Accent walls, FTW.

When Graham's away, I paint stuff. 

During his deployments over the past few years, I pretty much painted our entire house. And, since we're in an apartment, I'm not wanting to spend the time creating an amazing quatrefoil wall or painting stripes, I can't keep myself from painting accent walls very, very bold colors. 

Like this wall. I'm so.freaking.tired. of this wall. 

The day Graham left for Germany, I bought an Expedit shelving unit from Ikea. It was already assembled and a great price. Unfortunately, I was driving my Civic. 

That day, I learned a very valuable lesson: an assembled 5ish foot tall shelving unit will NOT fit into a Civic. Since it was on sale, I couldn't return it. So what's a girl to do? Go inside, get some tools and sit down on the floor to disassemble it. 

On the way home, I was texting Graham and asked him to pick a color: pink or purple. And the image started together in my head. 

This wall HAD to be painted. Had to. Putting a while shelf in front of an off white wall was just more boring on top of boring. 

So, I went to Home Depot, and picked a bold & bright shade of purple. 

And ta-da! I am SO thrilled with how it turned out! The bold purple is really pretty with every tone in the room. I love the way it looks against the dark cabinets, the off white walls, the dark gray couch, the recycled glass countertops, etc. Its a bit brighter than the navy I usually use, and I love it. 

Accessorizing my book case was challenging... I need more hardcover books with brightly colored spines. Too bad you can't sort books on Amazon based on spine color....

The only thing left do do: take care of the bar stool situation. A certain puppy I know and love chewed these up during her chewing stage. I'm thinking something like this, but in cream & gold. 

I know that painting walls in an apartment isn't everyone's cup of tea. Some apartments don't allow it, and other people don't think that painting is worth it when you have to repaint when you move. But here's the thing- even though you don't own the apartment, it's your home for a specific amount of time. We're going to be in our apartment until next February. So, I want to make it feel like home while we're here. 

Operation: Get on that!

We've lived in our apartment now for six months, and this past weekend we finally got off our butts and took care of some decorating projects around here. 

We've had a HUGE stack of framed photos in our guestroom this whole time, and a stack of things that needed to be matted & framed in a closet. We recently renewed our lease for a year, so since we still have a good bit of time here, I wanted to make it into a home. 

I don't understand people who live in a rental property, but don't make it their own. When we move we'll have holes to spackle and some repainting to do, but it'll be worth it to have it look like we live here for the next 11 months. 

Our bathroom is pretty big, and very blah. So, this plain little wall was jazzed up a little with more free printables from Young House Love, some Ikea Ribba frames I bought last time we were in Charlotte and had Graham cut some navy blue mats for them. The wall is so much more pleasant & cheerful to look at while I'm relaxing in the tub every night. 

 

My mom bought me this framed print of my alma matter (UNC-Charlotte) in 2004 for Christmas when I decided to go back to school. In Arkansas, and in Charlotte, it's home was on top of a bookcase with my degree. We sold those cheap bookcases before moving to Virginia. This little wall was the perfect new home for this frame!

These colorful framed prints were about to be rehomed to a box in the garage. They were perfect on top of our hutch in Arkansas, but the hutch is also in our garage. It won't fit in the apartment =(

I had planned to hang them with my giant fork & spoon, but I just couldn't make it work.

I refused to give up on them, did some re-arranging on top of the cabinets, and found homes for them there. It isn't ideal, but I'm happy to have them out & not boxed up someplace.

We also hung these four frames I painted last year in our guest room... And while I'm happy to have them off the floor, I miss the way they looked in our old house. The dark gray walls are so much more appealing than the soul sucking beige. Seeing these gold frames on the blah walls makes me want to paint...

We definitely worked on our gallery wall.We bought a few prints while on vacation in New England that needed to be framed and matted, we framed and matted the print Graham got me for Valentines Day and hung a small sentiment Brittany gave me for Christmas. Michael's has their frames 'buy one, get one free' this week, and the first part of the week they were an additional 25% off. So, I bought a few more frames, now I'm just waiting on the prints to come in.

This little wall in the bedroom got the biggest make over. If you remember our last house, I had decorated each room with bold paint colors. I've held off on painting here, because I knew we'd have to repaint and the ceilings here are REALLY high, which makes painting a little more work. Such a huge difference though. I am such an advocate of painting. I've always said that nothing changes a room faster than a fresh coat of paint, and it's one of the cheapest things you can do. I spent $20 on paint and I have over half a gallon left.

And a picture of my painting partner for old times sake =)

The only problem? Now I want to paint everything!

Our house is finished.

Welcome to our home. No matter where we go, this little house in Arkansas will always be special to me. This was our first home as a married couple, and we transformed every inch of this place from a dark & dated 1976 house, to a bright & modern home.

Master bathroom DONE!

This weekend we were able to mark a very significant item off of our big ass house to-do list: the master bathroom is finally finished.

