For today we’ll go over the only room in the entire house that is actually finished. From curtains to carpet. This room is almost exactly how I want it. It’s still not quite perfect, I’d really love to replace the mirrored sliding closet doors, but considering that it’s actually painted, furnished, and has things hanging on the walls, it’s miles ahead of any place else around here.

I had the absolute hardest time getting any accurate pictures of the colors in this room. The color is a really pale orange. It’s not at all pastel, but it’s also not yellow. I had such a specific color in my head that I actually ended up painting this room twice because the first time didn’t quite cut it.

Obviously the theme I was going off of was the alphabet, but I didn’t want it to look like I’d just thrown up everything that had a letter on it, so I went to one of the best quilt shops in the world, which just happens to be down the street from the hospital, and picked out a bunch of gorgeous civil war reproduction fabrics in the color palette of the room. You can see those fabrics making up the letters on the quilt, the letters and circles on the bumper, the curtains, etc. I think they really brought the room together without getting into alphabet overkill.

Here’s the curtains:

I used the repro fabrics to make a striped valance, and then I used a cream fabric with a tone on tone alphabet print as the sheers. There is no space for a proper curtain rod in this corner, so I had to rig up a big contraption out of a 2×2 I covered in fabric, screwed into the wall, and then velcroed the valance to. Then I used screw hooks in the bottom of the 2×2 to hold the sheers which I inserted grommets into. It all looks just fine, but if you lift up the valance it’s pretty obvious that the whole thing is kind of MacGyver’d together.

Here’s a closeup of our reading corner with the finished quilt:

Bear picked out the dark blue fabric, it’s got kind of a denim print on it which he thought would be perfect for a little boy. I tell you, years of hard work training that man has paid off big. He comes up with great ideas all the time.

Here’s the bumper that goes with the quilt:

And now for the artwork. For years I’ve been collecting little stuffed animals that come from picture books. I’m admittedly Seuss heavy, but I also have Stellaluna and Verdi, Babar and Celeste, and one of these days I’ll track down a Paddington and Courderoy. I’d also collected a couple of Seuss prints that used to hang in our living room, but no longer fit with the new decor, so I needed a place to put this big messy collection. Pottery Barn carried the perfect solution with shelves that were 4″ deep and had a bar in the front to hold in odd sized items, but like most things at Pottery Barn they were horribly overpriced and you never know about the quality. Instead I went to etsy and used their incredible Alchemy tool to find a craftsman to make them for me. I went with woodshed and was absolutely thrilled with the results.

On the opposite wall I have framed pages from picture books. I thought long and hard about which books to choose, and once we found out Atti was a boy I had to start thinking all over again. I wanted stories that were iconic and instantly recognizable, with a boy protagonist, preferably a human boy protagonist. I’m really happy with what I ended up using.

There’s a page from Where the Wild Things Are, one from Harold and the Purple Crayon, and the last one is Gerald McBoing Boing. Huge thanks to my dear friend Shutterbug for her help with this project. By the way, that picture is probably the closest example of the actual paint color.

Tomorrow we’ll focus on individual projects…

For today we’ll start with the staircase.

The folks we bought the house from replaced the staircase and railing just before we bought the place, but didn’t bother to do anything with it. When we took over the top of the railing was completely naked wood, and before we even moved into the house the grain of the wood was already starting to raise. I primed it and painted it, but by the time I was done I had slapped paint all over the wrought iron. So since I’d already ruined it, I figured, What the Heck. Might as well try something bold. So I painted it copper. I’m just wild about how it looks up against the paint.

My good furniture karma continues with this piece at the top of the stairs. I got it off of CraigsList for $50. It’s not in the best of shape, but talk about a perfect midcentury modern piece, complete with markings from the original manufacturer. Someday I’ll refurbish this.

Then we have Atti’s nursery, which we’ll save for it’s own day since it’s the only room in the whole house that’s actually finished, a guest room which isn’t worth looking at since it’s a room with a bed in it, and then another bathroom. This was the room that was infamously painted hunter green with airbrushed constellations on the ceiling. The paint was tough for me to pick because this bathroom will serve as Atti’s bathroom, as well as the guest bathroom, so I wanted it to relate to both rooms without it looking like it belonged exclusively to either room. This peachy color was intended as a variation on the orange of The Rookie’s room, while being more grown up to go along with the guest room.

Finally, we have the Master Bedroom. Which is also pretty much a room with a bed in it. I wanted to create a really masculine feeling, with all the colors existing in that vague not quite gray, not quite blue, not quite purple, but I chickened out when I chose the paint colors and now I hate them.

The colors in this photo aren’t quite true, but the contrast color looks very brown instead of charcoally, and the main color looks lavender instead of a milky gray.

You can almost see how purple the paint looks in this image. I think the combo looks just fine, but I had such a specific look in my mind, that I just can’t get over my disappointment that this doesn’t match what’s in my head. I’m sure that I’ll end up repainting this room fairly soon.

And finally, the Master Bathroom. These cabinets were the very last of the wacky paint to go away. Somebody who used to live here had a major soft spot for glazed cabinetry. These were painted seafoam green. Gosh, they were awful. I still plan to get rid of this mirror though.

I learned my lesson with the bad paint choice, so I just went for it and painted these glossy black. They turned out so gorgeous I just want to lick them.

I have big plans up here for bedding and curtains now that I don’t spend every day covered in paint. I’ve already started on a new quilt for our bed which I’m really liking. I’m obviously still squarely in the advanced beginner stage of my quilting. I had some real struggles with getting my backing to line up with my front, and since I’m making it King size the scale just got really difficult to deal with. I’m trying to squeeze out a few rows of machine stitching a day, so maybe one of these days I’ll actually finish something.

