Instagram Wall

So I know a lot of us have Pinterest, right?

I do. And  I have a bajillion pins of all sorts of stuff on there. Food, funnies, DIY home projects, cute animals, dreams of things I can't ever afford.....
But back to those DIY home projects.  I've gotten several ideas and we are actually starting to do some of those projects! And I am so incredibly excited that this project is done and I am so so so in L-O-V-E with it!

The original pin I had with the site that I got this idea from is here:  Instagram Wall Inspiration Post

So, let's start out with showing you the finished project... and then I'll ramble on and on.....

I still need to get the shelving unit that I want to put below the frames, but I measured it up so that I will have a little room to add a vase/decor/etc and have it all look fabulous.

So let's talk a bit about how I went about doing this.

First, the paint!

I had originally thought that I'd paint this wall the same color that we are planning on painting the entire house (the main areas)... And that would be Silver Bullet by Behr.  So, that's what we did.

I'm not so good at the whole before/after photo thing, haha! So you get an in between photo of this one:

And once it was painted, I decided I didn't like it for the look I was going for.  These frames are WHITE. The shelf I want to put on this wall is WHITE.  So while I do love this color grey and can't wait for it to be on the rest of the house.... it wasn't right for my Instagram wall.

So, we instead went with Mission Control by Behr.  It's the color that we painted in the loft on that one long wall {for future projects that we will *hopefully* be tackling soon} and also the long wall in the foyer-- that you can actually see in the first photo I posted and in my other blog post about all of our colors throughout the house {A Pop of Color}.

There's one difference with the paint on the Instagram wall than the other 2 walls just mentioned.... We used a high gloss.  No specific reason for that except we had a quart of it for a project and I ended up not liking the way it contrasted with my other color, so it was extra.  So why not use it?!

You can see the shine of it a bit, especially if you compare it to the eggshell that's on the foyer wall in the background.

Second, the frames!

I got the frames from the same place that the blog I pinned got them.... Tiny Mighty Frames.  I scoured the internet even after finding this site, as I wanted to keep this project as budget-friendly as possible.  And, when I first stumbled upon this site and the blog that inspired all of this, the frames were quite expensive, IMO.

But internet searching didn't turn up anything cheaper or what seemed better quality, so I knew that this is who I'd be going with for my frames.  Now, when we moved in I knew I wanted to do all this, but wasn't set on doing it now.  However, one day at work I happen to be perusing my Pinterest and came across my pin for this Instagram Wall, and with a little clicking, realized that the frames were ON SALE!!! Like, more than 50% off on sale! So I had to act now! I convinced hubby into letting me get them! But, I had a problem.  LOCATION! I had no idea where I wanted this wall to go!

So, we got home that day and looked at the walls and decided that this little wall would be best.  For anyone that has a Milan, this is in between the front 2 rooms (living room and dining room)-- we didn't have ours closed off to make a study so they're 2 rooms that kinda flow together.  This wall is actually the back end of the hall closet that is in the foyer.

Measurements were taken and then I did some math.  Got a guestimate of how many frames I wanted to put up.

Something to note:  Even though these frames fit a 4x4 photo, you must actually measure it out that the frame itself is a 5x5 frame.  I didn't when I did my initial calculations and actually over-bought the number of frames I needed.

Next-The pictures!

If I can admit one thing, it's that I am trigger happy.  I take pictures of everything.  And I mean EV-er-Y-thing!  I have them saved all over the place and had a very hard time trying to decide which ones I wanted to use. 

But, for printing them:  I used Shutterfly.  More specifically, the Shutterfly app on my phone.  They advertise that you can get UNLIMITED 4x4 or 4x6 prints for FREE!  Yep, FREE!! You just pay shipping and handling.

There were a couple "catches" to this, if you will.... the first:  unlimited means 250 photos at a time.  You can't do more than that in one order.  Second- shipping was like $24 for 250 photos.

That being said.... I ordered one set of 250 followed by another like 150 photos. I was so so so indecisive about what ones I wanted to use.

