I Like To Paint It, Paint It! Dining Room Paint Party

Oooohhhh la la we painted the dining room and I love it! 

I'm going to take you on a little trip down memory lane. Here are some of before photos.

When Scott ran the first paint roll up the wall I thought I had made a huge mistake. It was sooo bright. We had used this color in the guest bath at our old house and I loved it but wheewwww weeeee a whole room! It looked like a beach party in our dining room.

Here's the color in our bathroom:

This is what the color looks like on the swatch. In real life it is a lot greener.

That is really all that needs to be said about this. This post might win the award for least words.

Here are a few more photos of the snazzily bright room:

Just a few more words. Here is the room in use. You get to see a bit of weirdness and mess but this is a pretty typical scene:

Oh and you can see in the photo that we added a baby gate because August likes to move it, move it.

If you want to see any past dining room posts check these out (curtains, other, other)

Paint Party! Finally!

Until now, the only place that we had painted in our house was a closet. That closet does happen to also be our baby's room, but still. It is a closet.

Ooooohhhh how times have changed!

We now have 6 walls painted. Some of those walls may be pretty small but they are still walls! We have had the paint sitting around for these rooms since we moved into this house. I'm not really sure how I convinced Scott to do this considering we still have almost no down time but I did and now it is done!

Before we added a fancy dancy art display (I will share it on NeverListless in a few weeks) I had hung Cora's paintings with both tape and sticky tack. The sticky tack came straight from my 1985 collection that I have diligently held onto. It seems to have lost most of its stick but I'm not giving up on it. The sticky tack left a dark green residue. If you are familiar with sticky tack you know exactly what I am talking about. And the tape left a majorly gooey film. I pulled off the sticky tack as well as I could but there were still grease spots. I tried a number of methods to get the tape goo and the grease off. The best one turned out to be rubbing my fingers quickly over it to roll it loose. Neither adhesive was removed 100% but somehow the paint covered them both up perfectly.

Here are a few before photos to jog your memory:

It was paint city around this hizzie for a few nights after the kids went to bed:

The color is called Gray Horse by Benjamin Moore. I had it mixed at Lowes using their No VOC paint.

We did one side of the hallway and the walls connected to it one night and the magnet board wall the next. Scott was the roller master and I was Ms. Cut-In. We even caught up on a few TV shows while we painted. We acted like it was 1940 and listened to them like radio programs. It was kind of fun! And, I'm glad that we painted in small sections because I decided that this is, in fact, not the right color for the entire level. It is a bit too dark for a lot of the space and a bit too green to go behind my teal shelving unit. I plan on using Winter Orchard by Benjamin Moore for the rest of the space but that may change.

Here it is with everything back up:

This is the only after photo I took of Cora's art display wall before we put up the new art display.  

Last (and, definitely least) here is the terrible after shot that I took of the kitchen wall that was painted. 

I can't wait to share the rest of the progress that we have made in the house!

We Are Going Bi-Weekly.

Sorry folks... it is happening. Neverlistless is only going to have one new post every two weeks.
HOW IN THE WORLD did I put up a new post five days a week when I first started. That is some shenanigans. I honestly don't understand how it was possible. Now I don't even have time to shave my legs. You would not believe how long it has been. 
You are probably wondering why I don't go shave my legs now instead of spending the time to continue talking about them on my blog. Actually, I'm wondering that too. 

I have so much cool stuff to update you on but I just cannot make the time to do it. I have the photos, I have the lists, and I have plenty of bizarre stories to tell but just give me a little time. 

Here is a little peak at the massive yard overhaul Scott did and the new little buddy that we added to make it exciting. ps Cora is obsessed with the new yard art, "Roosty."

I hope to see you back next week for a legit post!

THe Hall Closet. Ehhhhhh Would We Call This An Interesting Topic?

Who loves the line in Love Actually where Hugh Grant is talking to someone about a new lady who has started working for him. The person he is talking to refers to the new girl as chubby and Hugh Grant says, "ehhhhhhhhhh would we call her chubby?" That line cracks my sister and I up.

Back to the blog... I have the most minor update in the world but you are still getting it. Sorry! I don't have much time to do home-related updates these days so when I do them you are going to hear about it.

Our coat closet is a disaster. Always! Cora calls it my cubby hole since she has one under the stairs and Scott has his cubby hole office. I guess she didn't want me to feel left out. So I feel personally accountable for it.

We have made some not so exciting changes to it!

You are really going to wonder why I think this is all worthy of being a blog post. I tried to justify it earlier but I changed my mind. It really isn't worthy. So I will include a *LIST* (yay lists!) for you. After this amazing list I will have really lame photos of my hall closet. 

Tricks to add more storage in your hall closet:
1. Fill it up with your junk and then take a look at it. If you are really tight on space in the rest of your house like we are you will find a ton of ways to store all of your random stuff. If you aren't tight on space then you should probably find a slightly more normal place to keep your extra junk so your hall closet doesn't look like it belongs to a crazy person. Either way this tip is all about purging your junk and assessing your space.
2. I mean it... just look in your closet. Is the back of the door empty? Not for long? Throw some coat racks, shoe racks, bins, etc up on there. Make sure to use "hollow door anchors" if your doors are indeed hollow. 
3. Hooks! Go hook wild in there! A hook for a bag full of bags? Yes! A hook for your child's lunch bag shaped like a bee? Yes! (Side story... try your best to send your child to school with a lunch bag. Otherwise you will feel bad when you send your kid to the first day of school with a tupperware container with their name taped onto it. You will feel especially bad when the weekly class newsletter mentions that all of the kids loved showing off their lunchboxes... oops! At least by the time Cora got to pick out a lunch bag they were all half off at Taget!).
4. You may think that that area at the very top of your closet is unusable. You would be wrong. If you are a youngin' you obviously use that area to hide in when playing hide and seek. If you are a cat, you find a way up there and nap. And if you are me (as an adult) you smack a shelf up in that gotta-have-a-ladder-unless-you-are-a-giant-like-me space and store the ridiculous amount of used tissue paper that you have accumulated up there. The first two vertical closet space ideas came from how it was used in the linen closet of the house I grew up in. Poor kitty was constantly getting closed into that closet.
5. When our house was being built we paid a little extra to have an electrical outlet put in our hall closet. It is a great place for the dustbuster. It would also be a good place to keep a charging station.

