If You Give a Laundry Room a Shelf

I think this update is a lot like the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. You see, if you give a laundry room an odd cramped layout, it makes the dryer stick out from the wall (but not the washer!). And if the dryer sticks out from the wall, things fall behind it.

So the dryer needs a shelf! And if you make a shelf for the dryer, you’ll have to pull it out from the wall to install it. While the dryer is out, it’s a good time to vacuum out the duct. It’s also a good time to patch all the holes left by the former homeowners. And when you’ve come this far, you might as well paint!

{new color on the right}

After the paint is dry, you hang your shelf and realize it would be a good idea to hang some things on the wall while you have the drill and level out. You put the ironing board up on hooks a la Pinterest.

You hang the antique washboard your momma gave you.

You move the dryer back in, tidy up, and take some pictures of your completely impractical styling…

And you step back and think about how much work it takes to put up one little shelf! Whew!

Keepin’ it real. I put that shelf there for a reason, ya know! =)

xo, Amanda Marie

Paint: Behr Twilight Gray

Stain: Minwax Special Walnut

Hooks from Walmart

Master Bedroom Moodboard

This is all pretty self-explanatory, but I just wanted to say a few things.

• We’ve already got the quilt, painting, ball jars, and crackled candle.
• We just finished my bedside table, and we’ll be doing Garan’s later (our finish is a bit different).
• The bed is ordered and will hopefully be here sometime within the next month.
• The room pictured is very similar to the way I would like to dress our bed when I finish gathering everything.
• Psalm 34:3 is our marriage verse, and I’m working on a way to display it in our room.

Things are coming together, and I’m really excited!

xo, Amanda Marie

Sources

Bed, Quilt, Inspiration Photo, Bedside Table, Vase, Painting

The “Before” Tour {Master Bedroom}

Our bedroom window faces West, so the room gets scorching hot in the evenings. It’s somewhat long and narrow; one wall is mostly windows, and another is mostly doors.

{please note the lonely wedding photo on this wall}

We have a bathroom (middle door) and 2 closets (the doors on either side). One closet is a narrow little walk-in, and the other is very shallow with bi-fold doors. At 17 inches deep, it’s too small to hold clothes, so we recently turned it into a shoe closet. Sounds pretty fancy, huh? =)

In reality, it’s not that glamorous, but supremely practical. The drawers hold Garan’s socks, and we’re still trying to figure out how to best use the top shelf. We hide our laundry basket and some office supplies in here as well.

This is the dresser from the bedroom suite my parents bought for me when I was little.

The picture is a gift from my sister. It’s from Kirklands a few years ago, and it’s called Penumbra II by Nydia Lozano. I love it because it reminds me of Christine from The Phantom of the Opera. It was originally over $200, but she scored it for $20! She’s pretty much awesome.

Our bed currently sits on this wall, but we would like to get a headboard at some point and put it in front of the window. I think it would open up the entire space a lot better. The bedspread is something I picked up just after we got married. It’s worked well, but bed-in-a-bag really isn’t my style, so I bought this one with some money I got for my birthday. I have another Cracker Barrel quilt on the bed in the spare room, and I love it!

{See my poorly painted swatch up there?}

My bedside table is a dinky (ugly) little thing I got off craigslist. I was going to paint it, but it’s too small for my needs anyway, so we’re working on making a new one from the Farmhouse Bedside Table plans from Ana White.

{yes, those are car parts!}

Eventually, we’ll get around to replacing Garan’s bedside table with the same thing. I got his current table from a little local shop called The Purple Leaf. I had plans to strip the piece and stain it, but I never got around to it. Now the bottom drawer won’t go back in it correctly. =)

Moving on around the room, you’ll see my favorite piece of furniture in the house. This little writing desk is almost 100 years old. It sat in the foster home Garan’s paternal grandmother grew up in, and last year, Garan’s parents had it refinished for our birthdays. We love it!

Here’s what we’ve done so far:

• Put up curtains and rods
• Reworked the little closet

Wow, that’s a little underwhelming! =)

The to-do list:

• Paint (Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore)
• Rearrange the layout
• Buy a headboard
• Make new bedside tables
• Hang blackout blinds
• Hang some photos and/or art
• Replace the bedspread and pillows

I can’t wait to show some updates in this space!

xo, Amanda Marie

Philippians 4:8

This verse has really been sticking with me lately:

How often do we focus on everything that is negative? I drove to my parents’ house Friday night for supper and I took the long way. I listened to music, I slowed down, and I admired how God changes our world in Spring. I took time to think on things that are lovely and I felt so refreshed.