And now I can say I'm thrilled with the 400+ little pictures I have.  It's one thing to thumb through them on a phone or a computer screen... but it really brings back the memories to hold a photo in your hand and just smile/laugh/cry at the memory of whatever is in the photo.

So, I took these 400-something photos, organized them by family  member/event/dog and then went through and found at least one "favorite" of each one-- and I even let Jason help with this part!

And now the fun stuff!

The Measuring!

So I tried getting super technical here. After my original "oh no!" moment that I should be measuring for 5 inches instead of 4, I got all sorts of fancy.  I wanted to make diagrams so that I could show off how awesome I could be.  That most definitely didn't happen.  Here's what did:

I measured the dimensions of our wall:  It was 39 inches across.  It's like 49-ish something inches high for as high "up" as I wanted to go.  The shelf that I want to add to the wall is like 36 inches tall. 

So I measured the wall, figured that if each frame was a 5x5 frame, that I wanted 2 inches in between each frame.  With this math, I would need 5 frames across the bottom and then I was thinking like 7 going up {I was thinking 7 inches total for each frame}.  So that would be 35 inches, with 4 inches left for the sides.  And, technically that last frame doesn't require that extra 2 inch measurement, so I put 3 inches on each side of the wall.

And from there I just measured 2 inches from the top of the first row, did the next one, and so on and so forth until I had all 7 rows of frame up.

Wanna have a good laugh at how I measured all this?

Take a look:

Yep. You're seeing that right.  I bought a yard stick from Home Depot (a steal at 98 cents).  I used it to measure up. And then, when I did the frames, I found the center point and just put a dot on my measuring stick so that I could put a nail in the same spot each time. That, and painters tape.... it worked like a charm! And you see how awesome they look!!

So the last thing I did was take some 3M tape (like the Command Hook kind) and put a little piece on the bottom of each of the frames so they'd stick to the wall.  That way I know they'll stay straight, not fall down, and it was recommended on the original blog post for the Instagram Wall.

And once this project was finished, Jason told me that he thinks we should do the adjoining two walls with photos as well! I love this thought and will be embarking on an adventure to do the other two sides so that you have Instagram Wall goodness from all angles.

Seriously, I love how this project turned out and I am SO glad we did it!!!

And just for fun before I go, a hilarious picture of our Crosley running through the yard last week.  With baseball season upon us, we are trying to give him some freedom in the house so he's not ALWAYS in the cage {he's a wall/corner/cabinet chewer-- which I think stems from being nervous from all the construction going on around us}... well, this photo was snapped when he was running crazy fast laps around the yard after our very first time leaving him out of his cage for a few hours while we went out.  He did good this particular time and was loving all the praise he was getting!

A Pretty Garage and Some Decor!

So I know y'all have all asked for pictures!
I snapped a few and have some saved on my phone for writing blogs in the "future".  I am trying to save some of them for the different projects we are working on, as I don't really want to show them off til we are finished!

We have a long list of "to do" things in this house, and we are slowly tackling them as we have the time.

I wanna show off our blinds. I have seen a lot of posts recently about window coverings and such.  We chose to do faux wood blinds in our house, and we bought them from Home Depot.  Seriously SUPER easy to install.  We still have a few to buy and put up in the house, but those are coming as budget allows.

If you're curious to see what we bought, check em out here.

And a few photos of what they look like!  With 18 windows in the house, it's kind of overwhelming to think about putting coverings on ALL of them.  We still need to get them for our morning room, and bedroom 2 (closest to the master bedroom).


So this is while I sit here and blog.  We are watching the Buckeye game.  Don't mind the TV stand. It's two different heights.  LOL.  I am still working up the courage to actually hang the cabinets across the top.  We had planned on doing that this weekend but have since changed plans and have other things going on.  So, it's a bit of a dark photo, but these are the blinds in the living room.

And then I got up and went into the "dining room" and snapped some up close photos of the blinds in there so y'all can see them up close with bright lights.

These were super easy to install and I love the detail with the valance across the top.  There are cords on both sides.  One to tilt and one to move the blinds up and down.  They do great at keeping the light out and look perfect in all of our windows!

The majority of our windows are 35-inches.  We have a couple that are 39 and one that is a little ole 23-inch one.

