Now That We Are Moved In, It's Time To Organize!!!

 

I still cannot believe that we are finally moved into the house!!! I keep pinching myself to make sure that it is not a dream. However, when I realize that it is in fact true and that all those millions hundreds of boxes stacked around our house are really there, I start to feel like I am in a bit of nightmare.  EEK!!!

 

 

But hey, let's keep it real, I would WAY rather be dealing with "Revenge of the Boxes" than still waiting to get into the house. So whose complaining...NOT THIS GAL! We basically spent all day Saturday moving the remainder of our belongings from the apartment to the casa so that we could have everything in one place (and because Sunday was our last day) and started the long unpacking process on Sunday. We decided to adopt the "snowball method" (thanks to my brother's advise) and get one room unpacked at a time, starting with the most important - the master bathroom and closet.  Matt tackled his clothes in the closet while I started unpacking and organizing all the stuff that was "supposed" to fit in the master vanity. I say "supposed to fit" because we I have WAY more bathroom stuff than any one human could possibly ever need in a lifetime would fit in our vanity.  As evidence, here are all the "Master Bath" boxes that we had in storage (you can't tell from this picture, but the poor tub is full of boxes too):

 

 

 And here is all the stuff that came over from the apartment:

 

Seriously, it is a bit ridiculous! Oh well, onward and upward.  So first things first, I had to come up with a plan of attack. Here is a diagram of our master vanity and the drawer layout:

 

 

As you can see, Matt and I each have six 3" deep drawers, two 8" deep drawers and under-sink storage.  I also have a 1.25" deep drawer over the knee space.  So we have lots of drawer storage and a good amount of storage space under the sink:

However, we do not have a linen closet in our master bathroom. Back in January, I showed you how I organized the bathroom in the apartment and the linen closet played a staring roll in my organization plan. Basically, I stored all of my bathroom products (divided into seven categories) in separate bins inside the closet:

 



Although this plan works flawlessly if you have a handy linen closet near by, it is an epic fail when you try to fit everything under your sink!

So, that meant I needed to head back to the drawing board to come up with a new organization plan for our master vanity. It was a bit cramped in the bathroom with all the boxes, so for Phase #1, I created a staging area in the master bedroom to give me room to see everything:

I first moved all the organized bins from the apartment to the staging area. Then I unpacked all the boxes from storage and added the new products to their respective category:

Now that I could see what I had, Matt and I ran over to Container Store to pick-up some much needed supplies and came back with quite the haul! 

 

Now that I had my supplies and my bathroom products separated into more easily manageable categories, it was time for Phase 2: Go through each pile and figure out what will be kept and what would be trashed /recycled (because nothing is worth donating).  I decided to start with my makeup, because who doesn't love playing with makeup???

As I have mentioned before, I have a serious hording problem with throwing things away, and makeup is no exception!  I had a Caboodle (the same one that I have had since 5th grade...no hoarding problems here I promise!!!), a travel bag (the same one that I took to summer camp for the first time in 3rd grade...okay, so maybe a little problem), a 12"x12"x12" metal basket, a ziplock bag, and two makeup bags full of makeup, as well as my airbrush kit. 



That my friends is a serious amount of makeup!!! As I went through everything, I again separated the makeup into categories: (1) eye shadow, (2) blush/bronzer, (3) foundation/powder; (4) eye liner; (5) lips; and (6) brows:

I also made a trash pile of products that I don't use anymore, that were super old, or that were basically empty (all those mascara tubes that I kept because they had a tiny bit left at the time and now are a dried up mess, yummy)...which turned out to be the biggest pile by far:

Evidently I have kept some of this make-up for over a decade and found some serious gems:

Can I get a "What! What!" for blue glitter eyeliner, blue eyeshadow and hot pink lipstick! They are so money and take me back to the sorority days!  Holla!!!  I planned to store all of my makeup in the center 1.25" drawer because it was the largest drawer (approximately 19" deep by 17" wide):

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the drawer is only 1.25" deep...and all the super cool containers at the Container Store that could work for drawer storage were too deep (the smallest ones that we found were 2" deep).  As I was wandering the aisles looking for inspiration, I came across the drawer liner section of the store and found this soft, thick, white liner that was a bit tacky on each side (not tacky in the sence that residue would get on you, but tacky in the sence that it would stick to the drawer without tape): 

