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upstairs bathroom remodel | it’s happening!

30 Apr

We finally pulled the trigger on the upstairs bathroom remodel! Our goal is to have this bathroom done before we start the main house remodel, and we are well on the way! We purchased all of the materials/finishes and hired a contractor to do all the install/work. So far, so good!

The bones of this bathroom will be clean and modern with touches of blue. However, it is a kids bathroom so we want it to be a little fun too! But, all of the fun stuff can easily be changed out when Zoey gets older and outgrows it. Here are a few things I recently pinned that I love for the bathroom. We seem to have a “whale” theme going. I’m generally not into themed bathrooms, but I want this to be a fun place for her!

This moroccan looking ceiling fixture is awesome, but I’m not into the oil rubbed bronze look. It’s a tad too traditional for me. So, it has gotten a makeover with “lagoon” spraypaint from Rust-Oleum! Stay tuned for the final result. I can’t wait to hang it!

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I love this print for the bathroom, from Urban Outfitters.78bb6db88a4c01b732f1ed4a89bb355c

And of course this whale shower curtain is too cute.

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And a matching bath mat of course

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This is a hippo, not a whale, but it’s too stinkin’ cute!

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And here is the tile work in progress. So exciting! Next comes floor tile, grout, primer, paint, and then install of all the fixtures!

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still chugging along…

19 Mar

Sadly, no news to report on the remodel front. We are waiting on the final contractor bid and then we will submit the plans for permitting. Who knows how long that will take?! :) I never thought it would take this long, but then again I am not really surprised. I am getting itchy fingers though and ready to tear some stuff out and do some demo- so let’s hope I can restrain myself for a little longer.

We did officially launch our vintage rentals company, Retrospective, this month and so far we have had a great response. Well, a lot of people are stumped about exactly what it is until we explain it! I think this post by one of our favorite wedding planners really sums it up well :) We would love it if you like us on Facebook as well!

Since I don’t have any updates to share on the home remodel front, I wanted to share some before and afters of some of the furniture we have redone. The upholsterer has loved me this month :)

Chrome puzzle chairs – I found these at Room Service Vintage with horrible floral tapestry fabric but they had great potential!

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After – reupholstered in a silvery gray snakeskin textured chenille. LOVE them.

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Chrome square chairs – I think I found these chairs at One Kings Lane online in their vintage sale. Pretty cool but in a very 70′s striped velvet. I almost kept it, but I think it was just too limiting.

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I found this sweet painted turquoise settee on Craigslist but it had a horrible cushion that was done very poorly.

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I had the seat redone and attached with a nice taupe and white striped linen.

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I found this awesome mid century sofa on Craigslist and it had great lines but the cushion/upholstery was in horrible condition.

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After – new foam/cushions and reupholstered with a mid century diamond patterned chenille in a gold.lucillesofa

I’ve always wanted an Adrian Pearsall sofa – this one I found on Ebay and had it shipped down from Chicago. It had an awful 70′s gold crinkled velvet fabric, ewww.

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After – reupholstered with new foam/cushion in a textured turquoise nubby weave fabric. It’s so bold and so mad men. I love it.

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I found this sweet little petite platform sofa on Craigslist for a song – also in bad shape with chunks of foam taken out of it and very 70s (which isn’t always a bad thing, but in this case it was)!

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After reupholstered with a shimmery gray linen and a modern gray, tan and golden yellow chevron accent for the pillows.midmodplatformsofa

I found this awesome tufted hollywood regency style sofa set on Craigslist, they were the very first pieces we purchased when we started the business this fall! Hideous grandma fabric but really great shape…

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After, reupholstered in an ivory linen, new foam, shirring along the sides removed, and skirt removed to show off the mid century legs.marilynsofa

The other part of this set might be my very favorite transformation!sofa2

After – reupholstered with an ivory linen with shimmery gold flecks. LOVE.

