Up To Speed...

I'm almost 36 weeks pregnant. I'm cranky. What else did I expect? With such a smooth-sailing, no complication pregnancy, I was bound to hit a wall sooner or later. A lot of people wonder if I have been nesting - I don't think I've done anything crazy and I still could care less about things being clean....but let me tell you, I am throwing things away like a mo-fo. All I want to do is scale-back, de-clutter and minimize. And it's not like I was some kind of hoarder pre-pregnancy - I always threw things away, but it's gotten to a comical level.

 

Things at Casa Murphy are moving quickly, but all the work being done is really small projects. Hopefully next weekend we can start on something big (like the guest bath, stairway, etc.). For now, let's take a whirlwind recap of what's been going down (sorry for the cell phone pics):

Nursery:

A few weeks back I decided to order a 5x7 jute rug from Overstock for the nursery. Then it came and 5x7 seemed like 2x3. I had never ordered a rug, but everyone said the same thing - you think a 5x7 is going to be perfect and then it arrives and it seems like the smallest rug in the world. We moved the rug into every position we could think of and it just.didn't.work. Booooooo. Thankfully Overstock has a great return policy and now we know that we need an 8x10 or possibly a round rug.

On a high note - we got the crib!!! Honestly the crib itself requires it's own post...but long story short, you get what you pay for. We ordered the Graco Crib from Target and it was terrible. Poorly packaged, scratched, dirty, cheap AND smelled like a hamster cage (I swear). After some hormonal tears, I devised a plan to use a friend-of-a-friend's Pottery Barn discount and we got the Kendall Crib. It was all I ever hoped it would be - sturdy, well-made, well-packaged. Check it out:

We threw up the 'Amelia' sign from my shower just to have something on the wall for pictures. I do love it, but I think we will do a frame with some art above the crib. In a weak moment, I picked up a glass pink knob from Hobby Lobby to see how it will look:

The picture doesn't really do the knob any justice, but it's very pretty and softens the dresser just enough. I think we'll wait until the end to decide if they are worth changing. The most exciting nursery update? I made curtains!! My mom taught me to sew when I was a little girl and I used to make pillows, Barbie clothes - you name it. Then I learned how to knit and cross-stitch. Sadly, I hadn't used a sewing machine in yearsssss and had developed some weird anxiety about it. Aside from a temporary freak-out trying to figure out how to re-thread my bobbin, the project was so easy and now I want to make curtains for every room.

Lastly, I found this capiz mirror at HomeGoods and it was perfect for hanging above the changing pad. The capiz is not as sparkly in real-life and just girly enough! Hopefully we get it hung this weekend.

Master Bedroom:

After the 5x7 rug fluke, I bit the bullet and ordered a Pottery Barn rug off the website. I know, I know...I didn't but it used on CL, or try to make it myself, I actually paid the people at PB for it. This only happened because a) it was on sale, b) I had a coupon and c) I could order it to store thereby saving on surcharges and shipping. All in all, $220 for a Pottery Barn 8x10 rug is a good deal. I chose the Mason Boucle Jute Rug in Linen and ended up putting it under our bed in the master:

 

 

Ignore the mess please. What else did we get done in our bedroom? Well, I don't have pictures of this, but we bought a black/brown Ikea Hemnes Dresser off CL and then bit the bullet and bought the matching tall-boy dresser and two matching nightstands. Did I always dream of the Hemnes line for my bedroom? Not exactly, but for the price and design they are the greatest bang-for-our buck until I robbed the Pottery Barn store win the lottery.

 

New Guest Room:

 

We decided to move our beloved guest room from the first floor to the second floor, taking over Brian's 'office'. Having a guest room downstairs was incredible, but we had to be realistic and since we only had people come visit us a few times a year, that room could be used in a more functional way for our family. We stuck with the same paint (James River Gray), mainly because I was too lazy to find something new. You know what? I love it more upstairs! I think a cozy (aka: small) room can handle a darker paint better and this room gets tons of natural light.  

 

We still need to hang the headboard, mirror, art and find a nice, long, skinny console table for this wall. That is on the to-do list.

 

 

Well, that's all I have for now...even though I am sure I've forgotten something. More updates and tutorials to come, so stay tuned.

