Front Room Make-Over

I've been meaning to do a post about our front room makeover for so long that I forgot if we painted last year or in 2015. How could I forget something like that?! I know it was a week at the beginning of summer and that I spent a lot of time sitting in the driveway to be out of the way. We hired painters and they did all the upstairs living areas, the hallway, and the upstairs bathroom. (I painted the entire basement, master bedroom and both kids rooms by. my. self. so I knew I couldn't take on vaulted ceilings with three little kids running circles around my ladder for a month.) We chose the same paint I used for the master bedroom "Natural Choice" with "Dover White" on all the trim and white on the ceiling. Behind our cabinets in the kitchen we used "Revere Pewter," which is the shade just darker than "Natural Choice." The metamorphosis in the kitchen isn't complete, so I'll save that for another post.

 We were almost done breaking down the room before I thought to take "before" pictures. I had family photos on those ledges and a big photo of my immediate family over the piano.The photos are pretty much the only thing I liked in the room. That couch. We bought it because we needed something in our guest room in our first house. It is a fold-out single bed. We got it second-hand and I hated it from the first, but thought it would be a place-holder until we got something we really wanted in the room. Thirteen and a half years later...

I had a nice lady paint the piano blue (with chalk paint) and I got those shelves from Ballard Designs (marked down 50%!). My goal in this teeny, tiny room (11' x 11.5') was to make the furniture seem less imposing. Painting the piano a light color makes it take up less space, see. (Not really, it's an illusion.) The corners of the room were useless space before and now we have storage for our favorite books and games. I had the big canvas print of the family photo Melissa took last year made at Costco for pretty cheap. The baskets under that couch have my piano books in them.

I did have curtains up, but they started under the "eyebrow" of the window. Not great. The chairs were another purchase I made because they were cheap and we needed something to sit on in the front room. When the home teachers came, our whole family of five would cram into the chair and a half and the home teachers took the chairs. Elbows! The file cabinet was part of my brilliant plan to store my piano books for my students in file folders. When I got the drawers home I discovered they do not fit standard hanging files. The Worst.

I researched couches for a year before we bought these. They had to fit width-wise, but I didn't want them coming into the room too much, so they had to be shallow too. I wanted couches that didn't invite lounging. Sitting only. These are from Crate & Barrel and they are 33" deep (most couches are at least 36" deep). We went back and forth for a long time, then decided on one couch and one love seat in the same fabric (platinum). The curtains are from Ballard Designs and we placed the curtain rod above the window "eyebrow" to make the room seem taller/bigger. I put the same crown molding ledges up and the same photographs are in the room as well, with a few added.

I'm in this room a lot because I teach piano in here. Before we redecorated, the room made me grumpy. Now I love to be in it. All my favorite books and pictures are in the room. (I thought it would take pressure off the other bookshelves in the house, but somehow they're still full too. I may need a support group for people who buy pretty books.) Here are some of my favorite views of our front room:

Aren't those the most gorgeous books?! On the wall is a photo of my Grandpa Furniss as a baby with his parents.

This corner has my favorite pictures of Brian and me and my favorite books.

Looking out of the room you can see whichever quilt I have hanging up and a photo of my Grandma Furniss when she was a toddler (the bottom photo), and a photo of my Grandpa Furniss and his sister, Lola as toddlers. Lola introduced my Grandparents to each other. :)

That concludes our make-over tour for today. :)

Master Bedroom Makeover

I finally took "after" pictures of our master bedroom.  Hopefully seeing all the before and after photos will get more of a reaction than, "Did you move your bed?"  (That was my Dad's reaction.  In his defense, I don't know if he ever saw it before I painted it.)

Let's go WAY back for the before before photo:

You know a room needs work when you can stand in your garage to take a picture of it.  However, after we got everything else furnished and we had the essentials in our bedroom, we just sort of left it as is for six years.  We were the only ones who ever saw it, so who cared, right?

Except that a few things started to annoy me.  Like the fact that the house painters barely put one coat of paint on our not-primered walls.  The morning light would hit it just so that I could see all the lines and spaces where there was barely a lick of paint.  Anyway, here's what it looked like BEFORE:

Not terrible, I know.  We chose to put a fireplace in our bedroom because our upstairs family room is tiny and it would have taken up too much space there.  Hmmm - what's that in the mirror?

That's right, a deer head.  I am in the Wife Hall of Fame for allowing Brian to put it in our bedroom.  Look at that bookcase piled with stuff.  I bought the curtains before I chose anything else - I now believe the curtains should be last.

