Feeling Blue…

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

BJ and I recently added a new storage cabinet to our dining room. We found this cabinet on sale at Target a few weeks ago. I’ve mentioned before how much I love a good sale, especially when I’ve had my eye on something.

I really like this piece because it has a vintage look to it. And it’s blue! I’m not that great at yard sale shopping or antiquing so I often find myself waiting for furniture pieces like this to go on sale or clearance before I buy them. Maybe one day I will be able to understand the world of yard sales and antique malls. If you have any suggestions, feel free to send them my way. I’m always looking for new ideas and tips. My problem is that I don’t even know where to start when it comes to buying old pieces.

I’ve been keeping my eye out for furniture to help finish out our dining room. I was excited to come across this piece for storing extra glasses, dishes and cookbooks.

I really love the glass window-frame doors of this piece. It displays our extra wine glasses, vintage Coca-Cola glasses and cookbooks beautifully.

The pumpkins on top of the cabinet, we won at a family reunion last year and I made the flower arrangement. The ice bucket on the right is a wedding gift from my best friend’s grandmother. The ice bucket works as a lovely and unique candy dish. Thank you, Lois! (shout outs to awesome grandmas! I know a few more grandmas who are also pretty awesome)

Now our dining room feels more complete. Even Bentley approves.

Do you have a favorite furniture piece in your home? Or maybe something that you kept an eye on for awhile and couldn’t wait to finally bring it home?

Feeling the Love, Home Style

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

Our house is certainly feeling the love and so are we. It’s been a busy few weeks getting our home ready for a reappraisal and even though we are far from finished with our home improvement, DIY and decorating projects, we are proud of how far we’ve come since we moved in. It takes time to make a house a home and I’m enjoying every minute of our journey.

The appraisal is now officially over and as promised, here is an official wrap-up on our “Show Your House Some Love for the Reappraisal To Do List.”

~~1. Weed the garden and replant the potted mums~~

~~2. Spruce up the loft so it looks like we use the space~~

~~3. Organize and clean the spare bedroom and BJ’s office~~

~~4. Finish the crown moulding and baseboard projects~~

We did it! We finished all of the items on our list before the reappraisal.

Number 3 on our list was to organize and clean the spare room and BJ’s office. Just a few weeks ago, these room were stuffed full of boxes, papers and Goodwill donations. After spending a day hauling stuff out and reorganizing, these rooms are once again usable.

With the addition of the his and hers bookshelves in our bedroom, we moved the white shelving cubes to the spare bedroom to be used as storage. Our very first dining room table also found new life as a craft/project table.

In addition, the old coffee table from the living room is now a game and puzzle table.

BJ’s office was daunting when we first started reorganizing the chaos. There were still unpacked boxes in there!
Now all of the boxes are unpacked and we can see the floor again. Our next project with this room is to add bookshelves to give BJ more space to further organize his stuff.

The last, and the biggest project on our reappraisal to do list, was to finish the crown molding and baseboard projects. If you remember, we started working on the crown molding in the living room and kitchen around the same time that we tiled the floor in the dining room.

And drumroll please… Here are the before and after shots.

Here is the kitchen before the crown molding was finished:

And after:

Here is crown molding cap that BJ install in the living room to finish off the molding.

We also finished the baseboard in the dining room.

Here is the before, looking into the dining room. Notice the visible white drywall line in the paint on the far wall.

And here is the after. We decided to go with a taller more dramatic trim. This is just the baseboard before the quarter round was installed:

Now for the finished product with quarter round:

Since the rest of the house has a smaller baseboard installed, we bridged the gap between the taller baseboard in the dining room and the shorter baseboard in the foyer and kitchen with a thicker trim cap. We also added the quarter round to the baseboard to give the trim a finished look against the tile.

Since the tall white baseboard looks so nice against the slate tile floor, here are a few close ups for your viewing pleasure.

With the reappraisal over, we’ve decided to shift our focus to smaller projects for awhile. We are going to work on dressing up the loft, hanging some photos and I also have a fun Pinterest-inspired project planned for the coming weeks.

Did you wrap up any big projects this weekend?

Showing Our Home Some More Love

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

As promised, here are our fabulous Ikea finds from last weekend.

Along with the coffee table for the living room, we also brought home a pair of Poang chairs for the loft. The loft is a good example of the “design and use a room for how you live” lesson I learned during the YHL panel session. For months, BJ and I talked about all the possibilities for the loft. After many discussions about how we could use the room, we realized it would often be just the two of us (and Zoey, of course) spending time in the loft. Why worry about seating multiple people? We have plenty of entertaining space downstairs in the living room. Instead of an entertaining space, the loft will be a place for us to relax outside of our master bedroom. Even when family and friends come and stay with us, they can use this space to read or relax.

