house updates

We Finally Chose a Paint Color for Our Bedroom Accent Wall + Our Home’s Paint Palette

July 28, 2023 by jessica Leave a Comment

It’s been over a year since we decided the old wall color had to go, and I’m happy to report that we finally made the change last week!

As a reminder, this is where we started. When we closed on our house, we tried to paint as much as we could in two weeks before our floors were scheduled to be refinished. Unfortunately, the expedited process didn’t allow for much time to mull over colors and I chose this way-too-bright blue from just the paint chip. I thought it would be more saturated than it was, plus I realized soon after that I like to wear bright colors not have them in my decor.

We kept this color far longer than we wanted — mostly due to paint fatigue after we painted nearly every wall and ceiling in the house! It was a year ago that I started getting serious about finding a new color. I tried a sample of Benjamin Moore’s “Raccoon Fur” and while I love how it looks in Instagram photos, I didn’t love it in this room. There’s a reddish undertone that read brown or purple depending on the light. Eventually I settled on Sherwin William’s “Homburg Gray,” a neutral gray with green and blue undertones.

Here’s how it looks with the other paint colors in our home:

I know that accent walls are controversial, but I really like it in this room to anchor the headboard. (That said, I’m incredibly tempted to paint the whole room this color because I love it that much.) I’ll be adding curtain rods and drapes yet this summer to visually extend the width of the window beyond that of the bed and really make it a focal point.

Then, it’ll be new lamps and — eventually — a new dresser. Updates to come!

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Roundup: 12 Simple Wood Bedframes + The One We Purchased for Our Bedroom

January 28, 2023 by jessica Leave a Comment

As I mentioned in this post, our next interior focus is our bedroom. I had hoped to make more progress on this room since hitting publish on that post in August, but finding the right bedframe took a lot longer than anticipated. It was partly due to life getting in the way, but financially, we were replenishing our savings after the bathroom remodel.

Finding that “Goldilocks” bed wasn’t easy and we spent countless hours browsing sites and shopping in-person to find one we loved. We thought we found the one back in November, but if you click through, you’ll see that the leg support runs all the way under the bed. I loved it design-wise, but floors aren’t exactly level in an old house and I worried it would cause stress fractures even with shims. Back to the drawing board we went with our list of requirements:

Coordinate with our existing nightstands.
Sold wood preferred, but would consider high-quality veneer.
At least seven inches of clearance for under-bed storage.
Less than $2,500, unless it was beyond perfect then we’d go up in price.
Reviews that say it doesn’t creak.

We considered going with West Elm’s mid-century bed. It would have been an easy choice to match the nightstands from the same line. However, it was pretty lackluster in person. The wood grain on the veneer was barely visible, the back of the headboard was unfinished, and it just felt a little cheap. We then thought about the Article bed. We have a dining table and desk from the brand and love both. We were dissuaded by the reviews, though, when some indicated the bed creaked. Plus, the walnut finish — while beautiful — would have left us looking for new nightstands that coordinated with the finish. Then there’s this stunner from Rejuvenation that we both loved. It’s solid wood, which we eventually realized we preferred over the veneer options, but that price tag was a bit more than we wanted to spend and we wouldn’t have had an easy way to return the bed if we weren’t in love with it when it arrived.

Eventually, we selected this one from Thuma. Internet-only brands are such a gamble, but the reviews on Reddit were outstanding and vouch for the company’s customer service. I had actually eliminated Thuma from the search early last year. At that time, they only had an upholstered headboard that needed to be up against a solid wall for it to stay put — not something that would work in our bedroom which requires that the bed go against the windows. A solid wood headboard that integrates into the frame, however, was a game changer and the bed ticked off every requirement for us. The walnut finish is warmer in person, coming close to the color of the nightstands. It’s a beautiful bed and I love the look of the Japanese joinery that allows the bed to be assembled without the use of tools. We’ve only had it for two weeks now, so I’ll plan to report back in a few months with a full review!

Next up, repainting the accent wall. I think I’ve settled on a color and will be picking up a sample today!

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Our Next Project: The Main Bedroom / What it looked like during the inspection, what it looks like now, and what our plans are.

August 19, 2022 by jessica Leave a Comment

The next home project I’d like to tackle is our bedroom. It’s not a train wreck by any stretch of the imagination, but we haven’t done much with it over the past couple of years as we focused on other rooms. There are aspects of the space that I love and won’t be changing (and I’m still as smitten with that duvet cover as I was when I first bought it), but there are other aspects that I’m no longer fond of and items that were intended to be placeholders until we had money to invest in this space. Plus, I’m no longer thrilled with the jewel-tone accent wall I picked out when we closed five years go.

So, I thought I’d share photos of where the room has been over the years, along with what it looks like as of this morning with a few un-styled snapshots. You’ll also find my design punch list below!