Now let's check out our garage!  One of our first house projects was painting the walls grey, which you can check out in this post if you don't know what we did or what it looks like.  Well.  Our next project was to epoxy the garage floor.  I pretty much knew from the beginning that I wanted some sparkly red floors in our garage.  And, we have some red sparkly floors now!

The epoxy process only took a couple of hours to complete.  It took 5 kits to completely cover our garage.  The kit says that it covers up to 125 square feet.  Our garage measures just over 400 square feet.  We were lucky that our neighbor across the street has also epoxy'd his garage floor, so he had some tips.  And one of those was that the kits cover closer to 100 square feet rather than the advertised 125.

We did have a hiccup at the beginning.  I started to mix the first kit together with my paint mixer, and panicked when I saw there was BLACK in the epoxy.  It's sparkly red.  Black didn't seem right.  I had used the paint mixer in some black paint prior to our epoxy adventure, so I was worried I had mixed paint with it.  So, I sent hubby to Lowe's to get a new paint mixer, and I used that first kit that I thought was "bad" on the edges of the garage floor.

Well, when he got back, the epoxy in the container I had was almost all hardened (I am guessing due to the heat and length of time I was using it, as it's only good for about 45 minutes), so we mixed our next container.  New paint mixer yielded the same black color in the epoxy as we mixed.  So, I sighed, gave a big womp womp and realized that it was probably just the epoxy and NOT black paint mixing in with the epoxy mix.

Anyways.  I'm sure y'all don't want to hear any more about our epoxy experience, and you'd rather just see the photos!  If you DO want to know more about our epoxy-ing, just ask!!  And, for those wondering, this is the kit that we used.  It was Rustoleum's Rock Solid "Cherry Bomb".

Here are a few photos!  First, the "before" photo:

All nice and power washed and ready to be epoxy'd

The exposed concrete on the top of the epoxy now drives me NUTS! I want to get some concrete paint and paint it black.  The stairs to the door we will probably stain white with leftover stain from our deck staining, which is a later project!

Details.

That last photo, the "details" one, really shows the color of what it looks like.  All of these photos are from my phone, which isn't the best, and lighting sometimes makes it look funny.  But, we LOVE LOVE LOVE it!  It's swirly and sparkly, and once it was done, we really wanted to find some roller skates and skate on it, it was so smooth!  It's fun and gives a great "personality" to our garage.  Who knew I'd love painting and dressing up a garage!

We've got all of our stuff back in the garage, and can still fit our cars EASILY!  I want to get some pegboard for the walls to hang things, and probably one set of shelves. I found some super fun red pegboard at Home Depot, and that will probably be a fun future purchase.  I also have great aspirations to maybe one day paint a Cincinnati Reds logo on the garage wall that's next to the door!  If there's ever a "best garage" award, it'll be ours, haha!!


And now a bit more decor!  Our plans for our loft are to make it "travel" themed.  We LOVE to travel!  Our honeymoon was to Ireland, followed by a few days in New York City.  A couple of years ago we took a two week trip to London, Paris and Rome.  Last year, our trip took us out to the West Coast as we followed the Reds.  We started in Phoenix and ended in Seattle.  Saw 12 baseball games, 7 new ballparks, and made a TON of memories along the way.  No trip this year as we saved for this gorgeous house we are now living in!  Not sure what next year's trip will be.  That all depends on the Reds schedule!

So anyways.  Travel.  That's gonna be our theme in the loft.  I want to get a big giant map of the world to put on one wall in the loft, and put shelving on the opposite wall.  The shelving will display all of our goodies and such that we collect when we travel.  Shot glasses, sand from different beaches and oceans around the world..... I also want to get a little bench for the nook under the loft window.

With the loft being travel themed, I found some great stuff at Bed, Bath and Beyond that would allow me to extend that travel theme into the hall bathroom that is upstairs!  It's called the Passport Collection and is perfect in our bathroom!

Check out some photos I snapped of the travel decor in that bathroom!!  Y'all can just ignore that damn ugly vinyl on the floors.  We won't even talk about it.

