Home Office/Craft Room: Thoughts

As we are finally wrapping things up in the boy's room (I'll share some updated pics tomorrow) I'm shifting my focus to the craft room/home office.

Right now the room is truly a bit of a blank slate... the only piece of furniture that I would like to keep is the dresser that I had previously purchased from craigslist and I gave it a YELLOW makeover!

it is time for another makeover... I'm thinking a lighter Chalk-Paint Base color and more modern hardware. The top will stay the stained wood however.

With that being the only piece that I'm sold on keeping here are my thoughts on bookcases...

 

In the world of lighting....

I kind of feel like Emma would love to make The DIY light from a One Kings Lane tutorial She is my little engineer and this would be right in her wheelhouse!

for actual workspace I'm SUPER on the fence!

Would love to know your thoughts/recommendations.

Spare Bedroom: Blinds

I'm so happy to report that we have fixed one large issue with our spare bedroom! We have added blinds!

I think that this is a huge plus because now our guests will not feel exposed when changing!! AND no more early morning sun rays waking up guests.

We went with the AWESOME Honeycomb Shades from Select Blinds that we also have installed in the other bedrooms in our house. The ones in this room are both light filtering and cordless.

These blinds have been sitting down in our spare bedroom for about two months now.  Nothing like putting off a 5 minute project for two months. I mean these blinds are SUPER easy to put in... In reality it took Matt more time to get a few tools together... and the best part is that you do not even need to measure anything!

Here is my cute hubby getting all of the hardware together that came with the blinds. You can just tell that he is loving this camera in his face!

This is Matt's FAVORITE utility knife... every time he uses it he asks if he has told me how much he likes it...

It is a Milwaukee Fastback Flip Utility knife

Now for the easy part... Instillation!

If you have a right angle on your window you are able to even cut out these first two steps... but it you have caulking (like we do) between out windows and molding you will need to cut out a notch to make a space for the brackets to sit flush on the window...

Matt simply help up the bracket approximately 2 inches from the outside of the window and used his razor to cut on each side of the bracket. and cut the caulking out.

He repeated this step on the other side of the window as well so that we had two notches in the top caulking.

Next, Matt made sure that the hardware fit in and was flush.

Here are our two notches...

Now to pull out the big guns... or more accurately, the electric drill.

Matt swears by this little guard thing that goes over your screw... he said that it holds the screw in place so that the drill does not slip and bang out the molding... I'm not able to provide a very technical explanation but it makes sense to me.

Now place two screws into the wall.

and one screw into the top.

Repeat on other side and grab your shade because you're ready to install!

Clip the shade into the front of the brackets and snap into the back! DONE!!!!

BAM... it was that easy!!!

I love that you are able to move the shade up and down easily WITHOUT a cord! All about baby safety in the Park Household

Select Blinds typically has a buy 3 get 1 free sale and today they even have 30% off your order. A very good deal!

Master Bedroom: The big reveal!

I am so excited to share all of the progress that we made in our master bedroom in the month of February! When I original shared our before images the room was lacking any real personality and I didn't feel like it was a reflection of us.

A master should feel like a retreat and a place that brings you a bit of joy. Especially with a new baby I wanted a space to just breath and feel at peace when I went there at night... I think that for now I have achieved that even if I don't have the furniture of my dreams!

As a recap here is our before... 

and here is our after! 

Yes... after two years we finally have curtains up! These are IKEA curtains and I will be back tomorrow with a quick tutorial on how I made the plain tab top curtains work in our space.

 

We also finally hung some artwork and photos in our room...

I made a DIY mercury glass lamp...

We got a new rug from Ballard Design for Christmas and I FINALLY put it in our room...

I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and painted our IKEA Malm, Laminate dresser. I still need to do Matt's dresser but that will be done soon. Also, still need to add some sweet glass knobs to the front to make it a more custom piece! Full post here.

Our bed also got the Chalk Paint treatment while Matt was out of town one weekend... You should have seen me trying to move the bed around on my own. It was hilarious.

 

With the help of my Dad I switched out our ceiling light fixture... Matt just loves coming home to my surprises..

Hubby closet was organized!

The pull out drawers behind our beds were organized...

The area behind our bed was cleaned up...

Matt's shoes found new homes...don't have a devoted photo of the behind the shoe storage but you can see it in the background of this photo...

 

Shoes that hubby wears frequently are placed in an organizer behind the door and shoes that he doesn't wear as often (cleats, tux shoes, etc.) are in a box in his closet. 

Again I'm extremely happy with the outcome! Here is a little before and after for comparison sake...

Master Bedroom: Ceiling Light

I'm back with another Master bedroom update...

My cute hubby was out of town skiing over the weekend so that meant that I was a busy mommy at home... and that I Might have taken on a few projects that Matt told me not to... He is happy with the results so it is a win win...

Here was our Master Bedroom at the start of the month...

 

To see  our progress in the room so far visit here, here, and here...

Over the weekend I decided to change out the light...  My dream light from Pottery Barn was this $149 Mercury Glass flush mount... but I was very worried about the amount of light that this would give.

So I hit up my local Home Depot and came home with the Hampton Bay Grace Semi-Flush Mount Fixture for $69.97...

 

I am fully aware that the above picture looks like a ram... but I saw the light in person and it won me over...  I liked the Rubbed Bronze Finish and the seeded glass.

Only problem is that I have NO idea how to switch out a light fixture and well I didn't want to wait for Matt to get home because he had previously vetoed replacing this fixture... 

So that is where this guy comes in... MY AWESOME DAD!

Byebye Ugly fixture... 

Safety First people... Turn off the electricity in the room that you are changing out your fixture in... and bring in another light source so you can see what you are doing. 

Remove the old fixture

Unscrew the flush mount from the ceiling

Carefully Uncap the wires and unscrew the ground wire that it attached to the center of the fixture mount.

This should be what you are left with

 

Next my dad removed the metal fixture holder as the crews did not line up properly with our new fixture and replaced with the one that came with the light... I think that in most cases you would just be able to leave the old one...

From this point you will need to follow the directions for your own light as all are different Screwed on the center metal piece that holds our new light. 

 

Cap the wires together again and screw in the ground wire... Red & Black are screwed together and  whites go together.

Attach Flush Mount to the ceiling

 Add light bulbs and glass cover

 

Now look at it and smile... or cringe because you can see the white light bulbs... Time to go back to Home Depot for some clear bulbs!

Thanks DAD!