we bought a house – Page 3 – emerald city diaries

highlights of 2013.

happy 2014!

i’ve said it before, & i’ll say it again!, yearly recaps are always my favorite kinds of blog posts. its a small way to sum up your year & to see how much the last 365 days have brought. as i look forward to the New Year, i am humbled & grateful by all of the wondrous events of 2013. here’s the rundown of ours:

january: I started out the new year with a bout of the flu. we hosted our first blog giveaway! we installed the west elm hanging capiz chandelier over our dining room table. I framed my diy polaroids for our bedroom walls. amanda & I met john & sherry from young house love during their book signing tour! I diy-ed campaign dressers for our bedroom.

february: I did lots of diy-ing for valentine’s day {here, here, & here} I celebrated my birthday! we bought a kitchen island. I tried to be better about getting in front of the camera!

march: I tried my hand at painting an antler {& was so impressed with the results!}. we took my 91-year-old grandmother to target for the first time! amanda & I diy-ed framed house keys on maps. we sold jez the jetta & bought a new car.

april: we updated our bathroom vanity with a converted antique sideboard. we updated the closet doors by stripping off the old paint in a crock pot. we celebrated our one year anniversary in our house & I reviewed all of the house diys!

may: we finally got some good weather in seattle! I painted the ceiling & hallway walls. we celebrated aaron’s thirtieth birthday with a beer tasting party! we had a fun-filled memorial day weekend. we were featured in west elm’s blog front & main.

june: aaron replaced our toilet. sadie was featured in the seattle dog spot blog. my parents visited for a long weekend en route to the olympic peninsula. my diy his & hers maps were featured. we finally got some summer weather!

july: we celebrated the long Fourth of July weekend with a holiday parade, fireworks, & time with friends. I made a nine layer ombre cake! we replaced our kitchen track lights with globe pendants from west elm. we road-tripped to idaho for my ten-year high school reunion. we started growing our first eggplant.

august: we celebrated our three year wedding anniversary. the blog got a Liebster Award Nomination. I diy-ed the tiniest baby hats for our friends’ new baby. we road-tripped to hood river, oregon to celebrate my cousin’s wedding.

september: we went to the husky vs. bronco game to kick-off labor day weekend complete with husky-style tailgating {via boat}. we took advantage of the warm weather & cleaned up the front yard with a fun game called love it or lose it. we celebrated sadie’s ninth birthday! I attended the Alt Summit for Everyone blog conference.

october: I attempted to start doing fashion posts again. we celebrated our two year blog anniversary at emerald city diaries! I finished up with the #embracethecamera challenge. we went to the pumpkin patch & carved pumpkins with friends.

november: aaron joined a team for movember 2013. we snuck off to hawaii for thanksgiving.

december: I reviewed some of my favorite weekend in pictures pics. I participated in A Pinterest Christmas for the third year {see this year’s projects here, here, here, here, & here}! we celebrated Christmas in indiana with aaron’s family.

reflecting back on this year, i am reminded how blessed we are & also how different this year has been than the year previous. it has been such a wonderful year & ringing in a new one is a bit bittersweet.

how was your 2013 – was it a year to remember, or are you itching to start 2014 already?

see past yearly highlights for 2011 & 2012.

west elm kitchen light pendants.

after i did the big kitchen update last spring, i wanted to live in the space & use it for a while before we did any other big updates. i have always disliked the lighting in the kitchen – track lights – and i had big plans for an update to them. luckily for us we were able to upgrade without bringing in an electrician – hooray!

i have been searching for light fixtures for months, & fell in love with these globe pendants some time ago. they are from, you guessed it, west elm! {this is my go-to place for anything home décor! the best i tell you!} while the junction boxes – is that what they are called – aren’t perfectly located {i would have preferred them closer together & centered over our kitchen island} these lights are far better than the old track lighting!

you can shop for your own here: west elm globe pendant.

{before}

{after}

we still need to patch up the holes from the track lights & find round, frosted bulbs {right now we have frosted LEDs that have a weird plastic top}, but overall we are very excited about these lights – such an improvement!

