I decided to rearrange Elara's room, and the result makes the space look so much bigger! I decided to change everything around to make it more efficient and to have more space for her to move around. Plus, now that the crib is on the other side she can no long see us when we are in bed, which seems to be helping her sleep longer. We also moved her mattress down as she was almost ready to escape. I'm liking to results! 

I need to add some kind of art above the purple shelf. I'm planning to frame this photo below to put up there. Maybe on a ledge shelf, along with the white E seen in the photo above. The room seemed a bit awkward before, as you encountered the crib as soon as you walked in. Now it seems so big and the arrangement looks more appealing. We have been hanging out in here a lot more now!

I have been wanting to paint our baby's crib, but didn't really have the time before, and I was worried about the toxins in the paint. However, I came across this brand, Lullaby Paint. Their paints are free from VOCs, fumes, and other harmful chemicals. I thought a fun colour like citron (seen above) would look great with the walls! Maybe a future project.

A bit about the company from their website:

Made from the finest ingredients, our baby safe paints are carefully selected for their safety and performance. In fact, our paints are so safe they include food grade ingredients. Our rich, deep pigments are imported from Europe and meet the highest environmental and safety standards. And because our resins are not diluted with cheap solvents, they’re thicker and cover your walls with ease.

Our award-winning paint is praised as much for its color, coverage and durability, as it is for its safety. Attaining the highest certifications for product purity, Lullaby Paints is known in the industry as the safest paint available. Recognized by consumer advocacy groups and leading environmental organizations, used by hospitals and maternity facilities, lauded by magazines, designers and bloggers and, most of all, enjoyed by moms as pregnancy safe paints. We’ve revolutionized how safe and eco-friendly paints can be, for mom, baby, everybody.

The new carpet for the nursery is here! Now we get to start on all the fun stuff, like decorating. We still need to figure out what we are going to to do with the closet. Right now it only has two build in shelves spaced wide a part. We could either leave it the way it is, and use the closet for large items. Then we would need to buy a set of drawers for the room. Or we could rip out the shelves and make the closet into build in unit with drawers and places to hang clothes etc. Lots to think about. Let the brain storming begin! In the meantime we have the crib and our funky painted shelf. It's finally starting to come together, very exciting!

This has been the week to paint white. It was something that needed to get done, and even though it's a little thing it really makes a difference in a room. We have continued with the baseboards in the office downstairs, and are tackling the guest room trim at the same time. And, boy did that room need some help, the wall and trim were so damaged! We also cleaned all the walls and trim, and filled in all the holes to get ready for painting. I have no idea what they got up to in there! It looks like someone went in blindfolded and threw darts everywhere, because there are small puncture hole all over every wall, and on the ceiling. So much work, but once painted both rooms are going to look like new (minus the horribly stained carpets, that's a future project)!

There are also baseboards missing from both rooms, so we are replacing those as well. The baseboards that matched ours came only in the natural wood, so first step was to prime them. It was easier to prime them before nailing them in. Next step will be to nail them in place to the wall, and then using compound, fill in the nail holes. After sanding down any excess, we can continue on to giving them two coats of plain white paint. 

Now, we need to pick paint colours for both rooms. This is proving to be really hard. For the guest room we are just thinking of something neutral, similar to the colour in chose in the hallway, but a little darker. We used Silver Drop, seen below, in the front hallway, so maybe something along the lines of Dolphin Fin for the guest room.

As for the office, which will shortly be both of our offices, choosing paint is a challenge. We are thinking maybe a nice sage green. Or to be really dramatic I was thinking of doing a couple of accent walls in a rich plum colour and then the rest of the room a nice taupe. Lots of choices to make! We already have a huge stack of paint chips from previous projects, but I think we will be back at Home Depot this weekend picking up even more! 

Every once in awhile we have been working on organizing our garage. It started out filled up with so much stuff. Most of it we wanted to get rid of for either garbage or give-away. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture at the beginning, but here is process part way through. The future plan is to create a storage area and a workshop, as well still having room for our car.

The house came with a bunch of shelves, some are in rough shape. We are planning on moving some of the white bookcases from inside the house and using them out here. Everything in the photo below is going to the dump (minus our garbage bins of course)!

The following weekend we managed to get to the dump, so this corner is now empty and ready for adding some of the white bookcases. So much more space now!

This past weekend, we set up a bunch of the white bookcases along the corner, and moved all the tools from inside on to them. I think they look a lot nicer and they are more convenient for finding things. Plus, it has given us a place for the endless white shelves in our house. 

