Getting Caulky

I was a little cocky going into the weekend thinking we'd wrap-up our DIY Door Casing Project we've been working on, boy was I wrong! But that's how most DIY Projects go, now that we have a little one again & a tween working on a big school project. The good news is, all the framing of our doorways is complete! The last time you saw our doorway casings, we framed our doorways with thick molding (almost 4 inches thick) and added a simple header using a 1x1 and a 2x1. You can read more about our inspiration for the DIY Casing Project here. Here's how it looked the last time you saw our door ways.

And the bottom of our baseboards looked 5ike this (not cute) 

Since then, we added a top trim piece to our doorways using two 1x1s and 2x1 in the middle section. I love how simple the doorway headers now look, to me they really fit the style of our California Rancher. 

Then we trimmed out the bottom of the doorway piece with the 4x1 piece, with mitered corner cuts. To hide the inside seam of the doorways, we used pieces of lattice. Again we mitered each corner cut. Oh, when I say 'we' I mean Hasani! I marked all the cuts using a 45 degree angle and he made all the cuts. 

Can I just say how much I'm also in LOVE with the bottom of our doorways! They look so polished and nice next to our existing baseboards! I like I said I'm in love! 

After the doorways were finished being framed out, it was time for my to get caulky. I had a ton of wood to caulk, a ton! For all the seams, I used caulk to fill in the nail holes and knots in the wood I used wood filler. Our doorway casing project has started a snowball effect around our house. As I've already mentioned, I plan on repainting the our baseboard trim (too bad I didn't get to it over the weekend) So with that said, after seeing how amazing our doorways were looking we decided it was finally time to replace our old dated small front door trim. We like our existing doorway trim that surrounds our garage door, so we bought the same trim. 

While Hasani was removing the old front door trim, he discovered a key hidden in the wall. Crazy huh? 

Next Hasani trimmed our existing baseboards to fit our new wider width door trim. Then I measured the miter corners and Hasani did the mitered cuts. Before Hasani nailed the new doorway trim in, I cleaned up all the drywall with a broom. It felt so good, it get to clean behind the old door trim, lol.  If you've ever removed an old piece of trim, you know exactly what I'm talking about, lol. Yup, I just added another project to my re-painting trim project and I'll be touching up paint on our front door surrounds. 


Here's how the door looks right now, pre-caulk and glossy white paint. 

Another snowball affect: we're finally getting around to added a new floor transition piece between the living room and dining room doorway. We bought an unfinished oak transition, I stained the piece Early American with left over stain from refinishing our hardwood floors last year and then applied a clean coat of polythene (also a left over from our hardwood floors) The new transition piece will help add a cohesive look between our original hardwood floors and our faux-wood floors, we installed two years ago replacing our ugly cracked tile. I'm really happy about this 'snowball affect,' because floor transitions are a good thing.

Next we need to sand, prime and then finally paint our new doorway casings and install our new doorway transition piece. Even though there's still a lot to do, I'm super excited about how doorways look! Oh, how I can't wait to see our DIY Door Casing completed and our baseboards glossy white again. I hope by Monday night, after the baby and tween head to bed, I'll be sanding and then priming our doorway casings and new front door trim. 


What do you think of our DIY Door Casing Project so far? Are you in love with the bottom of our doorway baseboards like I am? What do you think our our doorway headers, perfect addition to our little rancher? 


Any snowball effect projects happen in your casa lately? Have you found anything odd when your removed baseboards in the past like we have? 

Small Space Big Style

As you all know, we have a small home. So whenever I come across an amazing house that is small on the square footage, but big on smile I do a happy dance! Because it seems like magazines only feature large homes, I consider anything over 1600sq ft big, since ours hovers in the 1000sq ft range. I guess in the 1950's in California, they just made-em small :) But were snug and happy in our little rancher and love our big backyard, so its all good and I hate cleaning so I think the smaller space is perfect us (at this moment) I did some digging around on the on Better Homes and Gardens to find pretty small living rooms, that I like. 


