Browsing Tag

Connecticut

House Project

Connecticut House Bedroom Refresh

Last month Jeremy and I made a quick one week trip up to our house in Connecticut to refresh the bedrooms in our 1st floor unit. This unit is incredibly easy for me to rent out. Maybe it’s the price. Maybe it’s the coziness of the place. I don’t know, but it’s easy. However, it has needed a refresh for a long time. We did the kitchen and living room last Summer. It was such a huge improvement and looked fantastic afterwards. The only problem was that it highlighted the dinginess of the bedrooms. We didn’t have time to do anything with them last Summer, so when an opportunity came up to do it between renters, I decided it was time!

The carpet was almost 20 years old as was the wall color. I guess I can be thankful they held up for as long as they did! I tend to have an insane goal list so these were only part of the project. Here’s what we tackled…

Scraped popcorn off ceilings

Painted walls, ceiling, and trim

Installed and painted new doors

Installed new carpet (hired that out to Sullivan & Son)

Switched dingy yellowed outlets and light switches for clean white ones

Installed new faux wood blinds

Hung art

Hung table/lamp sconces on bed headboard

Refreshed with new duvet covers

Installed new light fixtures (hired that out as well)

These were my vision boards that I made before we got there.

I had to make some pivots and adjustments along the way, one of those being ditching the ceiling fans. This house is over a hundred years old, so the electrical is difficult to work with. We had an electrician come out, and although he was perfectly willing to install those ceiling fans, it would have involved cutting the ceiling to install a brace, then mudding and patching and painting. Basically there was no time for all of that, so I had to go a different route. I also ditched the tapestry in the full bedroom. It looked so dingy on the new wall color. My goal was to get rid of dingy, so I didn’t want to bring it back in! Here’s some before and afters…

And the after of the queen bedroom…

Before of the full bedroom…

And the after of the full bedroom…

Just like the kitchen remodel, we worked right up until we had to leave for the airport, but I absolutely love this kind of work and the design elements coming together!

Supply list…

Wall color ~ Benjamin Moore in Moonshine

Trim color ~ Benjamin Moore in Vanilla Milkshake

Queen bedroom wall sconces ~ Amazon

New duvets ~ Amazon

New lighting ~ Lowe’s

Carpet ~ Pebble Path in Berber

Artwork was sourced from various museum’s open source public domain collections

House Project

Connecticut House Kitchen Remodel

I absolutely love transforming spaces. To take something and make it better, well, it’s one of my favorite things. We bought our Connecticut house in 2004. It was in a scary state. On the verge of foreclosure, the owner abandoned it and left a slew of fun surprises from a fish tank with fish in it (they were frozen in there since we bought it in the winter), vinyls galore, a car that didn’t run, and many other things I won’t take the time to mention. We cleaned that place up and brought life back into its walls. I didn’t design the first floor apartment, but the colors were indicative of the early 2000’s…brown/tan and red. Times have a changed, so it was more than overdue for a little refresh.

Here’s the before featuring that lovely 2000’s style…

We had about 2 weeks to complete this project, so we had to really focus on what we wanted to get done. The living room and kitchen were our top priorities. And if you’ve ever done a remodel project, then you know everything always takes longer than expected. We had a plan that ended up turning into a bigger project than we anticipated (like when you paint walls and then the ugly old outlets stand out), but we worked hard and got it done. I love painting, but I got to add some new skills to my repertoire like tiling and changing out those ugly outlet plugs.

The updated kitchen and living room…

We worked right up until the day we left, so I only got about an hour to sit in the living room and soak up the beauty. I’m so happy with the finished product!

Supply list…

Wall color ~ Benjamin Moore in Moonshine

Cabinet color ~ Benjamin Moore in Essex Green

Trim color ~ Benjamin Moore in Vanilla Milkshake

Backsplash ~ Daltile Restore from Home Depot grouted with Delorean Gray

Light above kitchen sink ~ Amazon

Countertops ~ Butcher block from Lowe’s

Cabinet pulls ~ Amazon

Kitchen faucet ~ Amazon

Cabinets ~ All purchased in natural oak from Lowe’s

Artwork above couch ~ bought on Etsy, 24X36 poster prints printed at Walgreens, Ribba frames from IKEA