So Much Paint - Before & Afters

Dining Room

Here's a reminder of the before: 

We toned down the yellow by removing the wallpaper and border on the top half of the wall, lightened the room by painting all the trim white, including the windows, added a much more normal chandelier (bye bye lantern), and then finally painted an awesome tan-ish gray color. Love it!

Dining Room - After

Den - Before

 Here is your first look at our wood paneled den downstairs. We absolutely love the space but hated the way the dark paneling and carpet darkened the room so much.

 So what did we do...painted of course. Researched a little and found out we could just paint right on them, no sanding, just primer and paint. This was quite the painting project because after rolling primer on everything, trim and windows included, we had to roll on paint them come back with a brush and get into all the cracks.

 Den - After

When it was all said and done, we absolutely love the finished project. Light bright family room with a light green color on the panels and nice clean white trim and windows.

Master Bedroom - Before

I'm sure you are thinking the same thing we were...are you kidding me? Do you think these people liked blue? Blue walls, blue carpet, blue trim, and you guessed it...even the windows were painted blue!

Here's the beginning of our progress by tackling the trim. Blue trim goes white and we started playing around with wall colors.

Master Bedroom - After

We decided on a tan color and you can see here the amazing difference.

As you can see there is progress still to come as I still need to tackle that closet but what a breath of fresh air to de-blueify our room. The carpet isn't nearly as bad now that everything isn't blue.

Boys Room - Before

Not a bad color in the boys room, a little too peachy for my taste, but the boys requested a blue room. I was so excited to find out that Home Depot allows you to bring back paint that you already have and retint it. So cool! I didn't want to use the same baby blue color I had in my last house's living room so I was able to take it back and have them darken it. Perfect! $0 project, love that!

 Boys Room - Progress

My mom helped paint so much while she was in town. It was so helpful! The boys are thrilled with the color and eventually I'll get around to that trim.

Where Have the Kids Been?

Entertaining themselves beautifully! 

These kids are AMAZING! Talk about fun, funny, patient kids...love them!

 My first attempt at giving my daughter a cute "doo"

...and few more than a few completely exhausted days!

Demolition

Chris and his Dad headed over early Saturday morning to remove the old nasty yellow counter tops and cut out the wall behind where all the remnants of the yellow tile was leftover.

 After everything was removed, then came the fun part...replacing with new!

 So...what do you think? Amazing, right??? I love it!

Beautiful black counter tops for high contrast and it's amazing how good laminate can look. We also added a 10 inch addition to create a bar area to sit and eat.

 and here is what's to come...

Attempt at Holiday Fun

You can tell I'm not super creative with holidays, but when I do get a little touch my kids love it! Here they are enjoying their green pancakes!

White

White primer, white paint, I lived with white on my hands and arms for a full week. By the end of it, I was ready for some color in my life.

We had a super fun girl's late night priming party. My mom, me, Melissa, Dacy, and Liz all hung out pretty late getting every square inch of my kitchen primed and ready for paint. Thanks girls!!

 Not to mention that all the trim in the kitchen/dining area had to be done as well. 

So much white!

 Here is a shot where you can see the primer only on top vs. the white paint. I didn't get a good picture of the whole kitchen with primer only.

 All painted...with primer + 3 coats of white paint! Yep you heard me...3 coats!

 Chris had to be somewhat MIA during a lot of the remodel work due to a crazy busy project he was on at work. He worked tons of hours and was often at work later than I was at the house. Whenever he could, he would help out. Here he is in our basement finishing the last coat of paint on our drawers.

I was so grateful for his hard work because I knew it was hard for him to miss out on all the fun remodel stuff. I also can't express my gratitude enough for my amazing friend Melissa who put her life on hold so she could help/teach me and so many others who offered to help any way they could.  

 Finished doors drying in the Sunroom awaiting new hardware

10 Months

 How sweet is this cute baby girl??

Jess did a little impromptu photo session at the park with my little cutie and boy was she cooperating. Love these! At 10 months old, she is still as sweet as ever. Loves her brothers and is endlessly entertained by them. She still isn't moving around, but why would she...she's got her brothers to bring her everything. Hoping she'll get excited about it soon because she is pretty sad when she gets left behind. She loves her Daddy and shows major excitement on his every arrival squealing "da da da." This little baby does have quite the appetite and I'm pretty sure she will keep up with her hungry brothers just fine.

Love you Sydney!