"Gal"lery wall

Happy Galentines Day! If you don't know what that is then clearly you don't watch Parks and Rec and I'm not sure we can be friends... Just kidding... Kind of.

In honor of Galentines Day, and because my super, duper gal pal Ruby gets mad when I don't blog about things I've done to the house, I thought I'd share a "Gal"lery wall I've been working on.

I've still got a few frames that are waiting on prints to arrive, but overall I'm really happy with the placement of everything. Eventually the goal is to completely fill this wall from floor to ceiling, but I'm short some proper sized frames, so I'll fill in the spaces as I go.

In case you're trying to figure out where this masterpiece is in our home it's currently, technically in Lukas' bedroom. Once the wall goes up giving Lukas a true bedroom, and not some weird walk-through room with no privacy this will be a proper hallway. I've been dreaming of all the things I wanted to do with this wall since we moved in, and finally I got tired of waiting so I just decided to go for it. I'm so glad I did! It might be my new favorite spot in the house!

For those of you wondering if the taped photos are permanent, I taped those up because I was short on frames with every intention of framing them, but I really love how the washi tape looks. I think it adds an element of playfulness and really helps bring what could easily be a very formal wall down to earth. So the washi tape snapshots are staying.

I also added some of Lukas' watercolors to the wall. I framed them in a rather modern, formal frame with a thick mat, and I really feel like adding my two-year-old's art brought a little whimsy to this wall. I'm a big fan a framing your kid's abstract pieces. They really can look like fine art. Most people are shocked when I tell them my son did it, but if it wasn't framed nicely they would know instantly. I love giving reverence to the ordinary in my home.

Well, there it is in all its glory. I'm going to be painting the trim soon. The wood was so abused by the old owners, and is not looking great at all. I wish I could go back in time and say "if you can not neatly cut in a wall without dribbling paint everywhere they make this stuff called painters tape. It's a game-changer" but c'est la vie.

Until next time!

XOXO,
Victoria

Toddler bedroom makeover

I have a blog?

Obviously, I've been a tad bit neglectful to my little slice of cyberspace over the past 2 1/2 months.

I've had great intentions, but lacked the follow-through.

I'm back though. I'm not promising to regularly be around, but I'm going to do my best. Between my job, family, 365 project, and a secret something I have in the works I've been a tad bit busy... Bear with me.

That  being said...

After seven months I finally got tired of looking at this room.

I decided it was time to do something about it. We had a full gallon of the same color we used in the master bedroom, and bathroom (Porpoise by Behr) hanging out unopened in the shed. I decided to make good use of this weekend and get cracking. I figured this would be a simple, no nonsense, in-and-out kind of job, but no. There are eight... yes that's right, eight walls in Lukas' bedroom. That's 8 walls worth of cutting in I had to do, which made this quick job super tedious, and slightly labor intensive. All that being said it was well worth it to have a blank slate to work with.

Without further ado...

 Obviously, I need to hang curtains, but I'm rather impressed the difference a coat of paint can make. For those of you wondering I always buy the highest quality paint I can get. I try to buy paint that has primer in it, and I can more often than not get away with one coat. If one coat can cover my obnoxious polka dots, it can probably cover just about anything else you throw its way.

This room has come a LONG way in a weekend. The trim is still in really rough shape, so that will be getting a coat of paint in the near future, but I'm not about to start that today. Trim or no trim, a certain little boy approves and that's a win in my book!

I'll try and get a 7 or 8 month update done so you guys can see the progress. I'm constantly amazed by how far this house has come. Until next time!

XOXO,
   Victoria

Gentrification and security...

When we were house hunting we looked all over Fayetteville. We looked in beautiful, safe, well-established neighborhoods. We looked in quiet streets. We looked in cookie-cutter neighborhoods. We looked all over town. None of them drew me in like the south side of Fayetteville.

Ten years ago you'd be hard pressed to get me to drive through our neighborhood. If you would have told me then that I would buy a home in south Fayetteville (Can we make SoFay a thing?) I would have laughed in your face, and told you to lay off whatever it was you were smoking.

