Around the House

Happy Labor Day, and happy first day of September! I haven't been keeping up with this blog as much as I would like to. But we haven't gotten as many house projects done this summer as we would have liked to, either. It's Labor Day weekend, and we spent Friday night with friends at the Bandits game, we spent all day Saturday cleaning the house and doing laundry, and we went shopping all day yesterday. Trent worked this morning, and then we watched a movie after he got home. It's kind of a lazy day for us today. So even though we would like to get things done, it's hard to find the time and the energy. Especially with summer slowly fading away, and the days getting shorter.

Anyway, I thought since I didn't have any new projects to share, I would share some scenes from around the house today. And show you a few new things I've picked up recently - And where I got them!

First up: The living room, which hasn't changed much over the summer. Some parts of this room are already looking kind of fall-ish, but I still have plenty of little pops of color for summer.

My old bird pillows from Target have been reversed lately so we can enjoy the chevron side of them a little bit. :) Also, my frame wall has been the same for quite a while - I'm pretty sure this is a new record for me.

Oh, and we've decided to start looking for a new couch soon. The cushions have seen better days - if you remember this post where I attempted to fix the cushions, well, the velcro sadly didn't work too well. It has only gotten worse. Plus, our small couch just doesn't cut it anymore. We need more space to spread out, and more room for when we have company over. So the quest for a new, larger, more long-term couch will begin soon.

Moving onto the kitchen, there's lots of new little things in here. Like my new handy storage bin by the door. We never have enough storage. And this cute little bin is just one solution to a space that needed some more love.

I picked it up the other day at Marshall's. I think it was like $15. It now houses things we can grab before we go out the door, like ice scrapers, umbrellas, and a few of Trent's shoes.

Onto other things like cute spatulas...I think I've started an obsession. I barely use these things, but somehow I've developed a weakness for them. The purple and turquoise one is from Gordman's and has common measurement conversions on the back, I kid you not. The green plastic utensils are from Target a few years ago. (And the timer is from IKEA by the way)

I found this adorable plate and these matching blue mugs a couple of months back. The plate was from TJ Maxx, and the mugs were from Gordman's.

I've been wanting one of these things forever: a drying mat. To sit wine and beer glasses on. Looks and works so much better than a paper towel! (Although now it has veggies from the garden on it for some reason) This guy came in a 2-pack from Marshall's.

Now onto the bedroom...And ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my brand new clothes hamper! I'm super excited about this one - also from Marshall's...my wire laundry hamper from college had seen MUCH better days. It was kind of falling apart...so this is its replacement. And it's beautiful.

This picture is nothing new, but I love when the sun shines in and makes shadows on the wall of all my necklaces on my necklace hanger I made a while back. It's gotten many new necklaces on it since I made it, and it still works really well. I still love it!

Trent has recently moved most of his clothes into his new storage bins, but he was still kind of lacking in the hamper department. Then when we were at Marshall's the other day (I swear we bought half of the store) - THIS hamper screamed - Perfect size for the hamper spot!! It's not the same color, but it kind of brings a nautical vibe in here, which is kind of cool. We were even thinking of getting a little boat statue to sit on top of the storage unit. I don't know, might be kind of cute. :)

It is pretty much adorable, and Trent even likes it, so that's a plus.

And finally, the bathroom - We get a new rug in here like every couple of months, I swear. We tend to ruin bathroom rugs pretty quickly..or any rugs, for that matter. If it's not Saleen tracking in dirt, it's spilling bleach or putting the rug in the dryer and it shrinks to half the size. #rugproblems.

So this is the latest bathroom rug, and once again, it's from Marshall's. That place and Target are my go-to stores for rugs. So many cute ones. 

And this is the other new-ish addition to the bathroom - my wire basket from Gordman's which is being used as the toilet paper bin. It actually lived under the sink at first, but after a disaster with the sink leaking and ALL of the toilet paper getting soaked (and my new bin), it has since switched places with the trash can. 

Please excuse the unpainted drywall behind it...the bathroom renovation has been put on hold for quite a while now. Also, there are old pillowcases and such in the hallway from cleaning yesterday. But what can you do... that's life, keepin' it real.

It's always nice to have a clean-ish house. It lets us focus on other things like decorating and renovation projects. :) Now to find a new project to complete....

Office Space

No, this post is not about the hilarious movie Office Space....it's actually about my office, although I might just throw this in for good measure:

(image from here)

Oh, Milton...Anyway, in our house, right when you go up these stairs..

To the left of the landing is my office space. As I mentioned before, these walls used to be tan and brown sponge painted, so what you see now is quite the improvement. We painted them the same color as our living room, Glidden's Water Chestnut. It's a nice light, neutral tan color and it has really brightened up the space.

If you immediately turn left after going up the stairs, this is the wall on your right hand side:

This is that same wall that the yellow flower painting is on (It's from IKEA by the way). The walls up here all used to be brown with sponge-paint until we painted over it. We started painting the trim white, too. About 3/4 of the walls in this space are painted - there is a nook over the stairs that's still brown and needs to be finished. It's in a harder-to-reach area that's kinda cluttered right now with some of Trent's old things.

