White Vans, Orange Shag, and Gazelle {or, Q&A about our wall-to-wall carpeting}

Let’s face it: installing wall-to-wall carpet is about as popular in the world of interior design as tweezing your nose hairs out at the dinner table would be, well, anywhere. (I hope? Don’t admit it if your dinner table is prone to such antics.)

But around here we love nose hairs being different. Okay, we actually just love comfortable and warm padding underfoot and not having to refinish the jank-fest floors in our upstairs in order to have the significantly more popular hardwoods with area rugs. We have all that downstairs and it is lovely. But it wasn’t feasible for our upstairs. Cue the obvious question, which I asked when we first uttered the words “wall-to-wall”: is it possible for wall-to-wall carpeting to be attractive? I say yes.

The truth is, I’ve never been happier to see an unmarked white van pull into our driveway than the day our wall-to-wall carpet appeared. (Incidentally, the carpeting was in that unmarked white van, in case you were wondering if a sleazy crack salesman emerged instead. Incidentally, such fellows don’t actually frequent our driveway, in case you were questioning my seeming moral dubiousness.)

But less talk about white vans and more talk about how we found our affordable, attractive, and eco-friendly carpet, in helpful Q&A format.

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What is it?

It’s wall-to-wall carpeting.

No, really, what is it?

Oh.

…

Hello?

Oh sorry, I got distracted by this carpet model I know.

What was the question?

WHAT KIND OF CARPET IS IT?

No need to shout; I heard you the first time.

…[fumes patiently]…

The brand of carpeting is Shaw, the style is Conquest, and the color is Limestone.

Thank you. Why did you choose carpeting over refinishing your wood floors?

The floors in our upstairs were not in good shape and refinishing them would not only have been time-consuming, but simply not worth the results. Kenley’s nursery floor was painted brick red, another room had old carpet glue adhered to much the floor. The boards everywhere were warped and uneven, typical of a second-story for a house as old as ours.

Do you have something against brick red painted floors?

Yes.

But didn’t you refinish your bedroom floor a few years ago?

Yes. It was a significant improvement, but still too shabby and old-looking overall.

Do you have something against old things?

Yes. I mean, no. I mean, sometimes.

How has it held up so far?

Swimmingly, for the 6 months in which it has lived here. It has a 20 year warranty and the retailer from which we purchased it said they would come replace any sections that didn’t survive our normal wear and tear. But so far it vacuums nicely, and the stain-resistant feature has already come in handy—liquids just pool on top of the rug rather than soak in. Plus I’m told that I will be able to parade a herd of gazelle across this carpet and still be able to clean it back to perfection.

Have you tested that claim?

No. The only gazelle with which I’m personally acquainted have been avoiding my calls.

I see. Is it true that Shaw’s products are eco-friendly?

Yes. One of the reasons I chose Shaw in the first place is because it’s made in the USA and the carpeting won’t give us cancer. Or something. (You can read more about the Green Label Plus program for low chemical emissions here.)

Speaking of green, I’ve heard that teething frogs taste better when eaten on this particular wall-to-wall carpeting. Is this true?

Yes.

But isn’t that texture a little rough on her sweet baby skin?

Not at all. It’s actually super soft. I can lay on it and be totally comfy, and Kenley happily face-plants into it on a regular basis.

In that case, I’m liking the texture.

Me too. One of the reasons I was initially against wall-to-wall is because it sometimes seems to create a flat sea of color. The basketweave texture in our carpeting prevents that from happening and adds a little modern interest to the floor. Ack I just got all design-speak.

Wouldn’t an orange shag rug have had the same effect?

OMG why didn’t you point that out sooner?! Now we’ve wasted all that money.

Well since you didn’t go with orange, how did you choose your color?

We threw five gazelle up in the air and chose our color based on an algorithm derived from the order in which they fell.

Really?

Yes, that’s why they aren’t returning my calls.

Really?