Something has been happening in our neighborhood, and it's made the appeal of this place hard to deny. Not only are we within walking distance to the heart of town, but people are buying these old homes, and bringing them back to life. Investors are buying properties and putting in beautiful modern row homes, and detached homes, and the value of this area is on the up and up.

Seeing all the great things happening in this area made us excited to find a home in this neighborhood. And while it's exciting to see these new homes, and old homes finally seeing some love, that doesn't change the fact that there is still a fair bit of this around... 

We came in on the earlier end of the gentrification of this neighborhood. I'm not really trying to discuss the moral ramifications of gentrification. That is another conversation for another time. We were a young family, looking for a property that we could make a good return on investment, nothing more, nothing less. We love our home. We love the location. We love that we can put high-end finishes in our home and see a return. And we love that other families see the potential this area has to offer.

Despite all that, we've had some security issues since moving in. I'm positive our issues have less to do with our neighborhood, and more to do with who we bought the house from, but some fishy things have happened that have led us to believe that some less-than-kosher operations were happening from our home. 

We've had people show up in our driveway at 3am leading with "you probably don't remember me, but..." Our nanny has had a guy show up looking for "Billy Bobcat." Most recently I've had a women pull all the way back in our driveway, get out of her car, walk around my vehicle several times looking in the car. When I walked outside with my dog, and greeted her with a "Can I help you?" she very quickly got back in her vehicle and left. After that occurred I called my husband crying, and told him we had to do something. Patrick called to get a top of the line security system installed immediately. 

I don't think a security system will be necessary forever. I don't feel unsafe in our neighborhood, and if we had bought our home from different people this probably wouldn't be an issue. (Side note: unscrupulous activity was not in our seller's disclosure.) Until all of the previous owner's homies get the memo that they no longer live here, the security system is a must. 

I know this isn't a fun, pretty part of the home renovation journey, but I never promised you'd only get to see the good parts. This is real life, and this is really what we've been dealing with. There's not really a manual on how to deal with situations like ours, but we're rolling with the punches and it'll be okay.

Until next time!

XOXO,

Victoria

Guerrilla Walls

Happy Halloween!

I've been a tad bit busy lately undergoing a major change in our living room. I'm not quite ready to show the whole living room reveal mostly because I've still got half a wall to finish, but hold your horses... It's coming!

Up until a few weeks ago (yes this project has taken weeks. Give me a break. I have a two-year-old.) Our living room looked a lot like this...

A few things...

First of all the walls are wood paneling... You know how I hate popcorn ceilings? (of which we have no shortage of.) Wood paneling is right up there in the running for "most loathsome design choice."

Second, I don't know how well you can see it, but the seam in the corner is covered by corner bead... which I also despise. 

Third the "buttercream" walls were in HORRIBLE condition... Not to mention the fact that I am not really a "buttercream" kind of girl.

So something had to be done. I wanted to drywall, but decided to do that down the line around the time we install built-ins on the wall with the chimney.

Knowing that our walls days were numbered, but not wanting to live with the look of paneling anymore, I decided to camouflage the walls.

Being rather handy with spackle and a putty knife at this point in my life I went to Lowes and bought the biggest can (tub?) of Dap brand spackle I could get. I love Dap spackle for a couple of reasons. It's a nice consistency to work with, and it goes on pink and dries white so you always know when it's dry. 

I got home, armed with spackle and a determination to fill every line in the paneling to give us a smooth even surface to work with. 

After getting one coat down on one wall it became abundantly clear that I was going to have to fill every single line twice. Spackle does this things sometimes when it dries... it shrinks. (Insert sad face.) 

Post realization that this long, tedious work was about to get even more long, and tedious I sat down and ate a lot of ice cream. Then I got up, and decided I can't leave the job half finished, so I continued on.

Also I made my husband take down that horrible corner bead, which revealed a lovely gap where there should have been a seam. I filled that baby with a layer of paintable caulk, and trekked on. 

Two layers of spackle proved to be sufficient enough to get the surface flush, and not be so much that I was left with a ton of dust when I sanded it down.  

After using a fine grit sanding block I was left with a fairly flush surface which made my heart sing. I say "fairly flush" because our house is nearly 100 years old... nothing is flush.

