a little update in photos

Work here has been chugging along – slowly but surely. Almost everything is complete except the kitchen and the final punch list. Of course, the kitchen is major and we’ve had some major hiccups with regard to horrible subs, but that seems to be water under the bridge now (fingers crossed). Until I have a chance to clean up and take some real pics, here are some iphone snapshots of some little vignettes in our house that are completed. So much to do – but I have started hanging stuff on the walls which makes me SO happy.

Cash’s travel and adventure themed room is finally coming together – will have a proper blog post on that soon.

I DIYed a custom sheet for Cash’s crib with some custom fabric from Spoonflower. I love the way it turned out.

Finally hung some art in Zoey’s room, including a custom gallery wrap that I designed with a photo I took on our trip to Palm Springs last year.

The exterior of the house is very close to done (just need a new sidewalk and landscaping). Here is a sneak peek.

I finally took some pics of Z and Cash and made them into a gallery wrap to hang in our living area.

Also made a custom changing pad cover and wall art for Cash’s room (photo taken by me in Colorado)

I’m in love with our breakfast nook. I’ll also have a separate post on that coming soon with sources 🙂

dining room lights before and after

I’m excited to share the lights for our dining area. I found them over a year ago at the Four Hands Warehouse sale for cheap (I think they were around $20-30 each?)! I didn’t love the finish for our house though, so they got a makeover – semi gloss white spray paint on the outside, pewter sparkly paint on the inside, and new black and white houndstooth cords from etsy. LOVE the finished result – they have so much presence in the space!

breakfast nook banquette!

Today I just wanted to share a quick before and after of our breakfast banquette. We found it on Craigslist probably about 18 months ago, in desperate need of new padding and upholstery. At the time we didn’t have a spot for it to go, but I just had to have it. It’s been taking up (a lot of) space in our garage since then. I was SO Happy to drop it at the upholsterer, and even more excited to pick it up and actually bring it into the house and start using it! More pics to come of it in it’s spot, but for now here is the before and after. They did an amazing job. Our upholsterer does a lot of car/boat upholstery, so despite this being a pain in the a#%$ to redo (he told us so) – he had a ton of leather looking vinyl swatches to choose from. I selected a very smooth leather like medium gray vinyl and I just love it. It looks/feels just like leather and it’s so easy to clean. FYI, he used about 12 yards vinyl and at about $17/yd it came to $200 for materials plus the actual upholstery labor was $900. All the tufting as you can imagine is very time consuming. I can’t imagine how much some other places in town would have charged, because our upholsterer is VERY reasonable.

staircase redo

From when we bought our house, I have been itching to pull that hideous green 1980’s carpet off of the stairs and completely redo them! Finally we had that chance and boy do they look different! The carpet was pulled up and all of the nails and tacks removed. The old handrail was wobbly and was also torn out. The treads themselves were in great condition and were a really nice oak, so we decided to stain them a warm gray. Then, we tiled the risers with a mottled turquoise penny round tile from overstock.com. Love the final result!

The hideous before and during. Note the Krispy Kreme used to bribe the workers.

The treads look a lot more green in the photo than in real life.

we have walls, and floors!

Where to start? So much has been happening so (relatively) quickly that I haven’t kept up with posting updates. Well, and the new (adorable) baby needing constant attention isn’t helping…here he is looking dapper:

Zoey is an awesome big sister!

Ok onto the updates…I am so behind I don’t know where to start so this post will be all over the place…

Master bathroom still isn’t complete. We’ve had major hiccups with our contractor and the countertops. We didn’t like the sample he brought for us, so we decided to purchase ourselves. I could write a whole post about countertops, and I probably should…but to make a long story short we visited Home Depot (limited options in our price range for Silestone and lack of samples to take home in the colors we wanted), Lowes (has a huge minimum – basically you have to buy the slab which for what we needed, 17 square feet, not worth it), Austin Countertops (also have to buy a slab, their quote came out crazy high $100/sf for material that at Home Depot was $39/sf) and (the winner) Treehouse in South Austin – like a way cooler, smaller, more modern and more green Lowes. They had samples in stock, color options we loved in groups A and B for silestone (looking at whites and grays), and no minimum! They had more options than Home Depot or Lowes and the no minimums sold us. And they are local! A win all around! We ordered just a few days ago, they will come template, and then 2-3 weeks before install. So, we still have some time before the bathroom is done. Here are a few sneak peeks (it’s a mess in there right now since we are sort of using the bathroom, ghetto style). I will post sources on everything when I post final pics, but if anyone has any questions for now just leave a comment!

The tile is more gray than the brown it appears in the pics…

Here are a few pics of the work in progress (from a few weeks ago)

Check out those Oxford redi-screens from Crestview Doors. We got them at their warehouse sale more than a year ago and I am so excited to use them in the house!

Here’s a crappy phone pic of our floors going in a few weeks ago (and another appearance by the screens. They have been moved all over the house!)

During the main living areas/kitchen remodel we have been camped out in our bedroom (with a newborn and a 3 year old). Not fun! With the floors and trim complete we moved our living room setup back into the actual living room last week. So the photo below is us reclaiming our bedroom after mass chaos! Including actually hanging stuff on the walls!

And here are some more shots of the interiors as they are now. Mike (hubby) built the new staircase railing and also redid those cool lights. More to come on those soon. And the gray tufted piece there? More to come on that too. It’s awesome. This view is from the front door looking towards the right.

Looking into the soon to be kitchen/living room area.