No. Actually, we just went to the carpet store, looked at the miniscule color swatches, then politely asked the owner if we could perhaps have some larger samples ordered directly from Shaw before we installed 1600 square feet of a color that looked totally different on a 3”x3” square. They were happy to oblige given the volume of our order, and had the swatches shipped directly to our house. It took about 1.38 seconds for both of us to realize which one was the right choice.

So much did it cost, then?

A lot, by our penny-pinching standards. In fact, it was the most money we’ve put into our home since living here. But we wanted a high-quality product that had good aesthetics and was eco-friendly, so that’s why we were fairly picky and didn’t just go with the cheapest big-box retailer option. We also had the entire upstairs and a stairwell done at once, which obviously cost more right now but saved us money in the long run: the retailer gave us a large volume discount and a free upgrade to the higher quality padding, neither of which we would have gotten if we’d done it one room at a time. I should also add, though, that Shaw does offer more expensive options, and our choice reminds me of some of the more expensive options sold by FLOR. So overall, we landed middle-of-the-road. Just call us roadkill.

It seems to me we’ve covered everything, roadkill. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Yes. This picture.

That doesn’t have anything to do with this post.

Correct.

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So there you have it! What do you think? Are you a wall-to-wall fan?

Waxing Nostalgic About Our Formerly Decrepit Second Floor {Part 1: Nursery & Master Bedroom and Closet}

We started the projects discussed in this post in February 2011.

I started writing this post in September 2013.

It is now February 2014.

And you are now thinking: That’s great, Erin. What exactly is your point.

My point is that I have no point other than that there’s a good chance a triceratops still roamed the earth when we looked at each other and said “Why don’t we send the upstairs of our house to rehab?” But the time spent paid off, because we seriously have a brand new upstairs. Like almost as brand new as Cher’s face. However, this post will likely go down in history as The One Erin and Rick Will Revisit From Time to Time and Wonder Why They Didn’t Just Buy an RV and Live in a Field.

First up: the master bedroom.

Completed on the to-do list: Remove carpet. Demo closet. (Let me rephrase. DEMO CLOSET. Hmm. Still not accurately reflecting the enormity of the task. DEMO CLOSET. Okay that’s marginally better.) Scrape off textured ceiling. Skimcoat ceiling. Sand ceiling. Spray paint registers. Skimcoat junky plaster walls. Sand walls. Paint walls. Patch parts of junky plaster ceiling where we did a bad job the first time. Sand ceiling. Paint ceiling. Tear down old knot-bleeding trim. Replace with new MDF trim. Wood fill new trim. Sand new trim. Paint new trim. Remove boob light. Install chandelier. Have carpet installed!!

It’s sort of a tragedy to encompass all of these rooms’ work in just one teensy little post. Oh well. I shall console myself by gazing upon footage of this “before” angle.

And here’s a gratuitous “in-progress” shot as further proof of our insanity. I mean seriously, what kind of pregnant lady is okay with this sort of disaster happening in her nest.

 

You’ll notice that “after” picture contains no bed. Or other furniture. This is because we are going minimalist and have slept on the floor for the past six months. Actually, that’s a lie. The truth is that this photo was taken just minutes after the carpet was installed. Bedroom updates—helpfully complete with bed—coming soon.

Next stop on the tour: master closet and back stairs.

Completed on the to-do list: Remove carpet. Build up around the attic stairs and drywall over weird holes. Build new closet system. Paint walls. Spray paint and install new lights. Rebuild squeaky, caving stair treds. Finish installing baseboard. Wood fill trim. Sand trim. Paint trim. Take down railing. Paint railing. Install railing. Have carpet installed!!

A bonus not included here is “Console your hysterical wife after she trips on the stairs when the railing is gone and doesn’t even remember how she ended up at the bottom of the stairs because she was working so hard to not land on her baby belly.” Truly, I was in Mama Bear mode. Unsteady, balance-challenged Mama Bear mode. Bears in the wild don’t seem to have that problem. Perhaps it’s the four legs, or the general lack of stairs.