To kick off the loft transformation, we bought two Poang chairs with black brown frames and blue cushions.

Originally, my design plan for the loft was to hang yellow chevron curtains and make yellow chevron pillows for the chairs. After I searched the Internet for yellow chevron curtains, I couldn’t justify the price. Even to buy the fabric and make the panels and pillows myself seemed too pricey. I decided to reconsider my idea and instead I found some reasonably priced yellow chevron and gotcha lattice patterned pillows on Etsy and curtains from West Elm.

Two 18 x 18 Pillow Covers: Yellow and White Chevron Zig Zag & Gotcha Lattice

Okay, I digress…

Back to the Ikea finds. An exciting new addition to our bedroom are our his and hers cube bookshelves. Can you guess which one is which? 🙂

Those are our latest Ikea finds. As we continue showing our home some love for the upcoming reappraisal, we are slowly crossing items off our “Show Your House Some Love for the Reappraisal To Do List.”

1. Weed the garden and replant the potted mums

~~2. Spruce up the loft so it looks like we use the space~~

3. Organize and clean the spare bedroom and BJ’s office

4. Finish the crown moulding and baseboard projects

The Poang chairs were a huge upgrade to the loft, and as for the appraisal to do list, we can cross off number 2. We are still going to add some more touches to this room including the curtains, pillows and an entertainment center. But for now, we can call this one done.

We are diligently working on the rest of the list and are hoping to finish by Tuesday of next week. Fingers crossed that we get it all done in time.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Chilly Fall Nights

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

How do you relax on a chilly fall night? Here’s my favorite way… cozy by the fire!
That’s right, it’s October and we officially turned the heat on this past weekend. For the past two weeks, we were just turning the fireplace on at night. When it started getting chilly in our bedroom, we decided to turn on the whole house heat.

Zoey is very excited we decided to turn on the heat and start using the fireplace more.

On other note, did you notice, the fun fuzzy pillow in the first picture? We added some fuzzy pillows to our couch for the fall and winter.

And since it’s getting dark early, our candle has been glowing bright in the kitchen earlier and earlier each night.

Time for some hot chocolate by the fire. Have a great week!

Picture Perfect

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

So what have BJ and I been up to lately? Quite a lot actually.

First, we added some new furniture to our master bedroom.

Then we finally started adding pictures on the wall of our upstairs hallway.

I also bought a few more frames to add more photos to the walls of the upstairs hallway and continue into the loft. BJ and I also started planning out how we would like to design the space in the loft. Right now, it is a mix of furniture and not really usable. We have a projector that we would like to use for movies and we are thinking about turning the loft into a movie/game room. We both went to the same University, so we would like to incorporate our alma mater into the theme in a classy way.

Here’s where we stand now, it’s pretty empty. Just a few piece of furniture and no seating.

One of the challenges of this room is that it is the first thing you see when you come up the stairs. We’ve gone back and forth on the design of the loft. We’ve talked about putting a sectional couch and adding some bookshelves, and we’ve also discussed just putting some chairs from Ikea with the ottomans and making it more of a place to relax and kick back. If we go with the Poang chairs, then we plan to add a few side tables and skip the coffee table.

There are many options to choose from and I’m sure we will find something perfect for our space. In the meantime, we’re enjoying coming up with some over the top ideas and then of course, ruling those out. But if money were no object, we would have a pretty cool looking loft already! 🙂

Here’s to One Year

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

One year ago today, I started Frame By Frame Style. Not only has this blog brought me joy, it’s a great way to update our friends and family on our home improvement endeavors. I also hope it has given some of our readers a few tips, tricks and a little inspiration along the way.

In honor of Frame By Frame Style’s first year, here is a look back at five of my favorite projects from this past year:

1. The Railing Stain Project

We actually did this project almost a year before we started this blog, but it really transformed the look of our home’s interior.

2. The Wall One Year in the Making

The infamous blue paint chip that lived on our wall for a year finally turned into one large blue wall. It’s made all the difference when you walk into our house. All of our accent walls are painted on the rooms that face our front door. When you walk in you see bright colors throughout the house. It’s like a crayon box, but better.

3. The Kitchen Island

We literally went from very little usable kitchen counter space, to plenty of room for friends and family to gather and hang out and even help us make a meal. It was a fun adventure to bring this island home in pieces from Ikea and then to assemble it all was a lot of work. The results were so worth it.

4. The Tile Floor

It took several months to finish our floor and the baseboard is still a work in progress, but the look and feel of the room is so different. I love the way the slate looks. And I’m proud to say that I laid many of the tiles in this room. It was my first go at tiling a floor. Not too shabby.