Looking out from the old kitchen

Oh, if you want more up to date updates, follow me on instagram 🙂 @heathercbanks

More to come soon! I have so much to share!

a quick update

I have oh so many updates and so little time – so this will be a quick one! Here is what’s been happening the past 6 weeks in a nutshell…phase 1 remodel work continues – master bedroom/closet and tiny office is done, master bathroom is *almost* done. Phase 2 is well underway – which consists of a total redo of the kitchen, living and dining areas, staircase, front wall and back walls of the house, all new siding, etc. Oh, and in the middle of it all I had a baby (4 weeks early)! Cash Maddox Banks was born 12/10/13! This was right in the middle of phase 1 and everything at our house was in total chaos so the timing was nowhere near ideal. They completed the master bedroom and closet just in time for us to come home from the hospital. Our home continues to be pure chaos though and with an infant it is nowhere near ideal, but we are making it work and ready for it to be done so we can have some sort of normalcy!

Here are a few quick pics of some of the completed but empty spaces before we moved stuff in…

Looking from master bedroom into what used to be 2 back to back closets (for the 2 rooms)

Room divided in half, the far right made into a master closet

Some details…love the modern door levers and affordable closet fixtures!

Other half of the spare bedroom became my office

Office – view from the other side

progress update

Construction has been going on for about 2 weeks now in our master bathroom, office, bedroom, and master closet! It was supposed to be done this week but that isn’t happening (does any construction project ever finish on time??!) There isn’t a whole lot of visual progress that is super exciting – just old walls torn down, new walls put up, drywall, stuff demoed, etc…but here are a few peeks taken with my phone!

In love with these pendant lights for my office, from IKEA – they are the Ranarp line. They look much more expensive than they were ($25 each!) Planning to paint just the ceiling in my office a minty blue green color!

We are having a huge custom vanity made for the master bathroom remodel, and this photo is the inspiration! We will see how it turns out…

We also got a new roof last week – and we are redoing the dormers as the first step in “modernizing” the exterior of our very traditional looking house. Before on the right, in progress on the right! It’s amazing what a difference just a chance of the dormer roof can make!

Oh, and this was our yard most of last week – construction is not for the faint of heart! All cleaned up now though!

making progress (sort of)…

A lot has happened in the past few weeks (good and bad)! Just days before we were going to be eligible to apply for the loan for the addition/remodel (their requirement was 1 year after purchase of the home) Mike lost his job, suddenly and unexpectedly. Womp, womp. We made a quick but difficult decision to nix the addition – we loved what was planned but there were just so many obstacles we felt like maybe someone was trying to tell us something! So, we decided to proceed with making it work and remodeling the house as is…it’s smaller than we’d like but we are considering it a challenge to make the most of the existing space (about 1630sf).

So, my first order of business was to start work on bedroom/bathroom on the lower level – namely DEMO (my favorite thing). I’m 8 months pregnant and in full nesting mode, so I couldn’t wait to start tearing stuff out to progress towards a finished master bedroom, bathroom, and closet. Downstairs on the main level there are 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, each bedroom with a tiny closet (circa 1961). We decided to use the bigger bedroom as a master, convert the 2 closets into part of the bedroom, and split the 2nd bedroom in half to make 1/2 walk in closet and 1/2 small office for me (since I work from home).

2nd bedroom post carpet and trim removal

hallway leading to the bedrooms during carpet removal

hallway after carpet remodel (already so much better!)

I’m happy to say that we met with and hired a contractor on Saturday, and he started work on Monday! We planned to just hire someone to do the framing and prep work (since I’m so preggo I can’t help much), but he was quite convincing to do it all and his price was great. So, we went for it. It is quite exciting that we will have these rooms finished in about 2 weeks as opposed to the 2 months or more it would have taken us to do it ourselves!

Here are a few more before photos of the spaces.

BATHROOM before

HALLWAY before

MASTER BEDROOM before

GUEST BEDROOM before (will become walk in close and office)

Stay tuned – lots of progress pics to come! Demo is in full effect!

Here is a little sneak peek of what we have planned for the bathroom!

zoey’s mod big girl room – in progress

Zoey’s room is really coming together! It’s functional enough that she has moved in – though we still have a few major projects left in there before it is complete:

1 – New windows. The old windows are in desperate need of replacement – it get’s super hot up there in the afternoons. We ordered the windows and they are in

2 – Window coverings once the new windows are put in – some sort of solar or roller shades…

3 – Curtain panels to cover the closets. We were going to just replace the old closet doors or repaint the doors we pulled out, but they were too damaged. But, I thought for a softer look and easier access we would go with curtains.

4 – Wallpaper on the feature wall –

5 – A Door! She currently has no door – we need to order a new door and install a doorknob/lever 🙂

6 – A completed bed! Still need to get this bad boy painted and then reupholstered! For now her mattress/box spring are on the floor, bachelor pad style 🙂

 

Here are some photos of her room where it’s at now – really love it! I pulled a lot of brass accent pieces that I had in storage for decor, and I love the way they look. Also, the little gilded gold table will be replaced – it’s awesome looking but not very stable/sturdy…so it’s just sitting in as a placeholder for now.

Closets in need of curtains to cover the craziness…

Craigslisted shelving makeover

Just wanted to share a makeover that I’m proud of! I bought this adorable shelving unit on CL last year and it has been waiting for it’s makeover for months now! I finally got around to painting it a lovely medium dark gray and I added some new pulls from Anthropologie. I tossed the old dated pulls and updated it with adorable brass owl pulls on the top set of drawers, and the mid century looking brass pulls on bottom set of drawers! Then, I filled it with some brass decor and other fun items for Zoey’s big girl room, and there we have it! More sneak peeks from Zoey’s room in progress coming next week 🙂