{ Etsy Shop Love + Upstairs Today }

I am excited to show you all the spaces that I love and that the kids love about their upstairs bedroom. It's been a long time coming and I've finally got things organized enough that I am willing to share with everyone. There's still SO MUCH that needs to be done but for now we will concentrate on where we are today. 

We'll start in the "reading corner" or so the kids call it. It's the little area behind the stairs where I painted the herringbone accent wall. 

They got these bean bag chairs for Christmas from their Aunt and we decided this was the best place for them over in this corner. The kids love sitting down and picking out a book to read and I love that they are reading! 

We have the trim up around the room but it still needs paint on it. The base trim got two coats on it before putting it up but the upper trim around the staircase hasn't even had a coat of primer yet. 

While Jenna spends a lot of her time over in the reading area or in her kitchen -which I will show you soon, THIS is where Trevor spends the majority of his time. At the Lego table. We painted this table with chalk paint which is perfect for drawing roads and all sorts of things.

The kids and I painted it a couple months ago

 

Hours have been spent at this table. He doesn't have a huge Lego collection but he started to accumulate a few sets last year and now he has enough to spend a whole afternoon building and playing. Future engineer right there!

 

The kitchen is the other spot that Jenna will spend the majority of her day. This is the IKEA kitchen and it's perfect for her. 

She just got a new apron and literally wears it all day and goes back and forth from the kitchen and doing other things all.day.long. We put that little table over in the corner with the chair so she could set up the table to eat her "meals" and drink her tea! So.darn.cute!

Here's the other side of the room where their beds are. I love the look of the painted beds! 

 

I still want to put something above each of their beds and get a little table for the short corners on each side. I bought those curtains at Ikea and shortened them. I like the curtains but I am still looking for something different. I want something with a little more of a bold pattern on it that jumps out. I think it would be better with the walls being so plain to bring in more of a catching curtain. 

Did you notice the little baby bed? We got that for Jenna as a Christmas gift. She thinks it is her duty to put her baby to bed every night. I found the bed on Etsy. The shop is called, TheLittleMommy. Kristal has a lot of super cute beds and she also makes blankets, pillows, and mattresses to fit the beds too. You can see the blanket on our little baby bed. It is so adorable! These beds would be perfect for photo shoots too as seen below.

 Kristal is offering 20% to my readers by using the Promo Code: PROMO20.

There really isn't a lot of wall space to hang things up on, other than the wall space behind the beds and this little space between the closets. 

I finally got a few things hung up and I am really loving it!

We still need to paint the closet doors and add some handles yet as you can see, but so far I am really liking how this little wall is turning out.

I am using three of the frames to display the kids' art work and two of them to hold my two favorite photos of the kids. They are held up with command strips. I've never used those before and I'm not getting paid to say that I love them, but really, where have these been all my life! Love them!

The bottom board with the green chevron design is a magnet board. We made a little daily chore chart to put up on there-not pictured, and it's the perfect spot for it!

We love that little magnet board. It's already held up countless pieces of art work from our craft days and whatever Jenna thinks needs to be displayed!

I found this on Etsy at LivyLouDesigns. update: Chris is working on adding things to her shop right now so the link wont work today but should be up and running soon! You can click here to see her facebook page and the products that she has. Chris will be back soon with a promo code for my readers when her shop is up and running again. I will update you when I get that. 

Chase spends a lot of time up here playing too. We have his little jumper toy in here but he's just recently started to get board with it so that will probably go away soon.

That pretty much sums up the whole room tour for now. Like I said there are still lots of things to be done up there. Painting trim, painting closet doors, adding closet shelves (for now the clothes are just folded in piles on the floor :/), and adding wall art above the beds. The kids are always wanting to be in their room and I am SO glad we Mark spent a lot of time making this room the best it could be for our kids!

Here's a quick reminder of what it started out like if you are new here or if you've forgotten...

I love looking back at those old photos and seeing just how amazing the transformation really is!

Pretty awesome huh?! 

If you could already tell by now too from reading my past posts about my Etsy shop love and then this post, I LOVE buying off Etsy. It's a great place to find a lot of different items. I wanted to take a second to share two of my other favorite shops today. I haven't purchased anything yet from these shops but some of these things are definitely on my Christmas list!

The first one is RagNBoneStudio.

Allison has great welded jewelry displays over at her shop Rag N' Bone Studio. These are a must see and so cute they are begging to be displayed on your vanity or dresser! She is offering 10% off to all my readers using the promo code: RHP10.

The second shop that I am really liking right now is OneHappyLeaf.

Anna's shop One Happy Leaf has some adorable laser cut unique items. These are one-of-a kind things that would be perfect as a gift to a friend or wedding party (see the cuff links) or yourself (of course!). She is offering 10% off to you guys using the promo code: FIRSTLOVE.

Thanks for taking a minute to check out our upstairs bedroom and for allowing me to share my fav Etsy shops here on the blog! Until next time.... Be Blessed!

{ Focal Wall }


Back when I was painting up in the kids' shared room, I decided to do a fun focal wall. I debated forever on what pattern or color that I would do and finally decided to do a herringbone type pattern with two different colors that I purchased at Sherwin Williams. I started taping the pattern on the wall and because I have zero patience when it comes to waiting to see what things will look like, I started painting before I got all the tape lines up. Then once that dried a little, I peeled back the tape on the painted parts so I could get a good look at what I was doing.

