House & Home – It's An Ordinary Blog

It’s hard to believe that five years have already passed since we moved into our home. As first time home buyers, we were lucky to find a brand new home that met all of our needs on a budget that was affordable for budget. To keep costs low, we opted for builder grade fixtures and hardware throughout the house. In the five years that have passed since we closed on the house, we’ve made some changes which have helped to transform our house into a home. We finished the basement, replaced carpeting in the living room and hallway on the main floor living space, upgraded the kitchen faucet, and have added personal touches throughout that we’re really happy with.

One project that I’ve had in the back of my head for the last several months is to add custom touches in the most important spaces in the house. If I had my druthers (I just love that word, don’t you?!) I would add crown molding throughout the house, upgrade to a thicker baseboard, and replace all of the light fixtures but that would likely not offer the best return on our investment (and, let’s be honest, it’s not really necessary for this house) so I want to focus on small, low cost savings that will appeal to a future buyer when we’re ready to move one day.

This month, I want to focus on upgrading our guest bathroom on the main level of our house. I already have a few ideas for how I plan to transform the space so I wanted to share my plans with each of you and gather your thoughts and opinions for what I should do with the rest of the space.

Here’s what I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I want to do in the guest bathroom. We’ve got a single vanity sink right now with two drawers and storage space underneath. The vanity is already the ideal size for the space and the birch wood is absolutely stunning so I don’t want to change those at all. The faucet, however, is definitely builder grade and it’s a fix that I think will make a huge impact in creating a custom feel in the bathroom. I’ll be updating the faucet and installing this:

Absolutely gorgeous, right? I’m very excited to be installing this beautiful bathroom faucet and drain assembly from Vigo Industries in my guest bathroom. I love that this faucet offers a unique look and the oil rubbed bronze is, perhaps, one of my absolute favorite finishes on Earth (there, I said it, sorry frosted nickel). What I enjoy about Vigo products, in particular, is that they’re made with solid brass construction to ensure durability. The finishes resist tarnishing and are said to be significantly easier to clean (which I am looking forward to).

I feel like I’m taking a little bit of a risk with this next project but I want to update the towel, toilet paper, shower curtain, and hand towel rods (which are now currently a reflective silver color) to match my new faucet so I picked up a can of Rust-Oleum spray paint in an oil rubbed bronze finish and I plan to update each item in the new color for a more custom look. For less than $8, I thought the risk was worth the potential reward and I’m excited to see what it’s going to look like when it’s done.

Aside from these two updates (which I am confident will be a drastic change), I know I want to replace the existing shower curtain with a lighter color to brighten up the space, update the colorful floating flowers on the wall, add a little bit of shelving, and purchase some new towels but I need your help with a couple of other decisions…

The Mirror

Right now the space has a rather large, builder grade mirror. To give it a more custom look, I am considering framing it on my own. If you were to create a custom frame for a mirror, would you go with white & crown molding, or a unique wood?

The white would look something like what Momtastic has done in her bathroom:

For a more rustic look, I would do something like you see from Sweet Home Designs::

Paint

I’m still debating (and am honestly very torn) between painting the bathroom or leaving it the sandy tan color that it’s been for the last five years. No matter what choice I make, the space desperately needs a fresh coat of paint so feel free to give me your honest feedback without worrying about how labor intensive the project might be. Having said that, I’m thinking that a nice, light, airy blue might be a good choice for the space. Maybe something similar to this:

Now that you know what my ideas and thoughts are, I’d love to hear your opinions on the framed mirror and paint options. Feel free to leave me a comment below and tell me what you think!

DIY, House & Home, Tutorials

Our Deck Transformation (For Less Than $70): Part I

June 22, 2014July 1, 2014 Holli

As we approach the 5th anniversary of homeownership, my husband and I decided to celebrate by sealing the deck. It’s a project that we’ve been intending to do for the last couple of years but finally got around to actually completing it last week. Sealing your deck is an easy (albeit time consuming) task that really helps to improve the look and prolong the life of your deck. I will warn you that it is somewhat of a labor of love but it’s totally worth it in the end.