After prepping my walls I was able to put down a gorgeous shade of blue on my walls a la Vaspar's Pacific Coast

Seriously swooning over my own space right now.

So let's get down to brass tacks, shall we? This is not an ideal solution for everyone. Anytime you have two different materials on a wall they are going to settle at different rates, which will cause cracking like plaster and drywall, or panelling and spackle. Why did I knowing this ahead of time still choose to go down this route? I am very much a visual person. I am most happy, inspired, and at ease when I am surrounded by beautiful spaces. That being said the paneling was driving me bonkers, and while the spackle was a temporary solution it was still a solution. Second we bought a nearly century old home with some piers that needed to be jacked up. We were told that this process would cause lots of cracking in our walls so keep extra paint and spackle around. I was already going to be repairing cracks anyway so the thought of cracking wasn't at all a deterrent. (In fact in our barely four months here, I've already had to repair a crack that showed up in our freshly painted bedroom. It's seriously not that big of a deal.) Third, These walls are temporary. Knowing that we would eventually drywall made choosing a $20 temporary fix that much easier.

There are definitely things to consider with choosing to camouflage your walls. I definitely wouldn't use this as a permanent solution, but it works for now, and my living room is finally a space that makes me happy... Your home should do that.

Until next time!

Hugs and kisses, and a Happy Halloween!

-Victoria

Grow.

Hey ya'll! Fall is most definitely here, and this girl couldn't be any happier. Last weekend we had a home full of family, some of whom were seeing our home for the first time. Comments ranged from "this looks just like a Pinterest house" (which I'll admit made me smile) to "I can't believe how much you've accomplished in such a short amount of time." (To be fair, I can't believe it either, but I have the blisters to prove I did the work!) I loved having a home full of family. It was warm, and loud, and full of love... Just the way I like it! 

This weekend, my parents took our son Sunday giving my husband and I some much needed time to ourselves. We slept in, went to go eat wings and watch football, and then went antiquing! (Can you tell who picked what activity?) After heading to some of our favorite shops we went to Lowes to get some insulation for the pipes in preparation for colder weather. Little did we know we would stumble upon Lowes fall sale in the lawn and garden department. All the trees, shrubs, and perennials were 50% off, and decorative grasses were 75% off! I snagged 6 little boxwoods a week earlier at Westwood Garden that I had yet to plant, so grabbing some other plants for our front beds seemed like a good idea.

While we were there we grabbed mulch, potting mix, some Mint Julep Junipers, two varieties of Russian sage, some daylillies, and some landscaping lights, all while completely forgetting why we came to Lowes in the first place... Maybe next weekend???

When we moved in the front looked like this

The "beds" were predominately overgrown weeds, along with an over abundance of poison ivy and poison oak. We had a friend of ours come out and clean all the growth off the house and cut down any branches growing on the roof. That pretty much left us with a blank slate to work with. I did manage to save some lillies bordering the left bed, but everything else was gutted.

Once everything was tilled, and we arranged everything where we wanted it we got to planting... Which was no easy task in this rocky Ozark soil. When all was said and done we had two beautiful beds that we can hopefully keep alive.

Neither of us exactly have a green thumb... In fact, I'm ashamed to admit it, but I have somehow managed to kill mint before. We'll see how this goes. 

I absolutely understand why people garden though. There is something downright therapeutic and satisfying about getting your hands dirty... I just don't like summer which is when most of those gardening tasks seem to need to happen, soooo we'll see what happens. 

In the meantime, grow baby grow.

Until next time!

XOXO,

Victoria

Cabinet reveal- Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Makeover

Those of you follow me on Facebook or Instagram have already been privy to sneak peeks here and there, but the rest of the world has yet to see the splendor that is our new kitchen.

To put it mildly I am thrilled. For a little bit of money, and a whole lotta sweat equity I was able to completely transform my kitchen.
So I won’t delay any longer…

It’s so good.

This is just phase 1. Phase 2 will involve new counters and a new farmhouse sink, but I’m trying to focus on the fact that a home is not a sprint it is a marathon… Either way I’m thrilled to have my kitchen back. The cabinet reno was making me fat, literally. I think I gained 7lbs during the month I worked on the cabinets from not being able to cook and eating crap, but I digress. It’s green juice and salmon for a while…

So how did we get here? I’ll tell you. To start we pulled the cabinet doors off, and built up the builder grade cabinets with molding. You can read about that here.

