Vanity Sprucing

In honor of the first day of Spring I am getting started on some new projects. Something about the weather changing is making me motivated. One would think that being cooped up indoors I would get stuff done. Not the case. The winter weather really just makes me hibernate. I have made a long Spring DIY list and I am ready to start crossing things off. 

Today we are starting with the upstairs bathroom. We have two full bathrooms in the house. In true 70's fashion, one is blue and one is pink. Starting with the blue bathroom. Here is the picture from move in day. 

The lighting is terrible and give the wall tile a pink hue. In person it is basic white. You better believe there is also a blue tub. 

The vanity also came with these gigantic and totally unnecessary knobs. Since moving in we have replaced the toilet, added blinds, added art, and painted the door. Next on the to do list was to spruce up the vanity. 

It's hard to tell in the photo but it looks so much better. It was stained and peeling before. Now it looks fresh, clean, and well...new. It even makes the counter top look slightly better.

We have A LOT more to do but it is slowly coming together. The next things on the list are:

-Paint/replace counter and sink.

-Replace faucet.

-Replace mirror/lighting. As you can see in the below picture, the mirror is ridiculous. I know I am short but come on.

-Paint the walls.

-Paint trim and closet door. 

-Spray paint the heater cover (such an eye sore). 

View of the other side. 

In an ideal situation we would tear it all out and start over. In the real world that's not in the budget. So for now we are going to work with what we have and do what we can to make the blue tile look good. 

Here are the official "before" and "progress" pictures. It's not a lot but it is already getting better. Now if the girls would just cooperate and take simultaneous naps it wouldn't take me 4 days to get this done. 

 Happy Spring Equinox!

Happy House-i-versary!

This last weekend we celebrated the 1 year anniversary of getting the keys to our home. 

We are lovers of change but I am so happy that we have been able to stay put. We celebrated with cupcakes and giving our house a name. Our home in Georgia (The Golden Peach) was so easy to name. This house has been much tougher. After a lot of back and forth, may I introduce.....

The Swell Burrow 

This picture was taken a couple days before the mountains of snow we've had this winter. The light post is almost entirely covered now. Also we can't get to our front door. No joke. 

The name of our house was a collaboration. We have an ocean view and Brian's first love is surfing. Swell. When I first saw this house, with its wood shingles and split levels, it immediately reminded me of The Burrow from Harry Potter. It's also a little play on the word swell which is kinda fun. I hope to make us an official house sign sometime soon. 

Maine is our home and I hope to celebrate many more house-i-versaries here. I also hope to get a lot more DIY accomplished year 2 than we did year 1. Here's to a productive year!

ps//I'll leave you with a couple of picture from our favorite spots here in Maine. Happy Monday!

 Wolf Neck Woods State Park

 Nubble Lighthouse

 Portland Head Lighthouse

Wells Beach

Amelia's Toddler Room: Update & Project

We left off a few months ago with Amelia's room looking like this. 

She adjusted to her new room just fine...well better than fine. She loved showing it off to everyone. At first she was sleeping in her crib. Pretty quick after moving her in here she was clearly outgrowing her crib. About a month ago we decided to move her up to a twin bed. Luckily for us, this girl handles change really well. She LOVES her new bed and we have not had any issues with the transition. I think she got out of bed once and I asked her to get back in...and she did. Just like that, she has grown up. 

We didn't have a bed frame for her twin. We had planned on buying a universal frame until we could find something we liked. We quickly decided we wanted to make one..as we usually do. For the last month Amelia has been sleeping on her mattress on the floor. A little weird but at least she wont fall out right?? Right now her room is looking a little more lived in. We added a rug, art, curtains (homemade by my mom), and some personal touches. Oh and of course we added her bed.  

She loves showing off her bed. When I got ready to take the pictures she quickly threw in books and put "Beary" to bed. 

A drawing I did and a frame Amelia painted. 

Amelia's Birthday picture.

Her chalkboard wall gets a lot of action. I have also hung up some of her art, pictures, and a print of Amelia Island from Yellow Brick Home. This is one of my favorite spots in the house. 

