Wedding Recap

Happy St Patty’s Day!!! Hope you all have your Green on.

I was backing up my computer and came across our wedding pictures and realized that I hadn’t written much about our wedding.

Since the crib midget is sleeping, I figured I’d take a few moments and give yea a recap.

Our main goal to our wedding was low key, no stress and we wanted friends and family to join in and have a good time, nothing over the top just relaxing and simple.

We got engaged August 15, 2013 and were married Nov 9, 2013.  Which is NOT a lot of time in the wedding world. We had time working against so we needed to plan and plan fast.  Thanks to Pinterest and all of its amazing ideas, I was able to pull a wedding together pretty fast.

We managed to get everything booked {photographer, location, caterer, DJ} wedding dress bought, and decorations with in no time.

We decided to do all of our pictures prior to the ceremony.  I always hate going to wedding and having to wait forever for the bride and groom. We wanted everything to be done prior to the ceremony.

We had roughly 100 of our closest friends and family able to make it, which was just fine with us.  Our ceremony and reception where all in the same place, so we rolled right from the ceremony to food and drinks

John had the most amazing speech written up and before the dancing he stopped everything and read it out loud. I SOOO wish someone would of caught it on video but no one had a clue he was going to do it.  It was so sweet.

I apologies now for the picture overload

My fave Ginger

 Giving daddy the "last chance to run" sign

 Gotta get a pic with the boots

 The boys

 The Tierney's 

 Us with our Parents

The Girls

Navy dresses are from JCrew, cardigans are from Old Navy  flower girl dress I made.

 Right before the "first look"

 I loved how my broach bouquet turned out.

Reception Pics

Our guest book

 Our Ceremony Backdrop

 Shotgun shell boutonniere that I made.

So that was the quick and dirty.  I did as much DIY-ing as I had time for.  If you have any questions on where I ordered items or how I made them...Just ask!!!

Master Bedroom Remodel, part 2

We knew this project was not going to be an overnighter (a 3day-er if you watch HGTV)…try like a year….yup we strung it out for a year. We weren’t in a hurry. We had our original functioning bathroom; everything we were doing was extra.

We started with tearing down the old closet and ripping out the old carpet and flipping the room. We moved the bed down and removed all the stuff from the far end of the bedroom and it stayed in this hot mess of a state…for awhile.

We eventually added the closet walls!!! Which I love…I actually have a real closet that holds more than 10 items!!!!

We would buy items here and there and work on little things.  We worked on the electrical over the summer and it went pretty smoothly.  We had to buy a few extra items because whoever wired the house before…WOW... I don’t understand their logic.

During the remodel we got engaged (you can read about the proposal post here). We got married Nov 9^th and John was going to be deploying early Jan so he definitely wanted the bathroom to be functioning before he left.  John took off pretty much the whole month of Dec to get things done before he left.

That boy worked his butt off. He worked with his buddy, John, who was our plumber and they finished the plumbing right before Christmas!!!!  My mom would come up on the weekends and watch Graham so we could get some things done around the house. A 19 month old makes DIY bathroom projects hard.  But you can see he's such a good helper.

My mom, bless her heart, had decided durning one of her visits that she was going to buy us the rest of the items we needed for the bathroom. So on Christmas Eve, her and my dad were coming up to visit and she called and said "Meet us at Lowes, we're going to finish getting the stuff for your bathroom"  She didn't want to give us money because we would of probably spent it on bills.  Mom was so touched that John was working so hard she didn't want to see all of his hard work to go unnoticed.

So after a last min shopping trip to Lowe's on Christmas Eve, we were set and ready to finish up the bathroom. Well finish it up the best that we could before John left. I’m pretty handy so most of the left over stuff I can finish while he’s gone.

But that poor boy....worked until the zero hour. We had to leave for Chicago early the next morning and we worked on the bathroom and packed until midnight the night before he left.

I love the way everything turned out.  Not to bad for 1st timers if I do say so myself.

Master Bedroom Remodel, part 1

Good Morning fellow readers.

I figured today I'd talk about our DIY Master Bedroom Remodel. Disclaimer…we are still not 100% finished…but leaps and bounds from where we started.

