My master bedroom: A before and after

We haven't been house touring in awhile; partially because my attention span is so short, and partially because my house is never clean and orderly enough to photograph. But my master bedroom remodel is finally complete, so I forced all the humans that live in my house out of the room for 10 minutes and I took pictures. And though it is already messed up again, and clothes are once again piled on the floor, she is still a lovely room.

Here was the before:

My cute carpenter and I gutted the previous master bedroom, office, and master bathroom, to create the our new space:

The walls are my most favorite decorative finish that I have done in this house. They are subtle and soothing, it is a great look for a master bedroom.

Do you like the way I am "storing" all my fake jewels? My husband says it's weird. It certainly isn't conventional, but it adds color and a bit of bling to the room, and that makes me happy.

Another mention: My "set" of bedroom furniture was boring me. A little too matchy matchy for what I wanted, but replacing a perfectly functional bedroom set is of course not practical. So since new furniture was not an option, I instead just changed out my end tables for antiques, and all my matching mirrors were switched out for unique consignment store finds that I painted. A much more affordable and reasonable alternative indeed. This mirror was originally green, but I changed her look by painting her ivory and gold, then I aged her a bit by sanding. It is my favorite piece in the room.

My chairs...oh the love for my chairs.

Another painted antique mirror.

Some details:

This picture is of my husband pouring table wine while at a street cafe in Montmartre, France. It will always be one of my favorite photographs.

And because I love before and afters, I'm linking up with Cheri, and also Roeshel today over at The DIY Showoff .

A cowboy without a horse

If you are visiting here from Remodelaholics, then your timing is impeccable. You know trouble is brewing when you catch your husband outside with house plans, a tape measure, and red flags. It hasn't been 6 months since I called this house remodel "complete". I suppose deep down I always knew we were not really finished. There were too many things left lingering, a few things not all that ideal, a few things left "with room to maybe add on one day". And now that one day has come, sooner than I thought it would for sure. My cute carpenter husband wants a garage, and I want my linen closets back. It is such a strange thing to tell out of town company that the extra towels are in the closet at the top of the stairs, right next to the air compressor and compound miter saw. We have tools oozing out of every spare space in this house. My man needs a garage, 'cause he's kind of like a cowboy without a horse.

So here we go again. Only this time it's going to look a little different. We will not be living in a remodel, but rather watching an addition happen on the outside of our house...not nearly as stressful. And though remodeling is not the heart of this blog, you know that there will be some great stories along the way that I will simply have to share here. And who knows, there might even be a dreamy screened porch in those plans that that carpenter of mine is holding.

Thanks Cassity for featuring our remodel. Click on My House Tour over on the left hand side to view all the rooms in our remodel.

A sneak peak

Remember here when I told you that I was totally going to create my own crafty / painty / officey space. Well I was serious, and I have been working on it. And like all things I do, one task turns into one million, and my upstairs has now turned into my worst nightmare. Don't believe me? Look at my poor Thomas' room.

Are you judging me right now? I wouldn't blame you if you were...I'm judging me too. It is disgraceful. But at an attempt at justification, here is what happened: We have two guest bedroom upstairs. Thomas' nursery is the smallest room upstairs, and though I would have loved one of the larger guest bedrooms for my craft room, I felt too guilty doing that. So I decided to move Thomas out of his nursery and into one of the bigger rooms for his new "big boy room"...(don't cry Amy, don't cry) even though he is clearly not a big boy, and I would take his smaller nursery as my craft room. Well during all this moving around, my in-laws also moved out of there home that they have lived in forever and downsized. This is relevant only because they brought over to my house a fair amount of furniture, adding to the chaos. But again, a bonus for me because I now have my husband's old bedroom furniture that he had as a little boy for Thomas. How stinkin' fun is that? Also this week I bought a new (its actually very old) armoire for my new craft room and I have been painting it in my sun room all week. Every room in my house resembles the aftermath of a hurricane. Oh and one more thing, I haven't mentioned that my sweet Caroline has been sick with something awful all week, and we have been to the doctor 3 times already since Monday.

