Our AirStone Wall

Many months ago, I shared with you about our first ever DIY project, which was the Giani kit that transformed our 80's peachy leafy kitchen counter top into something that looked a bit more this-century and granite. It was a weekend project that took relatively little time and really enhanced the look of the galley kitchen in our first house. It was still holding up great three years later when we moved out, and I would 100% recommend it to anyone looking for a kitchen overhaul!

So our huge DIY project at our new house was the stone wall. And today I thought I'd tell you about the good, the bad, and the ugly of that in case you're interested in trying it in your house!

It all started with this pin from Pinterest, which I found months {maybe even years} ago when we were merely dreaming of a new home that might have some sort of open concept transition from kitchen to living room. I tucked it away, and when Ryan and I were dreaming specifically of the changes to make in this house, I casually showed it to him. He was on board with it in about eighteen seconds and started researching companies that made stone to use in such a manner.

If you didn't know this {and I most certainly did not}, you have to be very careful if you use real stone on a wall like this because it is {obviously} heavy and can actually pull down a wall if it's not done properly. Plus, stone is just expensive. And you know expensive is not our love language.

So Ryan found a company called AirStone and did some research, read some reviews, and declared this was the company for us. This product can be used inside or out {though we can only vouch for its inside use} and is 75% lighter than true stone. It really does look like stone and feels that way to the touch - until you pick it up and feel how light it is. You also do not use any kind of mortar or grout that has to be mixed. There's an adhesive that you put on the back {like buttering bread} and that is what keeps it in place. And if you need to cut a stone, you can do it with a hacksaw, so you don't even need any special fancy power tools.

There are two color ensembles to chose from: Autumn Mountain, which is a brown tone, and Spring Creek, which is a blue/gray tone. We used Spring Creek in our house. They sell flat stones, which are the ones that you put on a regular wall surface...natural edge stones, which we used on the end of the wall that did not meet up to another wall...and corner edge stones, which we did not use, but you would use that if you were wrapping around a corner onto another wall you planned to cover with stones. And we used the bucket of putty they sell.

Now, I will say, the online calculator failed us. {And if I had been the one doing the calculating, I would absolutely claim user error because we all know my math skills. But Ryan did it and he's both good at that stuff and accustomed to that stuff, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't his fault.} The calculator recommended two boxes of the flat stone to cover the living room side of our wall, and we needed somewhere between six and seven boxes. {We ordered eight total when it was all done, but that was after we also decided to also do the backsplash in the kitchen.} So I'll just throw that out there for what it's worth. Obviously it did end up being a more expensive project than we planned, given we budgeted for two boxes and had to buy eight {and a second bucket of adhesive}, but we still feel the end result was worth the extra funds, because this is our favorite part of our house.

I absolutely giggle at the cute girl in her white mini skirt and perfect pedicure in the installation videos, because our experience at this process was nowhere near as neat and tidy as this. We had a whole lotta dust, a whole lotta stone fragments hanging around, and a whole lotta adhesive mess, but again, worth it in the end. I would NOT recommend wearing a white mini skirt for installation, however.

Each box of stone comes with multiple sizes and color tints of stones, and Ryan learned, after he got his groove down, that it was good to work two rows at a time and alternate the sizes and colors of each stone. {Some stones, as you can see in the picture, are long and some are short. Some are narrow and some are thick. Some are light and some are dark. You want to puzzle it together so you have a good variety of thicknesses, lengths, and color tone.}

We painted the wall the Autumn Fog color we used in the kitchen, since it coordinated with the stone, and that way if there would happen to be any paint showing through between any stones {which I don't think ended up being the case} it would at least blend in. Ryan "buttered" the stone with the adhesive, which worked really well. It stays soft for about 30 minutes, so if you need to pull a stone down and reposition it, you can. And we haven't had any issues with falling stone since it was installed, so I would say it holds well! Ryan did have to pull a few stones off after the adhesive had "cured" so we could install the counter top, and they did pop off without breaking, but the removal damaged the drywall on the way off. That was totally fine, since we put them right back on after the counter top was in, but I wanted to let you know that if you do this and undo it someday, you'll have some wall repair in front of you. Also - the adhesive has a pretty strong smell, and that's saying something from the girl who wishes Sharpie made a candle. I didn't get a headache or anything, but you'll probably want some good ventilation or a fan going if you're sensitive to smell.