{in the bottom two pictures it looks like there are two bulbs in each pendant, but it is just a reflection off of the glass}

have you been changing out any light fixtures lately?

dear john {a toilet story}

this weekend, as i mentioned here, aaron & i installed a new toilet in our newly-updated bathroom. we were going to wait to replace the toilet despite it being a fun pinky tan color because it really didn’t need to be replaced. then two weeks ago the lid hinge broke & we fast-tracked a new toilet.

& by fast-tracked aaron ordered it from amazon prime, but apparently toilets can only be ground shipped. so our usual 2 business day wait turned into just over a week of waiting. boo. but, it finally came in all of its low-flow, dual-flush, super water efficient glory!

there really isn’t much to this post except a pretty awesome before & after of our bathroom {because as cool as it is for us, it is really just a toilet}.

{before – april 2012}

{after – june 2013}

the installation was a relatively easy process, especially considering the first set of instructions we found online said it would take 3 hours! we {& again, by we i mean aaron} was able to get the old one out & the new one in in just about an hour. thankfully the floor bolts weren’t rusted out {which i believe contributes to the longer installation time} – phew! have you installed a new john recently?

before & after feature {west elm blog}

as many of you know from our choice of house decor, west elm is my go-to place for anything we need around the house.

we are very honored & thrilled to be featured today on west elm’s home blog today, front & main! be sure to check it out here!

thanks west elm!
M

a fresh coat of paint: hallway edition.

one of the last remaining rooms in our house which hasn’t been painted was our hallway {the very last is the office, unless you count the interiors of closets, but i digress}. it is a pretty small space and has four doorways – to the living room, to the bedroom, to the bathroom, and to the office. the problem with the hallway was that it was yellow. the walls were yellow. the ceilings were yellow. it made you feel like you were inside of a butter dish. i would have painted it sooner, but i hate painting ceilings. a few weeks ago, i finally pulled the trigger and painted it all, ceilings and walls.

{the befores}

i decided that i should stick with a neutral color since this hallway {as mentioned above} connects nearly every room in our house. we have a pretty neutral pallet going in the house, but it was important that the hallway color look good with the living room color, the bathroom color, & the bedroom color. we happened to have some grey left over from our old living room at our townhouse, so i went with that. {it is martha stewart driftwood gray}

{the afters}

{the color is closest to what is shown on the very top picture // the “color scheme” in the house is well represented in the bottom picture}

how do you pick your paint colors? do you have a color scheme, or do you just pick the color for each room or space separately?

a year in review {house diys}.

it is hard to believe but we have been in our house for a year – can you believe it? while it doesn’t seem like yesterday that we were moving & packing & unpacking, it definitely doesn’t feel like its been an entire year. {where does the time go?}

i thought since so much of this blog is devoted to the work we have put into the house, it would be fun to do a review of all of our house projects over the last year. {also, this is making up for the fact that i have been horrible about keeping the house tour tab up-to-date.}

here we go! {are you ready for lots of pictures?}

{entryway} – chalkboard paint

{living room & dining room} – paint color, curtains, west elm light

{bathroom} – paint color, Ikea light, vanity

{kitchen} – paint color (walls), painted cabinets, painted countertops, painted tile, kitchen island, roman curtain

{office}

{bedroom} – paint color, roman curtains, closet doors

phew! it is hard to believe we did all of that in just one year. we still have lots of things on the to do list, including some bigger projects that we are saving up for! reviewing all of these projects makes me thankful that we have such a fun house to work on & enjoy. it was scary to make the decision to buy a house last year {it felt so grown-up!} but we have loved every minute of it & learned so much.

what sorts of projects have you completed in your living space? do you ever go back & review all of your hard work?

one year house anniversary.

one year ago today – april 27th – we closed on our house & {finally} got the keys! can you believe it? the day we became homeowners.

{first family photo with the house}

{the keys}

{the u-haul. oh my goodness am i glad we don’t have to pack this up & move this weekend!}

i am planning to do a big review post of all of our house projects from the last year on the blog next week so be sure to come back & check it out!

do you celebrate the anniversary of when you moved into your house/apartment/condo, or is that just us?

my weekend in pictures.