I knew I’d be working with Annie Sloan Chalk paint for several reasons. Number one being I did not want to have to sand down my cabinets with a two-year old in the house. The beauty of chalk paint is prep is really not needed. The second reason was aesthetic. I love love LOVE traditional finishes, and Annie Sloan Chalk paint has a gorgeous buttery finish that makes my heart flutter. It’s not matte, and definitely not gloss. It’s like the most perfect satiny finish you have ever laid eyes on. The wax finish is perfect for a rambunctious toddler. If my son scratches the finish I don’t have to strip it down and redo it like I would with a poly. I literally can fill the ding, and buff it out. I’m not entirely sure why people stopped using wax finishes, but I’m bringing wax back.

If you live in Northwest Arkansas the ladies of Red Hill Home were immensely helpful with helping me narrow down my chalk paint choices, and helping with finishes. They helped me narrow down a color that covered well, and gave helpful tips when it came to finishing applications. Not only do they carry Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, but they also carry Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint and offer workshops on both products.

I decided to go with Old Ochre after seeing a finished piece at Red Hill that read more cream than beige. I was assured that Old Ochre would cover in two or three coats whereas Old White would take more along the lines of three or four. Less Work? Yes please!

After filling the old hardware holes, sanding them flush, and giving them a light scrub with soap and water it was time to paint.

I went with thin coats and lightly sanded between coats to really give a smooth, buttery finish. You can see the difference between one and two coats was pretty substantial.

After painting I was able to put on a thick coat of clear wax, with the wax brush by Annie Sloan. You don’t have to use the wax brush. I actually already owned the wax brush that I used on other projects. It is pricy, but it gets in every little nook and cranny. It really is a great tool to work with. After applying the wax, I buffed it out with an old t-shirt and let it dry. I then mixed some of the dark wax with the clear wax to create an antique finish. I applied the mixture predominately in the nooks and crannies where the cabinets would naturally age over time. After it was applied I used my old t-shirt to buff it out again. If you are working with the dark wax you want to be pretty sparing with it. A very little bit goes a long way, and too much can create a dirty looking finish, not a pretty aged look.
Once the wax dried and I was happy with the finish I installed the hardware and hung those babies up.

I can’t even believe what an immense difference painting the cabinets has made.
The kitchen feels SO much bigger, and we are thrilled! It’s really insane to me that we’ve only been here for 3 ½ months! It’s so vastly different from the house we started with. This little bungalow is really shaping up to be home.

Until next time!

XOXO,

Victoria

Master Blaster

I may be the only one to get the Stevie Wonder title...

Our master bedroom was the first room we tackled in the home reno, and I am pleased to say it is all but done.

We still have a few things to do in here. Down the line I want to install a tin ceiling, and once that is in we will install crown molding. We also will be painting the trim in the near future, and installing closet doors, but after that this room is done!

I did slide our dresser down in front of the door that we will frame in to actually lay our room out the way it's supposed to be.

 By sliding the dresser down this allowed us to create a functional reading nook that I LOVE!

Chair- vintage find, Table- Homegoods, Ottoman- Target,
Pillow- Homegoods Tray- Target, Blanket- Target

 This is my favorite little spot to cozy up to with a cup of coffee...

To be honest, my absolute favorite little vignette in the entire house has to be on my nightstand. I love each and everything on it.

Lamp- TJ Maxx,, Topiary- Homegoods, Ampersand- Barnes and Noble

I love our bedroom. It is the calm in the midst of the proverbial storm. When my house is chaos (which it is most of the time) I can close the door, take a deep breath, and know that eventually we'll break on through to the other side. (I seem to be on a roll with the music references today)

Medallion- Homegoods Headboard- DIY 

All in all, this room is full of things that make my heart happy. It's a place where Patrick and I can escape. It's a place our son's toys aren't allowed. It's a place that is uniquely ours, and at the end of the day that is what design is all about.

Until next time, find a cozy little spot and snuggle up with a good cup of coffee... That's what life's all about!

XOXO,

Victoria