Dining room updates

Hello my friends! It’s a lovely rainy fall day here, and what I think will be the last warm day we have in quite some time. I’m actually excited about that. :) I’m tired of sweating – bring on the crisp air, yoga pants and boots!

I finally did something in another part of the house other than the family room…can you believe it?

A while back I took the drapes down that used to hang in the living room:

This was in the pink wall era, so glad that color is gone! (They weren’t really pink but sure photographed that way.)

Anyway, I took those drapes down after I added new trim to the windows up front:

I like them simple like that – so much so that I don’t have any plans to put new drapes up, at least for now.

I got to thinking that our dining room windows could really use something though. I do plan to trim them out the same way but in the meantime they were looking pretty bland:

This was my before picture as I started working – excuse the mess. :)

I took down the drapes that were the dining room years ago moved them to the family room:

When the wall came down those drapes did as well.

Anyway…I’ve had naked windows in the dining room for quite some time – I’ve been wanting to replace them but it hasn’t been a priority. Then I realized a couple weeks back I could use the drapes from the living room that I took down months ago. Are you with me?? ;) We’re coming full circle here. Kinda.

Of course it can never be as simple as just hanging drapes for me. There’s always all kinds of little things that pop up along the way. The first thing I did was move the roman shades back down to inside the window frame. Years ago I mounted them outside just for a little extra light. It’s felt messy looking to me lately though and it only gives a couple extra inches of extra light so back they went.

I had to patch where the shades were hanging:

When I took the brackets down they took chunks of drywall with them. Not sure why that happened – usually you’ll have problems with that if you put them up right after painting but I didn’t do that.

Anyway, I patched those up with spackling – this kind goes on pink and is white when it’s ready to paint/sand:

Love that!!

Hanging drapery hardware isn’t hard, it’s just a matter of hanging the brackets the exact same distance on either side of the window. I like to go out at least five inches from the window and usually at least a few above as well – I couldn’t go too high with these because I didn’t make them long enough.

I just trace where the holes go in the bracket and then drill a pilot hole:

I always drill a hole first before trying to get a screw in the wall – if I hit a stud then I’ll need to predrill anyway. If I don’t hit a stud I know I’ll need to use anchors, so it’s a time saver to just do that first.

I got the hardware up on both sides and then realized the middle piece was going to hit the small molding I had around the window. Sooooo that had to come down…more patching and then painting to cover up the original chocolate brown color underneath:

Remember those days??:

I don’t miss it. :)

So THEN I get the drapes hung up and realize I didn’t like the stripes I added as a leading edge years back. I was using two panels on each side of the windows so the stripes were on either side of each one and it looked circus-esque. Not what I was going for.

So I took them down, cut down the sides quite a bit and hemmed. I just left a bit of the stripes and I quite love the dark on the edges now:

I get asked about his fabric a lot – it’s a P. Kaufman fabric called retreat blue citrine. I’d like something a little simpler in this room eventually but until then these will do nicely. :)

I “trained” the drapes like I showed you here years ago:

Combined with my fake pleat method it makes them hang much prettier!

They add some warmth to the room and make it feel much more finished:

I’m so glad I took some of the stripes off – they look SO much better with just the simple color along the side:

These are two skinny panels together on each side – I cut the fabric down the middle for the other windows. I didn’t sew them together and you can’t tell. :)

I hung these along a full drapery rod so we can close them if needed:

I hear we’re going to get another nasty winter and I like being able to close drapes for some added insulation. It helps!

The colors are lovely – the blue edge matches the background on the built ins almost perfectly. Someday I will add the window trim in here but I will still probably keep drapes up even after that. They definitely add some coziness to a room!:

This project ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would, but it was free so I can’t complain. :) Another fall nesting project done!

Do you prefer drapes or none? Do you use yours if you have them? We use our bedroom drapes every weekend so the bedroom is crazy dark, love it. If you want your drapes to be full and pretty while closed you’ll want to add to your yardage to make them wider. I don’t spend money on that since they are usually only closed at night and it’s just us who sees them.

OH and we were waffling on keeping a table in this room but now that our kitchen table is plenty big I think we’re going to move ahead with our original idea of comfy chairs and a coffee table. Whoot! I think it will look lovely!

A glass door, sorta kinda

Hello to you! Hope you had a great weekend! Ours was lovely – lots of time outside, a date night with my hubby and family time as well. So happy that summer is here!

So a couple years ago I wrote a post that got a huge response – I never imagined talking about glass doors would be so interesting. :) I spoke of my desire to add some glass to our front door. We have a transom window above the door and five windows in the living room/foyer, but because we face north the foyer especially can feel dark.