The upstairs used to be Trent's when he lived here with his parents. In the picture above on the far left you can see the start of a doorway - that goes into what used to be Trent's bedroom, and what will hopefully become the guest bedroom someday. Right now it is storage to yard sale totes and our old junk that needs to be dealt with!

Here's another picture of that wall:

On the right you can see a cut-out closet door. Trent's old things are in that closet. You can see there's some sort of paneling on the walls too, which we painted over. I just hung a few office-y things on this wall: Starting with the top left - my award for Five Years of Government Service, my Bachelor's degree, a photo from my college graduation, and Trent's Employee of the Month award from the Security company he works for. And of course, there's my Wallflowers! :) I love them. I got them when I first moved in from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and was waiting until we painted upstairs so I could put them up! Here's the box that they came in, in case you're wondering what brand they are:

They're a plastic material, and the backs have pins you can stick into whatever - we just used the pins to stick them right into the paneling on the wall.

When you turn a little more to the left, you see my tiny office space! Low, slanted ceilings and all.

It's a little messy..I honestly didn't bother making it look nice or styling it or anything. The trash in the corner is even full. But this is my little space and I'm keeping it real.

I got my desk from Walmart.com and I like it (It's this one in silver), the chair is from Amazon (This one - I wish I would've splurged and gotten a little bit nicer one though, because the arm on it is already broken!), the lamp is from Target, the white and gray storage drawers on my desk are from the Container Store (These), my two white pencil cups are these, also from the Container Store. The pillow on my chair is one I had from when I was in college. My mouse pad is from Amazon, and it's Vincent Van Gogh's painting, "The Cafe Terrace" - this one.

You might have already seen the memo board I made in This Post, but here she is again in my office:

I told you, I wasn't lying about needing to empty my trash can:

You can see that we installed beadboard and trim against that wall - and we still need to finish trimming it off - there are still gaps where the ceiling meets the wall paneling. The unfinished nook is to the left of this area and still needs painted.

 

I think this little flower arrangement was from Target. I can't remember where those two little silver birds came from, but I'm thinking maybe Marshall's? And I have way too many textbooks from college on my bookshelves..along with my art and design books..journals, etc. I'd like to paint the bookshelves someday. White maybe, with a pattern or pop of color inside? Not sure. They're just cheapo 3-drawer ones I got at Menards. I assembled them all by myself. :)

So there you have my office as it looks today. Some things we'd still like to do up here are:

1) Finish painting

2) Replace the flooring

3) Clear out all the junk

4) Finish the guest bedroom

5) Put in new electrical

6) Eventually gut it all and rebuild it

Who knows when Step 6 will be completed, if ever!

Two Years and Two Months In

Well, I took a very long hiatus from this blog. An almost two years hiatus (sorry blog). Since 2011, I have graduated college and have a full time job! Yep, I'm officially an adult now. 

Anyway, I'm BACK! I have randomly decided to start blogging again. And I'm going to try to keep up this time, buuuut...I have a lot of catching up to do. It has been about 2 years and 2 months since we have been living in this house now. And even longer that we have been renovating. It's extremely hard to stay motivated all the time to work on the house. We think about it A LOT. I mean, we are living in it. But to actually get the motivation and the time to work on everything that needs to get done is a challenge. Nonetheless, we have made lots of progress, so the next few (or several) posts are probably going to be filling you in on all of the big projects we've tackled.

First up, The Living Room. This was our first big project and the first room that we tackled, before I even moved in, back in 2010. If you go back to my first Living Room Post, you will see that we completely gutted the room. It looked like this about mid-way through:

The living room back in September of 2010.
We added insulation, which it had never had before!

Then we added a little drywall into the mix, and it looked like this:

October 2010 - Drywall and even some mud!

And we painted the walls (in Water Chestnut by Glidden):

October 2010 - Paint on the walls

Once the paint was complete, we refinished the floor and added window trim. Again, you can go back Here to see pictures of the finished floor. Meanwhile, here's Trent in action with the window trim (Sorry for the bad pic):

November 2010 - Installing window trim!

With the addition of some new furniture and accessories (the fun stuff), by Spring of 2011, our living room looked like this (Don't mind the door against the wall - we were saving that for another project):

Living Room in April 2011

Here's a (rather long) source list, too - scroll further down to see some of the items: 

Wall paint: Glidden in "Water Chesnut" from Home Depot, Curtains: IKEA, Curtain rods: Target, Couch: Sofa Mart, Couch pillows: Dwell from Target, Throw: Target, Side chairs: Target.com, Pillows on chairs: Kohl's, Lamps and lamp shades: Target, Coffee table: Already owned (But we think it was from Target), End tables: Target, Sea fan picture on wall: TJ Maxx, Decorative Iron wall hanging: Hobby Lobby, Pink Faux flowers and vase: Wal-Mart, Mirror (See below): Hobby Lobby, Brown storage ottoman (See below): Target, Chevron pillow (See below): Kohl's, Wall clock (See below): Kohl's, White picture frames (See below): IKEA, TV (See below): Samsung from Best Buy, TV Stand (See below): Target, Wall shelf (See below): Menards, Pillar Candles (See below): Kohl's, Candle Holders (See below): IKEA.

