By Mandi | 03/22/2016 | 7 Comments
Guys. I have something really really embarrassing for show and tell today. You know those bad things in your life (and house!) that you just sort of stop seeing? They just keep getting overlooked, or they are on that list of stuff that you know you need to do but haven’t?
By Mandi | 03/16/2016 | 14 Comments
Hey everybody! A few days ago I was feeling massively emotional. Like you know when you know you’re acting crazy, but you just cant stop…anyone else ever have this? I’m pretty sure that both of my neighbors know when I’m feeling like this. Cause I might be loud.
Its fine.
Anyways. A few days ago I was feeling crazy, and I’ve learned a little thing about myself. I get like this when I’m frustrated with me. I’m the problem. I want to pretend that its everyone else causing me angst but really its just this girl, not doing her stuff. I know some of you are thinking “you just had a baby, cut yourself some slack!” but this runs a little deeper. Its not just taking it easy, its not doing anything that I should be, or want to be, doing because I’ve watched complete seasons of Mad Men, Better Call Saul, and House since I birthed the little Bremlin. So approximately 1/2 of his life in solid tv. Dude. That’s embarrassing.
My frustration with my lack of well, everything, hit a fever pitch. I was talking to Court and everything just seemed like such a big deal, even though it wasn’t. The conversation started when I went in to tell him about this awesome idea for a room makeover and he said “You should talk to someone else about this because I don’t get it.” What he meant was “I’m not a visionary and I don’t see what you see. You can tell me about it but I probably wont have anything to add to the conversation.” and I took it as “I hate you. Stop talking to me.” At which point I lost the little bits of tape that were holding me together and had to have a 2 hour conversation with him about why I need someone to talk to about my ideas and how much I need creative people in my life. News flash, as creative as he is, Don Draper is not that person for me.
Then (after I calmed down) I got thinking about all of you, and your projects, and your creative tribes and it just made me so happy. Seriously, still a little emotional here.
So I thought it would be so fun to have a hand in a little project between friends. Picture you and a few friends chatting and having an all around great time, and then a stranger walks up and group hugs everyone and starts crying. That’s me, I love a good group hug.
I’m giving away 3 world famous brass geometric Himmeli wreath kits from the Vintage Revivals Shop to 1 lucky person, just so that you and your creative besties can get together and have a fun night on me.
Pop over to Instagram to enter!
I promise I wont be crazy and show up at your door…or will I?
.
By Mandi | 03/15/2016 | 4 Comments
The first project right out of the gate on the boy wonder’s nursery was installing flooring. I am not a fan of carpet and would much rather have hardwood floors and big rugs, so that is exactly what we did! The flooring that we used is Jasper Birch Aspen from BuildDirect. Its the same flooring that we put down when we moved into our house almost 7 years ago (holy crap, where has the time gone?!) we love it that much. If you’re looking for a good medium brown shade, look no further. And they have free samples, so yay!!
This room is right off the entryway so we decided to continue the floor directly across (as opposed to installing a threshold piece). Hey, has anyone seen that shirt? I totally forgot about it! Also, tell me my husband is not the hunkiest man alive.
This flooring is tongue and groove. There are a ton of differing opinions on how to install (we’re installing it over a concrete slab) but the way we did it was to float it and secure the pieces together with glue in the groove. If your new to the flooring lingo, floating means that the floor is attached to itself but not actually attached to the ground. It “floats” between the walls.
By Mandi | 03/11/2016 | 28 Comments
There are a million and one tutorials online for how to install subway tile. Literally. Pretty sure that every blogger who has ever existed has posted a tutorial on subway tile. This is not that. Well, I guess it sort of is but here at VR I feel really strongly about sharing the things that I did wrong, just so you guys can 1. not repeat the same mistake and 2. know you are not alone in your DIY frustrations and suffering. Lets get this pity party started.
By Mandi | 03/09/2016 | 9 Comments
When we were staring on the baby’s nursery, I knew without a doubt that the crib needed to be something amazing. I just didn’t know what that looked like. IKEA has such great and inexpensive cribs so a Gulliver was my jumping off point.
Originally I was planning on completely replacing the end pieces and doing a style similar to this (with the solid ends) we even got the main pieces built, but when we put them on, they just weren’t special enough. It looked like every other crib in every other nursery and I just hated it. So we scrapped that Idea.
By Mandi | 03/03/2016 | 17 Comments
A few days ago I posted my frustration with our bathroom makeover. After we swapped out the ugly tile and put a coat of primer on the walls the tub and shower surround looked SO yellow. There were lots of swears involved.
I love using really bright true white, but I knew that if I did that in this situation that it would be a problem. I also knew that it wouldn’t really be fair to the new owners if I painted a perfectly good bathtub surround, just because I wanted a specific wall color. As great as the painting situation would be, its not a permanent fix and I don’t want to have to force someone into a bathroom remodel 3-5 years down the road, just because I like white walls. Seems a little unnecessary yes?
So I pulled out my paint deck and found a white that was a little warm (so that it wasn’t competing with the tub) but not too warm (because the floor is a cooler light gray) and wouldn’t you know, the color I ended up with was Alabaster. The same white that I used in Brem’s nursery!
Here is a side by side of the primer/shower combo and the Alabaster/shower combo. Obviously the whole point of this post is to talk color, but I’ll just say that other than lens correction and cropping there hasn’t been any changes made to the pictures.
It looks SO much better than it did 3 days ago, don’t you agree?
By Mandi | 03/01/2016 | 84 Comments
I know I’m not the only one that dives head first into something without weighing all the possible situations. This is one of those times. We’re working on getting all the areas of our house updated so that we can possibly sell it sometime this year. One of the areas that needs lots of love is our bathrooms.
They’re still rocking the original beige paint and blah tile. So this weekend we dove head first into updating it. We demo’ed and installed new tile and primed everything, only to step back and see this.
Do you see what I see? The tub and surround are NOT white. SON OF A!!! NOOOOOOO!
We’re not ripping out the tub. This is a budget update and the thing has to stay. That being said, what in the crap are we supposed to do!? I’m not sure if its yellowed over time or if it was actually that color to begin with.
There are lots of concoctions that came up on Google, and obviously I haven’t tried cleaning it yet, but I thought I would ask the brilliant people in my life (that would be you guys!) if they’ve ever had this situation come up? How do you de-yellowize a bathtub? I for sure don’t want to paint it because I feel like long term, its not a solution. And its not horrible enough to inflict a peeling bathtub on someone if the paint doesn’t hold up.
Am I overreacting?
The plan was to paint everything white, but I’m thinking that might not be the best solution now. Hmmmmmmm.
What would you do?