How To Stain Your Deck

For this project, you’ll need:

Deck Stain (We purchased Thompson’s Water Seal Waterproofing Stain from Home Depot for just under $30)

Wood Cleaner (We purchased two of the Behr Wood Cleaners for about $20 for the pair)
Protective gloves
A broom and scrub brush
A bucket or tub
A Power Washer
Roller and paint brushes (We also purchased this set from Shur-Line at Home Depot for just under $5 to help with the hard to reach places)

Since I apparently fail at remembering to take “before” pictures of major household projects, this (below) is the best photo I’ve got of our five year old deck pre-treatment. As you can see, it needed a little (okay, a lot) of help.

As novice deck sealers, we weren’t entirely sure where to begin so we set out on the internet (much like I assume you’re doing if you stumbled across my post by chance) to see what the best course of action would be to prepare for the seal. Many of the resources we came across advocated power washing a pre-treatment for staining or sealing a deck. Thankfully, one of our neighbors has a power washer that we were able to borrow. Power washing was a relatively simple task and did make a difference in the look of the wood.

After power washing the deck, we ventured out to our local Home Depot to purchase supplies and while we were there, We began to question whether or not the power wash was sufficient enough in preparing our deck for this project. We took a few minutes to look at the various products in the stain/seal aisle (near the paint) and came across this:

Behr Premium All-In-One Wood Cleaner. At the end of the day, we wanted to make sure that the seal on our deck is going to last and we want to make sure that we’ve done all that to protect our home. With the promise of cleaning off mold and mildew stains from the deck, we decided that the Behr Wood Cleaner was worth the small investment we would be paying to make sure that the deck was clean before sealing it. I should mention that it’s really important to make sure your deck is as clean as it can be before you seal it otherwise you risk trapping in bacteria, mold, and dirt into your wood and you increase the chance of having problems later on down the road.

The wood cleaner requires a 1:1 ratio (which is what we did) of product to water. Knowing that we would be using the entire bottle, we just dumped the bottle out into an old container, filled it up with water, and mixed it all together. We soaked our deck before treating it (per the suggestions) and then applied it using a stiff thistle broom and a small scrubbing brush (for the spindles and railing). The deck has to remain wet the entire time you’re doing this project so I would suggest having a partner help you while you clean.

The transformation after using the wood cleaner was pretty amazing. I had absolutely no idea how much nasty dirt we had accumulated over the years.

We wanted to make sure that we washed off as much of the cleaner as we could so we spent a good half hour spraying it down after we were done (I’m fairly certain my neighbors think I’m a crazy person for watering my deck for so long).

It worked so well that we decided to go over the deck with one more cleaning before applying the stain. This part of the process (power washing, cleaning the deck, and going over it a second time) took about two and a half hours but was well worth the time to make sure our deck was properly prepped for staining. Had we not opted to purchase the wood cleaner, we would never have known how completely disgusting our deck really was. Power washing it alone would never have been sufficient and I’m really glad we made the choice to buy it.

Next time, I’ll share the rest of this process with you including the incredible transformation that makes all of this time and effort so worthwhile. Stay tuned…

DIY, House & Home, Tutorials, Uncategorized

We Said Goodbye To Carpet: A Living Room Renovation

June 2, 2014June 2, 2014 Holli

In December 2012, in anticipation of our basement remodel, we purchased new living room furniture and we have absolutely loved our living room set since. One thing we haven’t loved, however, has been the wear and tear on our carpet in the five years since we purchased our house.

I really don’t like carpet for a multitude of reasons but primarily because it’s a hot bed for germs when it gets a lot of traffic (which ours sure did) and, over time, it gets kind of ugly. There are a lot of options when it comes to replacing flooring and we wanted to make sure whatever we did with our house offered the best possible return on our investment. Since the purchase price of our home five years ago is almost $10,000 more than what comparable homes in the area are listed at right now, we wanted to be careful not to end up spending money that wouldn’t be “worth it” to us in the end.

