Not only are we having a baby, but our best friends Shannon and Dom are having one less than a month before us! Yaaay, you get two nurseries for the price of one in a way 🙂 So this weekend we headed over to their house to help them install a chair rail in their nursery. We’ve only done one chair rail install ourselves and that was in our entryway a few months ago, but we were more than willing to help them out. Our entryway was actually more complicated and larger than their room, so the process was pretty simple this time around.

We were the brains, the boys offered the brawn.

Very important to this process this time around was our brand new nail gun. We picked up this small pneumatic nail gun while it was on sale at Lowe’s a couple of months ago. We paid about $75 for it (which I think we put some of on a gift card) and it was worth every penny. The compresser was nice and small, light and not very loud at all.

We knew this was a smart investment because we have plenty of other molding plans up our sleeves (including our own nursery) and our previous nail gun was electric. It weighed a ton and wasn’t powerful enough to shoot the nails all the way through the molding, so we had to go back and hammer them in. Not only does this thing fully sink in nails, the compresser can be used to inflate tires. Who knew? 🙂

The rest of the process we pretty much explained in our entryway post. Please excuse the inconsistently weird colors in these pics, they were taken at night.

We didn’t caulk or paint it, but at least you can see all of our cuts and nail holes 🙂

We also got a chance to add my favorite little part of a chair rail to this room… the end pieces. We once again just glued them on (I wasn’t putting my finger on that small piece of molding and shooting it in!) and held them in place with some tape while they dried. We didn’t have any painter’s tape on hand, so plain ol’ Scotch it was!

They haven’t done anything else to the room yet (it’s not staying yellow), but the uncaulked, unpainted chair rail already makes such a difference!

Mike and I looove all sorts of molding and we don’t mind installing it either. Painting is another topic for Mike, he hates painting. With our new nail gun, we’re looking forward to finishing up our entryway, molding out the baby’s room and making some built-in things. Hopefully we can start planning all of that soon because our new flooring has been delivered and is set to be installed next week! 🙂

Please excuse the iPhone picture, but this is literally the third time since we’ve lived here (which has only been a year and a half) that we’ve had boxes of flooring in our living room. Okay twice was because we wanted it, once was the builder’s fault, but hopefully this is it for us and we can get to decorating some new rooms! 🙂

ps- As I was searching through my old chair rail posts, I re-read this one from July 11th when we painted the bottom half of our entryway wall. It also happened to be the day we found out Darwin has cancer, so reading it nearly broke my heart all over again. BUT, in a happy way. Everything written that day, that he lost even more weight, that he had lost more than 75% of his kidney function, has been reversed. As of Sunday, Darwin finally broke into the 7lb range (7lbs 3oz at that!) and has begun to regain some of his muscle mass. I felt sick on Sunday so when he came back from the vet with Mike and happily trotted over to me on the couch, I was the proudest momma in the whole world 🙂

I’m back! Can I tell you it’s been a hectic and crazy week? To top it off, I worked until 8 tonight and our family room tv just died. I had such big plans of relaxing tomorrow night and catching up on all of the How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family and Jersey Shore that I missed this week. RIP Plasma, you were our first major purchase back in 2005 and you will be sorely missed. Especially by me. Especially this weekend. Because really, who wants to drop all of that cash on a new tv unexpectedly?? Not me.

Anywho, while we’re on the topic of the family room, I came across the coolest idea ever on Pinterest a few weeks ago. Remember our fireplace?

We originally wanted a chunkier, more dramatic fireplace surround that the builder offered, but it was too wide for our floor plan. Since then we’ve been trying to come up with ways to make it a little less generic builder looking. We added the tile to it (the same tile from our kitchen back splash) and we plan to paint the slate, metal and gold hardware one of these days.

Going back a few months ago, I spotted another image on Pinterest that got the hamster in my head running on his wheel. Why don’t we add some molding above the fireplace!

(via Design*Sponge found on Pinterest)

I liked it, but the arch just isn’t us. I liked the idea of it much more (plus the curtains and the rug). Plus the layout is identical to ours. So I searched a bit and found one much more my style, enter contender numero dos.

(via Bethany Christensen Design found on Pinterest)

I love the squareness of it and that chunkiness we’ve been aiming for. But, the style of this mantel is completely different than ours. We have that funny dental molding and our opening is framed out with a thinner molding. I wasn’t sure if this would translate well for us, so I pinned it and went about my life.

Then recently this showed up in my Pinterest feed…

(via 6th Street Design School found on Pinterest)

Not only does the fireplace itself (at least the mantel part) look like ours, but the whole getup looks like ours. When I first showed Mike from a distance, he thought I had worked some photo shop magic. The best part of this one (besides that I can totally get how ours would look like), is that it is probably the easiest to do out of the 3. Those straight pieces of wood? No ridiculously raised part that would eat my mantel? The fact that my mirror would work with it? Love it.

