Owl-y Business

So, this is just a little fun post I wanted to do before I share about the kitchen and the hallway renovation stuff. Sound ok? Good. If you take a look at my header, you'll see that there is a cute little owl in the corner (See it?). Well, I happen to have a little collection going with decorative owls. As in, they're pretty much my favorite. And they are scattered around the house like little helpers.  

Allow me to explain:

1. This owl sits on one of the little shelves in the kitchen. It has a place for a candle behind it.

2. This white ceramic owl also sits on one of the kitchen shelves. He keeps watch over the sink I suppose.

3. This is my Scentsy owl! If you haven't seen it in action, here you go:

Isn't it magical?

4. This owl sits on the phone table in the kitchen and keeps all the notes and pens for important messages, to-do lists, and the like. What a little helper.

5. This one sits on top of the fridge and keeps watch over all of our food. It has a lid also - I believe it can be used for a cookie jar, or just to keep anything you want in there really. I haven't figured out what to put in it yet. I got it from my sister for Christmas.

6. I almost forgot about this little guy when I was taking photographs - this is a knob on one of our cabinets in the kitchen! It's from Anthropologie - You can get it Here. Trent got it for me for Christmas. It's so adorable.

So those are my owls! Hopefully my collection will grow and I'll have new additions to share..although I think it's getting kind of crazy already, huh? ;)

Bedroom Update - Nearly Two Years Later

When we left off with the Bedroom Reveal in April 2011, it looked like this:

Our Newly Finished Bedroom, April 2011

Now, feast your eyes on this baby:

Our Bedroom Now

Isn't she a beaut? And even though this photo was taken last year, it hasn't changed too much since then. It is hard to keep it looking tip-top shape like in this photo, but basically this is what it looks like now. 

We have actually added a storage bench to the end of the bed since then, which Trent got me for my birthday last year. Here it is in all its glory:

It's from Target, and yes, it opens up its top to reveal bounties of storage! (wish I had a picture)

 But back to the Bedroom.

As you can see, we've added nightstands on both sides with matching lamps. The nightstands were from Amazon, and the lamps were from Marshall's I believe. (I will have to look up the exact stores and prices at another time and add them to this post.) We also added a couple of small rugs, and I love both of them! I think they were both from Marshall's as well, but again I will have to do some digging and check. Finally, there are two extra pillows on the bed to beef things up a little bit. It's hard to see them, but maybe I will add a detail shot once I get one. ;)

Oddly enough, when I first moved in, the bedroom did not have one thing that most people expect a bedroom to have...A door. So that was another addition.

Below you can see Trent installing it back in September 2011, and then after it was finished.

He has since tweaked it a little bit, and we have completely gutted the hallway as well, so that is a whole 'nother project for another time! (Which is still in progress by the way!)

The door you see to the left of the bedroom door is the door to the bathroom, which 1) Is the only bathroom in the house, and 2) Used to be the ONLY door to the only bathroom in the house. Yep, through our bedroom. How awkward for guests....

Anyway, Since this picture was taken, we have also added a second door to the bathroom, through the actual hallway. So things kinda make more sense now. I will share much more about this when I share the Hallway Renovation, which is a much longer, more complicated renovation than anything we have done in the house so far. So stay tuned for that.

But all in all, we like the bedroom a lot so far. We haven't gutted it or anything like we did the living room. But we don't think we need to for a long time. It still needs a lot of work as far as the closet goes - that's another project in itself - and it has a huge bare wall that needs attention, too. So it's still a work in progress!

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!

Starting to feel like home - A little update & pictures tomorrow

So I'm watching House Hunters International right now... jealous of course :). But anyway, I decided to update since a gazillion things have happened since my last one! It was LAST YEAR since I updated in here..Wow is all i can say. But I have since graduated in December with my Bachelors in Graphic Design. Woot! And I've still been going to school for my web developer certificate that I will get next month. Then it's the real world &; job hunting....kinda scary! Ugh, don't even wanna think about it now. I also turned 23 last month. We went out for pizza at Old Chicago and it was a grand old time!

