Mutiny! I'm Taking This Blog Back!

After Avonlea was born, we decided to split our 2 blogs between us.  I would write mostly on Bloggle Baby, and Jim would take over Blue Century Home.  Unfortunately, it turns out that Jim isn't much of a blogger (as is quite evident); so, I'm reclaiming this blog.  ^_^

Since we've made quite a bit of progress, and it would take me forever to give each piece justice, I'll just do a quick recap of the past 3 months.

We utterly failed at finishing the nursery before Avonlea was born.  In fact, we are still working on it.  However, we have made some significant progress on the upstairs.  The walls and ceilings are painted, trim is completed in both bedrooms (except for the closet baseboards), carpeting is picked out and ordered, and we have finished staining all the stair parts and hallway woodwork.

Here is a picture of Jim holding Avonlea in the nursery before the window trim was up. 

Our sliding 5 panel closet doors that we bought way back in April-ish.

Our 4 panel door

The windows with custom-made window sills

The trimmed-out Guest Room

This is a picture of Jim ironing on the veneer for the landing.

The stair landing balusters lined up in our garage for staining.

Jim has spent a lot of time and effort on building the newel posts.  I would post pics, but I'll leave that to Jim. He wants to write about how he built them, and I don't want to give away any spoilers.  All I will say is that I think they look great!  :)

As I've mentioned earlier, we have ordered the carpeting for the upstairs.  We have chosen Shaw Stainmaster carpeting.  The hallway and stairs will be a medium brown with a leaf pattern.  The nursery will be a light beige and the guest room will be a light grey.  Jim wanted to go lighter in the hallway and stairs, but I was adamant not to go too light.  I don't feel like having to constantly clean the carpet (especially on the stairs).

Hallway and Stairs:

Style: Lasting  Color: Amaretto

Nursery:

Style: St Amien II  Color: Bridal Veil

Guest Room:

Style: St Amien II  Color: Mineral Alloy

Right now, they are scheduled to install the carpeting on Dec. 22nd.  If all goes well, Avonlea might have her nursery by Christmas.  ^_^*  Well, almost...her closet won't be completed by then since we want to try something fancy besides just a single rod for clothes to hang on.

Look at those colors!

Once all of the wall spaces and cleilings were freshly primed, we formed color-teams to fill them in. Amanda worked hard to find the perfect colors for the rooms. After a few weekends of painting, and with my parents' help, our project spaces are looking more finished than ever.

We have a charming nursary in light Sage Green, which will eventually be decorated with songbird theme.

Also, We have a comfortable Lilac Time purple/grey/blue guest room, where you may stay when you visit. This photo also shows the custom windowsill we built. The windowsills are designed to be an easy transition between the window caseing and the baseboards, as the large windows are so low to the floor.

The interconnecting hall is in traditional Lyndhurst Timber, and will look remarkable with the stained wooden handrail and built-in shelf.

Painting by numbers

It sure seems like a while ago that we were doing all this painting. During the first weekend in September, my parents came to help prime all of the drywall we had recently finished finishing. Mom and Dad are a great team, and they white-washed the bedrooms and hallway in no time.

Dad and Mom working diligently. 

While they were upstairs working with white primer, Amanda and I were out in the garage working with white paint on our surplus of window and door casings and baseboards . As Amanda had a limited number of comfortable maternity clothes, she also wore a blue disposable coverall. Incidentally, she looked like a blue M&M with a paint brush. 

Jim and Amanda pretending to work while no one was looking. 

Soon enough, our working construction zone was gone. Evidence of the rough original studs, electrical wiring and insulation was only barely visible along the bottom edge of the wall. All of the measurement notes, chalk lines and repair work on the drywall had been replaced with a fresh clean coat of while primer. We now had a 'blank canvas' that resembled two bedrooms and a hallway! 

How refreshing, it looks better already! 

Colors, Colors, Everywhere!

Now that the drywall is completely up and the mudding is nearing the end...at least in the 2 bedrooms...I've been stalking the aisles of the local hardware stores for paint samples.  It was a grueling competition for the color swatches, but in the end, there could be only one!  Well, actually 6 if you count the 2 bedrooms, 1 hallway, and 3 ceilings.  ^_^

Here is a taste of the culling

These were the finalists for the nursery.

(Yes, that is an Ugly Doll in our color selection.  We just really liked his coloration.)

Haha!  I know, we are weird.  Poor, Enishi.  ^_^

These were the winners:

Nursery

Walls: Light Sage (Olympic Paint)

Ceiling: PaleVista (Olympic Paint)

Guest Room

Walls: Lilac Time (Olympic Paint)

Ceiling: Windsor Haze (Olympic Paint)

Hallway

Walls: Lyndhurst Timber (Valspar Historic Paint)

Ceiling: March Ice (Valspar Paint)

Jim and I agreed on the general color for each area (ex: grey-tinged purple in the Guest Room, green in the Nursery and brown in the Hallway), and I then picked out the specific colors.  Jim gave his final approval afterwards.  I think it worked out well.  I used the same method of elimination when I picked colors for the Craft Room.  I would put all the color swatches on the walls and see what they looked like throughout the varying times of day.  If I didn't like how a color looked, down it went.  The method must have worked well because I've gotten a lot of compliments on the colors of my Craft Room.  You can see pics of it in the Before and After Section of this blog.  Speaking of which, I can't wait until I can add the After pictures of the Nursery, Guest Room and Hallway.  Hopefully, I'll be able to by October.