Category: Home Reno & DIY

I’m so happy to be able to share another update post with you. Especially because my living room was a disaster for 4 weeks and now it’s back to normal. Actually, it’s not back to normal… it’s better than ever!

As I mentioned in my previous update post, in order to get the plumbing and heat up to the new bathroom, we had to run them from the basement, through the first floor and up to the second floor. This impacted the opening between our living room and kitchen, as well as the living room ceiling.

Part of the ceiling came down on April 24^th and then on May 7^th, the couch got covered and moved and the room turned into a disaster and stayed that way until June 4^th.

Once the plumbing was fully completed, my dad put new drywall up in the ceiling and wall, taped it, spackled it a bunch of times, and then primed everything and painted the ceiling. Over the weekend, I spent six hours in the living room and the connected entrance area edging, rolling, edging again and rolling again.

{Actually, I spent 10 hours painting that day, but the rest of the time was spent upstairs. And yes, my body hurt afterwards}

Once again, I chose Behr Greige for my paint color. I love that it is a nice, clean neutral and it really brightens up the room. I had no idea how dirty and marked our walls were until we moved everything away from them and I started painting!

Once the paint was dry, Travis and I moved back the couch. Then the following morning, I built a new console table and put everything back up on the wall. Most of the same pictures went up, except for the area over the bookcase.  I used the opportunity of filling holes and painting to put up new stuff on the wall and I love how it turned out.

If you’d like to see a fun Before/After Reel I did on Instagram, you can find it here:

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And here are my After photos:

The pictures stayed the same on this wall (below), but I switched out an old black fake fireplace/space heater thing with this pretty console table. It gives us better storage options for Jack’s video games and chargers and also sticks out less from the wall so it doesn’t block foot traffic.

And here is the updated area (below). We’ve had the organizer since Jack was a baby and it now houses a mix of toys and games. I picked up the two hand drawn pictures at a consignment shop, thrifted the sculpture, found the drawer at an antique shop and the mirror was a clearance find at T.J. Maxx.

And I let Jack decide how to fill the drawer slots.

LOOK! He made mini Lego figures of our family! And of course Travis and I both have gigantic cups of coffee:

Having our living room back together feels fantastic. I’d been holding off on repainting for awhile since it was going to be such a pain to move everything, so I’m so happy that the huge job is done and everything looks so nice and clean again.

Next up, the walk-in closet!

We are slowly but surely making progress on our Master Bathroom/Walk In Closet Renovation… which also impacted our bedroom, living room AND kitchen. So, I have a nice little update for both our bedroom and kitchen to share with you today! Here is where we left off in our last post: Master Bathroom Demo Day Progress.

Bedroom Updates

Here is what our bedroom looked the morning of May 7:

That is my wimpy little closet and there is a matching closet on the other side of the wall from the spare bedroom. When my dad knocked down the wall, we gained about 26″ from the two closets. Here is what it looked like when I got home that evening:

Then on May 12^th, we got a door hole:

On that day, my dad finished the drywall by taping the cracks on the wall and ceiling and then starting on the 4 coats of spackle needed to finish the room.

A week or so later, and I had a DOOR! And more coats of spackle. Then, the next step was to sand everything and do a coat of drywall primer on everything – walls and ceiling:

Over Memorial Day weekend, I really got into it. I filled all the nail holes in ALL the trim (bedroom, bathroom, closet, and downstairs mess), caulked the edges of the trim, painted 2 coats of semi-gloss on the trim, 2 coats of semi-gloss on both sides of the doors (bedroom and toilet closet doors), 2 coats of blue edging on the walls and 2 coats of roller on the walls. THANKFULLY the blue paint I had from 10 years ago when I did our bedroom still matched and I had enough for the project.

I was EXHAUSTED, but so happy to have one room of our renovation mess *almost* back to normal.

It’s not really done though. As you can see, we are missing a strip of about 2 feet of carpet and there is just janky plywood floors there. We have to wait to re-carpet the bedroom until we are also ready to take the old bathroom down to the studs to re-carpet that room too. As for the furniture, I think the tall white dresser will stay on the right side of the room (maybe). But the stuff on the left side of the room will most likely be integrated into my walk-in closet.

So, maybe this isn’t really an “after” but an “almost after”.

Kitchen Updates

Moving on to our kitchen. In order to get the plumbing and heat up to the new bathroom, we had to run them from the basement, through the first floor and up to the second floor. So the cased opening between our living room and kitchen had to grow a little over one foot to fit the new stuff.

Here is what it looked like from the kitchen side once the wall extended:

Over Memorial Day weekend, I filled the nail holes in the trim, caulked the edges and painted 2 coats of semi-gloss on the trim. My dad primed the wall the following Friday while he was priming the living room ceiling, so on Friday night I grabbed my old can of paint to touch up the wall.

I could feel that there was about 1/3 or 1/4 of a can of paint in there, so I was hopeful it would be enough. But… when I opened it, the paint was rock solid and completely dried out. Thankfully, it was from Sherwin Williams and still had all the color data and breakdown information on the sticker. So I made a quick trip to my local Sherwin Williams, bought a pint of the exact color and returned home to throw on two coats. And it matched perfectly. I didn’t even have to redo the other side of the opening because the color match was exact.

We finally have ONE ROOM completely done:

Next up… the living room!