Guest Suite Update

I haven't been good about updating my blog, and I'm sorry for that...

BUT...

I do have a very good excuse!

I have been BUSY decorating the Guest Suite, and I have some pictures for you!

So here you go...

This is going downstairs (and I need to do another coat of blue paint on the top, so bear with me here...even though I used the suggested porch paint, I still didn't get the exact effect I was hoping for...so my stepfather, Jimmo, suggested I mix the paint with a little bit of polyurethane, so I am going to try that tomorrow)...

But here's a glimpse...

Remember what those awful stairs looked like before?  After an hour or so with the power sander, and lots of painting, voila!

The nautical theme just sort of evolved...first I painted the wood light blue, and then I took all of the cabinets down, sanded them, and painted them white...

And then I found lots of cheap nautical themed decorations at The Christmas Tree Shop, and just decided to have fun with it...

The valances were a good find...$1 a piece at Savers!

And my cute little 20 inch cooking range I found on Craigslist! The seascape has a nice story to go along with it...when I was a little girl, I used to paint seashells and sell them by the shore...the Cape Cod version of a lemonade stand. There was an old man named Bob who traded me a seashell for that seascape he painted. It's lovely, isn't it?  It's the view from my childhood home. I think it was a fair trade ;-)

For some reason these cabinets were especially hard to get the paint to stick to, and required several attempts...

And I found the perfect refrigerator at the Habitat for Humanity RESTORE!

For the playroom, I wanted a space that the boys could not only play in, but a space that could also comfortably sleep guests with children. This room is next to a room with a Queen sized bed, so it's perfect for guests with children.

I found these "Fun with Dick and Jane" style posters from an antique shop for 10 cents a piece...they were much larger, but I cut them down to fit frames. Aren't the adorable?  

And featured below is the dollhouse I bought at the second hand shop for Joni...the one that looks exactly like the one my mother made for me when I was a little girl...my next project will be to paint it and to fix it up, though I have several years before she'll be able to play with it!

And yes, this IS the couch I was going to throw away...the couch that my Father-in-Law and Ben were determined to power-wash and salvage...the battle I lost...I thought we'd never use it, and here is fits perfectly. Thank you Peter! I'm glad I lost the battle!

And here is the other guest room down there I was talking about...I stuck paper stickers on the lampshade to dress it up a little...

I really must thank my stepfather Jimmo for all of his painting help. I really couldn't have done it without him. This was a BIG project for me to do alone with Joni strapped to my back, so I really appreciate all the help people were willing offer!  And special thanks to Greg and Joe for helping with the tiling!  What a grueling job that was!

Anyway, now you can see why I haven't had the time to blog :-)  I hope to change that though!  Here's to more frequent posts!