Where I stashed the husband

So the hubs is working from home now which means he needs a spot to work that is NOT in the main area of the house. Here is the solution:

I found this set of corbels on the clearance table at Arhaus. Then, by luck, I found this piece of glass on a console table at a consignment shop. They were willing to sell me just the piece of glass. The hubs and I attached the corbels to the wall and then just placed the glass on top. Makes a perfect desk for a laptop and room for notes. Now, if I could just get him to stop leaving piles of paper everywhere!

Just keeping it real. This is his pencil/pen storage right now. The seven year old announced that he is not into Batman anymore!

When the kids are away the parents will PAINT

This summer a miracle happened. For the first time in the Cheek Family history, my husband and I were without kids for two and half days. Truly, a miracle. As a parent of twins, I never want to burdened anyone with one kid, let alone TWO kids. So the fact that we got "rid"of all four at the same time was..A MIRACLE.

So what did we do? Did we go out for dinners and take long walks at night? Heck NO. I decided it was the perfect time to paint and reconfigure TWO bedrooms. I had two and half days, a lifetime for a parent with no free time, ever.

Did I make the projects easy and straight forward? Of course NOT!

We have four bedrooms on the third floor of our house and both sets of twins were sharing two of  the bedrooms which left one empty room for all of our "treasures". That is code for "all the stuff that we did not know what to do with so we just threw in that room and closed the door, pulled the blinds shut, and never stepped foot into."

So, we had a bedroom not being used. Total waste of space in a house where we have no extra space. It was my then 6 year old daughter that gave me the nudge to finally put an end to that. Up until then, she was sharing a tiny, tiny bedroom with her twin BROTHER. One day she said to me, "Mommy, when can Owen move out of my bedroom? He is making it smell funny!" Uh, how do I respond to that?

I started with the room with all of our "treasures". First, I moved EVERYTHING out into the hallway to be sorted later. This room was going to be for Owen, age 6, the little guy with the funny smell. I decided that striping the walls would be a great idea. A blog I read regularly, Iheartorganizing, gave me the inspiration for the walls.

The walls were already painted an off-white so striping them with one other color would be easy...NOT. That room is 100 years old and NOTHING in that room is straight. I ended up using a standard ruler and a level to make sure that the lines were straight. I tried using a large level, but the walls are so bowed, that I could not get a straight line. I did one wall (the only wall without any windows or doors) and decided that I must do the rest of the room and that it would not be "that bad". I think I have blocked out how sloped the walls, ceilings and floors are in that room. Another miracle occurred when I finished. The stripes all look level and even.

Benjamin Moore Minced Onion and Wedgewood Gray

Because Owen's room took just a wee bit longer than I anticipated, I had to really rush to get Lily's room painted. To do so, I kept it simple. The walls were a pale green color so I assumed that the pale pink  that I chose would not require any primer. Big mistake. ALWAYS prime first. It took MANY coats of paint, two gallons of the paint color. Had I primed, one gallon of the paint color would have been fine. The husband had to step in and help me. When I asked him for help rolling, I looked pathetic. Paint covered all parts of my body. A good look when you are asking for help at the 11th hour!

Benjamin Moore Palest Pink

Once all the painting was done, and I was still alive, I headed to Ikea to get a few shelves for their rooms. Lily's room has this "nook" in it since it was part old house and part new addition. As soon as the room was painted I knew that I wanted her to have a "window seat" with curtains as an opening.  I could just see it in the room and had read blogs where people had used Ikea Expedit Series to make benches. Again, for this project, Iheartorganzing, was very helpful.

After I finished the room and the "window seat" I knew something was missing. I did not like the plain wall behind the window seat. I thought about stripping it with paint, etc but knew that I did not want anything as permanent as wall paper. Then it hit me that I should try scrap paper on the wall. Don't know where that came from, but I went with it. I found black scrapbook paper at JoAnn Fabric with a cutout design. Each sheet was 12 x 12 so I just lined them up and glued them to the wall using glue dots. Since the wall color comes through the cutouts, it really looks like wall paper. So far, it has held up.

Owen's room got two Ikea Expedit Series shelves turned vertically and a desk found on Craigslist. I put a board across the top and plan to put crown molding to complete the look, yet another idea from Iheartorganizing.

 So, now that all kiddies have new rooms, I want to paint and redecorate the master bedroom....

Why Neutrals Work For Me

I have never been a "color" person. Even in the 80s when neon was in, I didn't get it. My sisters had the Florenza neon sweaters with matching neon earrings. I did not. When I bought my first "real" car, it was W H I T E. A pure white Honda Prelude with a white spoiler and white wheels. I loved that car. Funny how things change as you get OLDER. The only thing I care about these days when it comes to cars is that it has four tires and can get me from point A to point B. I have learned to embrace the smell in our minivan.

