BIG News!!!

i've been waiting and wanting to say this so many times but i've been holding off until we chose a contractor. and now we have!! we are going to be doing a bunch of fun improvement projects at our house! things like adding built ins, shiplap, bathroom upgrades, and a couple of other fun things! we can't wait to get started and we're so excited about the contractor we're going to work with. about 6 months ago i wrote a post about our forever home, our plans and dreams and it feels so good to be able to get started on some of these ideas.

what's on the list?

built ins in the master bedroom - we are going to add two built in dressers with a window seat between (where the navy bench is in the pic below). we can then eliminate one of the dressers and add some chairs to the room which i'm excited about!

adding interest to the main staircase - our front entry is open and goes up to the second floor. there is a great big wall that is in major need of something to break it up. i decided against traditional wainscoting as we want a little more of a modern feel. i've been lusting after shiplap and after thinking hard on it - i wanted to be sure it wasn't just a fad that we like right now but that it's really lasting - we're going to shiplap about 1/2 the wall and carry it around to the front of the staircase too.

family room - a couple of things going on here. we have a VERY open floor plan which is great but there is also something to be said definition of space. our kitchen through to the family room is basically a bowling alley and we want to add an opening - a very large opening to keep that open feeling - that will separate the spaces a bit. possibly also add some beams to the family room which could continue to help differentiate the space.

secondly we are going to do the dreaded mounting of the tv over the fireplace. i say dreaded because i really didn't want the tv to be part of the main focal point. but the thing is, it will really open up the room and give us a whole wall back where the tv is currently. to make sure that the tv won't be so high that we're craning our necks the whole time, we're going to rip off the existing mantle and replace it with a much simpler and cleaner design. it will probably save us 6". we are also going to shiplap over the backs of the existing built ins and around the fireplace wall, plus stain the built in tops darker (hard to see but they current stain is very red), and spray it all white. bye bye beadboard and stripes!

basement - i've slowly been selling off the furniture that housed the tv and other junk to make room for beautiful new built ins down there! it's a big wall so we'll gain so much storage space for toys which at this point in my life i find really exciting! :) i'm thinking right now that we'll paint them charcoal gray. that wall is so ugly that i've never taken a picture of it (!) but it's where that white bookcase is.

the last of the major projects - and this is the one that's still up in the air - is a redo of the basement bathroom. i've said before that's it's fine and functional, it's just ugly. so we have to decide whether it's a good use of our money or not.

a few other smaller things are on the list too like finally replacing the vanity in the powder room that i've been griping about since the day we moved in, adding some organization to the garage, and putting in a closet system in our linen closet/my husband's closet.

there are other projects that we're not going to get to - the biggest of which is adding built ins in our office. i really wanted to tackle that but the office is easily the room we spend the least amount of time in and i'm going to listen to my better half that the money is better spent elsewhere!