Office - Complete!

When M&J were discussing what was needed in their future home, an office was a must. M works from home for a national commodity association, so he needed a place to store his supplies, work and keep all his things separate from J's.

The home has 3 bedrooms, so it worked out perfectly to have their master bedroom, a guest bedroom and an office for M. By process of elimination, the "airplane" room became the office. There was a beautiful (please note the sarcasm, here) blue color painted on one wall in the airplane room. Thankfully, the three other walls in that room had already been painted white over the gorgeous primary yellow color. M&J always talked about putting purple in a room (We are K-State Grads, after all...) and so by elimination, the purple was painted over that AWFUL (I'll just come out and say it) blue. 

 The Airplane Room - Before

(Take note of the curtains, the blue wall

and the traces of yellow behind the white walls)

 Yay for Blue!

 The Optional Shades of

Purple and Taupe for the Office Walls

Before Picture of the Closet and "White" Wall -

Notice all the yellow paint along the baseboard

 After the Closet was Repainted

 There's that Purple and White - GO CATS!

 After the Brown Paint

 New Light, New Paint

(The hole in the wall is the access to the bathtub in the full bath.)

 After the Carpet was Removed - No Sanding Done

 Installing a New Floor Vent in the Office

The Office - After Furniture, Before Decor

After the floors were complete, we moved in a rug and M's furniture as soon as possible, as he had been without an actual work space for a few months. He was very happy to finally have a desk, a permanent place for his printer and storage for all his supplies. Although the furniture is mismatched, it all serves a purpose and will eventually be replaced with something more functional and a little easier on the eyes...

Master Bedroom - Complete!

Our master bedroom wasn't a huge project, but it definitely wasn't a walk in the park. And that is why we lived like this before we moved into our bedroom:

 The Guest Bedroom - Our Bedroom for 3 Months - Quite the accommodations...

We then chose paint colors for the bedroom walls - we eventually chose the color on the far right. It is difficult to see the exact color since the paint is still drying.

We tore out the blue carpet and all the trim, as well as repainted in our bedroom. The closet doors came off and the closet was cleaned up and repainted as well.

After tearing out the carpet and painting the room, we were ready for the floors to be refinished by a friend of the family.

 After Paint

 After Paint - With Our New Closet

 After a Partial Sand

 Completely Sanded - No Top Coat

After the Top Coat - New Light Fixture Installed

We had to wait one week before we could walk on the floors or put any furniture in the room. At the end of the week, the baseboard, window and door trim was added to the room. 

M&J got the rub protector down, along with their new rug, to protect the floors, and then started moving in the furniture and hanging the curtains. They didn't get anything hung on the walls right away - they were still trying to decide what decor would be put up in what rooms.

 The Master Bedroom

 Another View of the Master Bedroom

 A View of the Closet

M&J were able to move into their bedroom about one week before their First Anniversary. They were SO excited to be off of that mattress on the floor and have at least one room that was (somewhat) complete.

Decor will still need to be hung in the room, and we'll also be changing out all of the closet doors as well as hardware. M&J want to add crown molding to bedroom as well, but that will not be added until the rest of the home has trim and other projects are complete. The room will also be getting a new door as the door to this bedroom was pretty beat up.

M&J are loving this new room and have really enjoyed having a place to go to get away from all the construction and renovating. It is definitely a retreat for them and they love the dark, chocolate color with the trim and room accents.

Paint (Peynt) - verb

Paint - (Peynt) - verb - to coat, cover, or decorate (something) with paint.

Alright, people. It's time to get serious and talk about something that is CHEAP and makes a world of difference - PAINT. J already shared her experience on painting closets and how her world was forever changed made bettter by a little can of paint.

Paint was a must for our new place. Not only does it change the smell of the entire house to a fresh and clean scent, it also adds character and your personal style. M & J knew that this would be done throughout every room before things would be hung on the walls and rooms would be considered "complete". While waiting to close on our house, we had been to Lowes and Home Depot thousands many of times and browsed the paint color swatches. In fact, they had done such a good job of picking up so many swatches that the man working the paint department finally just asked if we wanted a book! (Why, of course! Why didn't you mention that 30 minutes ago when you first noticed us picking up five thousand swatches? moving on...) "That'd be great!" was the response, and we were immediately handed the paint bible:

We kept the swatches we had collected (Are you kidding? Who's going to put all those back?) and walked out the door with the swatches, little books of ideas and our new paint bible. We thought all our problems were solved - we'd just look through the entire thing, pick out the colors each of us liked, and then decide which room they would look best in. We'd already agreed that we wanted a brown that would be our base/main color throughout the house. We wanted a darker, almost chocolate color for our master bedroom, and a purple accent wall in our office. J loves red, so she requested a red accent wall in the combined living/dining room. Simple enough, right?

WRONG. M loved the paint bible and J hated it. M thought it offered tons of options and was an easy way to choose colors. J became frustrated because as soon as she'd pick a color in the "mid-tones" section, she'd swear she had found the same color in the "warm colors" section and the issues began.

After multiple test paints were purchased...

...and attempted on various walls throughout our new home...

...we landed on these colors for the different rooms on the main level in our new place:

 Main Brown - Soft Chamois

 Red in Living Room and Entryway - Apple Polish

 Purple for accent wall in Office - Darkest Grape

 Brown in Master Bedroom - Mocha Latte

 Half Bath - Pelican Beach (Valspar)

Kitchen - Eddie Bauer's Grove (Valspar)

We love all of them for different reasons and think they really fit our vision of how our home will (someday) look.