 

Craigslist Find: Crate and Barrel TV Stand

Sometimes in life, things just magically come together and work out perfectly. Sometimes that happens with my beloved Craigslist. This is my story:

 

I have a daily CL search ritual every morning - checking first for items that we currently need in our house, but always searching "Pottery" and "Crate"...because let's face it, who doesn't want to own a cheap Pottery Barn or Crate and Barrel piece of furniture? Well, this particular morning I came across a fifty five dollar C&B television/media console. 

 

I've never really done an entire post on our living room (just bits and pieces here and here), but we had the world's ugliest, most college-y TV stand known to man. It was black, particle-board, square with CD storage in the front. Yes, I said compact.disc.storage. You can baaaarely see it in this 'before' photo below:

 

 

It was the one item in our living room that was keeping it from being 'done'. We had tried to find a replacement a while back, but our wish-list was too detailed and the perfect piece never appeared on Craigslist. Since canceling cable over a year ago, we've had an old laptop permanently living in the console and we needed to make sure that whatever we purchased was going to work with that. So...this CL piece was affordable, in good condition and 4 miles from my office. Even better? My friend let me use her Subaru Outback to transport this random purchase. The people selling it said they would be home around my lunch hour, so Sarah, Devon and I set off on our adventure to pick it up. The unit fit perfectly in the back of her car and, for the price, was in excellent condition (there were a few teeny, tiny scratches on the front that a stain pen could fix in seconds). Ready to see it in our living room?

 

  

 

How perfect does that fit? It matches our furniture/decor, it holds the laptop, DVD player and all our movies. I am practically obsessed with it. Brian and I have been coming home from work the past few days and just marveling at how (5 years later) our living room has finally come full circle.

We are also in the process of turning our downstairs guest room into a music room (more on that later), so the record player and crates of records have found a new home. I was finally able to use this old wine barrel (that was found in my grandparent's Queens basement almost 40 years ago) as a side table and we hung up a painting I scored for twenty dollars at an estate sale last month.

Ignore my feeble table-styling attempt - I need to find some smaller books and a candle-holder. The print is of the Old North Church in Boston and I loved the colors and style. I actually bought it without showing Brian first and turns out he loves it! The black frame is not my favorite, but it works for now and hopefully in the future I can either spray paint it brown or just get it re-framed.

 

  

Featured :: Megan's Ikea Hack!

Lately the Murphy household has been conquering some big projects and the fun little DIY endeavors have fallen by the wayside. It will probably be a few more months before I can start working on 'fun' stuff again, but for now I can just share the fun stuff that my friends have been working on. Megan is almost done with her amazing Ikea hack and I had to show it off for her:

 

She started with Ikea's FÖRHÖJA kitchen cart, which looks like this before she got to work:

 

 

She stained the top, painted the bottom white and still plans to add a metal bottle opener (and finish those wheels)....but check out how incredible this looks:

I had no idea the birch would stain so well and I'm one second away from going to buy one myself...now, where could I put it? :)

We Painted the Nursery!

After three coats (I'll explain that later), the nursery is finally painted! Not only did we paint, but we also installed a new window, crown molding, quarter round and painted the closet (and installed a new shelf). Phew.

 

I know I mentioned the color we chose in this post....but even though everyone assured me it would be great, I was still convinced it was going to be too dark. I'll admit I went a little nutty (it's the pregnancy hormones, I swear) and I bought an entire gallon of Elephant Gray lightened 25%....just to see. I thought it was going to the answer I was looking for - and then it wasn't. So, we took the plunge and went with the original Elephant Gray. Brian painted the room while I was in NY for my baby shower, but he said it looked great and I loved it just from the pictures. The problem? We could still see the outline of every sample I had put on the wall underneath it!! We've used Benjamin Moore to paint our entire house and I swear that has never happened. The strangest part was that the lightest color was showing through also...which just did not make sense. It wasn't something you saw right away, but once we pointed it out to someone, they immediately saw it too. So what does this perfectionist couple do? We threw on another coat. Of course we had already gone through our entire gallon, so I went over to the BM store and explained what happened. The guy was as shocked as we were and offered to give us the mack-daddy Regal paint for the same price as the cheaper stuff! In another strange turn of events, Brian used the entire gallon to put on that third coat. All in all, we are sooooo happy we did that because the color is deep and rich and even more perfect that I imagined it. Sometimes it looks so lavender...in the daylight it looks more gray. Ready to see??