Admittedly, the only thing I’m missing is a nice chunk of crown molding at the top to mirror the mantel. But I guess that’s a tweak we could add on our own. You know, whenever we get around to finishing the other molding projects we’ve started around here 🙂

Now I’m off to stare at a dead tv… 🙁

No, mom, this entry title does not mean Rebecca is knocked up.  I wouldn’t tell you via the blog; I’d do on Facebook instead.  Or via an email.  I’m not sure yet, I’ll let you know after our 5-year plan to have kids.

Every time Rebecca and I watch Knocked Up, one of us always brings up how we love the house in this movie.  Then we spend the next 5-10 minutes discussing why we love the house so much.  And then we spend the following 5 minutes laughing about how whenever we watch this movie, we comment on the house.  It’s a vicious cycle.

Anyways, as we watched Knocked Up the other night, I had the idea to highlight the areas of the house we love and post them!  Original, right?  Right!  So for your viewing pleasure, here are all the things we love about the Knocked Up house!  (btw, it was incredibly hard not to label Katherine Heigl in every picture).

Okay, I don’t like this pool and seating area.  I like the idea of this pool and seating area.  Got it?  Good.

Actually, is that house for sale? We want to trade up.

ps- This is our 200th post! So far we’re doing well on our list of goals we set out in our 100th post, which can be found here.

Thank you all, once again, for your kind words for Darwin. We’re all hanging in there, just taking things one day at a time. Darwin’s been enjoying his brand new toy, Larry the Lion.

He’s currently sleeping on him 🙂 Darwin also took an interest in our therapeutic painting project.

That picture was taken with my iPhone. It’s amazing what some good light will do regardless of the camera.

We’ve spent the past few days finishing up our painting. Since we only did one coat of primer, we ended up having to do 3 coats of paint to cover up the taupe we previously had on the wall! Lesson learned, but it’s finally done 🙂

We have our entryway lamp on a timer, so that’s why there is a funny contraption in the outlet. We’ve been searching for a round, textured, chunky ottoman to stick under the table to make it more substantial looking, so that timer will someday be hidden.

We also still need to change out the gray lampshade for a white one, but we haven’t had much luck with finding one of those either!

The white we used was Olympic’s Crumb Cookie, which was the closest match to the existing trim. It is slightly less yellow, though not noticeable unless you’re me or Mike. We can’t figure out if it’s just a slight difference in finish between the different brands. Regardless, not a big deal. The baseboards in the picture above are the old paint and the wall/chair rail are the new paint.

Warning: I was completely lazy and left the mop and floor cleaner in this picture. I even saw it as I was snapping pictures but overtiredness=laziness. I didn’t feel like walking down the stairs and moving it for the sake of the picture. Whoops.

Macky thinks he’s a model. He seriously loves to photobomb.

And we forgot to put the outlet covers back on upstairs, whoops!

For the Macky fans…

I love these little mittens…even when they hit me on the way down the stairs.

I still have some touch up work to do tomorrow with the taupe. Macky thought it would be funny to rub up against the baseboards minutes after I painted them last night. Black cat + white paint = no bueno. He put himself in the tub (no seriously, he loves to play in there) and I seized the moment and gave him a wipe down before he licked himself. He thought it was funny and purred and rolled over the whole time. I wish I had pictures.

And for the fans of a good before and after? Here’s the hallway several months ago…

And today…

We cannot wait to finish up our molding and add the picture frame boxes like we have in our adjoining living room!

Then we’ll get to use our new nail gun too! 🙂

Update! Had to include a picture of Darwin sleeping with his toy, because he is just too cute 🙂

Yes, Larry the Lion is buried under his paw/face somewhere.

Tonight I handed in a midterm that took me most of last week to complete. We had to work in just two 48 hour blocks of time, so I spent way too many hours sitting at a desk last week. Thankfully, I now have a pretty home office to enjoy 🙂

I am so thankful we decided to get extra long desks, for when I have to do this.

You see that? A laptop, an open book, an open giant binder, room to write, a closed book and loads of open space!

I also realized that I never shared when I bought this West Elm bathroom cup to use as my mostly Sharpie, pencil holder.

The office isn’t finished yet, we still have lots of little details and storage to add. But it works wonderfully, and I can attest from hours and hours on my arse that the chairs are super comfy. We will probably add finishing touches to this room gradually, since we are currently hooked on this monster.

This was my view from sitting at my desk. Two weekends ago, we managed to prime the lower half of the walls. We decided to paint the lower half before adding the picture frame part of the molding, so that we can just easily roll paint on without worrying about nooks and crannies right now. Looking at this for hours had me itching to get some semi-gloss paint up there! Maybe my carpal tunnel will heal and we can get at least the downstairs done soon!