More Photos of the Shabby Chic Coastal Bedroom

I've been borrowing my oldest daughter's new Nikon SLR camera for the past few weeks & have been taking a lot of photos of the house. We just gave it to her for a High School Graduation a few weeks ago, but hey, she borrows my car, I borrow her camera. Fair deal! 

One of my pet peeves is MLS photos that are, let's just say, not up to par. So me being the control freak detail oriented person that I am, uploaded a whole slew of them to a Picasa account that the realtor could use and showed them to you in my Home tour

Back to my youngest daughter's room... The Teddy Bear was a gift from her boyfriend... awwww

We will be starting on some free standing bookcases next month(better late than never). They will be a little bit narrower than this current  one and taller than the curtain rods. In the meantime, I moved the bookcase from next to the bed to beside the window. A small chair will go beside the bed, if I ever find one.

Here's where the bookcase was before. The placement was just a little odd, don't you think? This photo was taken with my 10 megapixel HP digital point & shoot. Can you tell the difference from the other photos? Click on the photos & you can definitely see the difference. I might have to find a way to get a camera like my daughter's. Can you say credit card points? 

Thought you'd like to see what my youngest daughter's room looked like before we painted it grey. I found this photo today while cleaning up and scanned it with my new hp scanner/printer/copier!

I also wanted to remind everyone to go over to vote for Debbie so she can get her own tv show! I am sure all of you know her from her blog debbiedoos loves living in the Carolinas! If you don't, you should! She is one of the nicest ladies in blogland and is a cheerleader by nature! Go to her website and  you can link up to Oprah's website and then vote for her!!!

You can also link directly to the Oprah site HERE
Remember, you can vote as many times as you want!
Hope you all have a great day!!!

Pam

Home Tour

As promised, here is my home tour! Our house is ready to go and a sign in the front yard will be a reality in a couple of days. We've lived here ten years now and have lot's of happy memories. I'm warning you now, there are a lot of photos, so grab a cup of coffee or a cold drink and stay awhile!

This is a nice place to sit in the evening as the sun is going down behind the big oak tree across the street.

Come on in..........

The Foyer......

The Living Room, or the Piano Room, as we call it, is to the left of the Foyer (the piano is on the inside wall that your can't see)

The Dining Room is to the left of the Foyer, but this view is from the hallway door.

The view of the Family Room from the Kitchen.....Ugh...I wish I could find a decent ready made slipcover that fit my large comfy sofa. I never did like the slipcover I bought, but the sofa underneath is a champagne colored damask and would be very dirty if we hadn't covered it.

I'd buy a new sofa, but I would rather wait until we move to buy one.
Update: I bought a new sofa! I'm in the process of redecorating this room.

The Family Room from upstairs.........

The hallway off the foyer looking toward the Laundry Room.....The Powder Room is the first door on the right.

Here's the tiniest Powder Room on the planet! Ok, that's not a good selling point!

The Laundry Room ...

The Master Bedroom ...

Master Bath ...

The Kitchen ... with brand new beautiful granite countertops and tumbled marble backsplash...

The deck off of the Breakfast Room....

The view of the backyard from the deck

2nd Floor: Guest Room ... I found a new white matelasse cover for the bed that replaced a floral comforter.

Oldest daughter's room ...

Youngest daughter's room ...

Upstairs Bathroom ....

Ahhh, the Bonus Room ... You haven't seen this room, except for the closet we  Mr. F installed a few months back.

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Not very exciting, I know. This is where we are in the evenings during the school year.

Mr. Fanatic's office is in the nook in bonus room.

Now on to the Basement or Garden Level: Basement Family Room with Cultured Stone Fireplace & gas logs. The stone was a steal at $860 installed! It was finished a few days before last Christmas.

This is a great place for the teenagers to hang out & for sleepovers (the sofa is a sofabed)
We finished the basement (mostly) ourselves. We had some friends help with the sheetrock, hired the stone guys for the fireplace and granite top and hired an electrician. Mr F. Did the framing, plumbing, painting, trim, tile, etc.

Basement Full Bath. Mr. Fanatic did all of the tile work in here a several years ago. I love the way this bathroom turned out.