First up, here’s what it looked like the day we did our inspection:

What a lovely, tranquil escape, right? Who wouldn’t want the focal point in their bedroom to be a hanging shoe rack?! 😉 Whenever I feel like we haven’t made enough progress in our home, I look back at some of these photos and I’m taken aback. It’s a testament to looking beyond someone else’s stuff and seeing potential in a space. We didn’t even need to do a lot to this room to make it look better right off the bat: we had the floors refinished in the house shortly after closing and we put a fresh coat of paint on everything. Painting the paneling (ahem, “vertical shiplap”) white brightened up the space immediately. We also had to take the tree down that you can see through the window above because it was dying, which opened the room up to natural light.

I knew I wanted some color in this space and chose a dark teal. It did turn out brighter on the wall than I had hoped for when we painted it five years ago, but it wasn’t too far off from what my style was at the time. Since then, my preference in paint colors is a lot more subdued — think colors pulled from nature in the Pacific Northwest; not the tropics. I’m going to keep an accent wall, though, however controversial that may be.

The photos above are the progress and after images of our floor refinishing. The stain hue is Early American, which offers a warm, classic finish that’s appropriate for the age of our home. (If you live in Madison and need your floors refinished, let me know. The person we used was fairly priced and did a beautiful job. Every tradesperson that has come over has commented on how great our floors look.)

One of the challenges in the space that I talked about here was that there was a doorway cut between two of the upstairs bedrooms. We worked with a local carpenter to create a shallow built-in that you’ll see below. The opposite side is drywall.

The built-in continues to give me a ridiculous amount of joy and it’s the perfect space to put the little trinkets I collect on vacation. Our carpenter did such a wonderful job matching the frame of the built-in to the trim of our doors. Unfortunately the vent had to go right there because it was cut into the floor when they opened up the wall, but it doesn’t bother me that much. I might swap out the grate for something decorative down the road, but it’s not that much of an eyesore in person.

So, that brings us to where we are now:

A peel-and-stick paint sample of Racoon Fur is on the wall. I don’t think it’s the color I want as it has purple undertones in some light.

Here’s what I’m planning to do:

Repaint the paint accent wall with a more subdued color that works with the existing duvet cover, but could also work with this blanket that I recently bought. I gravitate to blues and greens, so I expect any future bedding to be in those color families.
Buy a new bed with a wood headboard. Our current bed was a $200 Amazon find — a steal for a king-size bed. We bought it when we lived in the apartment because we needed something and knew that we didn’t want to invest in a bed until we had a house. It’s time to upgrade. The top is snagged from cat claws and it gets stained with hair products. I hate it.
Swap out the lamps. Those were around $15 at Target when we moved in and needed something. The scale is too small for a king bed.
Add curtains. We have roller shades that will stay to block the light. I’d like drapes to soften the room, but also to visually widen the window where the bed sits so the scale isn’t so wonky.
Style the bed with a selection of throw pillows, but not too many since they’re annoying to move every night.
I’d love to upgrade that Ikea dresser, but it’s fine for the time being.

Here are some of the paint swatches I’m considering:

And here’s one of my initial mood boards for the space:

Wish me luck! If I can get the painting done and choose a bed in the next few weeks, I think we’ll be in a good spot! And if I don’t get that far, rest assured that this before-and-after moment gives me some peace:

We’ve come a long way already.

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House Update: Custom Bedroom Built-In

April 19, 2019 by jessica Leave a Comment

Over the past year and a half, we’ve been tackling a lot of the household things we could do ourselves like painting, changing light fixtures and outlets, and other small projects. There are a handful of bigger things, though, that are too daunting for our skill set and we’re to the point where we’re ready to make some of those more impactful improvements. One of the things that bothered us so much that we decided to embark upon first was the hole between our master bedroom and guest room.

At some point in our house’s 90-year history, someone cut a doorway between two of the upstairs bedrooms. This was likely done when the house was a two-flat. There were kitchen cabinets in our guest room, and I’m fairly certain our bedroom was a living room. Since it’s just the two of us, it wasn’t the biggest deal for the first 18 months, but it was really annoying to wake up every morning to a project we’d have to deal with at some point. Making matters worse was that the heat vent, which undoubtedly faced our bedroom originally, was set in the floor between these rooms. It’s not a big deal when it’s temperate outside, but it’s obnoxious in the winter. You can get a feel for what we were working with below:

We thought about just finishing the wall on either side of the two rooms, but the paneling in our bedroom would be a challenge to match with the wood grain and joints. It would have doable, of course — and as our carpenter reminded us, everything is doable with enough money. Instead, we came up with a design solution to add character to the space that felt appropriate for the 1920s home and opted for a shallow built-in cabinet. Unlike a traditional built-in shelf, this one could only be five inches deep due to the depth of the wall, so anything we display will need to be skinny. We also needed to find a solution to add a register to the bottom portion since that was on the floor between the two rooms and needed to face the master bedroom. It was important to me that the trim around the built-in match the window and door casings in the home. Here’s what our carpenter came up with:

The only change I requested was that the top piece of wood extend to each side so the seam between the horizontal and vertical pieces was running horizontally. It’s annoyingly picky, but that’s how the rest of the windows and doors were done in the house and I knew it would bother me if it were different.

