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Antique Door Turned Headboard

10 Mar

For our wedding (6 months ago now, can’t believe it), we salvaged this old 1800’s door from an architectural salvage yard in Rockford, IL. The same awesome place we got our “new” front door. We used the door to hang keys that served as guests’ escort cards.

Pollard_287We kept the door around with the idea to re-purpose it somehow into the house like we did with the big chalkboard sign turned sentimental art. I was toying with the idea of a corner shelf (like this), but decided it would work really well as a headboard in the 2nd spare bedroom.

We thought about attaching legs to it and then screwing it into the bed frame but landed on this really simple way to accomplish it instead.

First we had to cut down the door about 8″ or so on one side so that it would fit a Queen sized bed.

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Then we picked up some $2 hooks from Home Depot…IMG_2681

Attached them to the back of the door….

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And hung it up behind the bed like a picture.

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And voila!

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See the peachy coral pillow? It was my very first sewing project ever, I made it out of some clearance napkins from Target that were 4 for $3. Probably the simplest sewing project in the world, but you gotta start somewhere. Here’s a tutorial if you are interested.

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The rest of the spare bedroom is mostly set up so I can show some other pictures. But first, here’s how it looked when we closed in October.

purple sharapova

Sharapova, no more.

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The black furniture is my childhood furniture that I painted black right after college. It has seen better days and the black doesn’t really go, so it so will either get re-painted or replaced.IMG_2702

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We still have plenty to do in here including trimming out the new window..

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But we’re happy with how it’s shaping up and think the door turned headboard adds a lot of charm.

PS. I bit the bullet and decided to buy a domain name for the blog for $18/year, so you can now just go to www.12oaksblog.com to see what we’re up to.

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Toasty Toes, More Paint, New Lights & A Furry Rug

2 Feb

While I was in Las Vegas for work this past week, my darling husband installed the underfloor heat in the bathroom and finished painting the 2nd spare bedroom.

He said the underfloor heating was really easy to install. First, he laid down the cables in a “S” pattern. You can see in the photo there are little steel straps that you weave the cables through.

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Next, he applied a coat of thinset over everything to keep it in place and prep for tile.

IMG_2288I’m traveling for work again this coming week so maybe I’ll come home this time and see some tile down (hint, hint Ben ;)).

And here is the 2nd spare bedroom with its final coat of paint. I ended up tweaking it a bit from the first coat, toning it down a little by adding about 15% of some grayish paint we had to the original color.

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As you can see, we are using it as a staging area/workshop for the bathroom right now, but I can’t wait to get it all set up!

See that wood in the picture above? We are going to use that to plank the walls in the bathroom. I’ve always loved this look and am so excited to get to do it in here. Here is one of my inspiration images:

Found here: http://www.southernliving.com/home-garden/decorating/bedroom-walls-00417000070400/page10.html

Found here.

We also had a bunch of items show up in the mail this week, including a new light fixture for the office.

It’s a 3-bulb semi-flush light from Wayfair for $99. Simple and clean. IMG_2334

But my favorite is our new bedroom lamps! They are from Pottery Barn and are more than I would have liked to pay except we had a leftover gift card from our wedding, so they weren’t too bad.

IMG_2355They are nice and big and make a major impact in the room. The base is mercury glass and the shade is burlap. I wouldn’t have thought those two things would go well together, but they totally do.

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Here’s the room before so you can see what I mean about the big impact.

MasterThe final tweak this week (I’m a poet) is a faux sheepskin rug that was intended to go in front of the fire but it didn’t look right with our other area rug so ended up in our bedroom.

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I think it works great in here and helps balance out the dark wood furniture and floors. Plus it’s soooo comfy. Doc loves it.

That’s it for now. Tomorrow we are having some friends over to watch the Super Bowl and I am attempting to make chili for the first time. And make these cute little strawberry footballs. Wish me luck…I’ll need it.

Strawberry footballs

Found here.

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Upstairs Updates

27 Jan

We haven’t shared photos of the office and spare bedroom since we moved furniture into them. Now that we finally have all the doors hung and painted and door hardware installed, I think it’s time to share!

Here is the spare bedroom that is across the hall from our master. Remember when it was the “yellow Sharapova room?”

Yellow Sharipova room

Hard to believe it is the same room.

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We still need to add some art, window treatments, a light fixture and find the bed skirt, but there’s not much left to do in here. Hooray!

Next door is Ben’s office, which formally looked like this.

