Decorating for Christmas

Of course I started decorating for Christmas after we finished celebrating Thanksgiving!  Lina helped me to put several Charlie Brown garlands together to make a a nice full garland for the stairs, and then I decorated it with pinecones I'd saved from our house in Georgia and some Christmasy green and red ornaments from Costco and berry/sparkly picks from JoAnn.

Rearranging Furniture

We moved furniture around this weekend for a few reasons.  We needed to make room for the Christmas tree in front of the bay window, and the chaise of the sectional kind of crowded that area where it sat in the beamed ceiling family room just off of the garage.  Also, I don't really want a "formal" living room that is never used.  I would rather it be a comfortable, usable space that we use regularly.  Lastly, the sectional also felt too big for the family room, and the sofa looked a little odd as the only furniture in the living room.  The furniture is really just too big.  Lesson learned - don't buy furniture without measuring first - even if it's a great sale at Restoration Hardware!  The only place we've been that this furniture really fit well was our rental in Annapolis that had a HUGE open concept living space.  We're happy with how this turned out, though have some issues to work out with mounting a tv above the mantel, and we also think it's a weird for the sectional to block part of the entry door from the dining room.   Hmm... There doesn't seem to be another way to arrange it, and on the plus side, we can really seat a few people comfortably now.

Happy Halloween!

Comparison

Window Headers Installed!

SO HAPPY to finally have this project done!  Paul and Dad Madden worked all day and got the window headers installed.  Woo hoo!!!!

Now we really need to change out the light fixtures on the sides of the front door.

(The paper taped to the office window is a "You've Been Boo'd" sign, not a permit or tacky decor...)

Guest Bathroom Transformation

Before Lina got here, we wanted to do a mini-renovation on her bathroom. We kept the tile in the tub and the tub/tub fixtures themselves the same, and just changed the floor, the paint, and the vanity. Here are the almost-finished results. We still need to put up a mirror or two above the vanity, and finish repairing the wall where we removed a single vanity from the toilet/tub back section of the bathroom

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Gutter Replacement & Mastershield Installation

Today we're having our gutters replaced and Mastershield gutter protectors installed over top of them. The installers did Extreme Makeover Home Edition Baltimore! Cool, right? We figure with all these trees, we wanted to go with the best product we could find to keep debris/dirt/leaves out. Look at all the dirt that was in the existing gutters! We're switching to 6" gutters on the front and back large part of the house and larger downspouts, too. Of course, some extra unexpected excitement is some rotten fascia board at the back of the house. Lovely. You can tell there is a section that's white already where we knew we had a problem and the owner of the company doing the install said his guess is that that has already been replaced because it was rotten before.

http://www.mastershieldvamd.com/about.php

Curb Appeal

The curb appeal has improved since the mint green, yes? We still have to install the window headers - maybe this weekend coming up. The hurricane threw a little wrench into our timeline.

More Progress

Not sure why I forgot to step back and take the whole house after the shutters were all back on. Will have to do that today and add to this post.

Here is a photo of the assembly line of window headers or crossheads that we set up in the garage after Paul sprayed one coat. Can't wait to install these above all the front windows!

Shutter and Front Door Progress

We bought paint last weekend and had hoped to get our curb appeal transformation completed then, but the rainy weather kept us from accomplishing our task. This weekend, it rained Friday evening, and is supposed to rain tomorrow, too, so Paul worked really hard to get a lot done today. We didn't do anything with the Fypon window headers yet, but we did hold them up just to see how they would look.

The final color selection - Pratt and Lambert Williamsburg Collection. Shutters: George Pitt House Green, Doors: Spanish Brown