While I was at their house, Momma cut a bouquet of viburnum for me. I wish you could smell them through the computer!

These are sitting on my {new!} bedside table right now. I hope to show a bit more of it soon! Have a beautiful week, and take time to think on lovely things. It will do your heart some good!

xo, Amanda Marie

Spiced Tea

Today has been kind of a blah day. It was storming off an on, and that always messes with my sinuses. Garan asked me if my eyes were “bruised.” =) Even when the weather is warm, I love to have spiced tea on days like this one.

{it looks sunny in this picture…it’s not.}

It’s kind of a comfort thing for me. When I was growing up, we had spiced tea or hot chocolate almost every evening in the winter. Daddy would help Momma dry the dishes, and then he would pull out the little tea kettle and heat water for everyone. I love Momma’s recipe because it’s not too sweet. {Side note: I’ve never liked cider because it’s either sickeningly sweet or it smells sweeter than it is!}

I made a cup to enjoy, and a recipe card for you! From my momma’s kitchen:

Enjoy!

xo, Amanda Marie

The “Before” House Tour {Laundry Room}

Hello, hello! How was your weekend? We hauled off some scrap metal from Garan’s parents’ house Saturday, and we had a great day at church yesterday. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous!

Anyway, welcome back to the house tour!

Our laundry room is tiny (5′ x 6′), and we have 2 doors into the room: one from the garage, and the other from the foyer/living room. The one from the living room opens into the laundry room and covers the washer. To make it even more awkward, the light switch is also back there. I have to do quite the dance to get in there with a full laundry basket! Because of the dryer duct, we have to keep the dryer 1 foot out from the wall, but door frame won’t allow us to pull the washing machine out to match.

Garan has an electrician friend who says it won’t be a problem to move the light switch to the living room side, so we may do just that at some point. I’m working on a shelf to cover the area behind the dryer and I hope to finish it in a couple of days.

And then there is the door situation. We’ve thought about just removing it and hanging a curtain, but I often run a load of clothes while Garan is watching tv, and that could get annoying fast. We also thought about hanging a barn door on a track system or making a pocket door, but we finally realized that making the door swing out into the living room would be the simplest solution. We’ll probably revisit the other options at some point, though!

When we bought the house, the shelves above the washer and dryer were a wire-and-zip-tied hot mess.

Using it as a miniature garage while we painted the living room didn’t help its looks any… =) Yikes!

Nothing was screwed into a stud, there were holes everywhere, and the shelves weren’t anything close to sturdy, so we ended up putting things on the washer and dryer instead. After a few weeks, I took the bottom shelf and the backing piece down, and Garan added a bar for hanging clothes:

You can see the weird L shape they had going on. It was just zip ties holding the bottom shelf up on the back side!It brightened things up a lot, but the clothes still brushed the wire rack and didn’t hang straight. I got tired of it and pulled the rest of the shelf down a few nights ago. =)

As you can see, I’m in the process of filling all the holes. The people who lived here before us had a crazy way of hanging things:

I am not even kidding. The sad thing is, they never hit the stud. They just gave up and put the shelving up anyway. *sigh*

Time for the list! Here’s what we’ve accomplished so far:

• Replaced the dryer duct (it was really crooked and plugged up in the attic…we prefer to not start fires with our clothes)
• Pulled down the crazy shelves
• Added clothes bar
• Put up hooks for the ironing board

And the to-do list:

• Paint. I can’t stand the yellowy beige.
• Put a shelf behind the dryer
• Hang a cabinet for closed storage above the washer
• Rework the door situation
• Move the light switch to the living room wall
• Replace the flooring?

I’d like to pretty it up a bit. You know, like the ones in blogland and on HGTV that have fresh flowers and chocolates and a tv? Just kidding. They always say that stuff makes laundry so much easier, but I think a maid would do just fine… =D

xo, Amanda Marie

The “Before” House Tour {Front Door & Foyer}

Good morning! Time to get a peek inside the house!

Like I said in my last post, our front door is set back in a little alcove. The door is right against the ground, which makes finding a rug nearly impossible. We finally found one at Target that would work, but the design wore off where the storm door scrapes it.

We would like to remove the storm door at some point and get a steel door with a small window in it. I like the looks of this craftsman style. That would give us some natural light and still allow me to hide from the solicitors. =)

This little grapevine wreath is something I threw together with scraps and some greenery from Hobby Lobby a couple of years ago for Christmas. It’s not too Christmassy, and I kinda like it, so it pretty much stays up all year. I put up a different one in the fall, and this one comes back in December with a little ornament attached. The space between the doors is so small that it’s hard to find wreaths that will fit, but I should probably try a little harder to change out my seasonal stuff. Oh well!