What I like about this small living room: Not afraid to use color on the drapes, light blue slip covered sofa. Moldings on the doorway make the room look larger, also hanging the curtains makes the ceiling appear larger. 

{ via BHG}

What I like about this small living room: The light paint color on the walls makes the room feel larger and keeps the nice sunlight in. Large fun artwork add a nice pop. The furniture is in a tailored style, yet relaxed. The room also has a little 'office space nook area' 

What I like about this small living room: I love all the detail in this spot in the living room, pretty artwork dramatic curtains and large accessories all work well in this living room.

{via BHG}

Ooh, look casings on the doorways. I'm just a tad bit in love with casings lately since we're in the process of adding them to our home. I like the mix of traditional style with fun modern touches. 

{via BHG}

Regardless of how many sq feet your home is, its all about making the space work for your needs, that's one lesson I've learned while slowly re-doing our home inch by inch.  

In your opinion, what is more difficult to decorate a living room space or large? In my opinion, I say small :)  lol But I will say, it can be very difficult to decorate a large living room and give it a cozy lived in feeling :) 

What have you done to create a cozy & inviting living room in (be it small or big) in your home? 

Adding Casing to Our Doorways

For a while I've wanted to add some molding to our two doorways in , one leads to our kitchen and the other to our hallway. I didn't think adding molding would make a huge improvement in our home, until I saw a great How To on the blog A Charming Nest. They transformed plain doorways into a lovely architectural feature, that added so much character to their home. After seeing their pretty transformation, I knew for sure we had to upgrade the look of our two doorways. I really like the pretty details of A Charming Nest's casing trim and I like the ones I found on Tar Paper Crane. 


Pretty!! Love all the details :)

{ via A Charming Nest }

{ via Tar Paper Crane }

After showing Hasani what I wanted to do, we went shopping at Lowes. We stopped into Lowes and decided to go buy wood for our door casings instead of buying MDF. We decided on wood because, all the of our baseboards are wood and wanted to keep the same look thought out our home to keep everything consistent. We went though all the wood at Lowes, and bought the straightest and smooth wood we could find. 


6: 4x8 (each one 1 inch thick) 
4: 2x8 (each one 1 inch thick) 
4: 1x8 (each one 1 inch thick)
6: Lattice pieces 


We took all of our pictures down near the walls we would be added trim to. Next Hasani has sections of the bottom baseboards on both sides of the the doorway. Then we measured marked each board and made the cuts. So far both the front and back wood trim and header is on the doorways. We love the look of the doorway casing trim in the 1st picture above, however we have to keep ours looking more simpler since we have a 1950's California Rancher. You know so it doesn't look overdone. Here's how's ours currently looks, still much much more work to be done. 

Oh, I'm already in love how with how the doorways look! Even there were only halfway done. The thick almost 4 inches wide (to me) wood trim really makes our average sized doorway appear larger and the ceilings look taller. I like when little updates make huge improvements.  

After going back and forth over leaving the top of the header plain or adding a little molding detail, we've decided to a little trim to give it a more finished look. We still have a lot left to do, I'd say were about 50% done. 

We still need to: add miter corners on the inside if the doorways for a nice finished look. Add latices (thin strips of wood) on the inside of the doorways to hide seams where the wood meets the inside frame of the doorway. Fill all imperfections for wood filler, lots of wood filler! Sand, Prime then paint all the trim glossy white! We also plan to change out our front door trim, with trim that matches are garage door trim, since both over those doors are can be seen from the same room, we want to keep things consistent. 


I plan on paint lots and lots of trim over the next few days. I'm going to repaint all the trim in our hallways and touch up trim paint in our living room. I think I mentioned before that, some of our white trim got stained while Hasani and my Dad where finishing our Hardwood Floors last year. I was way too pregnant huge and tried to attempt re-painting the trim. My Dad did some touch ups for me in the Nursery (thanks Dad) Anyways I've been putting off re-painting the trim for far too long. We should be done in a few days, and I'll have more before, during and after pictures to share!


What do you think of our new door way look so far? Have you ever added casing to your doorways? Any project, like trim paining you've been putting off like me?

