More Paint Colors

Here are the rest of the pictures of our main floor that we've painted.  In the picture above you can see all the three colors together.  On the left is the formal living room that I posted about earlier here, it's Sherwin Williams Silverstrand.  In the middle is the color we used for accent walls, it's Sherwin Williams Tidewater.  Then on the right is the main color throughout most of the main floor, it's Sherwin Williams Useful Gray.

The family room is painted the Useful Gray with the accent wall painted in Tidewater ( above and below).



Our kitchen peninsula is also painted in Tidewater and the rest of the wall also in Useful Gray.  You can see in the backsplash area where I didn't paint because our next project is installing the glass subway tile.



Our butcher block is also finally installed. I used Waterlox to coat the entire piece. Another big future project is painting the cabinets white, which is why the two different color woods doesn't bother me yet.

Below is an inspiration picture for our future new backsplash, I can't wait to get it all installed and be closer to having a somewhat finished kitchen.





Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

 
 Our first Halloween here in Arizona.  It was quite the party.  Since the weather is perfect for a night stroll, everyone is outside enjoying the crowds that go by.
 
Spencer was a spy.

Tanner was a ghost.  (I used dry shampoo to make his hair and face white, weird I know, but it worked)

Logan was a vampire.

Preston was a policeman.

I was a slacker this year on costumes.  We waited until the last minute to look for things to go with their costume.  We didn't find much, so we mostly just used what we had.  They all still got plenty of candy!

Happy Birthday to Logan today too!  He is now 9 years old.  He's a great kid; responsible, self-motivated, and just a sweet boy!

New Paint Colors

 We have almost finished painting the entire main floor of the house after eight gallons of paint.  We rented scaffolding so we could paint the high ceiling entry and install a foyer light.  Let me just say getting on the very top of the scaffolding was very scary.  I made Jason do all the painting up there, I only had to get up there to help him put it together.  I don't recommend it to anyone who is afraid of heights, I didn't think I was until getting up there. 

Most of the walls in the house are brown.  We are now in the desert and all the houses are brown on the outside, I don't know why it has to look like a desert in the inside too.  I chose three different colors for the main floor.  In this post I will show one color that I chose for the formal living room and dining room.  Picking out colors was quite the challenge.  I wanted to do it right the first time.  Colors always look different than what I had imagined once on the walls, but overall it has been a huge improvement. 

(Before)

I chose Silverstrand by Sherwin Williams.  It is a blue gray color, which looks more blue than I expected, I thought it had a slight green tint to it, but I don't see the green anymore.  I do like it, it's a nice color.  By the way, the nice people at Sherwin Williams told me that they were going to have a 40% off sale on paint, so I waited for the sale.  I will ask next time I need more paint when they will have a sale.

I wish my camera was better at capturing the color better.

I will be posting about the other colors soon.

A Brighter Kitchen

If you know me well, you know I like a light and bright house.  The kitchen in our new home felt a little bit like a dungeon, well maybe not that bad, but it did feel dark to me.  The countertops and backsplash were a black granite tile, that seemed really hard to keep looking clean.  I always have had light colored countertops and realized that I've always been happy with them, even though they had been laminate.  We decided to replace these countertops with Quartz Silestone in Blanco City.  Because quartz can get a bit pricey, I chose the lightest color option in the least expensive group.  We bought them and had them installed by Home Depot.  They had a 10% off special, plus by signing up for a credit card I got another 10% off.  I think we got a great deal. 

After the old countertops and backsplash had been removed, it felt brighter already.

I love the new countertops!  They feel clean, bright, and modern.  We just did the 2cm thickness, which was the base price.  I was a little worried they would be too thin, but it seems normal to me and doesn't bother me at all.

After shopping for a new sink, I found one that works perfect for us.  It's a silgranit one bowl sink.  We have a garbage disposal in the one and only drain, no more food stuck in the wrong drain.  I think this is going to be great with kids.  So far I love it!!!

We could have done an undermount sink, but it wasn't that important to me, at least not for $250.

We have our glass tile backsplash ready to install and our island butcher block still needs to be cut and finished before installing.  I will be posting more pictures soon, we've been painting the house, repainting the brown walls with more updated colors.

Aqua Glass Floor Lamp

 Our living room doesn't have any lights at all.  I was on a mission to find a floor lamp to get started with the lighting in there.  I remembered seeing a floor lamp at Pier 1 Imports that I liked.  So I went to the store and saw "it", and it was more beautiful than I had remembered.  But, there was one problem, the price.  I couldn't pay $200, even though I really wanted it.  After I wiped the drool off my chin I roamed around a little dreaming of how perfect it would be in my living room.  The sales guy there asked if I needed any help, I asked if they were going to have a lamp sale anytime soon.  He didn't know, and asked which lamp I liked.  I told him which one and he said he had one in the back not in perfect condition that he could sell discounted.  I got excited and wanted to see it.  The top glass ball was missing and the part the lamp shade attaches to was loose and we couldn't figure out how to tighten it and the discount was getting greater.  It also didn't have the original lampshade, but said I could pick out one of their extra ones they had in the back.  To make a long story short, by time I got to the checkout, I paid $50! 

