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Special homecoming present from Mike: living room primed!

So while I was away on a business trip my wonderful Mike finished the drywall sanding and primed the living room walls!!  It made such a difference.  The room looks so much better.  I am now working on fixing and sanding the trim…next on to the ceiling, then we can paint and actually have our living room back

We took the old sheetrock down, built a bookshelf alcove and put in insulation

New drywall goes up

Joint compound and sanding

Finishing the kneewall

After Mike primed, he even cleaned up and put the furniture back

Primed, looking east

Stripping Paint off Chimney

Living room looking south east, when I moved in

So after reading countless blog posts on home renovators stripping paint from their beautiful wood work I felt like I couldn’t say I really had renovated a home until I had stripped some paint.  So I took on the chimney in the living room.  It was a total mess.  I tried to go au natural for a while using Citrastrip and some other green paste that didn’t work at all.  The Citrastrip worked it just took forever.  I had to wait about 24 hours between putting on the orange goop and going to work with the spackle knife.  Which made the whole process take about a week because each coat of Citrastrip took off a few layers of paint and there were about 15 layers of paint on the chimney.  In the end I went with some off the shelf chemical stripper, I wouldn’t say it worked a lot better, just a lot faster.

Coat 2 of Citrastrip and green stuff

I found that not only using the right stripper but using the right tools was important.  I went with a 2.5 inch putty knife to scrape, then towards the last few coats of paint, when the stripper is not really making the paint bubble up any more, I went with a wire striping brush and then a stiff scrub brush.  The final couple of scrubs was with the scrub brush and odorless mineral spirits.  Then I used oven cleaner to clean the brick and wiped it off with rags.

Close up view of left side of chimney

Almost done

It was a long messy process, but I like how it turned out in the end.  It looks so much better than the paint.  I didn’t take every last little bit of paint off, so the chimney has an industrial chic feel.

Chimney is all done....now on to the walls

Kitchen Plans

The potential kitchen remodel is getting more real

Current view looking north

I got back these drawings from Paul Hickey at DB&S Lumber on the South Shore.  There are still a few changes, but overall very exciting to actually see what I’ve been thinking start to come to life.

Similar to my interior doors, I will be doing painted white Shaker style cabinets.  The plan now is for the counters to be honed absolute black granite, or black quartz composite with a matte finish.  I may do the island counter top out of oak butcher block, or possibly reclaimed wood..TBD…since the island is also acting as our kitchen table I think wood would give it a much warmer feeling than stone.

My goals with the design were to maximize efficient use of the space.  I am a little bit of a nut when it comes to efficient planning of space.  I pretty much already know exactly where I am going to put every dish, utensil and cereal box.

Things I am debating:

1. Doing glass doors on the cabinet between the two windows
2. Moving the range hood up higher and then putting a stainless steel shelf along the range backsplash (which will be stainless steel)
3. Easiest place to put spices…in magnetic canisters along the backsplash? In a pull out shelf? suggestions?

 

From above

Looking west

Looking north from the living room

Doors

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So it is funny having lived in an 800 square foot condo with another person and two dogs for nearly 4 months without any doors (ok, we left the bathroom door on until we had a replacement).  We got a bit ahead of ourselves last fall when we were painting trim and took down all the doors and tossed them out with the trash….we thought we would have replacements sooner rather than later, oh well.  Finally, after the holidays and my love moving in, and and and…we got around to ordering doors and then having them installed.

I hired two great handymen from my love’s Firehouse (yes, he is a fireman) to install the doors.  I took on changing the hardware on the front door by myself and promptly decided this was a job for the pros.

I ordered shaker style 5 panel doors.  They have wood stiles and an MDF core.  They feel heavy and substantial like solid wood, but since we plan on painting them we didn’t need the solid wood all the way through.  They came primed and ran about $200 per door for an 80″ x 30″ door.  Then I ordered the Providence door set from House of Antique Hardware for all my doors.  It is actually made by Emtek.

The doors came out great and admittedly it was a bit weird at first to have privacy and to not have to look everything in my closets all the time.

In Love with Meg Ryan’s Beach House

from Elle Decor, Photographer: William Waldron

 

 

Photo from Elle Decor.com

From Elle Decor, Photographer: William Waldron

From Elle Decor, Photographer: William Waldron

I love the simple, black and white color scheme, the industrial chic furniture elements, the substantial architecture…not to mention it is beach house on Martha’s Vineyard…and is that a giant screened porch behind the kitchen, with a big fireplace!! I think my heart skipped a beat…

I have an Office!!

It is the small things that really get me going.  Like being able to have a kitchen table, an actual kitchen table, one that I don’t have to push computers, papers, mail and books off of every time I want to eat.  So after many months of being replastered, repainted, bookshelved and now decorated, I introduce the office.  The painting part has been done for a while, but we were using the room as a workshop and storage for tools.  Last week I finally had had enough, and went to work cleaning, organizing, building a desk, and them moving computers, files, etc. in to the OFFICE!!  There is still some work to do.  I finally ordered interior doors, so the closet in the office which holds printers, shredder, tools, vacuum, and linens will be hidden (although I am quite proud of my beautiful shelves and bins in the closet).  The doors are coming next week.  I need to find a comfy reading chair to put in the corner under the window. And I am waiting to get the last of the photos for the Boston photo wall display back from the framer.

There are some during photos mixed in to the new ones. 

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Bookshelf Ideas

So now that I have moved onto the office, I have been obsessing over bookshelves, office layout and decor.  Boyfriend and I built bookshelves from scratch for the back wall of the office.  I wanted to tie in the Aegean teal from the bedroom and give the room some interest so right now I am planning to paint the back wall of the bookshelves teal, the bookshelves themselves, and the rest of the trim white and then the walls the same floral white that is going in the hallway and living/kitchen area.  I found some great sites with bookshelf ideas.

Best Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe EVER!

Ok, so that is probably a bit of an exaggeration, and besides, I think everyone has the things they like and don’t like, I like my cream cheese frosting very cream cheesy and thick.  So if you also like it that way, then try this recipe:

1 lb cream cheese (two flat packs) – at room temp (or microwaved for 30 sec if you are like me and forget to take it out)

1 stick butter – also at room temp

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 lb confectioners sugar

1. Cream the cheese and butter together in an electric mixer with a whisk attachment until well combined.
2. Add vanilla, mix
3. Add the confectioners sugar gradually and mix until completely combined.
4. lick all utensils

Master Bedroom is finished!!!!

Finally done with the Master Bedroom.  All it needs now is doors on the closets and a bit of artwork.  I love love love the color of the walls.  This was my first venture into the world of darker walls, I was nervous I wouldn’t like it, but I love it, and will now have a hard time going back to the world of off white.  The color is Aegean Teal by Benjamin Moore and it really looks great with the rug.  The room is the brightest room in the condo, so it can pull off the dark walls easily.   Because of the new drywall, the room also has pretty straight walls, which I think is crucial for dark colors.  I don’t think I would have been happy painting this color in the living room, where it would have just accentuated the fact that nothing in old buildings is square!

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