We actually ended up getting two quotes on the project. The first person wasn’t able to provide renderings or a sketch. That’s not to say that he wasn’t capable of executing the project and understood what I wanted, but now that I’ve worked with someone who is able to provide this type of visual reassurance that we’re on the same page, I’m going to expect that of any person working on our house in the future. It helps to address any concerns up front so there are no surprises.

The carpenters crafted the built-in off site, and we had them paint it for us. It cost an additional $300 to have it sprayed with lacquer, but it was worth every penny to have such a smooth, flawless finish. Also worth nothing is that we went with fixed shelves rather than adjustable ones, which allowed for a lip that extends down to be added to the front of the shelves. This created extra stability to guard against any shelves bowing in the future. It also helped with mounting drywall on the other side of the wall. Our house is plaster, but no one is fixing walls with lath and plaster anymore, so the mudding was blended to match the plaster in the guest room. We also had our carpenter match and fill in the original baseboards that were missing in the guest room, and do some baseboard and crown molding restoration in our dining room. It definitely wasn’t cheap when it was all said and done, but I can’t express how happy I am with how everything turned out. (If you’re in Madison and need a carpenter, let me know and I’ll pass along the info!)

We still need to put some thought into styling the shelves. For now, we just added some of the smaller items we’ve collected over the years. If you’re curious about any of the items up there now, here’s the info:

Small Delft bowl from Amsterdam
Vase from a flea market in Brussels — and my first time haggling!
Vintage brass cat from Charleston
Candlestick holders purchased in Seattle, but you can snag them here!
Target vase
Planters from Copenhagen
Glass bowl from Portland, which is available online here.

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Living Room Progress: Inspection vs. Today

March 7, 2018 by jessica 2 Comments

We still have work to do in our living room in terms of accessorizing and styling, but I thought I’d give you a peek into where things are at right now compared to when we did our inspection in May. Obviously the before photos are on the dim side and that’s not an intentional editing choice to make you think it’s worse than it was. It was really that bad. Most of the light bulbs were partially unscrewed so they wouldn’t turn on and just about every window in the house was covered by fabric (men’s shirts and old sheets rather than window treatments). The paint was this awful creamy color that wasn’t quite as yellow in the images below, but it was as dingy and soul sucking as it appears here.

The first thing we tackled (after removing kitchen cabinetry from the guest room and a random square of teal carpet in the coat closet) was repairing cracks in the plaster walls and painting as much as we possibly could before we had our floors refinished. We got through the living room, dining room, the wood-paneled master bedroom and office, the guest bedroom, and the tiny room that eventually became my closet. The far wall in the staircase was left unpainted at the time because I’d like to wallpaper it. I didn’t want to spend the time painting something I was just going to cover up eventually. At this point, though, we’re leaning toward painting it white and doing wallpaper next year for my living room. It’s such an expensive project and we have other priorities to take care of. However, painting everything else white and removing the window coverings opened up the space and made it feel brighter and more welcoming, so the cream wall doesn’t bother me too much at the moment. My plan is to paint the upstairs hallway, ceiling, and trim this month and get to the top of the stairs. We’ll hire someone to finish up the stairwell since I’m not graceful enough to stand on a ladder while I paint. We have pretty high ceilings there and I have no doubt that I’d fall or get paint all over the stairs.

After about a month of painting every night after work and on weekends, we finally got a week-long break when our floors were refinished. The red oak floors were in awful shape (check out this pic of the floor in my closet) with patches in the floor that were different colors, and scuffs and scratches throughout. Upstairs, the stain was on the yellow side. I’m not sure if it was the polyurethane was showing age or if it was just a bad stain choice to begin with. Our floor refinisher said that the downstairs floors had likely never been refinished, which is great for future owners because you can only refinish floors approximately 10 times since you’re sanding off approximately .75 to 1mm with each round. We went with Minwax’s “Early American” stain. It’s lighter than the original color, but still felt traditional in the 1920s home. The biggest selling point was that it didn’t have red or yellow undertones. We paid $2.75 per square foot and ultimately came in just shy of $2,600. Worth every penny. (Pro tip: hardwood floors will eventually get scratched no matter what you do. Use a stain pen to camouflage the imperfections.)

Replacing the sconces is next on the to-do list for the living room. We’d also like to find a better throw pillow, a larger rug, and redesigning the corner that we have that wood chair in the photo above. The side chair is great for putting on shoes and using for additional seating. However, a mid-century modern bench might fill the space better. I’d also like to find artwork to hang in that area. All that stuff is easy, though, and will fall into place as we find the right pieces. I don’t want to push anything and accidentally have our house look like the 2017/2018 West Elm catalog because I was too impatient to wait for the right item. Now that the living room is in a good spot, we’re talking about what room to embark on next. It’s a toss up between the dining room or kitchen. The dining room is definitely easier and really just requires furniture, a woodworker to fill in spots were the trim and crown molding is missing, and window treatments. The kitchen is a more adventurous project. It’ll all be cosmetic updates and not a true renovation, but there’s a lot to do in that room from skim coating the textured walls to replacing the linoleum flooring that has a gross river rock design.

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