Bedroom #3 (Future office)

And now looks like this.IMG_2271

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The furniture in here used to live in our old house’s office and sunroom. It seems too crowded to me, but works for now. And it’s Ben’s space and he doesn’t mind.

We’ve also made a few updates in our room including a new ceiling fan…

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We purchased it at Menards, which has the best lighting selection of any of the big boxes, for a reasonable $89. Plus we got a remote for it so we can turn the light and fan on/off without getting out of bed. It’s the little things, people!

Here are the doors and closet doors with oil rubbed bronze hardware…

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And lastly we hung a bamboo roman shade, purchased from Home Depot.IMG_2256

We hung it about 6″ in higher than the window casing to make the window appear bigger. Could you tell? Also this way when the blind is pulled up it doesn’t block any light. I will eventually add curtains so it won’t be as noticable the blind is higher than the window.

IMG_2264You will likely see these type of shades showing up throughout our house. I really like the look of them instead of the horizontal white ones and they are pretty affordable. About $18 for a standard 39″ x 72″.

The final bedroom upstairs is still a big “in progress.” No furniture in there yet but we did some work in there today and got the trim caulked and painted. I never realized how amazing caulk is. See how much of a difference it makes….

Baseboards before paint/caulk:

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And now:IMG_2277

We had a mishap with the 2nd coat of paint in this room, but hoping to get it repainted and furniture moved in this week. As always, stay tuned.

Have a good week everyone, I will be in Las Vegas for most of it for work!

Master Bedroom Tour

19 Dec

Note: Before I get into the Master Bedroom I wanted to share some thoughts on the tragic massacre in Newtown, CT last Friday. Unfortunately I was working from home that day with the TV in the background so I was glued to it for hours as the horrific details unfolded. This terrible, terrible thing has rocked our nation to its core and has, I think, made all of us question our faith in humanity. But what I have seen since has restored that faith. The love and kindness expressed from people all over the country is just amazing. One example is the movement called #26Acts, where people are doing 26 acts of kindness to honor the 26 victims. It is spreading like wildfire and I urge you to check it out and participate if you feel inspired. I did. I also truly believe that gun laws are going to change as a result. Probably not as much as many of us may hope, but even re-instituting the assault weapons ban (which I think will happen) can save innocent lives. I could go on, but we’ll leave it there. 

After 6 weeks since closing and sleeping in almost every other room in the house (den, dining room, and spare bedroom), we are finally sleeping in our (mostly) complete master bedroom! It feels amazing.

So far this room has undergone new paint, re-finished floors, painted trim, new shoe molding, and new outlets and outlet covers. Plus we moved in all our furniture and hung a couple things on the walls. Voila!

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And here’s the before:

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The only thing missing are the doors, which are still a work in progress after the spray booth didn’t turn out as planned. Drip central. Some doors, a new ceiling fan and some decorating and this room will be done.

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Here are a few sources for anyone that is interested. Our bedding is from Ballard Designs, the large mirror over the bed is from Home Decorators (I got this over half off last year around Thanksgiving), the french writing rug is from Ballard Designs, and those Mr. and Mrs. pillows were a wedding gift from our old neighbors. Aren’t they adorable? They are also from Ballard Designs. I’m seeing a trend. The bed we built ourselves a couple of years back according to some Ana White plans. The rest of the furniture in the room was Ben’s parents’ bedroom furniture which we had stripped and re-finished.

So the last time you saw the Master Bathroom it looked like this.

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It wasn’t quite working for me for a few reasons:

  1. It’s super crowded. That vanity stuck out really far in an already tiny room (not to mention it was covered in seashells!)
  2. The faucet didn’t work right and
  3. There was very little storage.

Would you believe that Ben gave this room a mini-makeover while I was away in Miami as a surprise? Some women get flowers and chocolates, I get bathrooms. I’m a lucky girl.

So here it is today, complete with a new $99 vanity from Home Depot and some nice big shelves.

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He also quickly painted the medicine cabinet and light, changed out the light bulbs, and ripped out the blue soap dish.

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While this is all temporary until we can renovate the entire thing, it has made a huge difference! 500 brownie points for Ben.

And just for fun (my idea of fun at least), this is what it looked like on closing day.

Master Bathroom

Master Bathroom

Yeah I will take not dealing with that atrocity over flowers any day.

So what do you think of our Master so far? Also feel free to share any thoughts around Sandy Hook if you feel inclined.

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