House of Witz: June 2011

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Reorganizing and Redecorating...

To start, I completely reorganized our hall closet, which moonlights as our second pantry/medicine cabinet/decor keeper, and it looks and feels fantastic! Well, at least compared to what it used to look like. We still need to install Elfa shelving, the Mr. needs to install VERY tall baseboards as we have some large holes in the sheetrock at the bottom and it could really use a nice paint job.

Let's move on...

I have always been a neutral pallet kind of gal. I like the color in my rooms to pop in the form of textiles, flowers, etc., not paint color on the walls. Upon moving into the Chippendale house I became decor challenged and I have never felt so lost. Even turning to my second Bible, the Pottery Barn catalog, didn't help at all. In short, I ended up with some interesting wall color choices. The Mr. has been out of town for SIX days and returns this evening. He was in Minnesota sitting on a picturesque lake visiting with his Grandma while I was here with both of the little ladies and needless to say, it has been a very trying week. I told him that his punishment for being in such a gorgeous location was that we are painting the formal living (the playroom)/kitchen this weekend !!! Right now, it is a light blue/gray color with a navy blue accent wall. While I love having an accent wall, I am not so sure that blue is the right color for us (or shall we say, ME). A big thank you to my favorite blog, http://dearlillieblog.blogspot.com/, you have inspired me to get back to my neutral roots! Pictures will follow after the weekend!

Monday, June 13, 2011

Where We Are Now, Room By Room...

In my last post, I described my feelings regarding our home and how they are slowly evolving. I also shared photos of what the house looked like when we moved in. The only room missing is Miss Madeline's room. They did not take a picture of it for HAR.com and it was so hideous, it never occured to me to snap a quick photo. The original color of her room is hard to describe, but this is my best effort...a combination of medium chocolate brown and olive green. Gross, gross, gross! On top of the wall color, EVERY piece of trim, door, crown molding, chair rail, kitchen cabinets, etc. in the entire house is about 10 coats of high gloss paint. This becomes a huge problem because every time you barely knick or scrape any of these pieces, huge areas of paint start to peel off. It makes a horrible mess. So, back to the Madeline room story. The color of the crown molding and chair rail was a miserable cream (I think that it was just really dirty white!), so it needed to be relieved of it's layers and given a fresh, bright coat of white paint!. Because of the high gloss paint, we had to scrape every inch of paint off of the crown molding, chair rail, window frames, closet and bedroom doors. That alone took 3 weeks. The pictures below is where we are now. (Please ignore the cluttered toys and such! We will be redecorating and going through all toys very soon!)

Madeline's Room

Charlotte's Room

(These beds, nightstand and dresser will be painted a creamy white!)

The Small Wall of Pictures That We Have Started

We Rearranged Our Living Room and Love This So Much Better!

From the Dining Room Looking Towards the Study

It Took Many Coats, But YES, That Is A White Ceiling!!!

(My husband and my father made my mantle for me!)

Den Looking Toward the Dining Room

Looking Out the Sliding Glass Door Into the Backyard

(Excuse the dog nose fluid and slobber on the doors!)

Den Looking From Sliding Glass Door

Our Master Bedroom

We took down the crown molding in the master bedroom because it resembled a castle! I have never seen anything like it in a "commoner's" home. The chair rail will be coming down as well because of our wall-hanging bedside tables. On top of it all, they are that awful creamy (dirty white) color and of course, coated in 10 coats of high gloss paint! This room is still absolutely a work in progress. We will be putting a taupe color of some sort on the walls and when I find a fabric to fall in love with, I will make curtains to adorn the windows. Speaking of curtains, you will see below a picture of some white curtains...that is our closet! My Mother is so not a fan of the concept of curtains instead of a door, but we absolutely hated our bi-fold doors! They would get stuck everytime you opened them and would wake up Madeline. Anyway, they were ridiculous, so until Mr. Witz and I can decide what we would like to do to hide the clothes, shoes, purses, bags, hats, etc., we chose some curtains from Ikea. Cheap and easy.

Above our chests, we are hanging some 3 month portraits that we have of each of the girls wearing the same Petit Ami pink dress and in almost the identical same pose. We are also going to replace the knobs on the chests to "dress" them up.

Walking Into the Master Bathroom

Notice the curtains in the far right of the picture? That is where our washing machine and dryer are located. They are the same Ikea curtains as are in our bedroom. They did not build this area out deep enough for any washing machine/dryer, so doors are not possible. The machines stick out too far, so curtains were really our only option to hide the laundry "stuff".