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               That’s all for now! Check out more of our  vintage event rentals on our website which is now live and official : RETROSPECTIVE

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front entryway revamp

11 May

Sorry my posting is still sporadic, and so is our work on the house…Since my last post I’ve been shooting a bunch of fun weddings and portrait sessions, traveling to St. Louis (for a wedding) and Chicago (for a fun little weekend family getaway), and in the meantime awaiting closing on the Agave house which was pushed to sometime next week (hopefully). The buyers are awesome and it seems to be the perfect house for them (and their pups!). I’ll miss that house, it’s pretty great if I do say so myself. But, I will not miss being a landlord! We took one last dip in the amazing pool last weekend after we moved out our staging accessories and furniture. Isn’t Zoey a cute little  grumpy bikini baby?!

And here is a Iphone shot of me and my girl hanging out earlier this week…

So, we’ve started working on getting some bids for some work to the downstairs den/master bedroom. Our first goal is to get rid of the popcorn ceiling! We are also thinking of smoothing all of the walls down there so they match the smooth walls of the upstairs areas of the house that we gutted a few years back and had re-drywalled. We also want to install a few can lights down there (it’s dark and basement-y now) and  then put in new laminate flooring. Then finishing the bar will be the grand finale…We’re still a ways off from that and since everything we do takes a REALLY long time I can pretty much double my goal time, but one day…I need to take some current photos of those areas, it’s looking a little lonely down there because the buyers for the Agave house ended up buying a lot of our staging furniture. Which is fine by me, gives me an excuse to eventually buy more furniture (I have a problem). But for the meantime, it’s really empty downstairs. The easier to move stuff out to do the electrical and drywall work I guess…Here is a photo of the downstairs den before we moved a bunch of furniture out for staging.

We’ve done a few little projects lately. Now that we a bunch of our accessories back from the Agave house staging, we had to put them back in place and of course I decided to move stuff around. We’ve had this shelving system in our entry for a long time, but I’ve always wanted a credenza of sorts there instead (for hidden storage), with some nice art above. We are halfway there – still need to find the perfect art for above it.

So, out went the shelving (into the garage for now until we decide where it’s permanent home will be) and in came the credenza that used to be downstairs…

BEFORE

AFTER

the little ceramic tray on the far right is vintage and holds our keys and sunglasses. the book in the middle is our super cool wedding album! the lamp is vintage as well. Up next, some art for that wall!

 

 

 

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look what we did this weekend :)

24 Apr

On Sunday Mike and I were both in the mood to do a little home improvement. But, lacking the motivation to accomplish any of the larger items on our very long “punch list”, we decided to demo the bar top! I had mixed feelings about getting rid of the vintage tile, but up close it’s in pretty bad shape and the bar top itself is pretty gross. I’m excited to modernize our little wet bar and maybe finally use it!  I had a major aversion to this area once we finished our kitchen remodel that took over a year – we used this little bar as our kitchen for that long and I hated every minute of that. So, after we finished the kitchen I stayed as far away from it for quite a while. But, I’m ready to get back to it. So, we started small – Mike disconnected the plumbing and we were able to pull off the backsplash and bar top in two solid pieces. With demo, I’m always the impatient one – I like to just start banging stuff and breaking it out – but Mike likes to think things thru a bit more. Which in this case was a good thing. So, here is where we started:

excuse the crappy phone pics below – I was too lazy to get out my ‘real’ camera :)

So, our plan from here is as follows:

  • Mike is going to attempt to make a concrete countertop
  • New modern sink. I love this one from Overstock, and it’s really reasonably priced:

 

  • New modern faucet to go with our awesome sink.
  • Repaint the cabinet with a fresh coat of paint, and add new pulls.
  • Tile backsplash (I plan to reuse some leftover tile from past remodeling projects, but I haven’t decided which yet)

So, it’s a start! We’re excited to make this a really cool wet bar!

 

 

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our next little project

12 Apr

You’ll have to forgive me as my posts will likely be a little sporadic for the next few months – we are getting back into wedding season which means I am busy, busy, busy. And, we’ll also be traveling to St. Louis/Chicago soon (I’m shooting a wedding in St. Louis and Mike and Zoey are coming along so we can have a little family trip after – taking a train to Chicago!).