Here's some of the unfinished part of the basement. There are also 2 more storage rooms on the other side that are about 15 x 20. The basement is 2,000 square feet! That is larger than our last house! When the girl's were little and before the basement family room was finished they would ride their bikes and scooters down here in the winter. Even on the coldest days it only gets to the mid to high 50's.

We open this up when we have teenage parties.

The Garden Patio off of the Basement Family Room....This is my favorite spot to sit.

The view from the bench. The playhouse is from my childhood. We brought it all the way from California to North Carolina.

The garden path coming up from the creek ... I wish it stayed looking this perfect!

And, finally, the Patio in the Woods ... Mr. F installed this when the girls were much younger. There was a huge pile of sand (used in the installation) that the girls would come out & play with while their dad was working.

 

And there, you have it ... the whole house tour! I hope you enjoyed it!!!

Pam

Update:

Our house is no longer on the market and we might stay another couple of years until our youngest goes off to college. If we could find a house we liked with our new criteria, we would re-list the house in a heartbeat.

In the meantime, we are in the process of repainting pretty much the whole house!

I will post a new house tour after we paint the family room/kitchen/hallways.

You can see the update for our Dining Room HERE

and the bookcases in my Youngest Daughter's Room HERE

From Laminate to Granite- The Transformation

Yesterday I showed you the before and after of my kitchen countertops and backsplash. Today I thought I'd show you how we arrived at the finished product. It took us two weeks from the time the granite was installed to the finished kitchen, but we did throw a graduation/birthday party  last weekend!

 Here's what our kitchen looked like with a neutral laminate and plain, smooth tile backsplash.

 The granite guys made a template out of strips of corrugated plastic that they glued together with a glue gun. They left some glue on the countertop which didn't need to be scraped off since the laminate was being removed in a couple of days.

 Mr. Fanatic thought it would be funny to write on the counters the morning before the installers came. The installers thought it was funny, too.

The first thing that had to be done was to take down the microwave that was above the cooktop and take the covers off of the electrical outlets and switches.

The guys removed the tile backsplash first. The sheetrock was damaged, so it was taken completely out.

The demolition and granite installation took one day. At this point, I really wasn't loving the granite. It looked too busy and blah.

While we were standing in front of this wall looking at the inside of the wall, I said "please don't get mad mad at me, but how difficult would it be to install cabinet lighting now that the sheetrock is off?" Fortunately, he was thinking the same thing! It took us an extra day to do this, but it was worth it!

So, off to Lowe's we went. Thank goodness it is only 5 minutes away.

Here's the lighting installed. The lights only cost us about $50. The lighting really shows off the granite.

New sheetrock installed.

Tile is being installed...Tiling on a diagonal is a little more work.

Accent tiles were installed every couple of tiles.

Since the lighting took us an extra day on the weekend, Mr. Fanatic tiled a section after work each evening.

I was so happy to get to this point - the installation of the grout. The grout is smeared all over the tile and fills in the holes on the face of the tile.

The grout is then wiped down several times. The following day we used an enhancer sealer. The enhancer darkens the tile . You can see that the tile is much whiter before the enhancer is applied.

I bought these lovely corbels and primed and painted them.

They were installed using liquid nails.

Getting closer to being finished...

After the liquid nails dried the molding was installed at the top of the bar wall below the granite and between the corbels. A little caulk applied and a little paint on the molding and it's all finished! The tile backsplash cost about $475 with the tile, mastic, grout and sealer.

So pretty! We were thinking of ordering some light rail to cover the lighting, but they barely show.

So there you have it... how we arrived at our finished countertops and backsplash. It took a little longer than expected, but the finished project looks great and we are happy with it. Now, if it helps us sell our house we will be ecstatic! The news about the housing market hasn't been good lately, but we won't know unless we try. And, we REALLY are ready for a smaller house, especially after all of the projects we've done since January. I will have to do a recap of them all sometime soon!
I wish you all have a great week! Hopefully it will be a little cooler  for all of us who have been experiencing such HOT weather! All of you in SoCal- I am really a little  jealous of your mid 70 degree weather!

Happy Monday!!!

Pam