When we decided to build the bed I went straight to Ana White to look for some plans. Ana White is the go to for me because she has plans for nearly everything (for free) from beginner to advanced. Brian is not a beginner but I like to keep things semi-simple. This is the plan that we are going with. 

Ana White Farmhouse Storage Bedframe

We are adjusting the frame to fit some of the wood we already had and a twin mattress so it will be a little different. It will be a bit taller and more narrow.

 The room used to have those amazingly large sliding closet doors that I loathe. We are repurposing part of them as the headboard and footboard. 

It is coming together perfectly. I am not 100% on what I will do with the finish but I have a couple of ideas. We can be sure that it will be mostly white though. That's a given.

The best part is that the wood (and some work) were a Christmas gift from my parents. We are feeling very blessed and excited!

Happy Thursday!

Pantry!

We have never had a pantry. In all of our apartments and homes that we've lived in...never a pantry. What is that? I have gotten used to using cabinet space but this kitchen was feeling really tight. You can see from the picture of when we moved in that there is hardly any cabinet space let alone a pantry.  

To remedy the no pantry we got a shelving unit from Ikea. It worked for a while but having an open shelving pantry in the kitchen with a toddler wasn't the best idea. 

Enter the coat closet. If you look in the next picture we have a coat closet just around the corner from the kitchen. 

We didn't use it for coats. We used it for our vacuum and broom and a dumping ground for everything else. It was basically one big junk drawer. What a waste of space. First I started with cleaning it and painting it inside and out.  

After I painted it the closet continued to be a junk pile. This is when I brought up the idea of maybe turning it into a pantry. Once I told Brian about the idea it took him no time at all (probably 6 hours over a couple of days) to make our new pantry. 

He also surprised me with hooks outside of the closet for coats :)

What an improvement! I hate wasted space and I am so happy to have an organized functional use for this closet. I would love to take credit but my only involvement was the idea and part of the plan. Brian did such a good job for his first ever custom shelving. You can call him Dean......Kurt Russell in Overboard...anyone.... 

Hooks for the brooms and swiffer.

He made the shelves adjustable (his first time doing that). He also used a router to round the edges of the shelves. 

Amelia is thrilled as well. 

I still have some touch ups to do but the closet is already being put to use so those will come in time. Every project we do makes this house feel more and more like ours. It's projects like this that really make me love DIY work. 

It's The Little Things

I love doing large projects but I think that it is the little touches that turn a house into a home. In the past few months we have slowed way down but I have started to do small projects here and there. 

A fireplace mantel is always hard for me to decorate. I don't like things too busy but mantels need to be accessorized. The pictures in the shutter frame are from left to right: Santorini, Huntington Beach, Yellowstone. The pictures in the smaller frames are: Brian and Amelia at the Nubble light house and Brian surfing in Santa Cruz. 

 I added a jar (I loooove glass jars) to the mantel to collect shells from our beach trips. We usually hit the beach once a week and Amelia loves collecting rocks and shells. Occasionally a shell will find its way home and they have been landing in our jar. We even have some shells from Hawaii, California, and North Carolina in there. 

We also made some small changes in our entryway. I'll give you a little before photo to remind you of where we started. 

We changed the bulb on the light fixture. Eventually we want to replace this all together but it is definitely an upgrade. 

We also added a little art to the walls. We hung my painting above the door (it fit perfectly) and we also hung a couple of pieces in the stairway.

I was always struggling with what to do on this wall. It is such a large odd wall. As I was going through my frames I found these 3 11X14's that I have had forever. I also do some sketching or writing in a sketchbook from time to time. I pulled out a couple of sketches, put them in the frames, and there you have it. Simple and cheap, my favorite. The side pieces were inspired by some prints I liked on Pinterest. The piece in the middle is the lyrics to our wedding songs (better together & angel by Jack Johnson) written out.

One of these days I will spring for some art but we aren't quite there yet. In the meantime our little touches are homemade but very personal.

ps. We are working on turning our coat closet into a pantry right now. Wish us luck!