Ryan is a perfectionist, so every stone had to be tested with the level, and now and then - especially when he got started with the bottom row - he had to use shims to hold things in place until the putty hardened. This part of the process slowed us down quite a bit, but I know the end result was worth it, because we didn't get to the top to find the entire thing was not level.

One HUGE frustration he had was that one of the two boxes of edge pieces we purchased was not level. Like every single stone had to be filed down to make them level. That was probably the biggest holdup of the project. I would say that's probably not typical since only one box was that way, and thankfully it was just the edge pieces, which meant a much smaller box. But it did happen and it did cause a slow down, frustration, and a few cuts on his hands!

The stones were easy to cut, but they did leave a dusty mess. Definitely put down towels or tarp if you're going to do this inside!

In the end, I would estimate Ryan put about sixty hours into this wall. But we do love it, we think it makes an incredible statement, and we both feel it was a good investment!

Meet Our New Living Room

Thank you so much for all the very kind words you offered yesterday about our kitchen reveal! You made us smile! :)

Today I want to introduce you to our new living room! Our living room at our old house was pretty small. It was long and narrow, which made it delightfully cozy, but somewhat of a nightmare for large furniture. That's why we ended up getting Mo {our couch}: he made it possible to add seating without adding a whole new piece.

I think we about doubled our space with our new living room, and while our original plan had been to include our dining room table in this space, we nixed that idea to make it a little bit more open and comfortable. We learned, though, on Mother's Day that by moving just one chair, we have plenty of room to add long tables and mostly-comfortably seat a dozen or more people.

Here was the living room as a blank canvas on our first day:

We both adored the vaulted ceilings, the abundant natural light, and all the space. We noticed those things right away when we toured the home! Our old living room only had one window and it wasn't even a true "picture window" so the whole natural light thing didn't happen there. I've been SO HAPPY with picture taking in this house because of the lighting!

The house has pretty new carpet and while it is really light {almost white, actually} and not quite what we were used to at our old place, it wasn't worth it to us to replace it because it's still in really good shape and it's neutral. All the walls were tan again, which I liked, but I needed a little contrast somewhere. And so we got busy overhauling this room.

In the second picture above, you see "the wall." The one that came down to open up the space to the kitchen. And no. We don't normally have a tripod sitting in the hallway. HA!

Here are some pictures from the room in progress:

You might have to enlarge the picture to see it, but there's a big #DEMODAY written on that wall. Oh, I love my Chip Gaines Junior!

Ten million points to the guys for tripod-ing all those shots since I wasn't there to document.

 We decided to keep the two vaulted walls the same tan color they were when we moved in, but we painted the little wall the same milk chocolate that we had painted the bathrooms at our old house. It gave some depth to the room without making it too dark.

It was kind of a mess in there at that time. Living room/workshop.

For the other wall, we did the stone feature I'd found on Pinterest. It's called AirStone, and it's a faux stone that you adhere to the wall. It's not heavy, so it doesn't weigh down the wall. It doesn't require grout. It does require a lot of patience. {Here is the post on how that process worked.} Ryan worked for over a week on this wall and it turned out STUNNING.

 This wall took so much work, but the end results were AMAZING.

I present:

And again, if you need side by side comparisons, here you go. Click to enlarge.

I'm even amazed by the transformation in the second one, and I live here!

So a recap of what we did...We left the carpeting alone and the paint on the two vaulted ceilings stayed. We painted one wall Milk Chocolate {Valspar, Lowe's} and put up new curtains. The curtains at the small window actually came from the living room window at our old house. The curtain on the other window, we purchased from Amazon to cover up the vertical blinds. {Vertical blinds bug me, but they're up and we paid for them with the house, so I just cover them and move on.} We tore down half the wall that led into the kitchen and put up the AirStone treatement, along with a counter that passes through to the kitchen. We moved in the furniture we already had - nothing new - and called it done!

We adore our living room. Seriously adore it. We also adore having ALL our living room furniture in one place. We could not do that at our old house. Big, comfy couches for people to hang out and kids to play when they come over. Lots of space for working out and for throwing in a couple of tables to feed the masses. Easy conversation between the two rooms and much, much light.

{Funny story: the night the wall came down, the former owners came over to drop off some things they meant to leave behind. They walked in, stared at the opening, and said, "We never thought of that." LOL!! I think they liked it!}

We put the clock on the stone wall and now we call that our clock tower. LOL! It feels very regal.

That wonderful, heavy counter top. It has worked so well, both in our everyday life and in what we've observed so far of our entertaining life. We love it.