When we were working on finishing the basement, I found this beautiful laminate flooring by Harmonics that is exclusively sold at Costco. What I love about this flooring is that it comes with the underlayment already attached so, as someone who has never put down flooring before, it was very user friendly. When I purchased for downstairs, the flooring was on sale for about $28 a box (which was awesome) and, since we did all of the work ourselves, it saved us a TON of money. I knew when we were ready to replace the main floor carpeting, we would likely go with the same flooring we used in the basement. Even at the full price of around $35 a box (including tax), using this laminate flooring was significantly less expensive than it would have been had we decided to go with a real or engineered hardwood.

After all of the furniture was removed and we were preparing to tear up the carpet, I realized how much obvious wear the carpet had sustained throughout the years. Even though it wasn’t the worst carpet in the history of mankind, I was a little embarrassed that we’d hosted friends and family with it looking that bad. Whoops. I had actually already listed the carpet on Freecycle (a sustainability group that I’m involved with) and had someone coming by to pick it up later that day. I’m sure with a little hard work and a great carpet cleaner, this made a decent rug for the new owners (hopefully).

After the carpet was completely gone from the living room and hallway we were ready for the new flooring to go down. One thing that I learned when planning out new flooring is that you should always account for potential cutting errors. I purchased a little over 10% more than the measurements for this space just in case we needed it and ended up with one extra box of flooring. Since the laminate needed 24+ hours to acclimate to its new environment (to account for humidity and temperature in the space), I really didn’t want to run the risk of needing to buy a brand new box last minute.

We left the carpeting on the stairs (awkward, I know, but we’re lazy and stairs are hard) and in each of the bedrooms in the house so we ended up purchasing all of our transition strips (along with the shoe molding that went between the floor and trim) from Home Depot mid-way through the project.

Since the shoe molding was white and the existing trim was a different shade of wood, we decided to go ahead and paint all of the trim and door frames white (this part is still a work in progress). I really think that the new color adds a little character and elegance to the new flooring and I’m happy we made that decision.

Even though the space is not 100% finished, I’ll go ahead and share pictures of what the living room looks like today:

I should mention that all of the accessories, including the new rug, were purchased on clearance at Hobby Lobby & Target for less than $150 total. I’m so happy with how it looks that it might just be my favorite room in the house!

The upstairs of our house looks so vastly different with the changes that we made and the transformation is so easy I definitely recommend this type of project to anyone looking at projects around the house. The biggest advice that I can give is to make sure whatever you’re doing with your house is worth the time and investment you’re putting into it. The laminate flooring we went with has the look of hardwood flooring but is a much better option for our current home.

Next on the docket: An updated office and guest bathroom. Stay tuned!

Daily Life, House & Home, Parenting

Tips For Organizing Your Life: Toddler Toy Edition

March 27, 2014March 25, 2014 Holli

As any parent would tell you, young children accumulate a lot of stuff. All of the toys, books, games, dress up clothes, and stuffed animals that multiply with each passing holiday, birthday, or visit to Grandma and Grandpa can become a little (or a lot) overwhelming. One thing I’ve learned in parenting my three year old is that messiness begets messiness. The less organized I am, the less likely my daughter is to keep her belongings organized. I’m slowly trying to change our household habits and I’ve noticed a huge difference in how my toddler treats her belongings. Once I got everything organized, I implemented a standing rule that once she’s doing playing with one toy, book, puzzle, or game she has to put it up before getting something else out. So far, it’s been a total success!

When my daughter was an older infant and started actually playing with toys, I kept them in bins and thought I was organized. Now that she’s older, I realized that’s not going to work for much longer. We were constantly missing puzzle and toy pieces and having a difficult time finding all of the parts to the one puzzle we wanted to work on.

I dumped out all of the toys from each bin (one by one) and organized them. Then I set aside all of the puzzles (I did the same thing for the toys and games) that were missing pieces to organize later when the lost pieces came home. I only used two of the puzzles for the picture because, honestly, nobody wants to see the ungodly mess that was my daughter’s room the day that I took on this project.

Each puzzle went into a gallon size zip lock bag which was labeled with the name of the puzzle, toy, or game, a description, and the number of pieces that are supposed to be included in the bag.

It is so much easier to make sure we have the right amount of pieces for each toy to avoid a meltdown later on.