Things are going fantastically well in the house. Of course we have tons more updating/renovating to do, but it's getting there. We have a cozy bedroom, which I will go into the details maybe this weekend. Tomorrow? We shall see. Anyway, the living room, which I'm in right now, is by far my favorite room. It's so comfy and cozy and it's so NEW! We've gotten lots more furniture, and I will document the room hopefully this weekend too. Because hard work needs to be documented. :)

Our current projects include refinishing our kitchen chairs, which are looking super cute and comfy, and starting our outdoor landscaping hopefully soon. (Now that it's spring and getting warmer.) We finally just purchased new end tables and lamps for our living room, courtesy of Target. I swear, like 85% of our living room items are from Target. 'Cause Target = LOVE.

A couple of big projects we still need to do soon are redoing the hallway and the closet, and finish installing the living room trim. More on that later.

More detailed posts maybe tomorrow. Trent will be home from work very soon! I think I may go to bed...not even 10:30 and I'm tired. Oh, to be 22 again :)..lol.

Life is good

Hello again...happy 2 years and 7 months to Trent and I today :) hehe
Well I'm at work right now, it's 9:00am so I'm going to have to make this quick for now! But I've been living with Trent in our house since the week of Thanksgiving, I believe it was that Sunday, Nov. 21 that I moved in.  So going on 3 weeks now! It has been great so far! A little stressful and chaotic at times, since we're of course in the middle of renovating, but overall it's been good. We started sleeping in Trent's twin-sized bed upstairs, which wasn't too fun, but we then bought a new queen-sized mattress set, and we've been working on the bedroom...scraping paint off the walls and ceiling and now finishing priming as a temporary fix until we can gut the whole thing, ala the living room reno. So while we're working on that, we have been sleeping in the living room! Which still doesn't have curtains! But we're making it work. haha...I'm really itching to paint the kitchen, but the bedroom needs done first...there's just too much to do.

The day after Thanksgiving we hit the stores for a few good deals that afternoon, and ended up snagging a sale-priced down comforter, mattress pad, and a $30 pre-lit Christmas tree from Target (last one!), plus some ornaments to accompany it. It's a kinda short one, about 6' I think, but it looks really pretty in the corner of our now cluttered living room haha. I'll put up pictures soon.

It's finals week for me next week, and then I graduate on the 18th...8 days from now!! Eek! Finally! But unfortunately I'm taking a class over break, then I have spring semester at Black Hawk for my web certificate...so I'm not done with school. In May is when the real celebration will occur! Well I just felt the need to make a quick update, and hopefully we get this bedroom done soon. In the living room we still need to install the curtain rods, hang the curtains and maybe some blinds, and finish painting the doorway, the trim, and the top edge of the walls...chaos, I tell you. :)

UPDATE -

Here are some pics of our tree to get you in the Christmas mood:

Here it is complete with our bed - how's that for temporary sleeping arrangement?

VERY long overdue update..my apologies.

Wellllll... I had forgotten about this blog, admittedly. Being so busy with school starting up again, work, and renovating the house has taken a toll I guess. No time for blog writing. However, some more news has prompted me to write again, because I just need to get it out into the world! But for now, I need to provide a teensy-weensy update of what has happened over the past...3 months, whew!

So I actually haven't moved in yet, because we have been waiting until the house is more livable, and a complete living room renovation put the entire moving thing on hold for a while. But this weekend, I think it is finally happening! *Crossing fingers.* We started roughly the first of September, ripping out the living room, down to the bare bones. Plaster and all..from the walls and the ceiling. See below picture for what it looked like in the process:

Ripping out the walls and ceiling! Fun fun!

Actually it wasn't too fun, but it had to be done! There was no insulation at all, the plaster walls were covered in wallpaper, panel board, paint, and wall paper borders. It was nearly impossible for the room to look nice unless we ripped everything out. We eventually installed insulation, got all new drywall up on the walls and ceiling, mudded, taped, and sanded, installed some small heating pipes, new electrical sockets and wires to the ceiling, and finally primed and painted! Here are more pictures of the process for your viewing pleasure:

Trent hard at work!