But, coming up soon with a little of my free time I want to work on this chair – I got it for $40 on CL a few months back and it’s the perfect little chair for the corner of our bedroom.

It totally reminds me of the West Elm modern windsor chair:

However, I’m thinking it needs a little makeover. I’m not in love with the warm toned paisley fabric (I’m thinking something mid century similar to what I did with the dining chairs) and I’m also thinking of painting it white (though Mike and I are at odds about that, he says keep it wood). What do you all think? White or no? Fun fabric? It seems premature to be working on a chair for our master bedroom when it really needs an overall makeover, but that will be coming soon (hopefully end of May after we close on the Agave house).

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

14 Feb

I hope everyone has a fabulous Valentine’s Day, whatever your plans may be. Mike and I are staying in, making dinner together (steak and lobster), drinking some wine, and relaxing. I’m really looking forward to it (especially drinking some dessert wine that I bought on a recent trip to Seattle!)
I wanted to share a few Valentine’s Day cards I made for Zoey to hand out to the other kiddos at daycare today. They were super easy to make – I just used some leftover paper from craft projects, cut out some hearts, and sewed them on the cardstock!

 

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mid century modern chair makeover

11 Feb

 

I purchased this mid century modern chair on Ebay for a song almost 4 years ago for Mike, as a surprise. I told him I was going to have it reupholstered and it could be “his” chair. Well, then came a million house renovations and a baby, so this awesome chair sat in the garage collecting dust (a lot of it)! Since we’ve been working on staging the Agave house the past couple of weeks I realized that we really needed a chair to go with the sofa in the living room, but we didn’t have one that would work. Then, I remembered this beauty. So, I dug it out (and boy do I mean dug), stuffed it in the van, and took it to my favorite upholsterer (Cardenas Upholstery if you’re in Austin). He does a great job and he’s cheap ($225 for the labor). The location is a little ghetto but that is why he’s cheap, you aren’t paying for overhead! Oh, and I didn’t even have to pay for new fabric since I had plenty leftover from when Cardenas reupholstered our dining room chairs!

Here are a few more before pics:

And after! (this little shot will give you a sneak peek of the staging at the Agave house)

Anyone happen to know the designer of the chair? It may not be anyone well known, but I thought I’d ask…no tags anywhere to be found…

 

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vintage sign letters are up finally!

19 Jan

Well, it took us FOREVER! I first mentioned this project WAY back in August here…I have seen vintage letters used for decor and it was something I’ve really been wanting to try. So, we decided to spell our last name “Banks” with vintage letters. I found all of the letters on Etsy (search for ‘letter B’ for example). The letters all sat on our kitchen counter for a long time as I debated where to hang them and what to do with the pink “A”. We nixed the idea of hanging them above our front door because we were worried with a little door slamming that one may fall down on someone’s head. So, we decided we needed something in our staircase. With the “A” I decided to flip it around and spray it canary yellow. I love how it turned out, it’s bold while all of the other letters are a little more neutral. I still want to do something more interesting with our stairwell area, but this is a good start I think!

BEFORE

AFTER

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happy new year! (and happy new sectional)

1 Jan

First of all, wanted to wish everyone who drops by our little home remodeling blog  a Happy New Year! We have a big long list of fun and not so fun things that we want to do to our abode this year, so stay tuned! We plan to finish a lot of little odds and ends on our punch list, as well as really begin making the downstairs areas of our house what we want them to be.

In the meantime, I wanted to post some photos of our sectional, which arrived just in time for Christmas and our hosting my family at our house. It really got broken in – my brother and his wife brought an air mattress to sleep on but ended sleeping on the sectional instead, and loved it! And fell asleep on it while lounging during the day as we were cooking, so I’d say it was a hit!

