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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.

Winter Shenanigans

11 Feb

12 Oaks turned into a Winter Wonderland last week. It was the most snow we’ve had all season, about 6″ or 7″. I was in San Antonio where it was upper 70’s and came home to this.

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IMG_2244So pretty, right?

My Mom and little brother Jared came out to visit for the weekend and the boys cooked up the idea to tie an inner tube to the 4-wheeler and ride around the property.

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It was a blast!

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Then we decided to build a snowman. But it couldn’t be just any snowman. Since we had Ben’s friend’s bobcat, we decided to go big or go home. We checked the world record and quickly realized that was way out of our sights at 122 feet. It was actually a “snowwoman” that had skis for eyelashes and 30 foot spruce trees for arms.

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Our goal was 20 feet, and I think we ended up at about 12. We just started building a giant pile of snow. After that we shaped the middle part, then added a head.IMG_0107 2

I think Ben enjoyed building his first snowman.IMG_0110IMG_0117

We had to call it a day and come back to it the next day to finish up. Except then it had started raining, so we worked fast and furious to shape the bottom and put his “outfit” on.

A regular hat was too small so we spray painted a bucket for the hat and cut some spare fabric into a large enough scarf.

We were pretty proud of the outcome!

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Unfortunately, his face has melted off from the rain. But it was still totally worth it.

Next up on the blog: bathroom tile. It’s all laid, just needs to be grouted.

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.

Home Goals 2013

21 Dec

Since there’s no better way to light a fire under your arse than a public proclamation of what you want to accomplish, here is our big ole list of what we want to achieve in 2013…

1) Put in Upstairs Hall Bathroom. This will be one of the first things we do in the New Year, since we’ve already demo’d it due to a faulty/leaky bathtub. I also already put together a mood board so we just need to get moving.

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2) Re-locate laundry and renovate first floor powder room. It’s still up in the air where the washer and dryer will go at the moment, but the first floor powder room is in desperate need of a makeover. The wall color actually scares me and the sink reminds me of what would be in prison. We did hang some free cabinets Ben got from work which at least adds function and covers up some of that terrible wall color. Oh yeah, did I mention this room doesn’t even have a ceiling?

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3) Take down a wall to create open floor plan. Taking down the wall between the living room and kitchen is one of the things we’re most excited about since it will totally change the feel of the first floor. It is a load bearing wall though, so we are going to consult a structural engineer to ensure we do it correctly without having the house fall over on us.

living room wall removed

4) Along with taking out the wall, will be adding a kitchen island and renovating the kitchen completely. We’ll try to re-purpose the cabinets and the appliances are decent, but this will definately include new floors, countertops, sink, backsplash, lighting, etc.

5) New windows. Our windows are in terrible shape. Some are broken, many don’t open, and they all have these weird blue screens. BUT we’ve already got a quote on new ones, so this will probably happen as soon as the weather gets nice enough to install them.

6) Renovate Master Bathroom. Can we re-do 3 bathrooms in 1 year? I sure hope so. We want to extend the master bathroom by taking out the closet next to it to create a much roomier space.

7)  Get the pool up and running. We of course have to wait until the weather gets nicer in the Spring, but this will be a big job that includes filling cracks, waterproofing, acid washing, painting it, testing plumbing and adding new equipment. But once it’s done, I may never leave.

Pool filling up, slowly but surely

8) Build a deck and/or patio around said pool along with landscaping around it and the rest of the property. Thankfully Ben is friends with a landscape architect so he is going to put a plan together for us. It’s a big job but will make a huge difference.

9) Add french doors off of the dining room. We’ll replace these windows with french doors leading out to the deck and/or patio.

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You may notice a new light fixture in the dining room. We got it from Ballard Designs a couple weeks back. The scale isn’t quite right with the table, but Ben is going to build a new dining room table with some native New Zealand wood he has, so it should work better with a bigger table.

10) Paint the house and install new front door. I’m thinking something in the gray family to go with our new roof. I still need to share pics of it which was finished a couple days ago, but it was raining or dark every time I would be able to take a pic, and now it’s covered in snow (yay, white Christmas!)

11) Update fireplace in the den. We actually got a free chunky mantle from Ben’s work so we need to install/paint that and paint the brick or add stones or wood molding to update it.

12) Add shadowbox molding in dining room and stairs. Plus, we still need to get new railings for the stairs.

13) Put in can lights in living room. We don’t have a single light in the living room so we will add can lights. We also need to update fixtures in most rooms in the house.

14) Add hardwood floors in the entry way.  These weird green and red tile will not make the cut.

I’m probably forgetting some things, but I’d say that’s plenty to keep us busy for a year. What do you say? Think we can get it all done?