We set up a temporary workshop to build the shelves for the upstairs living room beside the new fireplace. It's a pretty ghetto workstation, but it's working well for now. Eventually we are going to get rid of the metal shelves, seen in the photo below, and set up a proper work table and saw. Until then, at least the garage is cleaner and more organized than before. 

We have made a new and improved rendering of our living room library. And we are going to get started on this right way. I'm so excited! Jeff and my father are going to do most of the manual labour as I'm not supposed to be lifting too much these days (ie baby in the belly). This long weekend all the construction magic is going to happen. There will be lots of progress pictures for us to share with you on Monday.

Here is the fireplace left all alone, once we removed all of our furniture, plants, and stuff. Goodbye old mantel. 

The mantel is gone! Got to love that wonderful purple colour behind there, we think the whole house was painted that at one point. The fireplace is all ready for a new cover!

I'd like to turn the living room into a library/reading room. We spend a lot of time in this room, just having morning coffee or relaxing in the afternoon. I thought that this would be the best place for all our books. Currently, the books are downstairs on the white shelves, however, we would like to get rid of those soon. So we need somewhere else for our books to go, not to mention, they are pretty well ignored down there. They would be put to much better use upstairs!

I made a little drawing of the living room wall, above, to show the changes I would like to make. Basically, change the whole fireplace mantel, add built in shelves on one side and a desk/work area on the other. The photo below shows the idea I am going for in terms of the fireplace and built in shelves. I'm hoping to start this project somewhat soon, as I'd like a place to put our books from downstairs. The result should look a lot more interesting and cosier than the current blank wall. 

Things have been moving a bit slower around here house wise, as we have been busy with lots of other summer activities, like working in the garden and visiting with friends. House projects have been on hold these days, but hopefully soon we can get back at it. We have some plans to work on a couple of projects this weekend, so maybe I'll have lots more to report next week! 

In the meantime, I have been doing some more brainstorming on our master bathroom layout. I've come up with a really dramatic plan for this room, which may or may not work. Here is a (not to scale) plan for our bathroom.

One of the main reason I have split up the room, is because it would be great to both be able to use it at the same time. If one person is having a shower the other can still brush their teeth. I would also like to make the back part of the room a wet room, and bath area. Something like the idea in the photo below, perhaps with frosted glass.

I have placed a wall in the middle of the room which will hold the sink on one side and the shower head on the other. Below is an idea of the sink on one side then behind is where you would enter for the shower/bath area. Of course, this one is huge and very extravagant, but you get the idea I was going for. I'm not sure if these plans will work out in the end. We still need to look into the logistics of it, along with moving plumbing around, but it would be a pretty neat bathroom!

We are starting to look for a patio set for our back deck. We have so much open space right now, and it would be nice to able to serve a meal outside. The rug in the photo above is new, and eventually the patio table will go there. Right now, we just have the sad small bistro set on there that we have had for many many years. The carpet is great since the deck gets too hot to walk on in your bare feet. We are thinking of going with this set from Canadian Tire. All the pieces are sold separately, so you can buy as much of the set as you need. We will for sure be wanting an umbrella, as the deck is in full sun for a good part of the day. The one below is the umbrella that comes with this set, I just love the fun colour. Can't wait to start eating outside! 

I have been doing a bit of planning for our master bedroom. The look for the room has completely changed since our first thoughts for it. I guess it really does take living in a place for awhile to figure out what you want! I'm actually starting to like the open airiness of our room, and the white walls. I'm thinking a slight beach house theme for this room will look amazing.  

I would like to get a big wooden bed frame, as we are still sleeping on only the mattress. Our room is so big it can take a large frame without it looking huge. Maybe even a reclaimed wood look, like you might find down by the beach. Below are a couple of examples I liked, both from Crate and Barrel. 

I still would like to paint the walls a different shade of white then they are currently. One of the main reasons for repainting is because the walls are in rough shape, so they need to be fixed up anyway. I'd like to pick a warm white, with a bit of brown in it, like sand. However, I really don't want it to turn out looking light pink, so this will be tricky. I see lots of paint samples in our future! Here is an idea of a warm white paint colour. 

I also would like to get a big comfy chair for the corner for cuddling up and reading. I really like this one from EQ3! 

For over the bed I'd like to blow up some of our own photos from travels and frame them, all water or beach themed. I think the overall effect will be light and airy! It will be a great place to escape to at night, and during the day. Can't wait to get started!