Big News!

You might have thought the house painting project and other things have been going pretty slowly recently. 

Well, there's a reason.... I'm pregnant! We're expecting a baby next spring. Since it already feels like winter/late fall here (we've received a lot of rain and a sudden drop in temperatures), this feels like it's just around the corner (though it's MONTHS) away. 

Here is our announcement photo. I'm happy to report the furbabies are excited and bewildered. They don't quite know what to make of the recent reshuffling of furniture and all these new items that smell like little humans.

And, of course, the runner up announcement photo. We didn't choose this one because we thought it looked too much like we were announcing that we were getting another puppy.

Kitchen thoughts

While I'm fixing up the bedroom, I've been thinking about the kitchen.

When we moved in, it looked like this:

LOTS of potential without a dramatic amount of heavy construction.

We painted the walls a gray/green/tan color, by Behr, called Ashwood:

I love it because it changes colors throughout the day. Sometimes it's green, sometimes's it's brown, sometimes it's gray.You can see the brown undertones in the deeper colors on this color swatch.

But recently, I've been thinking about the floor. It's a simple linoleum, but it shows EVERYTHING. Dog paw prints, any little speckle. 

Now, I'm not saying I want to live with dirty floors.... but I also don't want to have to be pristine ALL THE TIME. We already have that with the cabinets being white. 

So, I'm thinking of the idea of putting in faux wood floors. They make linoleum/vinyl planks that are about 1/8" thick and attach to your floors with adhesive. You put them in plank-style, as if they were wood floors. 

It wouldn't be absolutely perfect, but it wouldn't be that expensive to do (they run about $2ish a square foot, and with our cabinetry and island there aren't large swaths of empty space), and it would let us determine if down the line we want to rip up all linoelum and put down wood floors. I could see this lasting 10+ years though. The visible floor space in our kitchen is approximately 189 square feet, but add in about 12 more for the area under the fridge and in one big cabinet. So we're right at 200 square feet.

And, the end result would give our kitchen this feel:

At some point in the next 5 or so years, I can see us replacing our tile countertops with something less icky, and I already plan on staining and resealing our butcher block (on the island) within the next year (already have the special food-grade sealants and everything).

So hmmm.... 

Bedroom Color Scheme

As I mentioned in my last post, we're redoing the bedroom. I'm painting the walls black pepper by Benjamin Moore. I was perusing color palettes recently, and I came across this one. Wouldn't you know it-- our bedroom wall color is very close to the top color swatch.

I LOVE this color palette. We'll get the greens through plants in the room. I'm thinking of making the light blue actually an ivory white instead-- we'll get that color through translucent window coverings.

We also have these roll up curtains:

I'm THINKING about spray-painting them a new color. Maybe white too, but I haven't yet decided. Regardless, I think our room gets enough browns through the brown wood floors, so we don't need them on the windows... especially with the trims painted an off-white white color. Maybe a light cream? I think that's enough in the palette to work.

We'll get the other colors with a throw and pillows and nightstands. 

I'm very excited-- 2.5 years in this bedroom and it hasn't felt "like ours." With this transformation (and really, we're not revolutionizing too much), it's really beginning to feel permanent and like it's ours.