5. The Tree Towel Rack

The towel rack in our guest bathroom is probably my favorite project that we did this year. It turned out exactly as I envisioned and it was so easy! I love when people come over and it see it. It it so fun. I smile every time I see this tree.

It’s been a very busy, but enjoyable year working on projects and sharing our progress. I’m looking forward to more projects and another year of writing posts about our home improvement adventures.

Have a great weekend!

Hand-Me-Down No More

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

We finally have a new couch!! Hooray! No more hand-me-down couch with a lack of seats when friends and family come over.

Remember our old couch?

Here is its replacement. It’s bigger, has more seating and fits in a little better with our decor.

Before we left to pick up our new couch at Ikea, we made sure it would fit by using blue painters tape to visualize the dimensions on the floor. I find this helps me to see how the object will be incorporated into our home. We did the same process when we built our kitchen island.

We postponed getting a new coffee table due to the lack of time we had a Ikea. We were more concerned about getting the couch while we had access to a truck to haul it in. It’s also a good thing that we didn’t buy a new coffee table because there is no way it would’ve fit in the truck. We barely made it with the couch alone. So until we find a new coffee table, our old wooden one will remain.

I would like to change our current coffee table to a square table. I really like this idea I found on Pinterest. I’m still debating the color, but I do like how bright this one is.

I’m so excited about our new couch. I can’t wait to add some more bright throw pillows and find/make the perfect coffee table and really tie the room together.

Giving the gladiolus a little lift

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

Do you remember the V8 commercials with the people walking around leaning to the side? Then everyone would drink a V8 and stand up straight again. Our gladiolus reminded me of that last night when I saw it leaning in our garden. It looked like it needed a V8. I also discovered that we had two gladiolus growing this year. However, after we came home from running errands this morning, one leaned over so much that it snapped and it is now in a vase in our kitchen.

But the other gladiolus got a little lift after we ran to Home Depot to get a stake to tie it to. We decided to get a shepherd’s crook and hang a plant basket to add something more to that area of the garden.

We couldn’t find any string, so we used a small piece of wire to tie the long stem to the shepherd’s crook.

Meanwhile, the other flower that snapped is hanging out in our kitchen. I love the way it looks in the bright green vase! BJ got me flowers for our two-year anniversary and they came in this vase. It looks perfect with the bright green we have in our kitchen.

While we were at Home Depot today, we also bought two new Adirondack chairs so we could move the teal chairs to the back patio. And we bought some fun contrasting pillows to make the chairs pop.

So no mulching yet, but I better get to it soon! I spotted some weeds trying to take over our garden. Not cool!

Dear weeds, I’m coming for you. Love, Jessica.

Have a great weekend everyone! Stay cool!

A little wine with your home decor?

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

Mmmm wine. I love how some of it tastes and I love to use wine bottles in our decor. We came across these wine racks at Ikea while we were still living in our apartment. When we moved into our house, we hung them up in our kitchen and ever since then, we’ve found different ways to incorporate wine into our kitchen decor.

The flowers and grapes came from Michaels. I bought them for another project and just on a whim, I weaved the flowers through the wine racks and then hung the grapes from them for a little something extra. I’ve always liked the way it looks and now I don’t remember what I originally bought the flowers or grapes for.

One of the fun things about using wine bottles in your kitchen decor is the constant change of scenery. As friends and family come over and you enjoy a bottle of wine together, you replace that bottle with a new one.

And you can also use the corks. Here is how we are reusing our wine bottle corks. Our collection is still in progress.

Finally, to go along with our wine decor, we found this neat wall hanging.

Once we finish the crown molding, our plan is to hang this above the door into our dining room.

BJ and I became more into wine around this time last year when we took our first anniversary trip to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. We took tours of the winery, participated in a wine tasting and even enjoyed a wine and chocolate pairing. If you enjoy wine and haven’t been to the Biltmore, I definitely recommend it. If you are interesting in learning more about wine it’s a great way to get away to the mountains and learn about vino while you’re there!

Who wouldn’t want to kick back, drink a glass of wine and enjoy this view?

Have a great week!

Lilies Galore!

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

I’ve posted a lot of flowers and our gardens lately, but with all of this beautiful weather, it’s been hard to stay inside! With that said, here are a few more beautiful flowers from our gardens! Our lilies are doing wonderful and the petunias I planted over a week ago, are still going strong!

Since I’ve taken a bunch of flower photos lately, I’ve been thinking about putting together another photo collage for our wall. This one will include some of our travel (last weekend we paid a visit to Philadelphia, but more on that later…) as well as some of the photos from our garden, or maybe I will put together two collages!

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend! Ours was great! I will post more later this week on our fantastic Memorial Day weekend trip to Philly!