It got even worse when I painted the inside of the door black years ago:

I LOVE my black doors though, so that was staying. :)

So many of you agreed with the desire to have that natural light coming in as well. Those of you who already have glass sidelights or doors were mixed – some loved it and some hated it. Because a lot of you are in the one percent like me:

Ninjas!

So the years passed and I still couldn’t get over how much I wanted some natural light up there. And the boy got older and I really wanted to be able to easily see where he was at outside. One day I realized I was going to just do what I said I would never do – get a storm door:

I’m going to be honest here – I used to be a storm door snob. I mean, in my defense, there are some that aren’t great looking. I have just always preferred the look of just the plain door.

But my mind changed. It happens. I’m growing, changing, all that stuff.

We got it from Lowe’s and it was actually a long wait to get it installed. It was about six weeks, maybe more, from start to finish. The last two weeks were the hardest – it was getting nice out and the Bub was outside all the time and I wanted that glass door so bad!

When it was installed I instantly felt very mom-like and very suburban. You know how I feel about suburban – some think it’s a bad word but it’s me. Proud of it.

I’m not totally obsessed with the way it looks from outside, but it’s not horrible at all. I went with a cranberry color (there weren’t a ton of options) because I figured it would work best with our front door. When I got home from ordering it I realized how much more rust our door is than cranberry, but I really don’t mind it:

For a hot second I thought about painting the door again but I think this is fine as is.

We ALL love it. It’s open all day, everyday. LOVE love love. The animals are obsessed:

I do know one thing now though – I could NOT do an all glass regular front door. No way, no how. When darkness hits that baby is closed and I need my privacy.

I was so thrilled about the door I figured it was time to update the trim like I’ve been doing all around the house. What a difference!:

You can see how I install my DIY craftsman trim here.

Now it works great with the new window trim up there as well:

I still need to do some caulking on the door trim but it’s almost complete. I want to replace that foyer tile even more now! I still need to finish up replacing the chair rail throughout this front area as well.

We’re enjoying all the natural light that the new door brings in. I adore it! It makes the whole house brighter. We went with the heavier storm door with great security features, so I feel comfortable leaving it open all day:

Do you have a storm door? Does it make you feel incredibly suburban? :) Or do you have a glass front door and love it? Either way the natural light is amazing and I’m never going back! Whoot!

DIY craftsman window trim

WHOOT! I finally tackled a DIY project that I’ve been wanting to do FOREVER. But I was afraid…so afraid. I am excited to share it with you – there are a lot of pics so grab some coffee or a Coke and enjoy. :)

In addition to beefy baseboards and door trim, my dream has always been to add chunky trim around our windows. It just adds SO much character, I just love it. But all these years I haven’t been able to do it because our window sills weren’t wide enough. A long time ago I realized I could add some very skinny trim around the window that would match up with the sill:

This is a before I shot quickly before I started three days ago when it was 80 degrees and gorgeous. Today it’s 32 and snowy. But I digress.

To do the trim I wanted to do I’d have to take the whole sill (or stool, as it’s technically called) off and that intimidated me. But then I saw Cristina’s tutorial last summer and I thought it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. I ended up following her instructions and they worked perfectly!

I actually wanted to do this SO badly at Christmas after we got our tree up. I thought it would look so lovely to have the beefy trim on the windows, but I reeled it in and realized starting this in December was not the best idea. ;)

Fast forward a few months and I finally started! First up, I removed the apron underneath the sill. Fun story – in the CRAZY cold we had this winter the window was iced up and when it melted it went into the wall. That area below the apron was a big bubble of water. Good stuff!:

So first you need to score all the areas (with a razor) that are caulked, otherwise when you pull the trim off it will pull the paint/drywall away:

I freaked for a split second when I pulled it off and thought there was mold:

But it was just overspray from when the room was painted years ago. :) Whew.

Here’s where I forgot to take a pic, but after the apron is gone, you take a crow bar and start pulling up the stool, or the sill. It was actually MUCH easier than I thought it would be. I mean, I’ve stood on these things – I thought they’d be impossible to remove. But they came up pretty fast and easy.

The only issue I had was the ends would start digging into the drywall as I pulled up:

When I worked on one end at a time (instead of trying to pull the whole thing up at once) it helped a bunch. I just focused on one side and got that up and clear of the drywall, then got the whole thing out. I do have to touch up a little drywall there but it’s not bad.

This is the shape of our stool when it was out:

And here’s what it looks like underneath:

I was actually AMAZED that we didn’t have any water issues – our windows get condensation every winter if we don’t adjust our humidifier in the HVAC system just so. And they were covered in ice more than once this past winter. This shows the power of glossy paint and caulk my friends!