Putting them in the labeled bags also helped make it easier to store them in my daughter’s bins. Take a look:

I did the same thing with all of the other toys in her room. I know it may *seem* like a lot of work but, trust me, I am confident you’ll find that it is totally worth it.

Since they don’t fit into gallon size bags (and because it’s not safe to put plastic bags over ‘living’ things) all of her dolls live together in a bin of their very own:

The last thing that I did was to create a small reading area in the corner of her room with several books and all of her stuffed animals (which were outgrowing her bed) so that she can relax and read to her favorite monkey, dinosaur, and bear.

How do you stay organized?

DIY, House & Home, Pictures, Tutorials

Fall In Love With Autumn: A DIY Wreath Tutorial

October 21, 2013 Holli

Crisp air and falling leaves…don’t you just love Autumn?!

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to stop by the Junior League of Kansas City, Missouri’s annual fundraiser Holiday Mart with a good friend of mine (hi, D!). We had a blast walking around enjoying the Christmas music, sampling the incredible treats, and shopping with some of the wonderful vendors that Holiday Mart brings in each year. I had one mission over the weekend: find the perfect Autumn wreath. I’m embarrassed to admit that I failed. I searched high and low to find my ideal wreath and, even though I found some cute ones along the way, I couldn’t seem to find “the one”. And then that little lightbulb went off in my head: why not make one?! Challenge accepted! Creating your own seasonal wreath is the perfect opportunity to leave your mark on the season, design something that is uniquely your own, and save a little bit of money in the process. Curious to see how I did it?! Take a look:

Thanks to my local Hobby Lobby, I was able to score some great deals on all of the items I needed to design my new wreath. If you’re looking to replicate my idea, you’ll need to purchase about 45 feet of burlap ribbon (about three packages worth), a wire circle for making wreaths (located in the floral department), and seasonal decorations (I used pumpkins, flowers, and berries). This project takes about 45 minutes from start to finish and is a whole lot of fun so grab a glass of wine, put on some Jack Johnson, and have a little fun.

This project can be done in three easy steps (yes, I’m serious). To get started, you’ll want to weave the burlap ribbon loosely through the wire circle. Stop periodically to gently puff up the ribbon that you’ve done so far, making sure that it doesn’t flatten (which will happen if you pull too hard). When you start to run out of burlap ribbon, don’t panic. Simply tuck the end into the back of your wreath and start again. Keep going until the entire wreath has been covered.

The second step to your new custom wreath is adding in personalized decorations. Similar to decorating, try to group decorations in odd numbers (3, 5, 7). I found some great mini pumpkins, berries, and some yellow colored burlap that I used on both of my wreaths and am very happy with the results.

If you have a Hobby Lobby nearby, be sure to look out for their sale items. I was able to score most of my items for either 40% or 50% off of retail price.

When you’re done, the third and final step is to find a spot to hang your new wreath!

For my second wreath, I used a pre-existing plain “twig” wreath that was on sale at Hobby Lobby for $4.99 (I used a 40% off mobile coupon which brought the price down to just over $2.00) I simply added a few decorations and hung it up. I still can’t believe how easy it is to do yourself- I wonder why I ever purchased pre-made wreaths to begin with…take a look:

I spent just under $50 to complete both projects, have some extra burlap ribbon to spare, and am already plotting my Christmas wreath. Be on the lookout for more Autumn projects headed your way in the next couple of weeks!

Daily Life, DIY, House & Home, Pictures, Tutorials

How I Remodeled A Guest Room For Under $15

June 13, 2013June 14, 2013 Holli

My husband and I were elated to purchase our first home in 2009 but as new, first time, homeowners it took us a while before we furnished all three bedrooms. In 2010 we used part of the federal stimulus package we received (for first time buyers) to purchase a King size bed set for our master bedroom. We moved the Queen bed, which we had been sleeping in for three years, into our guest room. I feel that I should mention that our guest room is the smallest room in our house (second to the closets, of course) and having such a large bed rendered the space useless for much of the time. Overnight guests stay so infrequently that the wasted space has become more and more noticeable over the last year or so and I started to realize how our misuse of the space might impact potential resale value in the future (who wants to have to worry about a bedroom re-do when you’re trying to prepare for a move?!) so I finally decided to do something about it.

