Before we could even move in, we wanted to make the kitchen more livable. We can't do a complete kitchen renovation, but we can do some cosmetic stuff. We smoothed out the swirled plaster ceilings, scraped off wallpaper, took out the ceiling fan, and painted over all that green. We also added an island from Ikea in the center, to give us more storage and to break up the big expanse of space in the middle.
The built-in shelves in the living room are nice but they were white and beige. I wanted to add some color so I used Cobblestone Gray and Tidewater (Both Martha Stewart colors) for a subtle change. I still need to decorate the shelves more artistically. Workin on it!
We wanted to add a more cottage-y feel to the living room fireplace, so we added some stones and a rustic mantel.
The bedrooms upstairs were painted in some unbelievable colors when we moved in.
Our youngest son's room (bedroom #1) was painted mustard yellow with blue trim! It only took some cosmetic changes (paint, blinds, and a new ceiling fan) to make it livable.
The blue guest room (bedroom #2) began as what can only be described as Pepto-bismal pink. Today it's a soothing shade of blue called "June Breeze" which works well because it looks out over the water:
Our youngest son's room (bedroom #1) was painted mustard yellow with blue trim! It only took some cosmetic changes (paint, blinds, and a new ceiling fan) to make it livable.
The blue guest room (bedroom #2) began as what can only be described as Pepto-bismal pink. Today it's a soothing shade of blue called "June Breeze" which works well because it looks out over the water:
Bedroom #3 was painted a deep avocado green. Here's how it looks today:
Bedroom #4 is our upstairs office. It began with bright, Smurfy blue walls, and it also came with two very tall bookshelves that didn't fit out of the room--so we decided to make lemonade out of lemons. We painted the shelves and arranged the office around them:
The vanity pass-through to our bedroom needed some oomph. New paint, mirror, faucets, lights, rug, and drawer pulls was all it took.
You can see in this next picture that I changed the bedroom color from yellow to Sea Salt Blue, switched the yellow roll up shades to darker matchstick Roman shades, got a bigger gray-green rug, and covered the old leather loveseat with a store-bought slipcover.
And the change I love the most--the new patterned rug for the pass-through! Can you say flower power?
We changed the colors and fabrics on the Screened Porch:
The stairs leading to our basement were downright ratty. And that's putting it nicely. I painted the banister black, and the stairs a coffee brown. Then we stapled down sisal stair treads with black twill edges.
One of the first projects we completed was the Tiny first floor powder room. It really is tiny, about 5'x8', so we could make big changes for a fairly low price tag:
Our front door just didn't wow me. During the week after Christmas, we squeezed in our last home improvement project of 2011 with a $248 steel door from Lowe's. I painted, Tom installed. Shazam.
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