After all that I took the skinny trim off the sides of the windows:

I kept that all for future projects. I’ve used it on all of the wainscoting in this room.

Then I started the process of building up the new trim. I shared this image when I did my first craftsman door trim and it is so helpful:

 

I can’t find their size used for the fillet, so I use a trim piece called stop instead. It works great.

Also, our window sills are deeper so I had to use 1 x 8 wood instead of the standard 1 x 5. I followed Cristina’s instructions and used the old sill as my guide for the new one. The only thing you need to keep in mind is your trim that will be on the sides of the windows – mine was 3 1/2 inches and I wanted the stool to stick out a bit from that, so I traced the original onto the new wood, but gave myself four inches:

Here’s how it looks installed so that makes more sense:

I followed my traced lines with a jigsaw to cut it out. Don’t worry if the lines aren’t perfect!:

They will be mostly covered with the new apron and the trim on each side of the window. The parts that aren’t covered are easily fixed with caulk. (My BFF.):

Putting up the trim is my favorite part! Seeing it come together is awesome. You’ll notice in that pic above that I had to pull off some other trim – more on that in a minute.

I took my sander to the edges of the new sill because this pine has really sharp edges. I do this on all of the door trim I’ve installed too:

I just knock it down a little so it’s not so pointy. If you have a router this would be even better. Then I did one coat of primer and two coats semi gloss paint on everything. I may go back over the stool with a high gloss just to make sure it’s waterproof.

So when I was putting the new trim up I realized the wainscoting I installed years ago was going to be in the way – I had to pull off each box on the wall and reinstall it all to make the new trim work. Total pain in the butt.

Some of it you can’t see, but some areas I still need to putty, sand and paint again:

I still need to touch up that area that was a bubble of water too. :)

But that will come later because for now I’m enjoying the new window trim that I love! Whoo hoo!:

I had to pull the chair rail down to do it and I’ve wanted to replace it for a while anyway, so I started installing a new simpler rail:

I only have one wall done so far. I can’t BELIEVE how different the room looks with the beefier trim around the windows.

I took the drapes down before Christmas (you know, thinking I would do this back then), and I don’t know if I can put any back up:

We’ll see. :)

Here’s a closer look at how the new chair rail, reinstalled wainscoting and new window trim works together:

I still need to clean up the walls a bit like I said, and caulk around the trim up higher, but for now I’m calling it good!:

I took one of these images and detailed the wood I used:

That should help if you’d like to try this yourself! Remember the 1x2 and stop up on top and the stool on the bottom will be a bit wider than the other pieces. The ones on top are 1/4 inch longer on both sides and the stool on the bottom is 1/2 longer on both ends.

Here’s a shot of the before again:

And here’s the after:

Now…I just need to find someone to add the trim to the upper windows. Cause this girl is not doing it. :)

Have you beefed up your window trim? Like everything else, it will take me years to get it done throughout the whole house, but this start makes me happy! Big props to Cristina for her awesome post that gave me the courage to tackle this one! And if you have any questions let me know in the comments – I tried to cover everything but I always forget something.

Blocking the sun (new drapes)

Hello all! Hope you had a lovely weekend! I had a great time out on Saturday with some friends and also got plenty of family time in too. It was a great one.

This week the posts will probably be up later like this one – it’s so cold here and will be all week so we’re expecting school delays most of this week. That means my kiddo doesn’t get off to school till almost 11 so it pushes my day back quite a bit.

Have I mentioned it’s cold? Yeah. I’m still doing OK with it – in another two weeks I’ll be about done.

So I’m thinking more about the master bedroom redo lately. I’ve made changes over the past six months or so – I started painting (and stopped, but now I know my direction and I’m going to start again), made a new headboard and made a couple other changes along the way.

I sold our old bed so I have $500 to spend on the redo and so far I’ve spent about $350 (including items from today’s post) to start the transformation. That includes bedding, the headboard, all new window treatments and some of the paint.

The only part of the redo that won’t be covered by that $500 are the new floors…which we decided we will go ahead with next month.

Lately my focus has been on the windows. Up till about Christmas they've been nekked (I took the old drapes down months ago) with only some wonky roman shades up:

The roman shades are about seven years old, maybe older. These are the shades I spray painted years ago. (Yes, spray painted.) The new color held up great – the shades themselves didn’t. You can see in that pic that the left one wouldn’t go higher than half way.