So, a few things about it:

  • It is the Build a Sofa Oliver 2 piece sectional. It is HUGE. It pretty much takes up our entire living room (which is not very large to begin with). But, I am ok with that since this room is primarily for lounging/hanging out. It’s where we spend 95% of our time upstairs as a family. If you’re curious to know the exact dimensions, it is 96″ long on the shorter side (the side that is against the wall) and 122″ long on the longer side.
  • We got medium density cushions and we think they are perfect. Looking forward to breaking them in a bit but I think the firm would have just been too dense for our liking. We like to lounge…
  • We chose the light black stain option for the feet.
  • We selected 2 long bench seats with tufting for the base cushions. Love the streamlined look.
  • We also chose to have arms on both ends – we wanted it to be like 2 sofas put together, not just a sofa and a chaise…
  • The fabric is avalon pewter, and it is one of the base (grade A) fabrics. We love it, it looks luxurious and expensive (to us)!

And now for some pics! Here is an overall shot of the room”

build a sofa oliver sectionalcloser in

linus and moo ALWAYS find a way to get into my pics. yet when i want them to pose for me, they won’t do it. go figure.

below: box from Homegoods, coffee table from Four Hands Home

below: the fabric is a little more of a neutral gray which was hard to capture in the mixed lighting of our living room

rug: Angela Adams

below: peacock and turquoise and white pillows from Homegoods (last year), round pillows from Hobby Lobby, yellow lamp from Homegoods (also last year), side table from CB2

below: our display nook

below: frame from Homegoods, whale diffuser from Jonathan Adler for HSN line

below: handmade wall art made from leftover plywood painted yellow and leftover walnut scraps from our kitchen remodel, displayed on shelf is a piece by Misha Blaise

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holiday craft projects!

22 Dec

Our Build a Sofa sectional arrived yesterday, and I was so happy that it arrived in time for all of our holiday company! I am cooking my first turkey tomorrow for my family, wish me luck. I may need it. 

I haven’t taken a proper photo of the sectional but I will tomorrow morning once our house is all clean and pretty for the family we have coming for Christmas! It is amazing, and huge. I LOVE it, everything about it. It is pretty much my dream sectional (if I could afford a Jonathan Adler sectional that would be my dream sectional).So, photos coming of that next week!

In the meantime, I wanted to post my cute holiday crafts. I’m crafty at heart but haven’t had a lot of time for crafts lately. But every once in a while I get an itch I need to scratch. Especially with Pinterest now, I have so many cool ideas pinned to my crafting board it was time to finally try a few!

My first craft was trying a no sew tree skirt. I can sew if I have to, but usually I don’t have the patience for it. I used the tutorial on this site, but modified it a bit to make only three ruffles and I also added some decorative ribbon edging. It came out pretty cute for an hour long Sunday morning quick craft!

and below is our tree, with Moo sneaking in the bottom corner of the pic!

My second little craft project was inspired by this wreath that I also found on Pinterest. I didn’t actually use this tutorial and winged it, but if you need a more detailed tutorial that looks to be a good one.

Materials:

a foam wreath (size of your choosing)

your choice and color in yarn (I chose a turquoise yarn with metallic silver specs) – you could also use two or even three different yarn color

some felt or leftover material to make your flowers and/or accent ribbon to finish it off

hot glue gun to glue on your flowers

Instructions:

Start wrapping your yarn around the wreath. It’s pretty much impossible to keep it straight, so just do it randomly wrapping several times and making sure none of the wreath base is showing thru. A few times my yarn got tangled and I had to cut it, detangle, and start wrapping again.

Once you’ve covered the entire wreath, you’re ready to add embellishments. I added some felt and silk remnant fabric flowers I had made a few months ago, and then accented it with some ribbon I had leftover from a while back. Here is the result, I love it!

I had another tutorial written up for my sweater vases with glitter branches, but wordpress ate all of the rest of my post! ACK!! Anyways, here are the pics – I just found some old glass vases that were collecting dust in a cabinet, bought a couple cheap sweaters at Goodwill, stuck the sleeve of the sweater around the vase (making sure it was a right fit) and cut to size (leaving about 1/2″ allowance on both ends, and then hot glued the sweater in place. Then, I found some old sticks in the yard and glitter spray painted them (Krylon makes a good one) to decorate the vases. Here is the result, I love it!

 

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