My good friend Mindy (hi!) is coming in over the weekend to stay with us and I knew I eventually wanted to get that guest space remodeled but I wasn’t sure I’d have the time before her trip. So I asked her, “Theoretically speaking, would you be more comfortable in a room that had a larger bed but no room to move around or a smaller futon bed but room for suitcases and space?” Her answer gave me the green light (and inspiration) to go ahead and move forward. Here’s what the space looked like earlier today:

In case you’re wondering…yes, that is the entire room. Even though Tobias Funke would say, “It’s always good to be back in a Queen”, when the bed is the only item you can fit into a room, it’s probably not worth keeping. So we listed it on a local classifieds group. All together (bed, mattress, box spring, and the complete bedding set) we were asking $200 and were fortunate to find a buyer who was interested in picking it up this week.

When we listed the bed, I started perusing Craigslist for either a daybed with a trundle or a futon bed. I went back and forth on which one would be a better bang for my buck but ultimately found a great futon that could either be used as a little couch or a twin size bed. The previous owners took great care of it and were asking $75. I offered $60 and we picked it up Memorial Day weekend. While my husband was waiting for our buyer to pick up our old bed this evening, I ran to Target to grab everything I needed for our guest room fix. I gave myself a budget. Ultimately I knew I wanted to come as close to breaking even as I could and I’m pretty happy with how close I came. Take a look (details below):

I am a sucker for Target clearance, can you tell!?

My Target Purchase Included:

Twin Sham $9.99
Twin Comforter $19.99
Sheets $10.48
Towels (2 Bath) $9.98
Towels (2 Wash) $5.98
Orange Vase $7.48
Accent Rug $24.99
Wall Mirror Set $17.48
Table Lamp $17.79
Yellow Picture Frame $3.48
Bookcase $21.99
Candle $5.99

Total $155.62 (plus $60 for the futon) I used a coupon yesterday for $10 back when you spent a certain amount in the baby department so I applied that towards today’s purchase bringing the total down to $145.62 plus tax. Making my grand total (before tax) $205.62. Less than $15 over budget!

I brought in some old goodies for the white bookcase and knew I wanted to make it into something a little bit more unique than just a twenty dollar shelf. So I took an old Arabic alphabet poster my husband was asking me to get rid of and nailed that to the back of the bookshelf. Then I added some great books, pictures, and various other accessories to the shelf to give it some character. We moved a small television into the room so that the space will double as a den when we don’t have guests.

What I love most about this space is the function it now serves for our family. You don’t need a lot of room to have a great space and by incorporating those personalized details, you can transform an otherwise boring piece of furniture into something more interesting and beautiful. I couldn’t be more pleased with how the room turned out. If you’ve been considering a room re-vamp but didn’t think it was in the budget, I hope this helps inspire you to complete that project you’ve had on your mind.

Daily Life, DIY, House & Home, Parenting, Pictures

The Toddler Room (An Update)

May 24, 2013 Holli

It’s Friday! It’s Friday! It’s Friday and it’s a holiday weekend! Horray!

It seems like every time we have a long weekend, we try to fit in all of the items on our “to do” list (in addition to carving out some social activities and family time). This Memorial Day weekend is no exception. As you know, we’ve been working on a nursery to toddler room transformation and I wanted to share some of our progress so far. In the next few days I’ll share all of the details on her fabulous new room and some of what I’m learning about transitioning from a crib to a toddler bed. In the meantime, enjoy!

I can’t wait to share the finished product with all of you! Enjoy your Friday night!

Category: House & Home

Transforming My Builder Grade Bathroom For a More Custom Look: The Plans

Our Deck Transformation (For Less Than $70): Part I

We Said Goodbye To Carpet: A Living Room Renovation

Tips For Organizing Your Life: Toddler Toy Edition

Fall In Love With Autumn: A DIY Wreath Tutorial

How I Remodeled A Guest Room For Under $15

The Toddler Room (An Update)

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