Ready for Baby!

The classes are done, and the nursery's all set up (even though she'll probably do little more than nap in there for a while), so now we're just waiting for her arrival!

 

 

 

One day in the front yard!

It's amazing what a difference a day can make! We spent the majority of the day in the front yard taking out overgrown bushes around the front porch and filling the space with 21 boxwoods, bringing the front yard total to 33 (!), three hydrangeas, and several mums for some seasonal color.

Here's how the house looked last fall. We hadn't done much work outside at this point:

Here's how it looked early this morning:

Action shot...a few of the big bushes gone already!

And here's how it looks at the end of the day!

When we moved in, the wall along the garage (on the left) had hostas running along it that died back each fall. We moved those to a bed around the tree on the left side of the photo above and filled the space along the garage with three white hydrangeas, two vibernums, and 11 boxwoods. This project was done a few weeks ago.

Coming up in September: we're having the outside of the house painted. The trim will become a creamy white, the shutters black, and the front door Cardinal (Go tree!).

Nursery Progress

Over the weekend, we made great progress on the nursery as well as cleaning up the basement. On Friday, the nursery started out looking like this:

 

We had already hung the shades and had the carpet delivered, so this is the best "before" picture we have. This is the room that used to be my office (I decided I liked working from downstairs better).

 



On Saturday and Sunday we organized the room quite a bit, moving out furniture that was destined for other places in our house (i.e., the basement). We also hung the mirror, and the mattress was delivered so we could make the bed as well. Here's a few shots of the progress:

My mom was out earlier in July and we made the hot air balloon bed skirt and shams. And during the same visit, we found an antique chest of drawers in Indianapolis that will double as a changing table. I painted it teal and cleaned up the hardware so it really looks like a new piece of furniture!

Here's the hardware after about 30 minutes of cleaning...

And here it is about an hour later!

Nursery Inspiration

I was subconsciously tapping my love of Laduree - the Parisian macaron store and tea room - in putting together the inspiration for the nursery. Upon realizing this, I surrendered to the instinct and decided to embrace it. As we choose bedding, furniture, and accessories, the colors, textures, and styles of old Paris served as the primary inspirations.

Also, here's a blog post someone else already put together with many more wonderful pictures from Laduree:

http://svetlanaroma.blogspot.com/2013/07/inspiration-laduree-and-their-fashion.html

Master bath and half bath update

Looking back at the last few posts, there's been a lot of progress to report on the bathrooms! Craig installed some glass shelves above the toilet in the half bath to hold the majority of our sand collection.

We should have known that they weren't strong enough to hold the weight of the sand, but we tried it anyway...and then redid it with new shelves.

Hopefully sand bottles won't be sliding off the front ledge now...

A week or two ago the master bath countertop was installed, and the contractor finished up the plumbing and electrical. Craig also installed the final light fixture and a mirror in the master bath. We're waiting on a replacement mirror to be delivered since one was damaged en route to us. Then we're basically done with the bathrooms (we still need bath rugs)!!!

 

Time to move on to the nursery!

New Closet Doors!

While the bathrooms were being done, we decided to go ahead and reconfigure our closet doors. The accordion doors weren't really allowing us to use all of our closet space, which was limited to begin with, so we decided to replace them with two sets (his and hers) of French doors.

Here's the "before" view:

And here's the "after" view:

 



It might not look like much but it's much more functional!

 

More master bath pictures to come - we're just waiting on the backsplash now!

The latest on the master bath

The master bath is nearly finished too. We're just waiting on the countertop, which is holding up the sinks and faucets, mirrors and sconces, and a mahogany tower we added to the design when we realized recessed medicine cabinets were a no-go (plumbing and duct work in the wall made it impossible to fit them into the design).

The bathroom was already Behr's Dolphin Fin, which we liked, so we painted the new walls to match the existing ones. We also used the same tile in the master bath as we did in the upstairs bath to simplify the shopping process.