Here

Since I was planning on storing my makeup brushes in the drawer, I knew I needed a liner to protect the inside of the drawer.  And that is when the lightbulb went off!  Instead of trying to use baskets and dividers to store my makeup in the drawer, why not just lay it all out??? Once we got home, I measured the drawer space and cut the liner to size.  Then I started laying out my makeup and brushes in the drawer, starting with the makeup that I use most often (my daily work makeup kit):

I then continued sorting through my "keep" makeup pile and pulled out the other products that I use fairly regularly when I want to mix things up or am going out.  I kept the products organized by category (e.g., eye shadow and color pots, eye liner, blushes/bronzers, lipstick, etc.), fit everything together like a puzzle, and ended up with this:

And I absolutely LOVE it!!!  I have all of my "go to" makeup displayed in an easy to identify manner and because the liner is a bit tacky, everything stays in place when I open and shut the drawer.  This is also good, because it will force me to adopt the "one-in-one-out" method and only buy the makeup that I really need.  I then put all the duplicate makeup I have in a travel case and stored it, along with my airbrush makeup kit (which I use daily, but which didn't fit in the shallow drawer) in one of my 8" deep drawers. 

 

I am so excited that I have jumped my first organization hurdle and love how my makeup drawer turned out!  No digging and unloading when I need to find the products I need, I just simply have to open the drawer and TADAH, everything is at my fingertips!  This little project gives me confidence that I just might be able to accomplish my goal of an organized house with a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place!  As the late great Neil Armstrong said:

 

Here

Now it's time to keep this ball rolling and to tackle the rest of my bathroom products! But in the meantime, let's take one more look at the "Before and After" shall we?

 

 

 Thank you so much for stopping by! I hope that you enjoyed it and have a wonderful week!!! 

 



Happy days, oh happy days!!!!

It's here, it's here,

Let's give a cheer!

To the most wonderful day,

Of the year!

 

"What's going on?"

"What's that you say?"

"Why are you so excited?"

Because, IT'S MOVE IN DAY!!!

 

That's right people! After 371 loooooooong days, we are FINALLY moving into the house!!!!

 

 

I am so excited that I don't even know what to do with myself...it can't only be expressed through Napoleon's display of pure joy and happiness!

 

 

We had three truckloads worth of stuff to move in and four guys knocked it out in 3.5 hours.  Let me tell you, movers are worth their weight in gold!!!

 

 

Although the movers got everything into the house...it is our funfilled job to unpack it all and put THREE TRUCKLOADS worth of crap stuff into our beautiful new home (well in my opinion at least...but hey, this project has been a year so it's like the house is my baby...and it will always be beautiful in my eyes no matter what anyone says)!  I will stop back by tomorrow with some pictures of the destruction that is now the inside of our house and the game plan to organize, purge and put away all of our worldly belongings.  But for now, let's reserve this day for happiness and dancing shall we? If you need me, I will be in the front of the house celebrating...just look for the pink tutu!

 



 

 

Fireplace Makeover

 

Happy Friday! I hope that it has been a great week for everyone! Tomorrow is the first day of college foot and I couldn't be more excited (especially since Mr. Manziel is good to go and can start the second half of tomorrow's game - SCORE)!!! So fingers crossed that it will be a good game and not too sweltering hot (Bahahahahahah...not hot in College Station in August, good luck with that one). So much is happening at the house right now trying to get it ready for our move-in day. We passed the plumbing and electrical inspections today - WOOHOO!!! We also started the fireplace remodel. Here is what she looked like originally, right before we started the remodel:

 

 

The first problem was the massive hearth that stuck out about 16" from the front of the fireplace and wrapped around the side. Unfortunately, that was just way too much valuable real estate being wasted for me, so out it went! The second issue was the weird large cubbie to the right of the fireplace. Being from Houston where we might get one fireplace-worthy-day a year, Matt and I had no idea what that space was used for...and thought it was just a strange cubbie. We lived in the house for three years before one of my friends that lives up north happened to stop by and informed us that is where you are supposed to store your wood. Seriously??? How much wood does one person need (that's what she said)????  Here is what the fireplace looked like after we removed the hearth and added built-in cabinets to the right in the old wood storage cubbie.

