Archive | June, 2011

help us pick paint colors!

27 Jun

So, we are leaning towards residing/repainting the entire house…we haven’t made a final decision but we didn’t want to do all this work to the front patio and have to live with paint colors (by previous owners) that we just don’t really like. So, we are working on trying to select paint colors if we do decide to reside/repaint. Two things are certain – medium gray siding and a bold canary yellow door. Here is what we are debating: the color for the underside of the roof (soffit), the color for the trim and wood columns, and the color for the wood slat privacy wall that will be replacing the ugly stucco wall that we tore down over the weekend (pics to come from that)…

For now, here is a photo of the front of the house before we started any work:

And here are the paint colors that we are thinking of doing:

Edited to add – here are some photos from flickr that we are using for inspiration…

like how the white wall and white soffit contrasts in this home

really like the all white soffit and trim in this home

this may be my favorite inspiration image – love how the yellow door contrasts and love how the spans of white complement the rock

Any feedback/opinions are appreciated!

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patio remodel | and it begins…

25 Jun

First of all, we haven’t officially announced on the blog yet that we are so thrilled to have won the Social Space Makeover Contest sponsored by Making it Lovely and American Express! THANK YOU so much to everyone who voted for us, posted on facebook to vote for us, and for our other blog friends who gave us a shout out on their own blogs! We won 150,000 American Express rewards points to remodel/decorate our front patio as well as a custom design plan from Nicole at Making it Lovely. Here is the plan she came up with, we love it!

So…this past week we have started planning what we would like to do to the patio with the rewards points (which will be used for gift cards to Home Depot, West Elm, and Crate and Barrel) and of course our simple plan has gone from ‘let’s just add some nice furniture and accessories’ to ‘what if we demoed the ugly stucco wall with arches, resided that interior area with cool modern siding, changed the whole color scheme, painted the front door, rebuilt the privacy wall with cool wooden slats, and maybe built custom bench seating?’ Oh, and we can’t do all that without replacing the hideous 1972 Spanish style light fixtures, right? Oh, well if we are going to do all that why don’t we at least see about residing and repainting the whole house? (it is in dire need of residing and new paint, but we weren’t exactly planning on doing it quite so soon…)

So, as we pull out the demo tools (after a very long time span of no need for them)…we are thinking oy, what are we getting ourselves into again? We always bite off more than we can chew…but hopefully it’ll be totally worth it.

Oh yeah, and we want to have all this done in time for Zoey’s first birthday, which is in about a month. Yeah, we’re insane.

Wish us luck! We’ll post about our progress regularly here!

our hotel st cecilia inspired guest bathroom

21 Jun

I adore Hotel St Cecilia, which is a lovely renovated boutique hotel off of South Congress in Austin. I love it so much that it inspired the redo of our guest bathroom. We aren’t quite finished with it, but we’re close. All that is left is to hang the vintage lucite towel rack and toilet paper holder and find some suitable towels (preferably white with some sort of black trim) for the bathroom.

Here are a few photos of our inspiration (photographer unknown)

And here are some photos of our almost completed guest bathroom:
BEFORE AND AFTER



we are finalists!!

13 Jun

Just got news that we are finalists in the Social Space Makeover contest sponsored by Making it Lovely and American Express! We are so honored and thrilled to have been one of the top 10 finalists out of almost 300 awesome entries!

PLEASE vote for us! Voting ends this Friday June 17th at noon CST! Help us win 150,000 American Express rewards points to makeover our patio and a custom design plan from Making it Lovely!

IF we are lucky enough to win, we will definitely be posting the “after” results of our makeover on the blog! And for those of yall who are local to Austin, will also use it as an excuse to finally have a very very belated housewarming party (over 2.5 years since we moved in!)

To vote, just click HERE and scroll down to the bottom and vote “Heather”!

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social space makeover contest – making it lovely blog

11 Jun

One of the awesome home design blogs that I follow regularly (Making it Lovely) is having a social space makeover contest, sponsored by American Express. The winner receives 150,000 membership reward points to makeover one of the social spaces of their home.

We have a space at our home that I am dying to makeover – it has so much potential but we just haven’t had the time and mostly funds to really put a plan together and execute it. This space is what we would call our front patio – it’s semi-private, inviting (well, as much as it can be in the current condition), large, and has really nice shade from the enormous tree growing up the middle of it.

We’d love to make this space the sort of area you really want to hang out and maybe even have dinner on a nice summer evening – with some cool modern seating, perhaps a table with chairs, or a more casual sofa type seating with low tables. Maybe even a fire pit to make it nice and cozy for cool fall nights (it’ll be a while till we can enjoy those again :( ! ) I think we’d also probably use the funds to paint the front door (we’re thinking a bold yellow) and maybe even repaint the house (gray?)…

Here are some pictures of our space – we would love to be considered for the contest!





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