs to get used to being back in service over four years of non-use.  

Overall, we're really enjoying our time in the home so far.  It doesn't feel like "ours" yet but it's getting there!

Hanging from every door and cabinet is a contraption of which the sole purpose of it is to hang other things on.  Take a look...

Apparently, she even liked to hang her soap.

I started removing most of these "hangy" things last night.  It's going to take a little bit longer to get rid of the old woman smell. 

Our friends Charlie & Stephanie stopped by the house as we were working on it this weekend and dropped off this beauty:

We are most impressed by the rattlesnake on the hat. 

Like every crap gift, this picture has a story and the story ends at our house - it now sits on our mantle as we figure out where best to display this gloriousness. 

It's okay to be jealous.  We understand. 

Living Room before the storm.

Day one of my captivity.....held captive by our new home and the improvements and renovations we have planned.  It's all very exciting and will be worth it, but it's something new to us.  The biggest step will be having new white oak floors installed upstairs, and the existing floors refinished downstairs to match.  That and a little paint will go a long way in the perception of this house, and I'm already seeing that from the progress in the last day.

I was fortunate enough to be the one to actually pick up the keys and set foot into the house as owner yesterday afternoon....one of the perks of working just up the road from the new house.  I took some pictures of the living areas, and bedroom because Andrea and I would be heading back last night to begin ripping up carpet and wall trim.

Living Room from the dining room.Downstairs bedroom soon to be office and guest room. (someone else ripped up the carpet a few weeks ago)Master bedroom with beautiful 50 year old linoleum floors and seafoam green walls.

Those are the only 'before' images we'll ever have of those spaces cause now they look like this.  We're crazy to want to rip up that flooring and paint the walls....right?  I'll throw in one more for kicks.  This is the upstairs bathroom which we will remodel ourselves in the next few months.  Upstairs bathroom.Andrea and I were eager to get over there last night, and finally arrived around 6:30.  Since there was only one rubber mallet, I continued removing all the wall trim and door trim, as well as closet doors and carpeting so the wood flooring guys (Wood Floors by Design) could come over today and install all the new white oak floors upstairs.  Andrea got started with the paint samples she's already posted about, and then began ripping up the carpeting in the downstairs hallway.  Around 7:45 I finished upstairs, and went downstairs to rip up the carpet and tack strips around the living room walls.  It's not that hard, but just takes a lot of time.  We got about halfway through with that, which was enough for me and we headed home around 9. 

I met Wood Floors by Design's crew at 8am this morning, and started showing them around and asking a couple more questions.  The trickiest part of the upstairs is that they had to shim the top stair tread a bit to make it flush with the 3/4" thick wood flooring.  At lunch, I ran home to check in and was amazed that they had the entire area nearly complete, except for about 4 feet of each bedroom.  You can see from this picture that they did a great job. 

New floors and top tread at top of stairs (bathroom)Master Bedroom with new white oak flooring nearly complete.

The 1 1/2" wide white oak flooring is really beautiful.  Right now it's unfinished, but after sanding and sealing with three coats of Pallman's water-based finish, the color will be very similar to this, and have a satin like sheen to it which is fairly flat.  It will bring the grain in the floor out really nicely though when looking at a glance.  This is a fairly trendy look right now, and also very popular because of the low V.O.C.'s associated with the water-based finish.  It takes a little more maintenance, but performs really well in a low traffic area like a home unless you have a huge dog or feisty kids.  It's amazing how much  the flooring changed the way the upstairs felt....I'm really excited to have it completed.  They'll finish install today, then Monday they'll start sanding and finishing both downstairs and upstairs.  By next Wednesday evening, the floors should be completely done and we just have to stay off them for 3 days or so after.

I'm anxious to get started painting and excited to let Andrea see the floors in person.  Can't wait til it's finished!

The new oak floors are getting installed tomorrow, so Chris took off all the trim upstairs while I tested out paint colors. After doing some research and consulting ConsumerReports.org, we picked up some samples from Lowe's.  They are the exclusive retailer for Olympic Paint, which have zero VOCs and rated a Best Buy by Consumer Reports.  The price is $20/gallon and by far the least expensive low or zero VOC paint I've found.  Since we'll be painting just about every surface in the house, cost is a definite factor! 

My crappy iPhone camera makes it hard to tell the colors we chose.  Plus, being nighttime, the lighting wasn't great.  Chris and I like the end colors, but thought they were on the cool side.  We might be heading back to Lowe's to get some colors with a bit more warmth.  We're going to wait until we see these choices in the daylight with the carpets pulled up. 

The trim came off the walls pretty easily so we were able to start tearing up the carpet downstairs. 

Look how much better the room looks already without some of  the ugly green carpet...

It's going to look even better after I attack those drapes.  I'm anxious to take them down, but for security reasons, I think we'll wait until after the house isn't vacant anymore.  Also, we haven't quite decided what kind of window treatments we want to do. 

I took down these stained glass windows that were tacked inside the windows next to the fireplace. 