And finally here comes... Our Hall Closet Updates (I cannot stress enough how fantastically exciting this will be):
Soon after we moved in I added a shelf to it so the super high up space wouldn't be useless. And I didn't even write a post about it. How about that!?!

I added a plastic bin for hats, keys, random things.

I added a coat rack to the door. I liked it so much that I added another one:

The lower one is nice because, not only does it give us a bit more hanging storage but Cora can reach it. So when we want her to grab her bag or a jacket. Tada... she can!

If you need some more terribly unexciting before and after closet photos be sure to check out this post of hall closet reorganization happenings at my old house.

If you want even more organizational inspiration check out my not-at-all-up-to-date archives. 75% of the way down I have a ton of links to organizing stuff and every single one is more interesting than this post.

Next week, I am going to show you the fancy paint part that has attacked our house. And the week after that I will be showing off the awesome (no sarcasm here) art display that we made. I love it and you will too! 

Cora's Art Gets Framed And Hung (Above A Toilet).

Ooooh La La! My two and a half year old is now producing fancy art for my walls. I love it... even though I hung it above a toilet.
Would you like a little peak?

In my old casa I had a couple of random tree photos hanging in a hallway. I think they're nice and all but I have no memory of when this type of art was my style. I'm all about some funky modern. Those little diddies did not make their way back up on the new house walls. In case you haven't figure this out yet I love a good repurposing! Those framerinos did not go to waste.

This is the best photo I have of them up on the wall. Ehhhh... sorry!

I had big plans for this art. I busted out the painter's tape and taped up a random design on some paper.
Out came the art supplies and the old t-shirts and that little artista in the making got to work.
I wanted to ease her in with some crayons before the paint started flying around the room.

The paint happened. And my old t-shirt made Cora look like she had no legs.

The old mat was cream. So I painted it up and made the shiniest white in town.

Cora's art dried and it was time to pull off the tape.
Oops...
tape does not pull very well off paper.

Change of plans. I pushed the tape back down and went with it. I looked to see where the mat would look best.

I cut the painting and put it in the frame. Up it went.

We painted the bathroom walls the day after I took these photos. I cannot wait to show you! As strange as it may seem, this bathroom is now one of favorite rooms in the house.

ps I painted the frames months ago and I don't think I have any photos of the process. A little paint peeled off after they were painted and I decided to go with it. I sanded a few areas of the frame down to show the original black and gold frame. I like how it turned out! Here is a close-up.

The 2nd Floor Porch Gets An Upgrade (And An Introduction To You!)

Whoops! It looks like I am way behind on letting you in on a bunch of areas of our house.
This particular area was for good reason. It was where all random furniture was laid to rest.

Here's a peak at what's coming your way.

ps I am only showing you this so the before photo is not the first little thumbnail that you see!

This space still has a loooooong way to go but progress has been made. I am not thrilled with it at all but just wait until you see the before pictures.

Scott's brother and sister-in-law gave us a twin bed a while ago that I was sure I would be able to use in our house. It ended up having nowhere to go so we put it on the 2nd floor porch. And for more than 6 months it sat there looking like this:

You would think that I would care more about this section of the house than a lot of others since our neighbors could literally jump onto this bed from their porches and can see how abandoned and creepy ours was looking. But, for some reason, I was totally fine with it looking like it belonged to a crazy person. The reason may have had something to do with a newborn coming my way. It was Scott who finally threw in the towel. He had been asking me my plans for the area pretty much since we moved in and he had volunteered to take care of it himself. After the 30th time he mentioned it I finally got to work. And all it took was one 30 minute trip to Target. I didn't come home with exactly what I wanted and I definitely could have found better stuff. But 30 minutes and a heftier-than-expected Target receipt later I was done! Plus, Cora had a blast sitting on all of the chairs and picnic tables at the store.

I went outside to take some photos for you but Mother Nature unleashed her biggest and baddest wind on me. I was met with this so I held off for another day.

Then Ms. Nature showed me some Dorothy Oz-land-ish skies too.

A few days later, Ol' Mama Nature stepped aside and I snapped a few for you:

That grossy looking rope mess against the wall is a hammock that we have no room for. We loved it at our old house but it cannot find a home here. We are working on getting it out.

Here is the view from inside. 

You may ask the question: "Why did I decide to stage it with some bananas and an empty wooden bowl? "
It is a valid question to ask.
The answer: Unknown.

Future plans:

• Talk Scott into liking the idea of curtains on either side of the porch
• A rug? (I would also have to talk him into that one)
• Paint the mini white table with a cool pattern
• Change out the pillows so they are a bit less (I feel like a doofus saying this but) cheesy 2013ish pillows
• Paint the little black table and chairs a bright yellow
• Paint the frame of the daybed yellow