House & Home – Page 8 – Land of Laurel

Daydreaming, Design Inspiration, Exterior Upgrades, Gardening, Home Upgrades, House & Home, Lifestyle

Potager Plans and Garden Inspiration

March 7, 2019July 26, 2019by LaurelLeave a Comment

It’s starting to inch closer to Spring here in Portland, OR. And by Spring I mean, it’s March but the weather is still 27° in the mornings and it’s supposed to snow next week, but hey, who cares right? ME. I care! It’s FREEZING and I am over it. I am ready for warm weather and sunshine and sitting in my backyard enjoying the heat. So I’ve begun daydreaming and planning and pinning my backyard renovation. It’s a long ways to completion since demo and rebuilding of the garage is not on the docket until next summer, but I do want to get quite a few other things done out here this year.

Continue reading →

Home Upgrades, House & Home, House Tour, Videos

February House Tour!

March 5, 2019July 26, 2019by LaurelLeave a Comment

This post is about a week late. I had a bunch of issues uploading this file to youtube! I thought it was related to storage on my computer since my startup disc was almost full. I keep all of my photos on an external hard drive. When I went to delete some excess photos that were duplicates of what I had on my hard drive my computer froze and I ended up accidentally wiping all the photos from my hard drive. And I mean…. ALL THE PHOTOS. I’m trying to have that restored right now. I went to get my laptop looked at too and found out the whole reason I was having trouble updating was related to not having updated to the latest operating system. Doh! Fingers crossed I can still recover all the photos. It would be pretty sad to lose all the progress shots and before pictures of this crazy house, not to mention all the personal photos. Luckily, just a couple weeks ago I did create a new House Tour page which you can find in the main menu, which will show you all sorts of before pictures. Hopefully I can get my photos back and add even more before shots to that page. In the mean time I’ve switched to a cloud based storage system and will be backing that up to an external hard drive as well. Oh technology! Oh what an idiot I am…

Continue reading →

Home Upgrades, House & Home, Painting

Painting the Stairway and Updating Electrical & HVAC

February 19, 2019June 27, 2019by Laurel5 Comments

The stairway at Berrybrier has gone through some pretty dramatic changes in the last year. When I first bought the house, this area was dark lit by only a single bulb on a pull chain at the top of the stairs and a small square window squeezed in at the bottom of the stair. That little window had never even been trimmed out and a screen sat next to it waiting to be installed. The stair railing was almost black covered in god knows what and the light fixture wasn’t centered on anything.

Continue reading →

Decorating & Finishing Touches, Furniture Upgrades & Builds, House & Home, Painting

Installing a Vintage Medicine Cabinet

February 12, 2019July 26, 2019by Laurel15 Comments

I grew up in the same house almost my entire life. It’s the only house I ever remember living in. My parents bought it when I was one and a half and they still live in that house today. I had a bedroom in the center of the house with no outside windows except for a skylight, which sounds a lot drearier than it was in reality. My room was always light and bright and I never had to close the curtains to change. My room was right next to the bathroom which had been redone in the 1950s. It was all green and black tile with floral wallpaper and an old sink. There was even some neon orange accent tile that some previous owner then painted black, but by the time I was in middle school the black paint was chipping in a few places exposing the orange. There was this great vintage mirrored medicine cabinet in that bathroom. It may have been original to the house. It had a lovely arched top and two hinged, adjustable wings which was just perfect for checking out your hair before the middle school dance. I loved that medicine cabinet! It was so great for looking at your hair from all the angles, because it had two hinged, mirrored sides.

Continue reading →

Demo, Home Upgrades, House & Home

Sliding Around on the Newly DIY Refinished Kitchen Floors

February 5, 2019June 27, 2019by Laurel9 Comments

THE FLOORS ARE REFINISHED!! THE FLOORS ARE REFINISHED!!!! FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE PURCHASING THE HOUSE IN AUGUST 2017 I CAN WALK AROUND THE ENTIRE HOUSE WITHOUT WEARING SHOES!

To say I am excited is an understatement. I am ecstatic! I am overthemoon. I am a proud mother with a new born floor and this baby has been long anticipated. Remember back in September 2017 when I ripped off the two layers of vinyl on the kitchen floors and thought refinishing the floors would take a couple weekends? Bahahahahaha. Boy, I am an idiot sometimes. Because, in realityland it took about ten thousand weekends to finish these floors. So I finished in March 2018 about 6 months after I started.

Continue reading →

Good Buys, Home Upgrades, House & Home, Plumbing

Installing the Bathroom Sink, Faucet, and Bathroom Accessories

January 29, 2019July 26, 2019by Laurel1 Comment

So, it’s the first week of January 2018. My bathroom is finally functional again now that it’s painted, tiled, and the toilet’s installed. My sister moves in and it’s time to hop on to the final task for a functional bathroom: installing the sink!

I’d originally ordered a pretty pedestal sink for my bathroom, but I realized that the pedestal would take up precious floor space. Floor space I needed for storage. In particular, toilet paper storage. So, I returned my original sink and ordered a new wall mounted sink. Now, because the walls weren’t tiled in here, I wanted a wall mounted sink with a little bit of a backsplash. The sink had to be pretty small in size too, in order to meet code requirements and for ease of access to the room. The sink is immediately to the left inside the bathroom, right beside the door, and there’s only about 14″ depth available before the sink is sticking out. I couldn’t move the sink over closer to the toilet because code requires 15″ from the center of the toilet to any other element. It was a tight fit! I ended up landing on the Kohler Greenich Sink because it fit both my constraints.

Continue reading →

House & Home, Plumbing

Installing My New Toilet and Changing the Toilet Lever

January 24, 2019July 26, 2019by Laurel2 Comments

There’s a new throne to bend the knee to in the Land of Laurel and it ain’t made of iron. That’s right! I’ve got a gorgeous porcelain throne for ya’ll to fawn over today. It’s downright spectacular. And oh so necessary. You see, back in early January 2018 I was just over 2 months in to my bathroom renovation and it was time to kick it into high gear. I had a deadline, one not set by me, one I couldn’t just ignore as it passed by, a big, important deadline. My little sister was moving into Berrybrier to live with me! Hi, Bronwyn! And well… she needed a place to relieve herself that wasn’t the tiny hell bathroom off my own bedroom. As much as that delightful little space worked for me, she was going to need a space a bit more… accommodating and far less… disgusting.

Continue reading →

Daydreaming, Design Inspiration, Home Upgrades, House & Home, Painting

Living Color with Exterior Paint Inspiration

January 17, 2019July 26, 2019by LaurelLeave a Comment

Did y’all know that Living Coral is Pantone’s 2019 color of the year? How fun is that?! It’s such a happy bright color and I have a special attachment to it.

via

When I first bought Berrybrier, the house was looking seriously rough. The newer aluminum exterior, wood interior windows were a positive note though. But they were green…

Continue reading →