Drywall is up

This wall is officially...MUDDED.

Hooray for paint! Glidden's Water Chestnut from Home Depot. We love it!

We then refinished the floor by sanding it down with a huge sander we rented from Home Depot, (Trent did that part), cleaned and wiped it all down with mineral spirits, then applied sealer and two coats of poly. We decided against a stain because we liked the natural look of the wood. And the lighter floor just seemed to brighten up the room even more. Below are pictures of the floor while we sanded and then after it was done. Huggeee difference! We like it a wholee lot (Sorry some of the pictures are small):

The partly sanded floor - Can you see the major difference??

The sanded floor

Trent applying the sealer

Finished project!

Before the renovation, I purchased our washer and dryer set, a Samsung front loader set, from Craigslist for $900. It was less than a year old, came with a transferable warranty from Lowes, all the paperwork, only used for a few months. We have yet to hook these up, because we still need to make the laundry room/back porch decently livable. haha. Hopefully we will have laundry soon :) Anyway, then we purchased (well, my parents bought it for my early graduation present) a new couch from Sofa Mart. The Stonebrook model, seen here: http://www.furniturerow.com/SofaMart/Stonebrook-Sofa-Group/Stonebrook-Sofa/prod531202/. We got a great deal on it, because it was on sale. And we like it! It's very comfy if I do say so myself.

Since then I have picked up some more decorative items for the living room and other rooms in the house. And we were finally able to buy the trim for the LR, after Menards was out of the stock for roughly 2 weeks, due to a huge sale on trim. The baseboards and window trim are still sitting on the LR floor, but they should be up soon. In the meantime, here is a glimpse of our lovely room so far:

Our couch, rug, and coffee table, sitting pretty

Of course, this is only a few of the items that are now in the living room, but let me break it down on what we have so far: New walls and ceiling, refinished floors, our sofa with some lovely Dwell Studio for Target pillows, and some more pillows I got on sale at Kohl's, a throw from Target, a light-colored 5' x 7' area rug on sale at Kohl's for $26! And the coffee table was in the room previously. We're going to use it for now, even though it's not really matching our decor too much. On the opposite wall (not shown) is the TV table we got at Target, and our Samsung 40" TV that I bought from Best Buy a couple of months ago. The room is coming together, but it's the only room that really feels "homey" right now! (lots more to do...) We have some IKEA curtains and some curtain rods that I am dying to put up, but the trim needs to be up first! Trent will have to "get on that" soon. hehe :)

Along with the living room, we've been cleaning up other areas of the house, and we also made-over the front porch! It's looking more beautiful than ever, after we added a new porch railing that Trent made himself from boards that were lying around - so proud of him :). And we have been painting it white, with lots of coats of semigloss! We also painted the new posts Trent put in, and the porch ceiling & floor. It has a whole new, fresh look. I will post pictures soon hopefully! Unfortunately it's almost winter, and it's getting too cold to do much more work outside, but it's looking pretty great right now. I even picked up a new little doormat and it loves its new home on the porch.

Other updates include getting HD Satellite from Dish Network (long process, but well worth it!), getting a new, faster internet set up, and our current project - the bedroom. We're peeling layers of old paint off the walls..it's a pain in the butt, but has to be done so we can paint the plaster walls temporarily. Until we can renovate the entire room like we did the living room. The floors have also been sanded down and just need the sealer and poly coats applied. Then we can move in our new bed, which we've been looking for and will hopefully purchase on Monday when we pick up our new mattress :) We bought that baby today at Denver Mattress, and picked out a perfect bed, but it's a bit expensive... so I'm going to hold my breath and hope we can either afford to buy that bad boy, or look at some other options. Not sure what to do yet!

Nonetheless, we've definitely been busy working on the house for the last few months. I will be back to give another update soon. For now all I can say is that I am so very excited to move in finally!!!

Things are falling into place..