I got tired of the room being so dark during the day so I finally got some new ones over the holidays and hung them a few weeks back. This time I went higher above the window and did the outside mount instead of inside the actual window frame:

In this pic they are pulled all the way up to top of the window – LOVE it. It lets so much more light in the room and also makes the windows feel bigger. (More on that in a bit.)

That was a big change but I knew I wanted something else to soften them up. I’ve had my eye out for drapery fabric for months but wasn’t finding anything that worked that worked with the busy bedding. I wanted something really simple and it wasn’t till I was in IKEA a couple weeks ago that I realized a solid color would be perfect:

They are the Sanela curtains – they look like velvet and I got the dark gray. Because the roman shades are hung higher I needed to clear those so I went with the 118 inch drapes. ($70 for two panels.)

Turns out I had to cut about 17 inches off the bottom and hem them to make them work so I was thisclose to being able to get the cheaper (shorter) ones, but I’m glad I went with with these in the end.

Anyway. I had picked up a long drapery rod at HomeGoods a couple months back so I got that up yesterday. Hanging drapery rods is one of my least favorite jobs, really. It’s easy, just tedious. The hardest part is making sure you place the hardware in the exact same spot on both sides of the window. Once you get your measurements figured out, mark where you need to drill, then use a stud finder to see if you need to use anchors or not:

You know Mama went out when the nails are painted. :)

The stud finders are sometimes wrong, so I always use a drill bit to make my holes first. If I hit wood I know I don’t need an anchor there. The finder said there was no wood in this spot, but when I drilled the top one hit wood:

  

Now that I show you in photos it seems like the easiest project ever, gah. Like I said, it’s not hard…just time consuming to get all the parts level and secure in the wall.

So these drapes have grommets and I LOVE them. I’ve never used grommeted drapes before and the fact that they hang so nicely and you don’t need rings/hooks is awesome.

Our window is so close to one wall (shakes fists in air at home builders) that I don’t even put the decorative finial on that side:

You can’t even tell when it’s up. Also, if you’re going to use your drapes (we are in here) then I always recommend placing one drapery ring (or in this case one grommet) on the end, on the other side of the hanging hardware. Does that make sense? This keeps that end of the drapes from moving when you pull them shut.

I love the pretty glass finials on this rod:

I used to go big and chunky with our window rods and finials but over the past few years I’ve moved to lighter and thinner.

I waited to take pics this morning which was DUMB. This room is impossible to photograph, especially in the morning, but this gives you an idea of how it came together:

YES, the walls are still two different colors and YES I still haven’t finished painting the wall to the left, but I’m sure of what I’m doing now so I’m moving forward…finally. :)

Let’s just pretend the walls are all painted, OK?

I got them up and REALLY loved how they looked. They are sophisticated and a little sexy and I love them. When the walls are all the light gray they will stand out even more. I get a lot of questions about how well the bamboo shades filter light -- these are the shades I always get from Home Depot and they have a tighter weave then most:

Keep in mind all that sun across the floor is from the reflection in the mirror.

In general I think they are fine without liners (I’ve found bamboo shade liners at Lowe’s), although there is one point in the morning when the sun moves across a sliver in the shade and is like a laser beam into my face, which I’m so not cool with. I wanted to make sure the drapes would be thick enough to block it out and our room was so dark this morning, it was awesome.

Here’s the same shot, same time of day with the drapes closed:

All that light is coming from the other side of the house. The room stayed nice and dark.

So quickly, here’s my thought on hanging window treatments high above a window. I think most of the time it really can make a huge difference – it can make a smallish window look and feel much bigger. Hanging my bamboo shades higher really does let a lot more light in too. BUT – I think sometimes doing this can look really awkward too. I recommend hanging your blinds/shades higher if you plan to hang your drapes higher too. Otherwise the illusion is ruined, if that makes any sense. You can see the true height of the window if the shades are hung using the inside mount and if you hang the drapes a foot higher it still makes the window seem small, you know what I mean? I think when both are hung higher than the window it comes together nicely.

You know, the real issues in life…where to hang your drapes. :)

I decided a while back that I wanted our bedroom to be more sophisticated then it’s been in the past, but also soothing. I’m usually not one to use similar tones throughout a room like this, but I’m loving how it’s coming together.

Once this wall is painted and the floors are redone I think it’s going to be really pretty, I’m really excited about it:

And YES I still have a magazine problem.

Other than painting I have a wall treatment idea in mind, I’m planning on a redo for that floor length mirror and I hope to recover the bench at the end of our bed. Lots to do but I’m happy with how it’s coming together.

Do you love roman shades or are you a blinds girl? Do you hang your drapes high or like them low?