These are NOT from BBB, and rather I got them off EBAY.  But aren't they PERFECT!?!?!

Shower Curtain (it's super soft!)

Towels.

The accessories are all monuments from around the world!

Even a cute rug to match.  And my floating hands in the mirror, haha!

The goal is to eventually stain these cabinets to match the maple espresso cabinets in the master bath as well as our kitchen cabinets.  We WILL paint, but we aren't going to do that til after our drywall stuff nearing a year.  We just don't want to paint "more than once", haha!  As of right now, I am thinking a shade of purple (not a pastel, but more of a darker purple.. just not too dark as I don't want the bathroom TOO dark).  Purple might bring out some colors in the vinyl too to maybe make me like it.  I also want to get some metal prints of some of the photos I took from our travels around the world to hang in here.  I'm thinking square ones, probably about 6x6 in size.  Just not sure if I want color or black and white.  Being that the decor is black and white, that's what I am leaning towards.  But maybe if I do black and white, I can do that color pop on certain parts of the photo.  Believe me, I have TONS of photos to choose from.  I tend to be pretty snap-happy on vacation.

Besides that, we bought a couple more cabinets from IKEA for our bobbleheads in the basement.  WE are S-L-O-W-L-Y getting everything unpacked in the basement, and even slower getting it organized and ready for display.

That big black blob on the right is actually a gigantic vinyl poster thing from the All Star Game when it was in Cincinnati.  We found one and bought it and will be hanging it on the wall opposite our mural.  We love it and can't wait to hang it.  And, the purpose of this photo:  another cabinet built.  Two more are still waiting to be put together.

And a "motivation" photo for some of you guys that are just getting in your houses, or even have been in your houses.  We still have boxes.  They're scattered throughout the house, but we still have boxes full of stuff.  We are just taking our time and unpacking and finding homes for stuff when we have the chance.

This is all in our dining room.  You can see some fun projects we are working on... The "living room" has bookcases that we are putting in, and that little black table has our paint supplies on it as we work on painting our interior doors :-)

And then a few more photos for you, just for fun.

We see some gorgeous sunsets and sunrises from this house.  Don't know what it is, but the colors most nights are just amazing.

And it's so nice and peaceful in our little cul-de-sac.

And our boys!  If y'all have any pointers on getting dogs to NOT chew on walls and trim, feel free to share them!  Our puppy, Crosley, is in the crate when we aren't home... and the main reason for that is because he was chewing on some trim at the stairs (which I am still trying to figure out how to fix..... sigh).
But, he also chewed some of the wall WHILE in his cage the other day.  I really do think it's stress from all the noises he hears, seeing we live in a construction zone.  He's naturally nervous and everything scares him... but any advice for chewers is appreciated!!

Cody, sitting at the top of the stairs (closed door is the laundry door)

Crosley practicing his mug shots a couple nights ago.  He has a great smile.

So, just a few pictures for now!  Our projects continue as we have the time, and I think once baseball season is over we will have lots of projects done!  We are slowly getting our interior doors painted (which I LOVE the pop of color), and our next big project is going to be staining the deck!

We also have our first *official* house guests scheduled to come up!  My sister in law was up right when we moved in, but that was to help unpack and organize so I don't consider that a guest since she was working, haha!  But, my mom and stepdad will be coming from Florida, and at that same time, my sister and her family (4 kiddos and hubby and dog) will be coming from North Carolina!  They'll be traveling from NC to ALASKA and are stopping to see us along the way!  So, we will have a house full and can't wait to utilize this big ole house with everyone in it!!!

Our First House Project!

We had quite the busy weekend at the house this past weekend!

Friday brought lots of people in and out of the house, since I was off of work.  I made time to have everyone come over and do things that needed to be done.

Our loft window got replaced (the original was cracked).

Guardian came over and set up the home security system.

We had a handyman come out and repair some damage that had been done by the movers.  This included some dings in the trim of a doorway, as well as some scratches on the hardwood.

And house projects!