I'm writing right now full of optimism for where we are headed! I feel like a little slice of my dreams is finally starting to come true. Since inheriting Trent's family's house, his dad's belongings are heading out the door sooner than expected and it looks like I may be on the move in maybe two weeks or so now! I can't fully describe how excited and overwhelmed I am, to finally be moving in with Trent and being able to make a place "ours." Although it will definitely be a lot of hard work, I have hope that we will turn the house from an eyesore and a health hazard to something that is much safer and much easier on the eyes. I've been waiting nearly my whole life so far to have a home of my own to work my magic in, and we're both so excited to see our dreams finally coming to life. :)

I think that, besides Trent helping move out nearly everything from the living room over the past few days, and a decent amount of "stuff" from the kitchen, what really has pushed me over the edge is buying my NEW IMAC yesterday (!!) which I can't wait to receive in the mail. Trent and I both agree it will look amazing on my desk in our office, once I actually get a desk and once we actually have an office of course ;) Nonetheless, I'm so excited about that purchase - and not only does it come with a free pink ipod nano (16Gb), it will also have Microsoft Office '08 and CS5 Design Premium on it!! EEK! After the rebate on the nano, it came in at a little under $2000, plus my parents are chipping in a little for my graduation present. I have been saving up over the summer to buy it, so I'm excited that I could actually afford it with my checking.

Along with my spiffy new computer, I plan on taking the following things with me on the move to our new home:

• Mid-size flat screen tv (for the bedroom)
• The majority of my clothes (eek! - i have a lot) - what doesn't follow me will bag up for garage sale/charity
• 3 lamps: A silver, 3-light one, small one inherited from the parents (which may need a new shade) and desk lamp 
• Some dishware (plastic of course haha), along with a martini glass set, beer glass, and a wine glass
• Striped tablecloth
• Purple towels, pink and purple washcloths (Trent will have to live with those for now :) )
• Small bathroom rug
• Pink curtains from school
• Some framed wall art and a poster made by moi, that needs a frame
• Photos in frames
• Small fake flower bouquets in little pots
• A full length mirror for the closet and a small black mirror for who knows where!
• Some pillows and blankets
• A shoe rack for the closet
• Pink plastic-drawer closet organizers
• A small wooden filing cabinet for the office
• Tons of art supplies, books, and office supplies
• Alarm clock
• Purse rack, push lights, and hooks for closet

I really don't have a whole lot of household items that we can use, and it looks like we may be buying some majorly needed items, like a couch and a big tv for the living room. I am going to try to sell some things (i.e. the rug, curtains, tablecloth, etc.) at a yard sale, after we are all moved in, along with some stuff I like to call "crap." I hope the sale is a success, because I have beyond tons of junk to get rid of! I may or may not take my ugly end tables, though there is a possibility I will take just one for the time being. And I haven't decided on some things yet, like my cd rack full of old cds.. Is it really neccessary?
I guess that's it for now though, some fun pictures to follow I hope! :-)

House Tour

Alright, everyone. Come on in, hang up your coats and hats. And welcome to our home! It's definitely a work in progress, and it's ALWAYS mid-renovation. A century-old little charmer in small town Illinois. Behold, our humble abode, complete with Before and After/Progress pics. (This page is being continually updated by me to keep the "Progress" pics semi-up-to-date for ya!)

Front Exterior - Before/During:

Front Exterior - After:

 

Kitchen - Before:

Kitchen - Progress:

See more of our kitchen here

Living Room - Before/During:

Living Room - After:

With the new rug:

 

Updated Living Room with our new couch:

See more of our living room here

Bedroom - Before:

Bedroom - After:

See more of our bedroom here

My Office - Before:


My Office - Progress:

See more of my office here

Backyard - Progress:

Bathroom - Before:

Bathroom - Progress:

See more of our bathroom here

Laundry Room - Progress:

See more about our laundry room here

More rooms/spaces:

• Upstairs bedroom (Haven't started)
• Back room (Haven't started)
• Closet/Pantry (Haven't started)

See Our House Layout Here