It's a big improvement, to us anyway, especially looking at the before and after pics:

That top picture may have been an in-progress shot, but still..you get the picture. Much better right?

I don't think I have taken an updated photo of the whole living room since then, but here are some pictures I have of various areas of the room:

The above photos are back from April of 2011 as well. It has changed a little since then - not drastically, but furniture has been switched around, and the brown ottoman you see in the above picture is currently living in the bedroom. We moved it out when we brought in the Christmas tree in December. We also have 2 end tables flanking the couch. The black chair you see in the picture on the right was Trent's and has moved back upstairs. It was a temporary fix for some additional seating, but it was looking kind of old and tired!

As you can probably tell, it is a fairly small room directly to the left when you walk in the house from the front door. The two pictures below show the little frame arrangement I added in the corner. The photos inside the frames have changed since then, so I will have to post an updated picture of those! We're sticking to mostly black and white photos on the walls...just what we prefer I guess.

My favorite addition to the living room so far is this:

It is the hutch that I inherited from my grandma in the Spring of last year. My grandma actually passed away in September, so I guess that kinda makes it extra special. I just love it in here...It makes it feel so much more like home. Most of the dishes inside were hers as well, including that green and white plate with the pink flowers that I have admired in her house for years. It is my favorite plate that I own! I actually have a collection of antique plates that I've gotten at antique stores and yard sales over the past couple of years. I have some of them in this cabinet, and some hanging in the kitchen. It's always fun looking for the perfect plate to add to my collection!

But anyway, there you have an update of our living room progress, which I hope to take more recent pictures for soon. In the end, I am really glad at the way it's turned out so far. It is definitely our favorite room in the house, and the room we spend the most time in everyday, so it's been fun watching it change and become more "home-y" along the way.

Stay tuned for some more updates tomorrow!

Our hotel-like bedroom: The process and reveal

So we finished our bedroom makeover back in January. It took a lot of hard work and elbow grease, chipping away at layers of paint on the walls, then coating them with our lovely paint colors, and refinishing the floor. We even picked out our pretty curtains and bedspread. When we were finished, it felt like we were sleeping in a nice hotel room. It was definitely a shocker to walk through the hallway and see this at the end of it! Everyone's instant reaction was WOW! haha. Granted, we still need nightstands and better lighting..not to mention a useable closet space and dressers! But here is a look at the process.

The before/progress pictures..


Most of the progress pictures were taken in the late fall and winter of last year. I listened to many-a Christmas song while painting the trim and walls of this baby. Here are the pics:

Trent mudding parts of the wall after we had scraped most of the paint off.

Look at that peach ceiling and ugly wall!! Yeah, it was bad.

Here is another corner of the room. That's the closet on the left. You can see that

more scraping has taken place! We were trying to get the walls to be as smooth as possible

before priming and painting the new color onto the walls.

The "window wall" in all its before glory. Yummy isn't it? 

Here we have a pile of paint chips on the floor. This stuff was

all over the place. In the end, we were left with paint chips in our hair, 

inside our sweatshirts, and a big old garbage bag full of it.

Here is a corner of the room after the first coat of primer was

applied to the walls. Look at how yellow and gross the window trim

and old blinds look compared to the bright white primer!

Here's that window wall again, all primed. Yet the ugly

blinds are still there. Don't worry, we removed them :)

Yay, finally getting paint on the walls and trim!

Painted walls and trim.and floor is cleaned!

Trent applying mineral spirits to the floor. This is supposed

to help clean it and get it ready for the sealer and poly. But it kinda smells horrible.

Applying sanding sealer to the floors. Starting to look nice, no? Make sure your

space is WELL - VENTILATED before refinishing floors. We had the heat on, and it made 

the entire house extremely fume-y. Not good.

After the sealer was applied. Love the richer color. We didn't even need to use stain.

I believe this is after the first coat of poly..the edges obviously not done yet. And as you

can see, the trim still needs another coat of semi-gloss after the sander went through.

Plus, see that curtain rod in the upper right corner? Yay for progess!

The TV that was in my dorm at Ambrose. Mounted on the wall, next to the bathroom door!

And the reveal..drumroll please.....

AFTER:

(Please excuse the blue light from the tv)

 It's gunna be like this until we can gut it and drywall it like the living room. And we

still need to find some nightstands, lamps, redo the closet, etc. But we love it!

Here it is in the daylight with the little pictures hung on each side of the bed.

And here's where we got everything: 

Wall paint: Dutch Boy in "Cozy Neutral" from Wal-Mart, Trim paint: Glidden Semi-gloss white from Home Depot, Curtains: Martha Stewart Collection at Home Depot, Curtain rods: Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Bed: Slumberland, Sheets: Kohl's, Duvet cover & shams: Organic cotton pintuck in "Sea Spray" from West Elm, White and brown pillows: Target, Throw: Target

These are the pictures... I picked the frames up from the dollar store for a buck each,

Then printed out our first initials with a light turquoise background. And voila, cheap art!

Hope you like the bedroom reveal!