Before & After: A Baby Boy’s Nursery Reveal

When I posted little Miss K’s “big girl” room reveal last month, I mentioned that she had a baby brother on the way and that I had the honor of designing his nursery. I’m happy to say that baby Dex has arrived and has settled quite nicely into his new room, and today I am excited to show it to you! Oh, and did I mention we only had about 6 weeks to pull the room together?!

Before & After: A Little Girl’s “Big Girl” Room Reveal

Remember when I teased you with this project sneak peek a couple of months ago? Well, I am excited to reveal it in it’s entirety today! It’s a fairly dramatic “before & after,” which is always fun!

My Biggest Project Yet…

So sorry for the lack of posts last week…. I wish I could say I was galavanting about town, finding the latest and greatest design decor. But the truth is, I was sleeping. Yes, sleeping. All–week–long.

Those of you that know me personally know that my husband and I have been trying to conceive for almost a year and a half. We’ve tried it all… after several failed months, we turned to Clomid, which eventually led to several IUI’s…Let’s be honest, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the fact that my future children would be conceived by artificial insemination, but whatever it takes, I guess.

Before & After: Master Bedroom Makeover Reveal!

On Friday, I shared with you a sneak peek of a recently completed master bedroom makeover…and today, I’m going to share with you the room in it’s entirety!  This particular client felt as though her & her husband’s master bedroom was dark and drab… She indicated that she wanted the look to be a sophisticated mix of cool neutrals with a touch of glam.

Some Minor Changes Around Our Home

I know that I’ve written about my living room as well as my kitchen in previous posts….but we made a few changes in these rooms, and I wanted to share them with you….

Remember how I told you about our new chandelier for our living room? Well it has finally been installed! I am happy with it, but it really needs to be lowered by about a foot…that way it helps fill more of the empty wall space above the television. Don’t you agree??

Here is our living room before the chandelier was installed…

Here is the living room with the new chandelier…

We’ve also had some minor painting projects going on around our house. When the guys came in to remodel our kitchen, we also had them paint all of our plantation shutters. They were previously a stain grade walnut color, so we had them painted an off white to match the kitchen cabinets. Here is a picture of the living room with the stained shutters….

And here is a picture after we had the shutters painted…it really helps brighten up the space…

Something else that was bothering me was the fact that the walls above our kitchen cabinets were left white after our kitchen remodel was done. This was my fault as I had originally asked the painters not to paint this the same gray color as the rest of the walls (not sure what I was thinking).

I was also bothered by the fact that the inside of the glass uppers were left white, which made them look extremely bright and unfinished.

So I had them come back last week and paint all of the walls above the cabinets, as well as the inside of the glass uppers, the same shade of gray as the rest of the walls. What exactly is “that shade of gray” you ask? I can now confirm that it is in fact “Ashes” by Behr.

Also, I finally added some decor to the glass uppers .These have been bare for months as I have not been able to figure out how I wanted to fill the space….I decided to fill them with my classic white dishes from Pottery Barn. I have stacked bowls, stacked coffee mugs, stacked plated, etc…

Here is the kitchen immediately after the remodel with the stark white walls above and inside the glass uppers…

And here it is after the gray was added to those areas…I know it’s not a dramatic change, but it sure helps tone down the bright white lights (especially on the inside of the glass uppers), don’t you think??

Oh……and we also had the shutters in our bedroom painted white. Here they are before…

And here they are after…it looks much cleaner, don’t you think??

Quick and Easy DIY Window Shade

After posting, “Our Kitchen Remodel is Complete,” I received several emails regarding the fabric shade over the kitchen sink. Most of you wanted to know where I purchased it, but truth be told, I made it!

A couple of months ago I was perusing through one of my favorite design blogs emilyaclark.blogspot.com. Emily is an incredibly talented Home Stylist with many crafty DIY ideas…but this one in particular really captured my attention, and I just knew I needed to try it myself!

During the process of our kitchen remodel we decided to remove the previous shutter over the kitchen sink as it was hindering the amount of natural light we acquired. I still wanted some sort of a window covering for privacy, but I preferred something less obstructive and with a little more character. I knew this would be the perfect time to try out Emily’s “Easy (and inexpensive) DIY Fabric Roller Shade.”

So I purchased a roller shade from Home Depot for about $9 along with a yard of patterned fabric for about $12 and put myself to work! First, I cleared off a work space on my kitchen floor, unrolled the shade and placed the fabric underneath it. I then proceeded to trim the sides of the fabric to a width that is about 2″ wider than the shade.

DIY Fabric Shade in the making

I then folded the trimmed edges over the back of the shade and used fabric glue to secure them to the shade (use the glue to secure the edges only).

I allowed the glue to dry, rolled up the shade and installed it with exterior mounting brackets so that the shade would sit about an inch off of the wall…..

And here is the end result!!!

A great big thank you, once again, to the talented Emily Clark for inspiring me to take on this project! It was fun and easy, and I am thrilled with the end result!

Our Kitchen Remodel is Complete!!!

I am THRILLED to announce that our Kitchen Remodel is complete!

As I mentioned in “Making His House Our Home,” I originally assisted in designing this home 6 years ago when my husband, who was single at the time, elected to build a rustic style home where him and a couple of his roommates would live in “bachelorhood” for the next several years. Little did either one of us know, we would eventually end up getting married and living in the home together!

Soon after we got married we discussed possibly selling the home and building in a neighborhood with a better school district…but because we love the area and do not yet have kids, we decided to stay in the house for the next 3-4 years….I agreed, under one condition of course…that we do a total home make over!

For the last year or so I have been hard at work converting my husband’s bachelor pad into a stylish, more sophisticated home for the two of us. Our latest and most substantial project was our kitchen remodel. In my recent post, “A Little Design Inspiration for Your Wednesday,” I introduced a few of my ideas and inspiration photos. I have been dreaming of white kitchen cabinets, Absolute Black honed granite counter tops and a backsplash filled with White Carrara marble, similar to this kitchen….

I am happy to finally have my dream kitchen become a reality! So with no further ado, here are the photos of our kitchen before….

And here is our kitchen today!

Not only did we paint our cabinets off white, we also added glass uppers to extend the cabinets to the ceiling (of course one of the upper lights went out right before I took the pictures…go figure). I am now on a mission to find the perfect decor for these fun little cabinets. I would love to incorporate the blue-ish turquoise color that used I in the adjacent living room…

We replaced the tiled counter tops with honed Absolute Black granite. I am pleased that I selected honed rather than polished as it gives it a more casual feel…

The tile backsplash has been replaced with a 1/2″ x 1/2″ White Carrara marble which is polished, so when the under cabinet lighting hits it just right, it’s as if it sparkles!

We removed the stained shutter over the kitchen window and replaced it with a fabric shade which was my Friday night D.I.Y project……I’ll tell you more about it later this week!

As you can see from the before pictures, this bar was about 12″ taller before the remodel. We had it dropped to a more comfortable level and added a trash drawer (which I love!), 2 pot and pan drawers and wine storage…which in return added more counter top space. We also added 2 clear glass lantern pendant lights over the serving bar

We selected these satin nickel drawer pulls for the drawers…

And this satin nickel hardware for the cabinet doors…