Something New

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've been slowly updating our living room with a few new additions { pillows, a rug, new pictures, lamps and vintage secretary desk } I love all the changes I made so far, and am super happy with the newest addition. I went shopping with my boys on Saturday. Our first stop of the day was JC Penney's, because I saw a few dresses online and I wanted to check them out in person. Well, I'm so glad we went in there! I tried the dresses on, I'm still 50/50 on the dress { I'm still a bit self conscious after having my baby nine months ago } so maybe in a few weeks I'll buy one. I'm planning on doing daily walks around my 'hood in the evening, in addition to the 14 blocks I walk daily to and from work. OK, back to my Something New. Have you been in JCP lately?  The store looks fresher, selections cuter, the prices better the cloths priced more along the lines of Targets or even less. Which for this budget conscious girl is a good thing!  After trying on dresses, my boys and I headed up stairs to look at tween clothing and baby clothes. When I got off the elevator I spotted the prettiest mirror.


The mirror had a perfect wide frame with a Navy Ikat Chevron print! I've personally never seen anything like it and I loved it! I literary fell head over heals in love!


I didn't want the mirror to be an impulse buy. Two reasons, I didn't take the mirror home with my that day I need to make sure the spot I had in mind would look good & make sure Hasani didn't hate it. Our rule is, we don't have to always love what each others loves, but we we can't hate it. So I snapped a pic, and then headed over to the baby section and brought Avery adorable pjs on clearance. The next day Hasani and I { along with the kiddos } headed back to JC Penney's and I got the mirror! 


I decided the perfect spot for the mirror would be above our Secretary desk. Even though, we recently hung Tabari's artwork in the same spot I knew our living room needed a mirror. I love that mirrors help bounce light around rooms, and knew placing one almost across from our front door would be perfect. Since we have frosted glass panel insert in our door, it will 'catch' the light and bounce it around. Before I shore our new mirror, here's a reminder of how this spot looked. 

The same spot, now with the artwork moved and our new Ikat Chevron Mirror. I just love how well the Ikat Chevron  mirror plays off our Ikat pillows, swoon. 

Loving this reflection, ahh. 

In this picture you can see where the subtle Ikat print is in the chevron. Please excuse my dusty vases and candle :) And please don't hold it against me. 

I still love our yellow tray, one of my favorite makeovers to date. 

While I was taking pictures of our new mirror, I did a 2 minute cleanup of our living room and snapped some updated pictures of how everything looks right now. Can you tell I only cleaned up for 2 minutes? Yep, if you look closely, you'll see toys under the chairs and coffee table, lol. Keeping it real, I said oh well. I was able to get a prettier pictures of my lovely yellow lamps! Boy do they make me happy :) 

Here's a good full room view shot, if your standing in the kitchen door way this is how our living room looks. Whenever I stand there, I picture our built-in bookcases that we'll be working on very soon. In this picture our rug looks much smaller that it does in person, must be the angle I choose.

This is the view from our front door. Do you see the 'ghost' in the hallway? That's Hasani playing with the baby while I snapped pictures :) 

Well Avery is getting restless and whats to play outdoors, I'll take more pictures soon. 

What do you think of our Navy Ikat Chevron mirror, do you love it!?! Who knew JC Penney's had such cute stuff :)  Oh I almost forgot to mention, this is my 1st piece of chevron in my house! 


Do you have chevron in your house? Or are you over it? I think I re-fell in love with, after seeing this mirror. 

DIY Ottoman Ideas

A few days ago I shared that we are thinking our switching out our coffee table we've had for almost three years for a sqaure ottoman that will double as our coffee table. We're still undecided, but HUGE thank you for all the comments :) I love getting different opinions. It's no shocker, we love to save money when we can and DIY projects, which got me thinking about all the amazing DIY ottomans I've seen all over blogland. I've been thinking about DIYing and entire ottoman or tweaking an excisting ottoman I buy from a local store or on Craigslist. I'm no stranger to tweaking a ottoman, remember the vintage ottoman I re-upholstered for Avery's nusery? His ottoman came out nice, if I do say so my self, you can read more about the project here. 