We have a Facebook group for our neighborhood, which is kinda awesome.  They plan events, give away things they no longer need, and are just generally all around helpful and nice!  Well, we posted asking if anyone had information on someone that could hang our cabinets for the TV stand that we have, as well as potentially putting up ceiling fans for us.  A couple of super nice guys from the neighborhood volunteered to do the fans for us!  Best part? When we asked them about "payment", they said that they could be paid in Budweiser and Miller Lite!

So Saturday while I was at work, these 2 guys came over and put up 4 ceiling fans for us as well as a light fixture in our morning room! I had every intention of trying to do the fans myself, but after seeing all of the assembly, and ladder climbing and drills and screwdriver-ing.... I am so thankful that these guys came and helped us out!  They also got to see the house and have big plans for the unfinished parts of our basement, haha!!!!

And on to our project!  We painted the garage walls over the past weekend!  We primed them on Saturday and then painted them grey on Sunday.

I have a huge issue with unfinished garage walls.  It just looks messy.  I don't know why it bothers me so much, but it does!  So we have been discussing for a while (while our house was being built) about painting the garage walls.

Well let me tell you!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!  It makes the garage look more like a room than a garage.  And I'll admit, that part is taking me a bit of getting used to, but whenever that garage door goes up or I walk into the garage, I love how it looks!  It's by no means perfect, and if you look close you can see some of the drywall tape still, or on the tops of the ceilings you can see where we didn't edge perfect...
But I love it.

Check it out:

moving all of the goodies and taping a few areas... The "before" shots.

Before Shot

Before Shot

Day 1: Primer

Day 1:  Primer

Day 1:  Primer

Day 2: Painting!  Painting walls isn't complete without a little love message before you cover the wall, right?!

Finished product!

Day 2: all finished painting!

Day 2;  All finished painting!

The finished product

The finished product

We got our paint from Home Depot.  We went with Behr Premium Plus Exterior Paint in  "Silverstone".
It is a Satin Finish.  We went with the Exterior paint bc it's kind of an "outside" space. 

Check out how awesome it looks with the cars!

I did get a couple of other small things done around the house.... We built a cabinet from IKEA for our bobble heads.... We only bought one for now because we wanted to make sure we liked it before we bought more... Well, I nearly swore it off (and did swear quite a bit) as this thing was a bear to put together... but we do love it and will be needing more for all of the bobbles we have!

A sampling of our bobbles.  We have more than this that still need to be unpacked!

The finished cabinet!  Its really nice, a great price, and although a pain to put together, we love the cabinet and will be getting more!

I also sealed our grout.  That project took a couple of hours, but I worked on it off and on so I didn't make my back sore or inhale too many fumes, haha!  A lot of people were shocked to know that Ryan Homes doesn't take care of this for us... I've known we would have to do it since our pre-construction meeting so I've kinda just had that "it is what it is" attitude about it.

It was super easy to seal the grout, and I'm proud it's done.  We picked up the grout sealer from Lowe's when my daddy and granny were in town.  I have about 1/4 of a bottle left over, plus a second bottle because I wasn't sure how much it would take to seal the grout. We ONLY have tile in the master bath, so that made this job pretty easy too.

And here are a few other photos!  No more unpacking progress photos as that's pretty much just a work in progress and I definitely make more of a mess before it gets organized and cleaned up!

a friend at the front of our neighborhood.  There were 3 deer in total and she got a bit scared when she saw us.  We stopped and admired her and she eventually crossed the street safely.

Ceiling fan in the bedroom {in action}.  We bought Hunter fans from Menards.

The light fixture for the morning room.

a toilet paper holder for the half bath off of the family entry <3

Hubby mowing our yard for the first time.  Front yard where the sod is only..... 

We have a ton of other projects we want to tackle and have a small "schedule" of how we want to do things.

Weather permitting, we are going to epoxy the garage floor this weekend!  One of our neighbors across the street did his, and is super helpful and willing to give tips and pointers!  He also let us borrow his pressure washer {as well as other tools for the epoxy process} to get the garage floor nice and clean!  This was another idea we had while the house was still being built and we are super excited to start this!

If the weather is yuck, we are going to start painting some of the interior doors!  I'm nervous and excited about this project and can't wait for that pop of color!