 

 

I just love, love, love it. For now we've moved the Hemnes dresser into the room, which Brian insists is too big for the space, but I keep sticking to the functionality of the piece outweighing its size. Every nursery on the World Wide Web uses this dresser and I'm already addicted to how high it is; I was able to fold 100 little baby washclothes yesterday without bending over and hurting my back!

 

That box/cushion is the start of the Ikea Poang Rocker that I picked up this weekend and the crib is being picked up tonight and hopefully all these guys will be assembled by tomorrow. Stayed tuned for more updates! 

Master Bathroom Paint

Although our bathroom is far from 'done', I did want to share the paint color. I attempted to match the lightest shade in our new shower curtain and find something light gray/blue...so we went with Gray Cloud by Benjamin Moore. It still amazes me how differently a color can look from the swatch to the wall...and admittingly, I picked this color out quickly. It's a bit too blue for my tastes, but it works so well in the bathroom and really does tie-in the shower curtain nicely.

 

 

We are in the home stretch in the master bathroom and just need a few more things done. Our main project is painting the old wooden vanity (not sure if we should go white or dark brown) and framing out our builder-grade bathroom mirror. After those two projects I just need to pick out a shelf, some frames and vanity top accessories!

 

The Master Bedroom: Before and Progress

Finallllllly. We're not completely done, but the only thing left to do in our bedroom is decorate. And furniture. Okay, okay, all we really have is a bed, but at least the painting is done!

 

Let me just say this room was really hard work...the sheer size alone made installing trim, caulking and painting take forever and we also installed five new windows and four new doors. The color came out darker than we were expecting, but I still love it and it's calming and relaxing, which is perfect for a bedroom. So let's take a look at some pictures, shall we?

 

Here is the room when we first bought the house (I stole these from my House Tour page - sorry):

 

Between then and the photo below we put in 'smooth' ceilings and installed crown molding. Below we were in the midst of nailing in the quarter-round and I had a few paint samples on the wall:

After the new windows and freshly painted trim:

 

 

And now......The color again is Benjamin Moore's Saybrook Sage:

As I said before, the room still needs practically everything...so I made a list:

• Headboard
• Nightstands
• Curtains
• Artwork/Frames
• Long dresser
• Tall dresser
• Standing mirror
• Rug
• Bench/stool for foot of the bed

That's all I can remember for now. Our main concern is getting the nursery finished and the rest of the house done before coming back into this room to round it out. Meanwhile, I have been checking Craigslist for any good furniture.

The Nursery: Ideas

(So I starting writing this post yesterday and in the last 24 hours I actually changed my nursery ideas yet again. Can't make this up.)

I've been known to change my mind often when planning out a room...but this nursery is ridiculous. Not sure if we can blame it on hormones or pregnancy in general, but I cannot seem to get it together with this project. Much of the reason (I think) is that (a) I'm am not girly and (b) patterns and bright colors give me anxiety. So just take a second to Google 'girl's nursery' and come back when you're finished. Done? Yea, welcome to my world. WHY do 92% of the nurseries out there have to be so loud? Loud colors, crazy patterns and 'themes' (gag). Initially I wanted to go neutral/gray/greige, but I knew that a baby's room was my one opportunity to go outside my comfort zone. Of course, outside my comfort zone is problem most people's 'safe' bet. 

 

Anyway, after some internet/pinterest searching, I was convinced that BM's La Paloma Gray was the one. Just to be sure, I bought two other samples...one was Portland Gray (and the other I cannot remember the name of). Here they are on the wall:

 

 

The first color was supposed to be gray, but it looked so blue - I hated it. The second was my La Paloma...and it sucked. It was darker, grayer and more depressing than I could imagined. The third was Portland Gray and even though it has very lavender tones, I actually kinda liked it. I mean, in what other room will I ever be happy to see purple tones? My only complaint about Portland Gray was that it was just too light for the look I wanted. That weekend I decided I would try one shade down on the strip and go for Elephant Gray. I also found a great fabric that was girl-ish, but remarkably not super busy or too kid-ish. First, here is Elephant Gray (excuse the lighting - this room has very little natural light):

 

 

 I loved it. Brian loved it. Everyone I sent a picture to liked it...so what is the problem? The only trepidation I have is that the color seems too dark for a room with little to no sunlight. How do we solve that? Well, my first thought was board and batten. I have jumped on and off the board and batten bandwagon probably ten times since we started this nursery. We want it, we like the look of it, but it's just a lot more manpower and money that could easily be used elsewhere. The biggest issue is that most existing baseboards don't work (aka: don't line up) with board and batten...and Brian and I are just way too anal retentive to let that fly. Thankfully my husband is sometimes even more rational than I am...and we talked ourselves out of doing any kind of wainscoting in the nursery.