The pattern comes from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts. I’m a total cheapskate about buying craft books since most projects seem pretty intuitive to me, but this is one I’d buy five times over. Great projects, great photos, totally inspiring.

Tomorrow: Atticus’ nursery!

Now that I’m starting to get my feet back underneath me, I’m trying to get caught back up on the world. I have a mountain of blog content stacked up waiting for me to get around to uploading photos, so I’m going to try to make my way through it by the end of the summer. For starters, I thought I’d share the close-enough finished product of my insane year of work. I have hardly done a thing this year but work on this house, and I’m really starting to enjoy the fruits of my labors. I think I love this house so much because I’ve worked so hard on it. It’s like I heard somewhere about service: if you want to love someone, serve them. I love my house because for the past year I’ve taken it from an outdated monstrosity to someplace I can be proud of.

So, I’m going to dedicate this week on the blog to showing off the new look. I have nearly furnished this whole place and haven’t had a chance to talk about any of it! Gosh this year has kicked my butt. Anyhoo… for today I’ll walk you around the ground floor.

Let’s start the tour at the front door and into our tiny living room:

Long time readers with very good memories may remember those chairs. They were some of the first pieces I spotted as we were shopping and one of the only actual items I ended up bringing home after my time at the temp job.

Off to the side is my studio, which hasn’t changed besides the fact that it’s covered in dust and cat hair since I rarely get to see it these days, and then a little guest bathroom:

You may remember this as the cave of a bathroom that had leopard print wallpaper. I don’t care how in it is now, I will never use wallpaper. I’ve taken down enough wallpaper for four lifetimes.

This leads into the dining room:

This table is really hard to photograph. It’s surrounded by windows, so it’s perpetually backlit, and it’s a really dark wood anyway. Would you believe we got this table, which has a classic art deco crescent base and six bucket chairs …. for $800??

When our table broke back before Thanksgiving, taking most of our dishes with it, we ended up propping it together with wood glue and hoping that it wouldn’t pull a repeat performance in the middle of dinner one night. We couldn’t imagine coming up with enough money for a new table and chairs before the kids were old enough to do their homework on it. We were toying around with the idea of buying a bedframe (because we are super classy and just have a mattress and box spring on the floor) so the co-sleeper would be at the same height, and there in the store was this little gem. It was the floor model, and they just couldn’t sell any so they were discontinuing it. Everybody wanted classic California casual, so this perfect little art deco reproduction was just waiting for me. What a find.

This leads into our main family room:

We had the couch made for us because I had my heart set on a curved couch. It’s excellent for seating and conversations, and I think it really brings this room in to make it cozy. Our next big purchase will most likely be an area rug for this room, because this spot gets so much traffic that unless I sweep and mop daily, I end up with black feet by the end of the day.

Then instead of a breakfast nook I created this little home office area:

This teak desk and reproduction tulip chair were the first pieces of furniture we bought for the place. You may have noticed by now that I have a love affair with midcentury modern and art deco design, and this tulip chair is my prize possession. There are some wonderful antique shops up and down Pacific Coast Highway, and one great place had both of these. I actually got quite a deal by buying them together. Putting together a tour all in one place like this makes me realize just how many outrageous deals I’ve gotten on some beautiful beautiful things. I have wicked good furniture karma.

Also, these inset shelves used to be a winerack. I just flipped the shelves over and now instead of ridges for holding wine bottles in place, they have triangle details on the bottom – say it with me now – very art deco.

We then find ourselves in the kitchen:

From this distance I think it looks great. If you got up close you’d see the paint already chipping and the scratched up glass. And don’t try closing them or you’ll really see the effects of the damage the rain caused. But until we’re ready to redo the kitchen right, at least I can stomach the sight of them which is more than I can say for the nasty peach glazed cabinets.

Tomorrow…the upstairs.

We did it. We finished the first batch of painting. We’re exhausted.

I’ve spent the past few days just trying to clean everything up after the disaster we’ve been living in for the past three months. Now it’s finally to a point that I feel ready to share. The pictures came out super dark because it’s been so dang hot here that I had to make the place as cave like as possible so I don’t burst into flame. But here’s the ones I think most accurately reflect the color.

The teal color is Valspar’s La Fonda Villa Fountain, and the green is Valspar’s Oakmoss. I went with Valspar because they’re rated best for fading, and since my house gets so much light and I want these colors to stay bold, that was the way to go.

Next to the computer was a built in niche made into a wine rack. Obviously we don’t have a need for that (“I don’t even own *a* gun, let alone *many* guns that would necessitate a gun *rack*”), so Bear had the brilliant idea of reusing the wine racks and just flipping them over. Now we have handy office shelves with an interesting little art deco triangle accent.

Now that we’re done and cleaned up, I can actually take a breath and sit down and enjoy it. Ahhh.

Of course, I don’t really have the luxury of taking a few weeks off, as attractive as spending a few days not covered in paint sounds. Should the worst case scenario happen and we have to move, I can’t exactly put this house on the market with kitchen cabinets that completely clash with all the new fancy paint. Not to mention all the wacky paint still left throughout the place. If we do have to put this house on the market, we’d have a much better chance of breaking even if we can make this place as turnkey as possible. Call me crazy, but when I hear turnkey, I don’t really think of hunter green bathrooms with constellations painted on the ceiling.