We bought this wall saying a long time ago and have always wanted to hang it up, but the walls in our old house were textured and couldn't support vinyl wall letters. So this was our first chance to use it and we love it! Our little family of two. :)

Ahhhh, our comfy seating area. We seriously love it. Have I mentioned that?

So that's a tour of our living room! More rooms to come!

Slow Goodbyes: The Living Room

If you missed yesterday, this might be a confusing start to the blog. :) In preparation for our upcoming move, I'm working through the potential onslaught of emotions by paying tribute to our current home here in a little series of posts. Yesterday I reminisced about the memories made in our little kitchen, which is now a bare-bones cooking operation, and today I look at our living room, which is actually one of the still-most-put-together rooms in our house.

I did that on purpose because our living room is just that: where we live. It's hard to live for long in a space so completely upended, so I've tried to leave this room as put-together as I can for now. In truth, the only thing that might clue you in to this season is the stack of flattened boxes leaning up against the fat chair, and the utter lack of any personality in the room, since I've taken down every single thing from the wall except the big clock I bought Ryan our first Christmas together.

The fireplace is void of decoration but we run the lights in it for ambiance, and it couples with Albert, the plant we bought at IKEA on our second anniversary and have managed to keep alive for one year and four months. {WHAT!?!??!}

This room, though, even if it's somewhat haphazard right now, holds a billion memories.

When I was little and my grandparents still lived here, this was the room where they sat to watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune on their big console TV. This was where I slept on the "davenport" as they called it, with dining room chairs lined up along the side so I wouldn't fall out if I rolled over. This is where I would wake up in the morning to the smell of coffee and the sights of them reading their Bibles and the newspaper. This was the room where they put up a Christmas tree every year and we all gathered around to open gifts as a family, some of us on the davenport and some on dining room chairs tucked into corners. This was where Grandma and I sat almost every weekend to watch the true classics on Nick at Nite, after she was a widow and I was done with babysitting for the night and would come to stay with her.

This was the room I painted after I owned the house - and while it was supposed to be a lovely shade of terra cotta, there was just no mistaking that it was straight up PINK and all attempts to make it better essentially failed. So it was also the room  my friend Amber helped me repaint a soft yellow with an accent wall of sage, and that's what it remains to this day. So I guess you could say it was the room where I learned the hard way the ups and downs of paint choice.

In this room, Ryan confessed his feelings for me, told me he loved me {for the first time and a billion times thereafter}, offered me our first kiss, and prayed with me for the first time. And during one heart-to-heart conversation while we were still dating, it's also where he told me he planned to marry me. {Not the official proposal, but the moment in which I started breathing normally again because I knew his intent.} It is possibly going to be all I can do to not cut that little square of carpet out and take it with me! The square where all that happened.

This is where we planned much of our wedding, took our first at-home photo as a married couple, and took about a billion more pictures after that. We have spent probably more hours of our married life in this room than anywhere else.

We have truly lived in this room. We've eaten most of our meals in here, prayed in here, done Bible study in here, hosted Bible study in here, decorated for Christmas in here, hung out on Mo in here, watched TV in here, and talked for hours in here.

This is the room where I recuperated from gallbladder surgery and oral surgery, too, come to think of it.

I've gone to war in this room, falling on my knees and sometimes my face in earnest prayer. 

We've lived a whole lot of life in this room. It's not a huge room, but it's huge in memories. Huge in failures and successes and everything that falls in between.

I'm excited for our new living space at our new house, and I know the same kind of living that we've done here and that generations before us did here will be carried on within new walls of new color {and not terra cotta/pink}. The praying and laughing and crying and living will march on in that place, and I'm eager to see what unfolds in our new home, but I'm always grateful for the life lived in this very room.

Living Room Overhaul

You're probably wondering if we're about done overhauling. YES. WE. ARE. The dining room, living room, and hallway all flood together, so when we did the carpet replacement...we kind of reassembled each room as we went.

We really didn't do a ton to our living room - other than offer a heavy sigh of happiness when the hardwood floors were once again protected and we could drink our evening coffee without the worry that the mug would take a spill off the side table and shatter.

I just painted the living room two years ago, so we didn't have to mess with any paint - other than touching up a bit of the trim that had taken beatings from furniture here and there. So, without further ado...here are my pics!