I felt a little guilty taking them down - I don't know if the previous owner did them herself or if they were purchased.  But, obviously they are not my style or of this decade.  I've actually done glass art before (fused and stained), so maybe I'll have to start taking classes again to work on a piece to fill the space in those windows. 

And to further demonstrate the time-capsuleness of the home, check this out:

It appears to be the box the milkman would put a delivery in.  It even had old, metal house numbers on it.  I kinda want to keep it, but don't know what to do with it.  Any ideas? 

Tile costs can vary tremendously, and since the tile will be the majority of the wall surface in this small bathroom, it's the first thing we have to get figured out from a design standpoint, and lock in a budget.

A couple nights ago I brought home these sketches

They're not exactly accurate colorwise, but they give some ideas of ways to unify the room with tile and paint colors.  We identified the first two as our favorites, and I did some quick renderings to study colors in the two schemes.

white glass tile over warm gray glass tile and porcelain-Casamood 'neutra' line.

faded blue glass over porcelain or stone - Ann Sacks 'Beaullieu' line.white glass tiles over calacatta marble floorsThe second option potentially is the cheapest, although I most prefer the first.   The first, however, requires us to use a higher end glass and porcelain tile to pull it off.  The third is the cliche design, but would still be awesome.  You can open up any design magazine and you're guaranteed to see an all white bathroom with marble floors and wood vanity.  But imagine having floors like this....

'Aria' marble wall from Ann Sacks'Selene' marble floor tile from Ann Sacks

I've already done a bit of pricing at Daltile, United Tile, and Ann Sacks here in Portland, and now we can use these design schemes to finalize which specific tiles and colors we want.  Then we can begin to develop the vanity, lighting, window treatment, and introduce color like in some rugs and shower curtain. 

I think we're going to go look at tile and paint colors today.  I'm having a hard time with the tile situation.....I'm not an interior designer.  I tend to want to overthink things at this level, so I'm having to fight that urge.  I'm really excited to get this started though!

Downstairs, the home has white oak floors - unfortunately, they're covered by ugly green carpet.  We've been able to pull up a few corners to peek underneath and they look like they're in pretty good condition. 

existing white oak flooring

Upstairs, the bedrooms have a lovely retro-patterned linoleum in them :)

Even better, given the age of the home, the linoleum is likely glued down with a product containing asbestos.  Yikes! 

So, obviously we will be getting new flooring upstairs.  We decided to get new white oak floors installed upstairs to match what's down below.  AND, we decided to get the existing white oak floors refinished downstairs to match what's up above.  After almost 60 years, the original wood floors will be darker than new white oak. Our new floors will look like this:

Shoes included!

Lucky for us, the new wood floors can go right on top of the old lineoleum.  This saves us from having to have the original floor tested for asbestos....and ripping them up.  It would have been a hassle and a half to tear them up safely and dispose of properly.  If you're ever dealing with questionable, decades old flooring, please have it tested for asbestos - you do not want to accidentally expose yourself to it without proper protection!

All of the work should take a week to complete.  The majority of that time will be dedicated to the finish of the floors.  We opted to have the floors finished with a water based product - it's more environmentally friendly than oil and better over time on your body - no fumes.  It also has a nice satin finish that we prefer to a shiny laquer.  After the final coat of finish is down, we still have to wait a few days to move in - we can't have furniture and boxes on the floor while the finish cures or it can stain it. 

So, that puts us moving in on November 8th - over 2 weeks from now.  The waiting is going to be torture! 

That's the first bathroom we want to remodel.  My feeble mind is unable to imagine the possibilities, so Chris has to draw it out for me.  In these pics, we're testing out color schemes of tile. 

Chris caught my cold and stayed home from work yesterday.  When I came home, he had 3D modeled the entire first floor of the house - fly-throughs and everything.  He said it was so that we could figure out how our furniture will fit in the living room, but all he had done was concentrate on "his" office. 

In more typical about-to-move news, I've become obsessed with paint colors.  I have a new found love for gray and fear that our whole house will be shades of gray when it's all said and done.  I'm going to price paint this weekend (zero VOCs!) and buy samples of colors we're interested in.  As soon as we get keys, we're going to slap those samples on some walls.  Hopefully there will be no disagreements and foot stompings afterwards :)

When Chris and I laid our eyes on this beauty, we knew we had to have it. 

Some of you may find this dining room set ugly, but to me it's beautiful.  And to a Designer like Chris?  Well, it's an architect's dream. 

This house is part of an estate so we figured that the Seller would have no problem leaving the table and chairs behind, so we asked for it as part of our offer.  Luckily for us, they agreed!

When we were at the home during the inspection, I asked Chris what he thought it was worth.  I was shocked when he estimated $1,800!  I knew Danish Modern furniture was popular, but not that popular.  I looked on eBay and Craigslist and since this set is in such great condition, I think his estimate is pretty spot-on. 

I love orange, but the fabric is pretty worn.  Eventually we'll reupholster the chairs and it should be good as new!  I don't know what we're going to do with our existing dining room table and chairs - probably just put in the garage for now.  What we have now is from IKEA so this is definitely an upgrade!