You won’t hear from us for a couple weeks, we are heading off on our honeymoon in Fiji! Can’t wait for some much-needed rest and relaxation.
Here’s the island we are staying on, which houses a max of 66 people. We’ll be staying in one of those beach huts, called “bures.” Should be amazing!
Painting continues at 12 Oaks. We’ve now painted all but 2 rooms (both bathrooms, one of which was completely demo’d this week.. more on that later).
We painted the current Master bedroom this week. The color is a bluish gray called Metropolitan by Benjamin Moore.
Before:
Master Bedroom
After:
The “pig in lipstick” comes into play in the master bathroom. Originally we were going to rip out this bathroom right away and use the hall bathroom. However, we only had a total of 1 shower each in the hall bathroom before it started leaking and Ben had to rip half of the shower out to find the problem. So now we are going to renovate the hall bathroom first and use the master bathroom.
It’s tiny and outdated, but the best part is the beautiful seashells and god knows what else they painted on the vanity.
Master Bathroom
So we gave the entire bathroom, vanity included, a coat of Metropolitan. We also switched out the toilet. This should get us by until we gut this bathroom.
My apologies to the previous owners for painting over your masterpiece. Apparently this was a family affair, even grandma was in on this. Babcia= grandmother in Polish. Thanks to my Polish friend Alex I knew that one right away.
The next pig in lipstick is the entry and staircase walls. These were a lovely gold faux finish which will now need to be skim coated or re-drywalled to get them smooth again. For now, we just painted over it with the upstairs hallway color, Perfect Greige by Sherwin Williams.
Before:
Entry
During:
After:
Back to the hall bathroom which Ben demo’d yesterday. Everything is gone except for the pink cast iron tub, which we can get re-enameled white for about $300.
I put together this mood board for what I am thinking in here. Blue/green walls, white subway tiles in the shower, weathered-wood vanity, etc.
That vanity is $1,600 from Pottery Barn so we are going to try and make it ourselves. We’ve ripped off some Pottery Barn furniture in the past, so hopefully it works.
Lastly, Ben cut down and burned all the weeds that were up to 15 ft! tall around the pool.
Before:
After (yeah it’s going to look worse before it looks better):
Between the chainsaw, 4 wheeler, ride on mower and all the fires, Ben is like a kid in a candy store.
Fine by me, I am busy making mood boards, picking paint colors and scouring Pinterest for decorating ideas!
We’re going on our 4th night at the house, and it’s amazing but it already feels like home. I promised some pictures of us moved in so here goes.
Here’s the living room, which is probably the farthest along of any room in the house. We still need to mount the TV, and will be adding lights in the ceiling (there are none), removing the wall that divides it from the kitchen, and re-doing the floors, but that’s about it. My favorite thing is the huge built ins. Can’t wait to decorate those bad boys for the holidays.
Here is the dining room. We will be adding shadow box molding under the chair rail, french doors where the windows are that lead out to the pool, adding a chandelier, and of course art.
On to the kitchen. This will be pretty much a full gut job. We’ll be removing the big wall on the right and adding a huge island to create an open floor plan. But for now, its not too bad.
Here is the den, which will be our cozy movie room. We will be re-doing the fireplace, the floors, adding a light fixture and painting the trim and doors white. I didn’t share the paint color in here yet. It is called “Wheat Bread” by Behr. Another greige. Yeah greige is my jam.
We haven’t moved in furniture upstairs yet because we are getting the floors done while were on our honeymoon. So we’ve just got a mattress on the floor for now. We are going with the bottom most left color. I think it is called Spice Brown.
Outside, Ben tidied up the front yard, and I decorated the front door area a little.
I LOVE this color mum.
We also got the hot tub set up. We still need to get some more chemicals, but should be able to take a dip this week.
Ben and Mike unloading the tub
That’s all for now. This week will be finishing painting upstairs, cleaning out the rental, demoing a bathroom, cutting down brush around the pool and building a temporary fence around it. Ben also wants to cut the grass as possible and get as much done outside before snow hits and we are buried with it for 6 months.
Note: Thank you to everyone for your kind words about Macy. We are starting to feel better and of course being so busy with the house helps keep our minds off of it.
We are all moved in to 12 Oaks! It feels great. Ben also turned the big 3-0 yesterday, so we had a few friends over for a massive bonfire.
Being the smart guy that he is, Ben called the fire department to alert them we were having a fire and they said to make sure it wasn’t more than 5 feet tall by 5 feet wide and out by 10 p.m. Yeah, right.
Photo credit: Tatiana
We had it up to about 40 feet tall. It was awesome! And no cops came so we think our neighbors are cool with it. Which is great because we are going to need to do about 50 more of these to get rid of all the dead trees and weeds on the property.
I learned it’s near impossible to take good photos of people in front of a fire, but here are a few pics:
Yes, Ben was in a t-shirt. It was 30° out. (That’s -1° for the Kiwis)
Our city-dwelling friends (particularly the guys) really loved stoking the fire. They were slinging huge tree trunks like it was nothing.
In addition to having a blast, we made great progress. Here is what our front yard looked like last week.
And now.
Update: Ben kept the fire going all day Saturday and cut down a bunch more brush out front. Boys and their fires.
Here’s a new pic of the front. We’re getting there!
I’ll be back tomorrow with photos of the inside of the house once we do some more unpacking, but for now here is a sneak peek.
Hi, we're Ben and Amanda, two DIYers tackling the renovation of a foreclosure in the Chicago suburbs. Watch as we transform the house and 5-acre property into a home to be proud of.