My Wall of Crosses

We have left the girls bathroom the same color. It matches the multi-green mosaic tiles on the floor. We have just added a stark white shower curtain and pink towels. (oh and of course, Dora!) I am just waiting for PBK to give me something that I cannot live without and then I will redo their bathroom.

The Formal Living Room - Otherwise Known as The Playroom!

Right now the wall color for the playroom, kitchen and "walkway" is a light grey blue. We plan on painting all of the light blue Ralph Lauren's Cymeric Silver (which is the master bath color). The navy blue wall will either stay the same or be painted a beautiful, deep plum color. We still have not decided...

From the Dining Looking Into the Playroom (and Front Door)

One of My Favorite Walls in the House

A Little of Everything In This Picture

The Ikea Black "Grid" - Houses the Girl's Toys and Some of Their Books

From Playroom Looking Towards Dining Room and Den

The Dreaded Kitchen

I have very little counter or cabinet space. The appliances are awful (with the exception of the new dishwasher that I insisted on upon moving in) and white. The countertops are dirty (no matter how much I scrub them, they still feel gross). The tile and grout is disgusting and ugly. I know, short and choppy here, but there really is not too much to say. Horrible, horrible kitchen. Ugh... We keep talking about updating, but there is NEVER a good time to destroy your kitchen when you are a stay at home mom and have two toddlers! I am baking several times a week and cook two to three meals a day, so it is looking like now is a good time.

Looking from the Walkway Into the Kitchen

From Playroom Looking Into the Kitchen

Looking from Kitchen Into the Walkway (Notice Our Beautiful Sideboard and Hutch? Had to Be Purchased to House Baking Dishes, Etc. Since I Have No Storage!)

The Dining Room

Our dining Room is a work in progress. Since it is part of the "old" house, the electricity is not updated in this room. Did I forget to mention in my previous post, that 2/3 of the house's electricity has not been updated. Our course, we are taking care of that, but until it is done, we cannot update fans, lighting fixtures or add any new ones either. What am I going to do with that big blank wall you ask? What I really want to do, is to knock out part of the wall and add a window, but the Mr. and I are not too sure how much money we want to sink into this house since we do not plan on staying here too much longer. Most likely we will buy an oversized mirror to give the illusion of more light. We also plan on purchasing a chandelier and I have found several on Overstock.com. Again, not wanting to spend too much money here either. The wall color is Ralph Lauren Neutral Brown (always has been one of our favorites), but we are missing our old neutral pallette and are considering going with a beautiful cream. Ryan also installed the chair rail, but we still have some work there.

From Kitchen/Walkway to Dining Room

Wall with the Master Bathroom

Our Beautiful Dining Room Table (It Has Two Leaves and Can Seat 12 to 14 and Has Come In Very Handy!) Pottery Barn Rug 9x12' (We Bought the Blue to Coordinate with the Slate Flooring - Not Necessarily the Best Plan)

The Nipple - Seriously Not an Endearing Term, Truly Hideous!

This House That I Hated Is Starting To Grow On Me

It is not surprise to anyone that knows me, that I absolutely hated our "new" house on Chippendale Road. In April of 2009, we found out that we were pregnant with little Witz No. 2. At the time of this announcement, we were living in the Houston Heights neighborhood in a two bedroom, two bath bungalow that was 998 square feet. Needless to say, the home that I had come to LOVE had to be sold. We had maintained the house and updated it so well, that it sold in two weeks and left us scrambling for a house ASAP (we did NOT want two mortgages!). We decided on the Oak Forest neighborhood, which like the Heights several years ago, was up and coming. We decided on the Chippendale house because it boasted three bedrooms, two baths, a study, formal living AND den and came with an oversized two car garage. Plus, it almost doubled our square footage. Sounds great, right??? Not so much. First of all, the kitchen is the size of a cracker jack box, our "master" bath is in the dining room, the paint colors were far less than par and the previous owners had to be some of the filthiest people alive. They attempted to update the house, but it seems that most of their updates were done incorrectly and have left us with even more work than we had envisioned. We moved in at the end of August 2009 and I was almost six months pregnant which left me unable to do pretty much anything. I am a work horse. I want it done and I want it done NOW! This is not exactly how things would happen. Here we are almost two years later and things are just now really happening and I am not hating this house as much as when we moved in. Do not get me wrong, just because I am in a better place with the House of Witz, does not mean that it is the house that I want to live in for a long time. The ceilings are low (8 feet), the kitchen is in the middle of the house, small backyard, etc. Instead of hating this house, I have finally decided to turn it into our home. Our journey has been long and painful and we have SOOOOOO much more to do before I would even consider using the word love. This is our journey...

This is the largest bedroom and belongs to Charlotte (and Madeline will share sometime this year)