Final stop on today’s Part 1 tour: the nursery. Hey, look who’s here!

Completed on the to-do list: Skimcoat junky plaster walls. Sand walls. Paint walls. Skimcoat junky plaster ceiling. Sand ceiling. Paint ceiling. Frame new closet. Drywall new closet. Mud drywall. Paint closet. Sand trim. Paint trim. Rip out old carpet. Laugh at hideous red painted floor. Have carpet installed. Fill the room with cute things. Have baby installed!!

For more nursery details go here!

The details of our brand new upstairs started out being all cozy in one post but it was ridiculously long. So today you got Part 1 and next week you’ll get Part 2.

Before I sign off, I should add that that the majority of this work came to be in the seven months before Kenley was born. This was because we like to be ridiculous and obviously pregnancy is the best time to do renovation wanted to have the entire upstairs carpeted before she arrived, and in order for that to happen, a TON of messy work—as evidenced by the lists above—needed to be done first. With the October deadline looming over us, the carpet made its grand entrance just a month and a half before Kenley did. I’ll share more specifics about the carpet in an upcoming post. Spoiler alert: we are very happy with it.

Did your house need some resurfacing or did it come as a new blank slate? Should we have skipped all the labor and instead purchased an RV? According to Clark Griswold, they look nice parked in driveways.

Farewell, Fleshy Walls and Gangrenous Trim. {Spare Bedroom Progress}

In the continuing saga of “Frantic Nesting at Erin and Rick’s House,” I present to you the latest installment of upstairs progress: the formerly fleshy and gangrenous spare bedroom.

When we first moved in, we non-affectionately referred to this room as the Rope Room because A) the previous owners had decorated with thick rope all around the perimeter and trim and B) we are clever. In case you ever decide to glue rope to your house, the method they used involved giant staples AND glue—you know, in case the staples got lazy and decided to take the day off.

In the name of all things original plaster and trim, please do not glue rope to your house. Thank you.

They also should have gotten a refund for that color match paint job there. It’s like when you put on sunscreen and miss a spot and get burned there and only there.

Soooo the following is a list of tasks completed in this room in the past 2.5 years:

1. Rip down rope.
2. Install mess and weird light fixture.
3. …that’s it.

But NO MORE. Because a few weeks ago, the poor, neglected spare bedroom became the final victim in our Get the Upstairs Ready for Carpet scheme. Just like the nursery, the original plaster walls were pockmarked and rough, and the trim was gangrenous gross and bumpy and peeling. So just like the nursery, the room got the skim coat treatment along with sanded and painted trim. Carpet was also removed.

Also just like the nursery, the walls are Benjamin Moore’s Gray Owl mixed at 50% lighter, and the trim and ceiling are Benjamin Moore’s Simply White. The same-old same-old color choices go along with my plan to not spend so much time making little house decisions. I knew both of those were tried and true so I just went with it.

The closet also got some love.

This room will eventually become somebody’s “big kid” room, but for now, we’re just going to try not to let miscellaneous junk take a dump in there. Other than that, we have no plan for it.

Hope everyone is having a good week! This pregnant lady begins school in a week. Time flies when you are turning your house upside-down…or watching somebody else do it for you. (To be fair, I did don a mask and do some painting through all of this.)

Psst…want to see the rest of our upstairs progress? Check out the newly drywalled common room, the closet Rick and relatives built, the herringbone accent wall, and the nursery curtains and paint!

How to Paint Herringbone on a Wall (and Live to Tell About It) *TUTORIAL*

I have a bad habit of taking forever to post about things. Just check out the “Favorites” listed in the right sidebar. Every one of those snippets begins with something to the effect of “Many eons ago before the world began.” (Maybe my bad habit is just discussing my tardiness in the beginning of my posts. Note to self.) Anyway, I’ve finally pulled together the tutorial for how we created our herringbone accent wall. Like I mentioned in the reveal post, our method was a bit simpler than the tutorials I perused as I tried to wrap my brain around this process. There was no trigonometry. Just simple addition. My English teacher brain likes that.