{finally arranging on our new bathroom counterspace. i picked up these fun silver mint julep cups from one kings lane to hold cotton balls & q-tips.}

{got diesel for the first time in our new car. the green is fun!}

{paint rollers & drywall – story of our weekend.}

{ikea bins. i was in organizing heaven!}

{finally sorted out the mess in the bathroom vanity. since i don’t have a label maker (yet) i used fun chalkboard labels instead.}

{aaron joined me on sunday morning in my favorite vinyasa flow yoga class. afterwards we noshed on a bagel. carb loading post-yoga is totally legit, right?}

{i had already prepped & primed the hallway before i realized we didn’t have the paint color i needed to finish painting it. alas, i see hallway painting in my future next weekend.}

{i am glad that someone likes & enjoys these upholstered tables. they sit in front of our front window, so sadie has a view of everything in front of the house. plus, she likes to bring her favorite toys up to join her.}

we had a great weekend, but as always it went so fast! there were a lot of house projects which is exhausting but it feels great to get a few things off the checklist. we had terrible wet weather all weekend with the sun only peeking out for a few hours at the end, but we are in for a warm week (seriously, mid to high 60s you guys!). how was your weekend?

updated closet doors.

now i am sure you are thinking “updated closet doors, doesn’t seem like much of a blog post.” am i right? well, you are. except that we have been “working” on the closet doors for some time now. remember back in november & december when we painted our bedroom? well, that is when we took off the closet doors & they haven’t been up since. needless to say it is a big deal around here that we have closet doors again!

as you can see from the pictures below {the befores} whoever had painted the doors before we moved in decided it would be wonderful to paint all of the hardware too. {seriously, who does that?} so when we took down the doors to be painted from their original yellow to white-ish {the color of our trim} we decided it would be lovely to restore the hardware. once we got the hardware off the doors {hinges, hinge pins, & faceplates} we soaked them in a crockpot full of water & a bit of laundry soap. {the crockpot was a $5 steal from the goodwill that we will only use to soak old metal hardware & other crafty things.} it took two rounds of a low crockpot, but we finally got all of that paint off!

{before}

{after}

what an improvement, huh? it is lovely to have the hardware back on as it should be. you know, all metal-y & not all paint-y. plus, a bonus because i got hooks in the inside of my closet – yay! we picked up three of these hooks from anthro & while they aren’t exactly the same metal as the door hardware, it keeps with the antique-y look. i do put my clothes away, but it is nice to have a place to hang your twice-worn jeans or put together an ensemble ahead of time, don’t you think?

have you been updating any of your hardware {buying new or refinishing old}?

updates to the bathroom {mirror & drawers}.

i wanted to share a few more updates to the bathroom. sorry if this feels like i am beating a dead horse, a bathroom is a bathroom, right? this is probably the last post until we do the toilet & tub.

this weekend we aaron worked on the mirror situation that we had going on. we had a medicine cabinet that was recessed into the wall. after aaron was able to remove a few screws from the inside of the cabinet, he pulled it out from the wall.

you can see the lath in the picture below that is up against the wall studs. it appears that some of our walls have dry wall right over the old lath & plaster, & some of the walls are just the old lath & plaster. in the gap beneath where the cabinet was we found a crumpled up newspaper. it was dated 1938. it is sort of hard to believe that the medicine cabinet is that old.

i was originally wanting to put a big antique mirror in the space above our new vanity, but price & convenience led me to target instead. i was able to find a mirror that was big enough to fit the wall space {see target silver beaded wall mirror} & could even have gone a few inches bigger {this mirror is 34” by 28”}. it isn’t perfect, but it works for what we need now. perhaps we can upgrade to something nicer in a few years.

the big white rectangle that you see below is drywall patching that we haven’t had time to prime & paint. because the original medicine cabinet hung portrait {& the new mirror is landscape} aaron had to do a bit of patching. hopefully we will be able to prime & paint it in the next few weeks.

i had mentioned in the original vanity reveal that aaron & my dad had rebuilt the drawers to accommodate the undermount sink. here are some pics of that. they kept the drawer fronts, but then turned the rectangle drawers into squares. aaron also had to reconfigure the drawer supports underneath to accommodate the smaller sized drawers {shown in the last picture}. we are lucky that the drawers are deep enough to hold toiletries, make-up, etc. that we don’t want to get lost under the sink.

have you been shopping for mirrors lately? where is your go-to place?