You guys have NO idea how amazing it feels to have this bathroom finished. It has been sitting in shambles for almost a year. In January we finally started working on it again, and while it took a longer than we anticipated, it was absolutely worth it. The bathroom is small, and I wish it had a tub, but despite the tub, it is one of the most beautiful bathrooms I have ever seen.

I'm going to stop rambling now and let the beautiful bathroom speak for itself.

Graham had to custom build the vanity. If you remember from my original bathroom post, the floor is unfinished under the vanity. And of course it was an odd size. So our options were to finish the floor, or build a custom vanity. Graham loves woodworking, so he built this.

Doesn't even look like the same bathroom, does it?

Framing out the mirror made SUCH a huge difference. I think that this is something small and fairly simple that makes such a huge difference and makes the room look and feel so much finished.

The cubby hole is probably my favorite thing in the bathroom (other than the quatrefoil wallpaper). The cubby hole is a massive waste of space, and if we had more time and an unlimited budget, I would have liked to knock through the wall, dry wall it up and put in a bathtub. But, that wasn't in the budget or the time frame that we're dealing with. The door that Graham built looks absolutely beautiful. I love the glass, I love the hardware. I love that it makes it look a little bit bigger and gives you a focal point other than the teeny tiny shower.

The shower door was cracked and busted before, and was potentially going to shoot our budget through the roof, when Lowe's quoted us $600-$700 to have one custom made. But by doing a little research, we found a company online that made one for about $150.

Love the light fixture! 

 

And I love having this view from my bed. 

I absolutely could not be happier with this bathroom. It is so beautiful and Graham did such an amazing job! Now, onto the kitchen...

Fabulous Finds

One of the best things about going home is the chance to do some shopping at my favorite stores. I love things that are a little different that you can't find everywhere you go.

Paper Skyscraper is one of my favorite stores ever. They are locally owned & operated, and carry a very diverse selection of gift items, greeting cards, gorgeous gift wrap, etc. I can never go in there without finding a few dozen things I want, and this trip was no exception.

Umbra Fish Bag Clips

Mid-Century Modern Dresser Project

Over a month ago we found this gorgeous mid-century (aka 1950's/vintage/or just plain old) dresser at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I fell in love with it instantly. After doing some serious googling, I decided that the mid-century modern style is absolutely fabulous, and finding this dresser at the ReStore when I never find anything good there was a sign that I should look towards the past more often.


Mid-Century Modern Dresser

It took a minute to make Graham see my vision. But basically, ever since seeing this on Pinterest, I knew I wanted to find an old dresser and turn it into an entertainment center. This one was absolutely perfect. It was well made (Graham was impressed with the dovetailed joints) and very sturdy. It was also ridiculously heavy... Anyways. We decided to buy it, but there were about 4 other people circling, waiting for me to step away. Graham went to go pay, I wasn't leaving this alone for a second, so I hopped up on it and made myself comfortable until he got back with the bright green sold slip. We went home, got his truck, came back and loaded it up.

We didn't plan on doing a lot to it. Sanding, new stain, new hardware & replacing two of the drawers with a shelf. We loved the legs on it. I think the vintage look to the legs gives it a lot of charm. Picking new hardware was easy. We wanted to replaced the ugly brass with something sleek, stainless & modern. Putting the new hardware on was challenging because of the placement of the old stuff. I'm not sure if you can really tell in the picture, but the hardware placement is staggered... definitely not the look we wanted, and the new hardware wouldn't cover it. So Graham found some similar wood and made plugs to put where the holes were.

This worked really well. Once he sanded them down, they were barely noticeable, and even now I couldn't find them until I actually looked for them.

This bad boy took a LOT of sanding. A LOT.

But finally it was smooth & finished, and we were ready to choose a stain. We ended up combining Minwax Red Mahogany & Dark Walnut to get the color that was closest to what we wanted. Being completely honest, I wanted to go darker, but Graham wanted the pretty grain of the wood to show through. I'm glad he convinced me, because I love the richness & warmth of the color we went with.

He stained it, put a few coats of polyurethane on it, and then went to Virginia for a few days, so I was forced to wait.



And re-evaluate our hardware selection. The one we picked out initially was small. And I thought something a little more substantial would look better.

Anyways, Graham got home late Tuesday night, and when I got home from work yesterday I came home to this. It's absolutely beautiful! We spent the night curled up on the couch continuing Graham's X-Files education. During an episode I don't really care for, I swear I spent more time admiring our newest piece of furniture than I did watching Mulder become entranced by a vampire.

The dresser has always been a great piece. But I think as an entertainment center, it's absolutely perfect in our home. I love the color. I love the warmth and richness of it in a room full of dark & cool colors. I love the height (it's significantly higher than our old one). I love the drawers that keep all of our stuff hidden. I just absolutely love it.