When you step inside, you’ll see a minuscule foyer  (it’s only 4 ft. wide), a boot tray, and the end of our loveseat. Not very welcoming at the moment, right? Just don’t look down…

Yuck! Who puts carpet up against the main entrance?? We’ve tried shampooing the it, but most of the stains just won’t come up. Our next big project is learning how to install floor tile. We bought the Leonia porcelain tile in Sand from Lowes and we’re going to install it here and at the back door. You can actually see a stack of them by the love seat up there!

See the rip in the carpet? That’s where I just started tearing it up. We now have a lovely foyer full of concrete subfloor.

I would like to have some storage along the right side of this wall, but it has to be really narrow. I’m talking between 13″ and 16″. It’s hard to find any dressers or sideboards that depth, so I’m considering something along the lines of this setup by Made By Girl. We’re nowhere close to an Ikea, and I’m not fond of their shipping charges, so Garan said he’d try his hand at building cabinetry. Woohoo!

We’ll probably have a gallery wall in this space at some point, but we have some practical needs first.

This is the only before shot I have of the foyer (it’s of the missing door stop):

Ugh! The green walls! They were so incredibly dark!

Anyway, this is what we’ve accomplished in this area so far:

• Replaced the brassy doorknob with an ORB one.
• Painted the walls Light Pewter by Benjamin Moore (we LOVE this color!)
• Replaced the little doorstop thingy
• Repaired a bowed door jamb (actually, Daddy did this one)

This is what we would like to do (in no particular order):

• Replace carpet with tile (okay, this is definitely our first priority)
• Build cabinets ala Made By Girl
• Hang gallery wall of family pictures
• Remove storm door
• Replace door with windowed version
• Paint the interior of the door a happy color (muted blue-gray?)
• Replace outdoor light
• Buy or make a prettier boot tray

Whew, that’s a long list for a tiny space…this one might take us a while! Wish us luck!

xo, Amanda Marie

The “Before” House Tour {Front Entrance}

I don’t have many pictures of when we first moved in. We were moving from a basement into our first owned home (we were just a little excited to get our things out of boxes and storage!), so we waited just long enough for the carpets to be cleaned. We moved everything as quickly as we could, and for months, we just kinda shifted things around. It was not effective. Or pretty. Bottom line, most of my before pictures have our stuff in them, in various stages of “unpack and put away”.

I do have some pictures from our home inspection. In fact, I think the inspection picture of the front entrance is my only picture of how the front looked for the first few months.

Upon first glance, it doesn’t look too bad! Actually, it isn’t bad, but there were a few things that needed to change immediately. See, the doorway is set back into a really narrow alcove. Those massive bushes made it really dark and kinda creepy! I could just imagine someone hiding in them at night… *shudder* If someone did hide in them, I would have to give them props. I mean, those things were pokey! They’re almost like holly bushes, but I’m pretty sure they’re not. My daddy came by one day and chopped down all of them except the one on the far left (we left it so the front wouldn’t look so bare). Turns out, they were trapping moisture against the window and causing it to mold inside the casing. My paranoia was good for something! =)

We rounded the flower bed out to meet the walkway so it wouldn’t look so plain. Momma brought nandina bushes, lilies, daffodils, and sedum from her garden to fill in where the bushes were. Since then, she brought an azalea bush, some monkey grass, and a few little grape hyacinths.

Oh, see that lonely shutter? The other one was/still is propped up in the garage. We’ll get to it eventually!

We scrubbed the gunk off the brick where the gutter was stopped up, planted some daffodils around the mailbox, and the for sale sign came down, obviously. The only other major change has been the sidewalk. See the little narrow strip between the driveway and the walk to the front door? It’s really tiny!

Whenever it rained,  it was almost impossible to carry groceries or anything else without stepping into the grass there.  So, my parents (you will be hearing about them a lot!) helped me pour a little fan shaped concrete pad there while Garan was at work. It’s so much better now!

In the next few months, we’ll hopefully be adding some rock and plants in the front bed to fancy it up a bit. It doesn’t look too pretty right now, but once everything starts filling in, I think it will be quite lovely! =D

xo, Amanda Marie

Welcome!

I’m Amanda, and this is my husband, Garan:

We’re passionate about making a beautiful home. I hope to chronicle our plans, projects, and adventures here, and I’m happy to have you join us along the way!

xo, Amanda Marie