Before:

 After:

* Carpet was the biggest change in this room. {As if Braeya's presence does not vouch for that.} It may not look like a huge change, but it was.
* We replaced the ceiling fan, which was ridiculously old. I had replaced the globes on the one that was up there...but we put in a more modern looking one and I love it.
* Replaced the curtains on the door and window with light tan ones that let in more light and look softer. We love them.
* I used my Christmas money to purchase a cabinet to put under the coat rack so we have something other than a basket to hold our hats, gloves, scarves, etc. Looks SO much better. I love that thing!
* Swapped out a lamp from our den {sort of a burlap/twine look} with the one in the living room just to keep the theme going.

Before:

 After:

 * I moved the little decorative balls out of a flat, rectangle basket into a different basket I already owned. And while it's hard to see here, I added a grapevine tree by the fireplace.
* We purchased a shelf to hang on the wall between the clock and the fireplace to hold my little candle holder I love so much. I love the way it brought presence between the clock and the fireplace.
* Took the 2 smaller picture frames that had been on the mantel and hung them on the wall with the two larger frames already there - just to finish up that space.
* You'll notice Braeya had to be in EVERY PICTURE.

Before:

 After:

 * This view didn't really change - except for the carpet. And the obvious start of football season.

Before:

 After:

 * And the main change here...the cool cabinet for our gloves and such.

Details

Words cannot adequately express how much I love this cabinet!! We just happened upon it, fell in love with it, and I was so happy I still had my Christmas money so we could get it. It is literally THE perfect solution to all the foyer clutter. {Since, you know, we have no foyer.}

* Like having four frames on this wall instead of two - and one day they'll all have pictures going the same direction. My OCD cannot handle it otherwise. :)

*The distressed shelf. I pointed out to Ryan that we ran around with a paint can fixing the blemishes on the trim and then spent money on a shelf that looked exactly like what we covered up. EXPLAIN THIS TO ME???

* I'll just say it. Those curtains in the before picture were a mistake from day one. I went shopping on an impulse to try to jump-start myself back into real life after Isaac left me and I bought them without ever liking them. BAD. BAD. MOVE. These are so much better. So. Much. Better.

* Hello, this century!!! And it kind of looks like an asterisk. That makes my writer's heart happy.

* Just so you can see....the carpet before:

*...and after...

Even though the changes weren't as radical in here...it feels polished. Finished.

Home.

Back to School Mantel

We have an electric fireplace in our living room, and I told Ryan earlier this summer that I wanted to start decorating it seasonally. It's just a fun challenge I wanted to pursue to change up our decorating in the room where we spend most of our time.

After some um...{ahem} time on Pinterest...I came up with mantel #1...the Back to School mantel.

Interesting, since, after all, we have no one in this house attending school.

Praise. The. Lord.

But check out the elements I used and let me know what you think!

First...the big picture:

I love Ryan's big clock above the fireplace - and we just added that shelf in our renovating, so we could always have the candles without using up the mantel real estate. I like that addition more and more every time I look at it!.

I tried to "shop around the house" when I could...and tried to spend minimal money on the rest. I had the easel already, and the notebook paper is actually a white board I found on the dollar shelf at Target. The apple came from Hobby Lobby and may have been the most expensive thing I got for this mantel. {Isn't that just like an apple!! Always so costly.} Bought two packs of pencils for a dollar per pack and put them in Ryan's pencil holder from our office. Dug the frame out of my picture frame stash and printed the pictures on our printer. I did purchase the letters at Hobby Lobby - and decided to leave them plain to keep with the burlap-y theme I have scattered around the house. The bell was Ryan's - and the flowers were a gift from Ryan.

Like I said, no one in this house is in school right now, but I loved this quote I found {on Pinterest} because we do seem to live in a constant state of learning. I love to learn - I just love NOT having a quiz to follow it up!

Seemed appropriate to add the apple. Why is fake fruit so expensive??? I thought about adding chalk or crayons to the mix, but decided to stick with pencils to honor my love of writing. :)

I had to do a throwback to our childhood on here. I had to. Fourth grade for him, fifth grade for me. Do the Shaffers know how to rock 1988 or WHAT?

I intended to make a nice stack of books covered in brown paper...but the letters were so big, they sort of took over. It's okay though...I like the way it turned out.

I collected bells when I was growing up - so it's funny to me that the bell we used is Ryan's. HA! But I love this one and it fits in with the feel of the thing. And to finish the thing off - the flowers are in our high school colors. Good old green and gold!

We like it...our first little mantel in our new living room!