 

Enough about paint, right? Let's talk furniture. We already own the Ikea Hemnes Dresser in White, which will be transplanted from the guest room to the baby's room:

For a rocking chair, I racked my brain for at least a month trying to decide on which way to go. I just could not justify paying $800-$1,000 for a upholstered rocker and there was nothing on Craigslist. Then I thought of going with a stationary chair and re-upholstering the one we have from my in-laws. Honestly, that just seemed like a waste of money too. So who saved the day? Ikea, of course. Meet the Poang Rocker: Okay, it is a bit more modern than I would normally go...but it's comfortable, affordable and once you throw a pillow and blanket on it, look how good it can look:

{via}

 

Our friends had generously given us a free crib that they had, but I needed to add a few more 'big-ticket' items to my registry and ended up falling for the Graco Mason Crib from Target. It's also very cheap and I love the straight, classic (almost modern) lines.

 

Those are the three basic pieces we have for now...eventually I would like to find an area rug and put up some ledges for books. Above the crib, I was thinking of getting a large version of this fawn print:

 



{via}

 

Well, that's where we are so far. Who knows what else I can change my mind about between now and May. This weekend our to-do list includes: installing crown molding, new doors, quarter-round on the baseboards, new window and hopefully priming all the old wood trim. Wish us luck!

 

 

Master Bathroom: The Update

Remember when I said I hate bathrooms? Well, now I hate ours just a little more than before:

 

I went food shopping and this was the crime scene I walked into when I got home. Apparently, once Brian took the old toilet out, the water in the pipes decided to leak through the ceiling and the can light in the kitchen. It only got better too. Later, while taking a shower in the downstairs bathroom, I hear Brian run down the stairs and then immediately my water turns off. Huh? Well, he needed to cut the sub-floor surrounding the toilet pipe and figured he would try and be careful instead of shutting off the water. Needless to say, the saw nicked the pipe and water was gushing up into Brian's face. (Okay, you're allowed to laugh). Is the bathroom really to blame? Probably not...but come on.

 

What else went wrong? Well, we decided to go out and purchase the precious Carrera Marble tile that we were in love with. But first we took out the calculator. Between material, labor and grout, we were looking at $1,000. Time out. Was this really worth it? Was our house and neighborhood really 'marble-worthy'? The answer was always no. We're expecting a baby...how could we really justify blowing so much money on this nice tile when all the homes for sale in our neighborhood have laminate kitchen counters? So the decision was made...we nixed the marble and went back to the drawing board. These were the new contenders:

 

 

The winner was the tile at the bottom of the stack. Simple, beige-y and most of all...cheap. First step was to remove the old tile. Our previous owner, who I swear did all home improvements intoxicated, did not disappoint...he tiled over the original laminate. Brian had to rip out the tile, the backer-board and then the laminate. Aside from that we got rid of the old toilet, the weirdly-placed medicine cabinet, the vanity top and patched the holes in the walls and . Check out the progress shots:

 

 

 

 

I forgot to mention another cost-related reason we ditched the marble...the vanity top. We made a trip and looked at granite remnants and even though it seems cheap at first, when you really put the cost of granite in our bathrooms and (hopefully) in our kitchen...it once again made no sense. Magically, the most perfect-for-our-situation vanity top appeared at Lowes. It is a solid surface, which top (with the sink as one piece) and it was only around $200! Check it out:

 

 

 

Wait, let's get back to the floor. Here is the subfloor:

 

 

The tile backer-board that we put down:

 

 

And....ta-da, the finished floor:

 

 

 

We also got a new toilet:

 

 

Now here are a few more shots of the new vanity top and the faucet we ordered from Overstock. I normally hate online shopping, but this faucet was really true to it's photo, it shipped quickly and it was affordable!

 

 

 

We also re-shelved and painted the inside of the linen closet:

 

 

 

Okay, I know that was a lot of pictures in one post, but we're almost done with this room. In the past few weeks we've painted the walls (don't love the color too much, but that's another story), painted the trim and bought a new shower curtain. Our next big task in here is framing out the builder mirror and painting that wood vanity.