I stepped back and right away I knew I couldn't keep going with this pattern on that wall. It doesnt look too crazy in the photo above but imagine the whole wall done in those colors and in that pattern. I'm pretty sure it would have been the most overwhelming, headache inducing focal wall ever. So I primed and painted over it with a really nice muted shade of blue-gray (which I love).

But it was a fun wall and I had the paint so I thought that I could still do that pattern, just somewhere else, not so focal. There is a tiny area on one side of the stairs that we will have kids toys/books so I figured it would be perfect there. So I taped up the pattern on that wall and again couldn't wait so I started painting

I wasnt careful about measuring out the pattern, I literally eye-balled the lines as I was taping them. I like how random it is and I really love that it's on this wall where no one really will see it until they look for it. It adds some color and fun to the kids play area without giving me a headache every time I walk up to their room.

So here it is all finished



You can see on the back wall we now have curtains hung (which I hemmed myself) and a light fixture installed (Thanks Papa Rawson!) so, it's really looking more and more like a finished room. The trim, the closet doors, and closet shelves are the only things left to do up here. I painted the beds too which you get a small view of in one of the photos above and I will share all that with you next time. 

Just in case you are a little confused where we are in the room this photo gives you a little better view



Now can you tell it's the stairway wall that you were looking at. On the right is the door for the closet and behind me is the big open room. So you can see it's a pretty small little spot but it's just perfect for a play area for the kids. 

What do you think? Was a good choice to hault the focal wall on that main wall and move it? I'm really happy with my decision to move it over to this little wall and the kids love it! 

{ Drywall is up }

The upstairs room is moving along nicely now. It took a long time to get to this point since everything needed to be replaced. 

Finally it's starting to actually look like a room. I am getting so excited to be able to decorate this space for the kids. Remember what it started out looking like? Dark. Lots of wood. Closed off. Gloomy. Muti-floor covered. The list goes on.

So here is a look at what the room is looking like now.

It's so fun to watch the upstairs progress. As you can see the drywall is all up but not finished yet. You can see the new window, the new outlets, the new can lights in the ceiling, the new sub floor...it's ALL new and looking so so so good! YAY hubby! 

Here is a quick run down of how it got from the first photo to now.

Gutted room.

Fixed the roof where the chimney used to be.

Moved the side walls out, lifted the ceiling, replaced bad electrical outlets, and removed and replaced all the insulation.

Created a new sub floor.

Replaced the windows.

Put up insulation on the walls and ceiling.

Built the wall surrounding the stairs and built the closets.

Hung new drywall.

Cleaned it all up and now we are ready for the drywall to be finished!

 I am probably the only person that squeals when I see these photos but it took a long time to get to this point and I keep envisioning what the room will look like for my two kiddos when this is done and I am jumping out of my skin to make it perfect for them.

I've already purchased a few things for up here that I am really excited about. I got two twin beds off craigslist that I plan on painting. We took a trip to Ikea and definitely spent some $ there on things for this space. I've also been busy visiting my fav shops on Etsy and making a bunch of purchases on there too. 

Stay tuned for the final results hopefully sooner rather than later! 

{ Big Changes }

This is what we started with upstairs...

I was planning on just painting all the wood paneling but Mark had other ideas. At first I was not excited about tearing apart the whole upstairs because I knew it was going to extend our move in date much further out but after seeing how it looks now, I am glad we decided to make some big changes up there. The kids are going to love it when its done and its going to be a great space for them to sleep and play!

This was our first big project on the house.  We Mark removed all the paneling and the middle wall divider. We ran into an issue when taking the middle wall out. We realized there was a chimney that went through the middle of that wall and out the roof. It was a chimney for venting out an old furnace so it was no longer being used. As you can see in the picture below it was right in the middle of the room.

You can also see all the paneling has been removed and the flooring had been ripped up. The progress was exciting! I really wanted that chimney removed which meant the roof would need some repairs afterwards but my amazing hubby did it. It's now one big open room. Check it out, isn't it so different already!

Mark also moved the ceiling up higher and the side walls were extended to maximize the size of the room. 

The can lights have been installed into the ceiling and the new electrical outlets are in around the room. This has been a long process for the upstairs. It took Mark about a day to remove all the paneling and only a couple hours to take out that old chimney but removing the nasty old insulation took a long time. We also adding a lot of main floor lighting so while the flooring is removed in the upstairs it was a good time to add all of those ceiling lights downstairs so that added time. It is now ready for the sub floor, drywall and new windows. See here's the new windows...just waiting to be put into place.

The old windows were in extremely bad shape. Most of the house will need new windows eventually but these two were the worst so we will be happy to see them go and it will be much more efficient to have these new windows installed. Check out those rotted boards around the window. I couldn't get a great shot of the window panes due to the lighting but they are bad. 

I am so excited to see this room coming together. Mark has put in a lot of time and energy so far with the help of a lot of friends and family too. We are so grateful for everyone who is helping on our home! I know drywall will make the room seem a lot more finished so I will update you as soon as we get that in! 

Here is a before and in progress pic for you to check out again. Looks good huh?!

Before

 Progress