 

Oooo, and gotta give a quick shout-out to the new floor color. I am so digging the dark chocolate brown. Yummy!!! So now back to the fireplace, the third problem came to light as the remodel progressed.  Although the Old Chicago brick was great in the house originally, it did not play well with our new cream walls, dark trim, and dark wood floors...it just came across too orange'ish-pink'ish-salmony (if that's even a color).  We first pondered white-washing the brick, but felt like that still wouldn't fit in with the rustic-glam look we are going for in the living room.  So we decided that our best option would be to cover the brick with dry stacked limestone. This picture below gives you an idea of what I am envisioning - a combo of elegant and rustic (and P.S. I L-O-V-E this living room, it is FAB!!!):

 

Here

So here's the game plan to beautify the fireplace and bring it in line with our current decorating scheme:

1. Remove massive hearth

2. Pick out limestone

2. Cover Fireplace with dry stack limestone

3. Add new rustic/reclaimed wood mantel

4. Add plug and cable for future TV

 

Our slab of stone arrived yesterday.  We chose a cream limestone overlay that will sit right on top of the existing brick. It is reading a bit yellow in this picture, but is much more cream in real life with just a bit of Edward-style sparkle (mmmmm....gotta love some good ol' fashion vampire sparkle): 

 

So now that we have the limestone and have removed the hearth, the next step was to cover the existing fireplace with a layer of skim coat to give it a nice even base for the limestone to overlay.  We also added a plug and a cable cord so that we can put a TV above the fireplace if we want in the future...and in the meantime, they will be covered with a painting, so our guests will be none the wiser of the electrical storm going on just out of eyesight.

 

That is as far as we have gotten.  I will pop by next week with an update on the final product.  I hope that everyone has a wonderful Labor Day weekend!!!  Thanks so much for stopping by!

 

 

Selecting the Stain Color for Our Wood Floors

 

Happy Hump Day everyone!  I am so excited because Mattey-boy finally gets home tonight after being in the Deen for the past two weeks...and it looks like this might be his last trip over for quite some time (for those of you who don't know, he has been spending about 3 weeks+ each month in Aberdeen, Scotland since March for work and his tour-of-duty is finally over)! Yippy for me!!!  While he has been gone this past two weeks, I have moved onto our next major project at the casa, and that's refinishing our wood floors. This is a pretty huge undertaking and has a lot riding on it (literally) because we have wood floors in EVERY SINGLE ROOM of the house (other than the bathrooms and laundry room - I showed you the details here)...and let me tell you, that's A LOT of wood people! Although the vast majority of the floors are the original floors that were installed when the house was built in 1967,  we have expanded the front of the house, relocated the stairs,  moved a ton of walls, and also added on a whole new bedroom during this renovation....which means that we had to install new floors for each of these locations. Easy-peasy, right???? Just go pick up some matching floor at the flooring store and you are good to go?!?! Well, unfortunately, that is 100% wrong in this case. So let me explain, here is a picture of how the floors look currently (with a whole lot of drywall dust and apparently some kind of water (I hope) drop...yummy):

 

 

So, asides from all the drywall dust, we have two major issues.  First, flooring companies no longer make wood floors with the cute little pegs at the end...apparently those pegs actually held the boards down (and are more expensive) so have become obsolete.  Second, 47 year old floors are super tricky to match because 40+ years worth of love gives them a depth and character that you can not recreate with brand new, out-of-the-box wood floors...no mater how much they hand scrape them.  So our solution was to hunt for reclaimed wood floor that were the same or similar vintage...and we totally scored!!! Although the salvaged floors were completely different colors than our current floors, they are real wood and can be sanded down and restained to match.  In the picture below you can see a sample of the newly installed salvaged floors (the ones on the left side of the square) next to our existing floors (the ones with the pegs on the right side of the square), with a sample of stain that matched the original color...pretty impressive if I do say so myself!!!

 

 

So now that we resolved the "how do you match 47 year old floors" issue, it is time for the fun stuff - picking the stain color!!! Fun, fun, fun! The color of our original floors (as you can see in the picture above) was a redish-orangish-brown with dark pegs.  Although it looked super pretty, we have both been leaning towards the idea of darker floors throughout the house (1) to go with the dark trim that we have downstairs and (2) because we think that it feels just a bit more dressed up.  However, I didn't want anything that was too dark, because I didn't want to loose the pretty wood grain and variations in each of the boards. So I thought maybe a dark walnut stain mixed with ebony. I explained my vision to the floor guys and then played Goldilocks for the afternoon wading through the seven samples that they provided:

Starting from the bottom row on the right and moving clockwise, we had

1. Antique Brown (too light and too yellowish-brown)
2. English Chestnut (too light and too orange)
3. Spice brown (getting darker, but not dark enough...although I loved how it really brought out the grain)
4. Coffee Brown {closed grain*} (love the tone and the effect on the grain, but still just a hair too light for my taste)
5. Coffee Brown {open grain*} (definitely good on the darkness, but it felt a bit flat)
6. Ebony {open grain*}(too dark because we completely lost the wood grain)
7. 50% Coffee Brown & 50% Ebony {open grain*} (WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!)