The idea of buying an existing ottoman is really appealing to me, I like the idea of transforming an existing piece into a custom made-for-you-only piece. I put together a few ottoman ideas using an existing ottoman, tweaked into a custom piece. Below is an idea, of what II'm considering. 

1. I like this square ottoman I found at Kirland's, it's 36' by 36' which is a good size and would look nice in our space. I like the shape of the legs, but no the color. I would spray paint the existing ottoman feet Oil Rubbed Bronze (same color as Avery's ottoman's feet) I also like the idea of added Caster to the bottom on the feet, kind of like this below.

{ via here }

2. I love pretty patterned fabric and think another layer of pattern would look really pretty in our living room. I'm torn between the navy and a neutral patterned fabric. The neutral fabric is pretty, but it might blend too much with our sofa and chairs, but looking at this natural ottoman on top of a natural fiber rug (like ours) makes me think it could work! 

{ via Style at Home }

3. I also like the idea of going with a solid fabric, either a shade of navy or green. The navy fabric is most practical in a house full of boys { husband included! } The fabric is an indoor outdoor fabric, so its much more durable than regular fabric, regardless I would Scotch Guard the fabric! I love look of Tori Spellings living room: neutral sofas, yellow lamps, dark wood floors { like our living room, but ours is obviously much smaller } One of the standouts in her living room, for me is her elegant large bold color choice of an ottoman! I love that its green and feels classic yet modern, perfect combination.

{ via Tori Spelling }

 4. Depending on what color fabric we go with if we decide to DIY an Ottoman, I'll be changing out my existing beloved yellow tray, I found at a thrift store and re-did with a new larger tray. You can read more about my tray project makeover here. I love the lacquer trays from West Elm! We already have one in Avery's nursery, its the perfect catch-all for all his misc. baby stuff on his changing table. 


I've also thought we could go the other DIY route and build an ottoman using: Wood, Foam, Batting and Feet {they sale at Home Depot or Lowes} The ottoman below was a complete DIY Ottoman made from scratch! Which completely inspires me! 

{ via Eighteenth Century Agrarian }

And fo course I LOVE all the amazing coffee tables turned ottoman, I've seen all over blogland! So that's whats been on my mind the past few days. 

Have you ever DIYed an Ottoman? Any plans to make one? What do you think pattern vs. solid?

Ottoman vs. Coffee Table

I've been slowly updating the overall look of our living room. Over the Summer, I replaced our old pillows and made I made new ones. The new pillows, added additional color in our living room: navy, green and golden yellow. I also took down our artwork above our sofa, I want a larger piece of artwork of a large interestingly pretty mirror. I also added more frames to balance our wall ledges in our entryway. Click here to see how I built our wall ledges. Then in the fell we bought a mid century modern secretary desk off Craigslist and completed refinishing it in December. We also added a rug and new pillows from West Elm. Then lastly we added a fun pop of color with a pair of yellow lamps. I have a serious crush on these lamps, so glad I finally found a pair I love.


Now I'm thinking over the replacing our wood and glass coffee table. We bought the coffee table a few months after we moved in our home and while its still loved in our home. It seems to be less practical now that we have a baby. You see Avery is a little explorer and our coffee table has two areas to explore bottom and top, which is fine. Lucky the coffee table is round so there's no hard corners to worry to much about, I just worry about him bumping his head or mouth on the wood surface. 


So for the past couple of weeks, I've been thinking a large-ish square or rectangle ottoman would be a nice addition to our living room.  If we end up going the ottoman route, I still plan on using the ottoman similar to our coffee table, with a tray on top. A tray for me on a coffee table or ottoman is a must, a super quick way to lift items out of the way of little hands. 


Here's a few looks I dig

{ via Pinterest }

{ via Pinterest }

{ via Pinterest }

A reminder of how our living room currently looks

I'm still on the fence about an Ottoman vs. a Coffee Table.


What do you prefer an Ottoman or a Coffee Table?