Sooooo... having said all that, here is a sneak peak at the tiniest little corner in Thomas' new room...

And my new chandy for the craft room...

My cute carpenter says it is the ugliest thing he has ever laid eyes on. I told him it was tole, and it was Italian, and that is was actually very lovely. He told me that the Italians clearly have no taste.

Come back Monday for the finished look, I hope.

I can't blame the closets anymore.

I told you here that I was blaming my daughter's closets for making us late to church each week, well I cannot blame the closets anymore. The cute carpenter came through for me again, he always comes through for me. He has such a love affair going on with his power tools though, that I am not sure if he creates awesome things out of wood for my benefit, or just to satisfy his passion for woodworking. Either way, I suppose I should not complain. He gets it done, and here was the process.

The set-up:

The design process:We know the design will work as long as the Michael Kors shoes with "the bling on them" fit on the shelf?

I painted what he built:They sold lemonade:

Then my carpenter installed it all:

The best part: full extension drawers. They extend all the way out and you can see everything in the drawer at once. The old dresser that we were using almost fell over several times while the girls were searching for clothes. So I guess the best part of this project is actually that no one has to worry about dying anymore while trying to find an outfit.Closet number two now has double rows for hanging clothes. Top row for the big girl, bottom row for the little one.

Full view:

Maybe this is the best part: all concealed behind closet doors. Love it!

Linking up with Met Monday today and The Idea Room and Kimba!

Back to house touring: The master closet

We are finally back to house touring, at least for today. Are you new here? Click here to see why I have put my home on a "house tour". Today I will walk you into our master closet. Are you asking yourself why? You should be. The closet is not all that amazing of a space from a design perspective (it is what it is: a closet); but rather I love that there was not a lot of square footage to work with, a whole lot of stuff to put in, and the cute carpenter somehow pulled it all off...and that makes it worth sharing in my house tour. That and the shoes of course.

We started with floorplanner.com again. Much like our master bathroom remodel, my husband spent a lot of time on floorplanner.com trying to come up with the best use of space. He finally decided on the one you see below, the U-shaped design optimized the square footage.

We used pocket doors all throughout the bathroom and closet, there was simply not enough room to have swinging doors at every entry.
Have you ever stood up on a chair or bed as an attempt to view the lower half of your body in a mirror? We had no full length mirrors in this house so this empty closet wall was the perfect place for one...love it!

This is the back wall in our closet. It was a "dead zone" for a clothes rack, so we recessed it into the master bath on the other side. Do you see those wires hanging through the closet shelves? This is where the cute carpenter pulled the wires for his television in the bathroom, the TV hangs on the other side of this wall.

Ummmmm...can I get an amen?

That Cinderella was a wise lady....

How can a shoe that is so lovely cause so much pain? And why is it that it's owner keeps putting them on her feet?

Yes please.

These are half a size too small, don't care, wear them anyways.

These are the best of both worlds, fabulous and comfortable.

And then when I feel like kickin' it old school, I slide on my Vans. They are literally old school, I bought them in high school.

I'm calling this the strangest post in my tour so far. Thanks for hanging with me through the weirdness.

A chocolate sitting room

I would like to add my 'created' sitting room into this house tour thing I have been doing. I call it a 'created' room because this space used to be the dining room. I wanted a smaller sitting/living room and a larger dining room; because honestly, we do not do much living in a living room. So when we moved into this house, we switched these two rooms. We also did a few other things, like took down those dated railings, moved the chandelier to the front room that was becoming the new dining room, removed the carpet and installed hardwood floors, scraped popcorn ceilings and then I fauxed the walls with chocolate. Well, it wasn't really chocolate, but it did have the consistency and color of a chocolate souffle. Troweling it on the walls looked delicious!

These framed pictures are my most favorite consignment store purchases.

We will keep touring on Friday, see you then! I am linking today with Met Monday.