being four

the hallway trim is done



all but the second coat on the bedroom 4 door



sam was working in there on saturday



made it a little tricky to paint it



i'll get to it...



but my paintbrushes are put away this week



it's all star wars all the time



when i wake up tomorrow, my four year old boy won't be here



my five year old boy will



soaking up these last drops of his being four



love this kid.




party friday night... did i tell you i'm making costumes for ALL the children? and that i'm NUTSO?!!! i'm also planning on making a cake... you know... carved out of rice krispies and shaped like the Milennium Falcon. You know... because I'm NUTSO!!!

But it'll be seriously fun :)

bits and pieces

Woot! Woot! Painting is being accomplished! Grandparents are here and giving me all kinds of time to work on the hall.

hoo ray.

I'm waiting for a video to download for you. It takes a little while for a vimeo video to be available to embed. Like 30 minutes or so. I used the time to get some photos off my card. The actual phototaking hasn't been the most time consuming part of Catch 36... it's been the downloads and editing. I'm downloading fifty to a hundred photos on a nightly basis. I don't keep them all... I like to see them on the computer screen, though, before I decide which ones to nix. Helps me check for focus and all that. It's too difficult to see whether or not eyes are in focus on the camera's display screen.

I still have a few minutes for the video, so here are some shots from tonight's photo dump... straight out of the camera without edits... I like this project :)

















And now we have the video! The hallway is really difficult to photograph because of the low light and tight space, so I busted out my flip camera. Painting a hallway is hardly thrilling, I know, but I had fun making it.



Mom and Dad are here through late Saturday afternoon. I was running out of steam by around 3pm today, so we'll see what I can get done. At the very least, I want to get the trim completely done. It's been finished but unpainted for over a year now!

See ya after the weekend!

Peace out.

upstairs hall design inspiration

I'm gearing up to start my upstairs trim priming and painting. Mom and Dad come on Thursday morning... and I'm trying to psych myself up. I know I want to do this. It will look so great all bright, shiny white! I know it will be worth it. I just need to rev myself up for the days of sanding, priming, and painting.

So, I messed around on Pinterest. I've had these ideas in my head for a while, but I went through Pinterest today, just looking for photos that represented what my head had concocted. I thought it would be motivating to see the photos/ideas all together. Just waiting for a freshly painted, bright white canvas.



This is the bathroom trim, but I'm using it to represent the rest of the hallway trim... all finished!



And you've already seen this. This mirror and banner are hanging in the hall now.

Source: houseofwentworth.com via Jacci on Pinterest

This is from Pinterest. I have a large, plain corkboard that's been sitting around for forever. It held our Christmas cards last year, but that's the only job it's been given in this house so far. I've been picturing it in the hall, right outside the master bedroom. Full of all the odds and ends creative stuff that comes through our doors. Our kids draw... a lot. And are constantly giving us little tokens of love. Too many to keep them all, but I want some place to display them for a time, so the children know that they mean a lot to us.

Source: etsy.com via Jacci on Pinterest

And I want to cover the cork with this Michael Miller fabric in "charcoal". I think the gray and white dots behind all the bright colors of the kids' art will be perfect.

Source: etsy.com via Jacci on Pinterest

This print, right beside the door to the kids' bath is just right in lots of ways. For one, it introduces the wall color of the bathroom, before you actually open the door. Makes the transition from so much white to a rather bright blue less jarring.

Plus, I love it. Here's the (new!) Etsy shop.

And to bring the color over to the mirror wall, I'd like to make a slightly larger version of these...

Source: etsy.com via Jacci on Pinterest

I think it's the teacher in me. Pretty things hanging from ceilings just make me happy.

I'm going to go get dinner started now, but then I'm planning on busting out the blue tape to start taping off the bottom of the baseboards. Sam brought home some primer for me at lunchtime... just in case, but the bug never bit. I took a nap instead. Maybe now that I have this little inspiration post up, I can get moving. Excited to transform the hall!

the upstairs hall

is about to get some TLC. finally. after, what? over a year of unpainted trim? it all needs primed and i couldn't do that very easily whilst preggie. mom and dad are coming to stay over for a few nights next week, just so i can finally get it painted. or at least mostly.

that makes me happy.



the banner i made this week for the hall makes me happy, too.

sam's getting started on bedroom 4 bright and early tomorrow. makes for a long saturday for all of us, but i'm glad we're almost ready to paint in there.

hope you all have a great weekend!

Our New Trim Reveal

It might be a little silly sounding, but I'm a tad nervous to show you guys what we've been up to. Remember now, I warned you that the new trim doesn't really look like it fits in with the rest of the house, yet. That's because it's the first part to really get changed in a way that takes the house in a completely new direction. For it all to make more sense, try to imagine a hallway light like this one...





...doorknobs something like these but with oil-rubbed bronze backplates...



and 5" wide planked wood floors - a versatile medium/darkish wood tone :) Got that? Okay, now the trim will make more sense. Quickly... here are the best shots I have of the hallway before...






And......here's our progress as of Saturday evening......


Wait! First I need to give some serious credit to Humphrey House, a blog we found via HouseBlogs dot net. They have been lovingly restoring a 1912 Craftsman since 2004, and have done such beautiful work. We referenced their trim, a few books on the subject, as well as stalked a few original 1920s Craftsman homes in the area (Open House from 2-4, here we come) while making our choices. Thanks to Humphrey House for such great photos of their trim and for answering questions in how to find things like "bullnose". Now...

















Sam has also finished the trim in Bedroom 3 (baseboards, basecap, and headers above the doors) and he's done all of the trim around both sides of each hallway door (hall side and room side) except for the master bedroom. He needs to borrow a table saw for that door because the dimensions are wonky.

But, doesn't it look soooooo different? Sam will continue installing this trim upstairs throughout the next two months and then we hope to caulk, prime, and paint when we begin getting warm days. We'll be painting all of the trim in Benjamin Moore's Dove White. I was skipping around the kitchen today and gave Sam a big hug & kiss and sang "Thank you for making our house so pretty!" :) And I mean it. It's really pretty in the hallway now. Oh, thank You, Lord.



And thanks to all of you for sharing our excitement and encouraging us along the way.