How to Paint Herringbone on a Wall AND (say it with me)…LIVE TO TELL ABOUT IT

You’ll need:

• painters tape (we used a combination of Scotch Blue 1” and Frog Tape 2”—the 2” wide tape is how we got away with simple addition and a simple layout)
• paint
• pencil
• patience
• peaches (It starts with P and I figured I had a nice little trend going there, so. Besides, peaches are delicious.)

1. Mark and tape your vertical lines. Start by measuring the width of your wall and dividing that width into equal vertical sections. The more sections you make, the more herringbone Vs there will be, and the skinnier they will be. I measured ours into 6 equal sections so that the whole design was centered on the wall, but you could be wild and crazy and do whatever you want. I’d recommend marking these measurements with pencil and then checking and re-checking your measurements BEFORE you put up tape and step back to find out the tape is crooked because your measurements were off. I am obviously not speaking from experience.

2. Mark and tape your diagonals. Don’t be fooled by the brevity of this section’s title, because this is the most time-consuming part—and also where the process got tricky and I almost gave up. Luckily Rick came home from work right about when I was about to have a meltdown and eat an entire carton of ice cream, and together we returned the ice cream to the freezer and figured out a good plan of attack. Basically, what you have to figure out is how deep you want your V angles to be.

I wanted somewhere between the top two, so I put up the first piece of 2” Frog Tape (beginning at the top of one of the vertical lines of 1” tape) and just adjusted it until I got an angle I wanted.

The next thing we had to measure was the distance between the left end of the tape and the ceiling so that we could replicate the same angle in the other vertical sections. For us, that distance ended up being 10”. (Again, this exact measurement will vary depending on how deep you choose to make your Vs.) I don’t have a picture of the next few steps but it looked something like this:

From here, you do a lot of measuring. But because we used the 2” Frog Tape, our measuring was simple. There was no need to confusingly tape off the alternating sections like we had to when we painted stripes in our bathroom. And there was no need for trigonometry or other mind-numbing calculations. Using the 2” Frog Tape was key here because it allowed us to easily create a 2” space (that would stay white) between each desired V. Each of our exposed diagonals (that would be painted navy) was going to be 2.5” in width. Therefore, to determine where the second piece of tape needed to be placed, we simply measured down 2.5” from both ends of that first top piece of tape and marked it off in pencil on the 1” vertical blue tape.

All of the remaining marks within a vertical section were made 4.5” from the previous mark (2” for the tape and 2.5” for the desired white space). As I was putting up the tape (Rick did all of the measuring/marking), I knew that the TOP of my piece of tape needed to line up with the pencil marks on the blue tape.

For those pesky pieces of top and bottom tape that touched the ceiling/floor versus the vertical lines (which means you can’t easily measure to the 2.5” mark), we just held up tape and eyeballed it until the angle seemed to match. This is where having a helper comes in handy (again).

3. PAINT AND PEEL AWAY THE TAPE! The fun part. The part where you cover your eyes, cower in a corner, and maybe wet your pants a little in fear of the whole thing not turning out the way you wanted it to. Sort of like the first day of middle school. We painted one half of the wall at a time and worked quickly, applying a second coat just a few minutes after the first (the navy was too dark to get away with just one coat, but allowing either of the coats to dry would guarantee a messy, peeling edge when we removed the tape). Within a few minutes of applying the second coat, we removed the tape so that it wouldn’t peel the paint away.

And presto, a herringbone accent wall that took around six hours to create.

I think it would have taken less time if we had 100% known what we were doing—but as it was, we had some trial and error, and obvious breaks for peach-eating and cat-petting.

Before and after of the room? Okay. (For more details on this room’s progress and updates, go here and here.)