I have not always designed and decorated with neutrals, but now that I have, it is definitely for me. I get bored easily and love to change things around in my house and using neutrals makes that easy to do. I can move things from room to room and know that they will still work. Like the day my husband came home and found that we no longer had a dining room and we also
no longer had a "great room". I turned the dining room into a family room and our "great room" into an extension of the kitchen. We NEVER used our dining room, EVER. It just hit me one day that the  two rooms should be switched so that we would actually use BOTH rooms and get functionality from both. So, I moved the eight foot long dining room table (a yard sale find) into the "great room" and moved the UGLY denim sectional out of the great room and into the basement. When I am determined to do something, my muscles kick in.


Dining Room in the DARK days before neutrals:

More neutral Dining Room after renovation. Never used.

 

 

Dining Room turned Family Room 

"Great Room" turned extension of kitchen:

More neutrals

FYI - Wanted to let you know that I have a facebook page for Susie Cheek Designs
https://www.facebook.com/SusieCheekDesigns

Our House Love Story

Before I delve too deeply into this blog, I want to share our house journey and describe its gradual transformation from a bit-sized bungalow to a cozy home for a family of six. Here is our house love story.

When my husband and I were first looking for a house to buy in 1998, we looked at A LOT of houses. Some nice, some not so nice. As time went on, we realized that we had to remove certain items off of our "must have" list and settle with what we could afford. One of the things we had to take off of our list was a SHOWER. Yes, we bought a "charming" house with NO SHOWER. I cried. Seriously, when my husband told me that this house was "the one",  I cried. It was 85 years old, lots of previous damage, sheets of peeling paint falling into the yard, one bathroom (the one with NO SHOWER),  NO AC, windows that would not open and others that were falling out of the house. Sob, sob, sob. So, we bought it!

When we first moved in, we tackled things like painting rooms, changing out light and plumbing  fixtures, etc. The original metal kitchen cabinets were rounded and curved so that you could not find a thing in them, but, they were ours. We were thrilled to own a house and we convinced ourselves that taking a bath in the cool, retro claw foot tub, while trying to get out the door to work, was "relaxing". And, getting out of that tub only to start sweating from the lack of AC was just part of the "charm" of our house. Uh... not so fun. When our first set of twins arrived, I found out that there is no "quick bath". By the time the bath tub would be full enough for me to "jump in", a baby would start to cry.  Not a lot of bathing during those early baby years.

After six years in our house, and two kids later, we decided to take the plunge and renovate. We hired an architect, found a builder that we could afford, and got started. We removed the back part of the house in order to add a three story addition. We did as much as we could afford at the time. Of course with an old house renovation, there were surprises and things that we had to fix that we had not anticipated. During the renovation, after the house was framed and the drywall up, I discovered that I was pregnant with our second set of twins. Uh oh.

No turning back!

Packed and ready to move out!

Eight months later....Looking MUCH better!

So we moved back into our house and I literally sold ALL of our furniture on Craigslist. I did purchase a slip covered denim pottery barn sectional off of Craigslist to put in our new "great room" since I knew I would be spending HOURS on the said sectional nursing babies. It was NOT my first choice, but it would have to do. White furniture was not an option...yet. The rest of the house was pretty much bare bones.

Not so attractive denim sectional, but for that point in our lives, it got the job done

Two months later we welcomed our new sweet babies and went from a family of four to a family of six. My reality was now four kids, ages 4 and under. Not much time to think about what to do with the house and how I wanted to decorate. I was just a bit B U S Y. It is all a blur now...

Our new family of four kids!

Slowly, I started adding things back into the house, all from Craigslist, yard sales, or other budget friendly sources. You see, after our first set of twins were born, I stopped working. We went from two incomes, no kids, to one income, two kids. I have HAD to be budget minded, ALWAYS. And, I have found, that takes some creative thinking.

So now that you know some background of our house and the journey that we have taken, hopefully you will enjoy hearing how we made our house a home and all of my design adventures along the way.  Our house is 100 years old this year, so it seems fitting that I am starting this blog. This house has been my blank canvas to experiment with design, make MANY mistakes, figure out how to live with things that we could not change, and celebrate design successes. Besides sharing design ideas, tips, etc, I hope this blog is a way for us to document and celebrate our lives in this special home.

Welcome to Susie Cheek Designs

Hi there! Welcome to Susie Cheek Designs. My name is Susie and this blog is about my adventures with interior design, DIY house projects and organizing. I am constantly changing things in my house, thinking and wondering how to make things better, more efficient, and how to give our little bungalow more functionality.

I am the very proud mamma of two sets of twins...if your jaw dropped, you read that correctly.

My four kids keep me VERY busy and I often wonder if I really have been in two places at once. I have been a room mom for seven years and have perfected the job!

We have lived in our 1913 Bungalow for 15 years and did a major renovation 8 years ago. We have slowly transformed each room to fit our needs. My goal is to make our house beautiful, yet functional, warm and inviting for our family and friends.

So, welcome to Susie Cheek Designs. If you find that you cannot just call me Susie, that is okay. People have so much fun saying susiecheek, like it is one name, they just cannot help themselves.