Our Latest Project: A Brick Wall!

I have always wanted to have a house that has an exposed brick wall.  

It just adds so much character and gives it a real historic feel.

Being that our house is brand new, we don't have the option of

 tearing out old walls and finding a beautiful hidden brick treasure.  

So what did we do?  We created our own!

There was this awkward wall between our kitchen and living room

that I just wasn't sure what to do with.  

(This was after we tore the trim off and started the process)

Was it the kitchen?  Was it the living room?

I wasn't sure.

So I knew I wanted to accent it somehow.  Wallpaper, accent paint color, picture wall?

This is where my husband took a deep breath and braced himself for what was about to come.

He loves it when I search for ideas :)

Brick!

  

We looked around all of the home improvement stores for the brick veneer tiles and it was SUPER expensive.  This wall isn't that big - about 100 square feet.  With the brick veneer tiles that they sell, it was going to cost about $1000!  Not what we wanted to spend.

So, being our frugal selves, we decided that we would make our own brick veneer.

We were lucky enough to be given all of these beautiful bricks!

They were a mess!  They had been sitting in a wooded area for who knows how long.

We just had to wash them, rid them of their former tenants (there were TONS of these),

 and cut them.  We cut both sides off of them.  So we got 2 veneer pieces from each brick.

Yes...all 200 of them.

So here's our homemade veneer...

Now it was time to prep the wall and start putting it up.

We added cement board to the wall and then started putting the brick tiles up with versabond.

We added spacers in between while it was still wet for even spacing and to prevent the tiles from slipping.

Oh, and you have to use these spacers on your outlets and light switches

 since your wall is sticking out a lot further now.  

Once all of the bricks were up, it was time for the grout.  

We put this in by using a grout bag.  This thing could ice like a million cupcakes :)

Let it sit for a few minutes and then smooth it out with this handy little tool.

And there ya go!

A beautiful brick wall.

It was definitely an intense process but it was well worth it.

I think this was a great way to accent this wall and I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out!

How do you accent random walls??

Half Bath Makeover

First of all - please excuse these horrible cell phone pictures.  

Secondly, this bathroom is quite possibly the smallest room in the world so getting a full picture of the room was completely out of the question.  So this corner is pretty much all you're gonna get.

You'll get the idea though and see this corner go through quite the transformation.

Our half-bath was very basic to start.  There were just plain walls painted with flat beige paint.  There was no crown molding or trim of any kind.  So we pretty much started from scratch.

My handy husband (Dan) started out by taking everything out of the room.  That included the toilet and the pedestal sink.  Like I said, very basic.

Dan made board and batting with MDF (medium density fiberboard).  This is a pretty inexpensive building material that is a lot smoother than wood.  The only downfall would be that it makes a crazy mess when cutting it with a table saw.  I swear I'm still cleaning it out of our garage.

Once we had the look we wanted, the nail holes had to be filled in with putty and sanded down.

Now, time for paint!

Once the board and batting was painted, we painted the whole room white.

Now it was time to start with the stencil!

I knew that I wanted to do something special with this halfbath, I just wasn't sure what.

I originally wanted to do wallpaper but I couldn't get over how expensive wallpaper can be.

So that's when I came across Cutting Edge Stencil's website.

There were so many cool stencils to choose from!  This site is great.

I found the trellis stencil and instantly fell in love! 

 It was just what I was looking for.  And get this...only $39.95!

You pay for your stencil once and you can use it over and over.

People are using these stencils on walls, ceilings, furniture, and even curtains.

So here is how it started...

It was pretty tedious work, I'm not going to deny that.  

If you aren't sure how it works, check out one of their tutorial videos here.

After a couple of hours, this is what we ended up with.

Again, please excuse the cell phone pictures.  

It was night time at this point too so no more natural light.

Once we got everything put back in, this is our final result...

We are very happy with how it turned out.  I promise to get a better picture with an actual camera.  

Better pics to come!

Friday Faves

I want to start a little series called "Friday Faves".  In this post, I will post different things that happened or I discovered during that week that are worthy enough to be pegged as my "faves" (favorites).  Being that this is the first post, I might be cheating a little and using things that I didn't exactly find during this week. 

I know, I know...I'm a little obsessed with Lady Gaga.  She just died her hair like a caramel shade but kept a strip of blonde above her ear.  I LOVE it!

(via AHLAN)

I have to talk about this beauty product that I found about 2 weeks ago.  I bought a few things at the Clinique counter so I was given one of those "free gift" bags that they usually give when you spend so much money.  In this gift bag, there were the usual things like eye shadow, lip gloss, and mascara.  BUT, there was also a tinted moisturizer called Moisture Surge.  It is INCREDIBLE!  It is very light and oil free so you don't have to worry about break outs.  It's great to use when you don't want to put on a lot of makeup.  Just put on this tinted moisturizer, add powder, your eye make-up...Done!

(via Sephora)

I finally got a new phone!  I was in the market for a new phone a couple of weeks ago and I was so indecisive it was annoying.  I was going back and forth between an iPhone and a Droid.  I have always been a Blackberry girl so I was worried about these phones being too advanced.  And let's face it, I'm a little touch screen stupid.  After talking to the employees at Verizon Wireless, I was sold on the 

Samsung Galaxy sIII.  This phone is awesome! 

(Check out the review here.)

I feel like a 14 year old girl that just broke up with her boyfriend when I say this but I am LOVING the new Taylor Swift song!  Check it out here!

I am pretty pumped about this.  I am going to attempt to make these adorable Hello Kitty Cake Pops for my niece's birthday this weekend.  Happy Birthday Miya!  

I found this great tutorial here to help me along.

My idea of the PERFECT kitchen...

White Marble + Jadeite = Perfection!

(via Cape Cod Collegiate)

What are some of your favorite things right now?

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