I'm baaaaaaaaaack!

Hello!?!? Anyone out there still reading?!!? I know of a few faithful readers who check the site periodically and then give me a hard time for not posting updates. We'll see how long it takes you guys to see this post. 

Well it has almost been a full year since we closed on our house. 11 months since we moved in. We have made some tremendous progress in those 11 months, so I figured it was a good time to post some before and after pictures. I love a good side-by-side before and after. Nothing makes me feel more accomplished. :)

I'm going to start with my favorite areas of our house and will spread this over a few posts. Get excited to see some action on the ole blog!

The office.

Before & After

We knew from the beginning, this back bedroom, which is right next to the family room, would be turned into an office. G$ works from home on Fridays, and unlike me, isn't a fan of working from the couch. G$ also has a ridiculous number of books and has always wanted a library of sorts, so we knew that built in bookshelves were going to be a must in the office.

Sidebar: Notice how I'm refraining from calling this G$'s office. I put a lot of sweat equity into the office, so I don't just want to hand the credit over to G$. 

I had read numerous blog posts about folks who hacked IKEA bookcases to make them look built in, so that's exactly what we did. I spent way too many hours putting together the plan using graph paper with room dimensions and bookshelf dimensions. It was tricky because of the room layout -- windows on two walls, a closet door on a third wall, and the entrance door opened onto the only wall with nothing on it. This meant that a simple wall of built-ins like all the blog posts showed wasn't possible. Luckily, IKEA's Billy Bookcases had a corner brace attachment piece to make three bookcases into a corner bookcase -- those Swedes really think of everything! 

After figuring out all the pieces we needed, we made the trek out to IKEA to buy everything for the bookcases, plus some other items I wanted for some other areas of the first floor.  After losing a curtain rod out the open hatch of the car while getting onto the on-ramp of 95 (whoopsie!), we made it home safely with all seven bookcases, plus top extender pieces since our ceilings are higher in the back of the house. Let the fun begin!

Here's me assembling the shelves.  Did I mention how much I love IKEA?!?

After all 14 pieces were assembled and secured to the walls, I measured for the baseboards and the crown moulding and off we went to The Depot, our favorite place in the whole, wide world. Installing it was a tag-team effort with G$ -- I would measure the piece, G$ would make the cuts with the mitre saw, I would take it back in and install with the nail gun. 

Sidebar: Nail guns are awesome. :)

Sometimes some additional tweaking was necessary, shaving a bit off, etc., but once we got into the groove for the baseboards, we finished in no time. Then it was onto the crown moulding for the top of the bookcases. This is where we wasted a whole board, I kid you not, trying to get the cuts right. The first outside corner cuts were easy, but when we got to the inside angles for the corner, neither one of us could figure it out. We both were beyond frustrated. G$ called his dad over to provide some assistance. With three minds working together, we finally figured it out. And, of course, we were over complicating it. With the little "test" pieces for each type of cut made and marked with the appropriate saw positions, we were ready to finish this thing! And that we did.

Kairo posing next to the mitre saw

After the moulding was installed, it was time to move onto the board and batten effect on the bottom half of the wall. I again, spent hours figuring out the perfect layout based on the length of the walls and the width of the "batten" pieces, which is just lattice.  Since it's thin, with only a 1/4 inch depth, it doesn't stick out past the baseboards, unlike true "board" in "board and batten" would.  We pretty much followed almost the same process as Young House Love, but instead of doing a true board and batten top rail, we opted to go with an ornate chair rail. After another Home Depot trip, we followed the same process -- I measure, G$ cuts, I install. 

Wrote the lengths directly on the wall

Now that all the moulding and trim pieces were in place, it was time to move onto caulking. I now have a love-hate relationship with caulk. It's really amazing how it transforms a space from incomplete to complete. I oddly found the smoothing the caulk process a bit therapeutic like painting. The "hate" part of this relationship was due to the fact that every time I put the damn caulk gun down, inches of extra caulk would come seeping out while I smoothed. 

Last, but not least was finally painting.  As you saw from the IKEA assembly picture, I had already painted the top of the walls the navy blue (Benjamin Moore Gentleman's Gray matched to Behr Premium Plus Ultra Satin), but just used ceiling white on the bottom to cover the bright yellow.  The IKEA bookshelves were slightly off-white, or off-white compared to the existing trim.  To match it, I took one of the shelves to Home Depot and they colored matched it, perfectly.  I put a fresh coat of the IKEA white on the bottom half of the walls, as well over the seams I patched on the bookshelves (on the exposed sides where the top extender pieces attached to the top of the bookcase).  

Ah, the after!

There you have it, our first big project.

Still on the To Do List for this room:

• Paint or Stain Doors
• Paint Window Frames
• Buy Desk Chair -- current chair is one of our dining arm chairs
• Buy Rug -- I'm thinking cowhide
• Make Faux Roman Shades from Mini Blinds -- G$ currently has binders stacked to block the sun

Fabric for the Faux Roman Shades

 And to leave you with a picture of the K-Man enjoying his new Pottery Barn chair.  No, we are not letting our dog on a $2000 leather chair, it was actually a Craigslist find steal.

Just as cute a year later. :)

Thanks for checking in.  I'll try my best to keep this updated on a more regular basis!

<3
K$