It was so cool walking out of the store with the lamp I thought I would never have.  Anyways, after about 15 minutes of messing around with the lamp, I had it tightened up and working just fine.  I love the lampshade too, it's silvery.  I love a great deal!

New Improvements

 We are making some home improvements before we really get settled in, some small ones and some bigger ones.  Here is one small project that made my kitchen happier.  I laid down new contact paper on the shelves in my pantry. 

Because this is what was on them (below).  A black rubbery padding that was stuck to the shelves that were impossible to clean with all the tiny holes filled with crumbs and such.

So I peeled them off and this is what was left.  I scraped and cleaned what I could, then added contact paper.  Now it looks much tidier, cleaner, and cute.

Now on to a bigger project.  Remember this?  We tore out the laminate floors that were in the formal living room, dining room, and den.  Personally, I could have lived with them even though they did look plastic-like.  But we'd much rather have real wood flooring.  Better do it now or never!

Formal living room with new flooring.  Tape is on because the glue is still drying.

Formal Dining Room.  Notice the banister.  We had to pick a wood that would work with our railing and front door, which is also wood.  It matches better than it looks in the picture.

Finally, the den.  By the way, we did engineered hickory flooring in golden brown.  In Washington most houses have solid hardwood flooring, but because of the dryness here in Arizona and concrete slab foundations, engineered wood is the way to go.

We are not done just yet, we have a few more projects coming up!

Arizona, Our New Home

Well we made it to Arizona and finally closed on our house last week.  We are still in a vacation rental while we move our things into our new home from the storage unit and have the floors redone.  It's hot, but there is plenty of A/C everywhere and I think the heat feels good, unless we're working outside, like lifting boxes, then we're sweating like pigs.  We miss Washington and everyone we left.  The boys get a little homesick, missing their cousins and friends, but they are enjoying their cousins here and they're making new friends.

Our House Story:

We really love our new home.  I just can't believe what a great house it is.  Jason searched for a house while me and the boys sold the house in WA and packed up the house.  Jason saw many houses in Arizona and I searched hard online for houses for him to go look at.  We kept finding houses that already had offers on them, or there would be something we didn't like about a house.  When we found "our house" I really liked it and we prayed about it and felt like it was the right house for our family and the right location to raise our boys.  But we weren't the only offer and then...we DIDN'T get it.  I was so sad!  Jason kept searching, but I kept hoping the other house would go back to us.  Jason told me, "You need to move on, it's gone", I said, "I know I just really wanted it."  Well to make a long story short, I did pray that if it was the right house for us we would still be able to buy it.  It was hard to move on but I tried even though we still couldn't find a house that I liked (yes, I'm more picky than Jason, plus remember I only have pictures to go by).  Anyways, it had been a couple weeks and we made an offer on a different house that was nice, but I wasnt' in love with it and it was more expensive.  The sellers wouldn't budge on their price, so we decided not to make another offer because I kept getting the feeling that this was NOT the right house for us.  Then, just a couple hours later Jason gets a call from our realtor that "our house" was ours again.  The other buyers has something come up and had to back out.  Wow, I was estactic, I was on cloud 9!  Now just for the record, I didn't wish anything bad to happen to the other buyers, but this house was meant for us after all.

The Floor Story:

When we saw the house again the Travertine floors looked like they were in worse shape than we originally thought.  Jason had called someone before and asked how much it would cost per sq. ft. to have them restored.  It was expensive, so we thought we might be better off tearing out the floors and putting down porcelain tile instead, which wouldn't need any maintenance, but it was even more pricey.  We were just a day away from the floors being torn out, when Jason and I looked at our porcelain tile samples on the Travertine floors and said what a shame we can't save these floors they are so much prettier than the porcelain tile.  BUT then a tile salesman came over and said it looked like the scratches and dullness on the floor was from some kind of wax coating put over the floor.  Which is a big mistake on a natural stone floor, because they need to breathe, someone didn't know what they were doing.  It was the coating on the floor that was causing it to look scratched and dull, not the actual stone.  So we canceled the floor removal and called another floor guy to give us an estimate on restoring the floors, which was a fraction of the cost of the first bid we got, so we hired him and he started restoring them the next day.  We are so happy with the floors now and thank our lucky stars we didn't tear them out!

Before:  notice the dullness and scratches.

After:  Shiny, new and beautiful.

Before:  Kitchen, it felt dirty to me.



After:  Clean and fresh.

Before:  Master Bath

After:  Master Bath

Before:  Ugly scratches.

Now, Beautiful!!!

Another Floor Story:  to be continued...