 * Open grain means they wipe the wood with water before applying the stain to open the grain so more of the color soaks in...it makes a huge difference.

 

I absolutely fell in love with the 50% Coffee Brown-50% Ebony combination because (1) it provides the deep brown tone that I was envisioning with the Coffee Brown; and (2) the ebony stepped in to highlight the beautiful grain in each of the boards.  Here is a close up of the color (although the picture above it much more accurate depiction of the color...the color in the picture below is darker than the color in real life and there is more contrast)

So that is one more check on the ol' To-Do List!!! So exciting!  It is going to take the floor guys 10 days to finish the floors, but all the stain and first coat of poly should be down by Monday.  So stop by back to see the update!  I hope that you all have a wonderful rest of your week!!!

Oh, and just cause I am excited and because it's Thursday...I think it is time for a little Carlton!

 

 



What Goes Up (My Walker Zanger Tiles)...Sometimes Must Come Down (Part 2)

 

 

Happy Friday world! It has been a great week and I am super excited to help one of my good friends ring in her 40th birthday tomorrow at an "all gals spa day"...brang it! I am also going to get to work A LOT this weekend, so a few hours of relaxation are going to be just what the doctor ordered. And speaking of spas, our bathroom has made some major steps towards being completed this week. The last time we visited the master bath there were some issues with the size of my beloved Walker Zanger Tile feature wall and alignment/centering of the travertine tile surround. So unfortunately, what went up, had to come down.  Here is a quick pic of the issues:

 

 

It is never fun having to go back and redo work because it wasn't done correct the first time.  But you are going to have setback in a renovation...and you gotta learn to roll with the punches. Fortunately, this issue only required one day of work to fix. The blue outline in this picture below shows my proposed changes to make the real life feature wall more closely resemble the size and layout of the feature wall that has been dancing with the sugar plumbs in my head for the past several months:

 

And here is what she looked like after undergoing her outpatient surgery:

  

Sooooooo much better! It is absolutely amazing how gaining a few inches of trim can have such a major impact (that's what she said...WaaWaaWaaaaaaaa). It's difficult to tell from the picture, but enlarging the area containing the Walker Zanger tiles makes the space feel so much larger and the ceiling taller! It basically had the exact same effect as when you add crown molding to a room...which causes your eyes to go up and out making the space appear bigger. So needless to say, I am thrilled with the result. If you are keeping tabs, that would be score #2 for "Speaking-Up-During-Construction/Renovation-When-There-Is-Something-That-You-Think-Is-Not-Right".  So let's take a another look at the oh so exciting Before and After shall we:

 

 

The next item on the To Do List was installation of our plumbing fixtures. We picked oil rubbed bronze fixtures to play off of the dark vanity that we installed. 

 

And can I say YUMMY!!!  This girl is in L-O-V-E, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!!

 

The shower is made for two, so Matt and I each have our own shower head.  We also have four body sprays and an overhead gravity rain shower. I cannot wait to start my mornings belting out "Splish Splash I was taking a bath SHOWER!"...and believe you me, this will happen!  I just need to figure out how to work it into mine and Matt's Jungle Trilogy Mashup (a.k.a. Welcome to the Jungle, Jungle Boogie and the Lion Sleeps Tonight).  Witnessing this serenade is a real treat I tell ya! But I digress. The final step for the shower is the glass surround, which will be installed next week.  Oh, and I can't sign off today without giving a shout-out to my other love in the master bathroom - my claw foot tub and the cool telephone sprayer! Hello lovers!!! The color is a bit off in the picture due to a combination of bad lighting and my IPone camera that is on the fritz (after being dropped about 20 times)...so in person the various oil rubbed bronze colors are actually a lot closer in color.  It is all coming together! As of today we are officially:

 

 

until move-in! Woohoo!!! I hope that you enjoyed checking out the progress. Thank you all so much for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!