We live in an older house (40-50's-ish style home) idk my husband bought it prior to us getting together. It sits on a little 2 acre plot in the country. We have 4 bedrooms (2 downstairs and 2 upstairs) and 1 bathroom!!!!

Yes, this is a NO-GO in my book. I hated that we only had 1 bathroom. When we had people over they'd have to wait to use the bathroom. If someone’s in the shower and you have to pee….you either wait or give the friendly knock before you enter (don’t act like you don’t do it too)  Needless to say it’s just a big pain in the butt.

So our master bedroom is quite large 12x26. Come to find out it used to be 2 rooms that was turned into 1 oblong room.  The closet space was minimal. We had 2 closets, both of which were very small. Like un-functional small. There was so much dead space it was ridiculous.

One day the hubby was at work and drew a sketch of what he wanted to do with the room. Walk in closet & add a 2^nd bathroom!!! Ok, I’m sold where so I sign up?  We talked about it for a little bit and decided to go for it.  We had a plumber come out and look at the house to make sure it was do-able first before we started tearing down walls and ripping out carpet. I had an architect friend look at the sketch to make sure we had a freaking clue.  The plumber said it was totally doable, the electrician (family friend) say he would be able to run eclectic and our architect friend said that everything looked good in the sketch.

 

So as soon as you get the green light what do you do….Tear down walls and rip out carpet, duh.

Oh & start making a pinterest board of what you want to do & watch every episode of al HGTV DIY shows.

 

Since this project went on as long as it did, I have a feeling I should probably break it up into parts. So consider this Part 1.  I know the suspense is just too much. I promise more to follow shortly.

 

 

Bathroom Pallet Wall Tutorial

Hey Friends.

Tonight I wanted to give you all a tutorial of our pallet wall in our new bathroom. The hubs and I had posted some pictures on our facebook page and people have been asking about it since we posted it. So I figured I'd let you see 1st hand how we did it.

I scoured Pinterest and came across this pic as my motivation. I loved the colors...but wasn't 100% sure if those colors would work for us.

 I was lucky enough to come across an endless amount of pallets at work. So I took the truck to work and loaded up 2 full truck loads {about 50 pallets total}  

Then it was time for a little manual labor.  I've seen some projects on Pinterest that took the time and removed the nails on the ends and middle of the pallets or carefully cut them. I figured screw it and just grabbed the saw and started cutting.  Don't worry I had the wood burner going in the garage to stay warm :)  

 

 After cutting through about 30-35 pallets, I grabbed the sander and touched up the edges and the front of the boards if I felt that they needed it.  I grouped the pieces by width and some by length.

After all the pieces where sanded and grouped, we stared staining. Sorry I didn't take any pictures of the actual staining process, only a pic of the pallets drying. 

I went to Lowe's and purchased a 4 different tint-able stains {sangria, moss green, blue and brown}.  The stain was almost like a paint, which I loved because it washed off so much easier.

We also bought a $5 return gallon of a redish-brick paint to put on the bottom of the wall where the old wainscoting was. It worked perfectly.  We wanted a darker color to hide any gaps or imperfections in the wall behind the pallets. 

After painting...it was time to lay out the pallets. I stared by laying the rows out on the floor. Once I found my groove we started applying them to the walls.  To secure them to the wall we used some liquid nail & air nailed them to the wall. We hit the ends and the middle. Those boards aren't going anywhere :) 

The Hubs in action. 

We totally lucked out with piecing the wall together, there wasn't too much extra cutting to fit the boards.  John did an amazing job. I'm so proud of him.

The final project.  I was really not digging the blue when I was staining the wood, but LOVED the way all the colors turned out.  This might be the 1st Pinterest project that turn the way I was hoping.  

We still need to add some trim work to the bathroom but its totally functional. John did an awesome job. I'm so proud of him, he worked his ass off before he left to get everything running and functional.

Total cost for the pallet wall...
50 pallets= FREE
1 gal of Paint= $5.oo from Lowe's {it was a return gallon}
4 stains= $6.00/stain ($24 total)
2 tubed of Liquid nails=$6.00

Grand Total=$35.00 

 I'll take it.