We’re getting there. The only thing left before furniture is carpet. Orrrr we could just leave the floor as-is. It has sort of a rustic, shabby chic vibe.

 

So…is your mind numbed? Truthfully, it’s a whole lot easier to do it than it is to explain it. It’s like the time I gave Rick and his family “great directions” to my college (via a route I had driven hundreds of times) and they ended up in West Wang-Doo, which was, incidentally, nowhere near my college. Oops.

*Linking up to Thrifty Décor Chick and Home Stories A to Z!*

The “Erin & Ricky Should Get Married” Club {Sentimental Gallery Wall Update}

I was going through a folder of some sentimental gooey stuff the other day and re-discovered these clever notes that had been sent by some official members of the “Erin and Ricky Should Get Married” Club. I mean, by Erin and Bicky.

This club had precisely two official members. These two official members were six and seven respectively when the club was founded. These two official members also plotted to play chicken ice hockey at our wedding reception and went so far as to put their flip-flops in the freezer in preparation. This was, perhaps, in celebration of the fact that their club succeeded in its mission.

Today, those two club members are still our baby sisters but have since learned the difference between a “B” and an “R.” They also no longer take an active interest in frozen poultry athletics. But since their notes still make me smile, and turned out to be prophetic in a way, it only seemed fitting to scan and print them and make them a part of our bedroom gallery wall.

It’s especially fitting because tomorrow, June 28th, marks the five-year anniversary of Erin and Bicky being married.

Time flies when life together brings new jobs, new smiles, new places to live. Time flies when your husband is your best friend. Time flies when you find yourself, five years later, carrying the child that you created with the man who makes each day complete, and knowing that the moment you see him holding your daughter for the first time will be one of the best moments of your entire life.

So Happy 5th Anniversary, Rick. I love you! (And seriously--can I start calling you Bicky now? It has a certain ring to it.) ;)

Psst…you can see more specifics of our bedroom gallery wall here.

Navy & White Herringbone Accent Wall Reveal

Okay. I’ve stepped outside of my comfort zone big time with our recent accent wall project. Like I am maybe even in a new country if my previous comfort zone was the United States. Like maybe, I don’t know, my new comfort zone is in Guatemala or something.

I wonder how the Guatemalan locals feel about navy and white herringbone walls.

I felt terrified of them. (Herringbone walls, not Guatemalan locals.) I am a vanilla sort of decorator. Safe, safe. But we plunged ahead and there is no going back now. I like that it’s quirky but just a little less modern than its cousin Chevron.

Rick has also put up new trim AND gorgeous crown moulding in the entire room. He is my hero and seriously deserves an award for all of the work he is doing around the house. He also deserves an award for the most vocabulary learned in one project. He learned the word herringbone. I learned no new vocabulary.

Creating the herringbone pattern itself took us approximately six hours from start to finish, with obvious breaks for food eating and cat petting.

As for how we did it: I started typing up the tutorial and anticipate that writing it will also take at least six hours of my time, for two main reasons.

1. The whole thing initially made my brain hurt like I’d just swallowed a gallon of ice cream in 4.7 seconds time, and I need to figure out a way to explain the process without inflicting physical harm on anyone who reads about it. I am in no position to be sued for damages. And, actually, I am in Guatemala…so good luck finding me to deliver the subpoena. Full speed ahead with a mind-numbing tutorial. (I am all about getting people to come back to my blog.)
2. We finished the wall over a month ago and these days I’m doing this new trick where I say “Hey Rick” and then by the time he says “What” I have forgotten the pressing matter with which I began the conversation. So basically I will work on summoning my month-old memories and post the full step-by-step tutorial later this week, complete with pictures and diagrams.

There are only a few herringbone tutorials out there, and because of the tape we used, the process we personally ended up with is (I think) a little less complicated than the tutorials I looked at. We shall see.

What’s your favorite pattern these days? Do you have any accent walls in your home? Who’s ready to have their mind numbed?

Update: here’s the full tutorial!