Too bad the photos don't really show how disgusting that bed skirt is.

That's my Grandma Carol's sewing machine (the only thing I had of her's until a week ago).  On the wall in between the closet and the bathroom doors is a splatter of rust that goes from about the height of the sewing machine all the way to the top of the vaulted ceiling.  Remember that time Brian bounced a filthy little bouncy ball against the wall about 10 times before he noticed it was filthy?  That was awesome.

Okay, I'm getting stressed out seeing those before pictures.  Something had to be done.  We needed a sanctuary - a place where we didn't feel the urge to make Cat in the Hat stacks of papers and binders.  A place we looked forward to going to at the end of the day instead of a place where there were too many reminders of all the things we didn't accomplish in the day.  

I painted the walls with "Natural Choice" (I think it's just a Sherwin Williams paint) in satin, the ceiling and the trim with "Dover White" in semi-gloss, and the fireplace mantel with "Dover White" in gloss.  Everything but the fireplace got two coats of paint - the fireplace got about five.  Bridget helped me the whole time and I risked my life standing on the tippy top of our ladder to reach into the corners.  And yes, we moved the bed. :)

I'm still looking for something to go under that print so it doesn't look too big for the space...

I chose a red toile for the curtains and I love how it looks with the quilts and the deer head.  There are linen sheers in between the two toile panels, so it's much brighter in there, and yet more cozy.  The end!

 There are more makeovers where this came from if you go to the dance with Between Naps on the Front Porch.

My Sewing Room

I'm going to participate in Between Naps on the Front Porch's Metamorphosis Monday. I don't see many westerners on her blog. It's mostly wonderful southern women who really know how to live graciously. I aspire to that. But I live in northern Utah where the climate doesn't say "sit on the back porch and drink in the sultry air." There are wonderful things about Utah, but the kind of consistent weather that makes you want to be outside all day is not one of them. I hope BNFP doesn't mind me crashing her party this week.

Anyone who visits this blog knows I'm a quilting fool these days. Part of it is that I'm using sewing as therapy right now and part of it is having a room in which to sew. Before we finished our basement I could only get out my sewing machine when my kitchen was spotlessly clean and the dining room table was cleared for cutting. Almost never. (Back off.) So, here is the metamorphosis of my sewing room:

May 2008 - framing and insulation are in, electrical is done, bomb shelter closet in the bedroom next door framed out thanks to Aron.

November 2008 - after the much-discussed blue paint went up. Since I did all the painting - three coats on every square inch of sheet rock in roughly 1400 square feet - I chose the paint colors. The end. (I wish.)

December 2008 - new bamboo floor! It's starting to look like something. Don't be jealous of my amazing view.

Same view a few minutes ago. It's looked like this (minus the lone star behind my desk - there used to be a map there) for about a year, but I'm just now getting around to photographing it. I have a car seat under my desk to use as a model for the car seat covers I make. That would be kind of weird if I just liked to tuck a small baby in under my desk while I worked. I love this room so much. It's definitely one of my happy places. Let's take a closer look:

My ironing board is barely a step away. When I did that lone star on the wall I lowered it and put it right next to my sewing desk so I wouldn't have to get up at all. On the floor is my distilled water for my iron that got plugged with calcium deposits after I'd used it for a week. Stupid hard water. The shelf above holds my big thread box, some giant spools I got from an antique store a long time ago, my patterns, a sewing box, some photos...

That's a photo of Bridget wearing her Halloween costume in 2008. To the right of that is one of my favorite family photos. The lab messed up on the cropping, so we got two of them. The box on the left of Bridget's picture is a sewing box my Grandma gave me when I was little. (The tube is a Christmas gift I haven't taken care of yet. I need help with it. I need to SEE someone do it before I can do it myself. The words in this parenthesis are for my Mom. Sorry everyone else had to see that.)

I love Sarah Jane art. I also love knowing what day it is.

A heart hook from Danforth Pewter that Katy gave me when we adopted Bridget.

My toile lone star wall hanging... extreme close up. This is one of the few projects I've kept for myself. It was my Great Grandma Rhoda's favorite pattern. She was quite a show off when it came to quilting. :)

I won't go into the other side of this room much right now, but this is part of my view from my sewing machine.

Books! There's plenty more where these came from.

How I love having an inspiring place to create stuff! Thanks for visiting and Happy Metamorphosis Monday to all. :)