Our front door is Autumn Fire by Valspar (Exterior).
Our living room is Filtered Shade by Valspar.
Our fireplace is Lilac Muse by Valspar.
Our bedroom is Elephant Gray by Valspar.
Our trim/molding/interior doors on the first floor is Lilac Muse by Valspar.
Our closet is Autumn Fire by Valspar.
Our bathroom is Hunter's White by Valspar.
Our guest room is Lilac Muse by Valspar.
Our guest room door is Enchanted Forest by Valspar.
Our kitchen walls are Ocean Storm by Valspar.
Our kitchen cabinets are Lilac Muse by Valspar.
Our sun room walls will be Lilac Muse by Valspar.
Our sun room ceiling will be Autumn Fire by Valspar.
Showing posts with label living room. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living room. Show all posts
Friday, January 30, 2015
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Fifteen lessons I learned in 2014.
In the past year, we have found a house, put an offer on a house, closed on a house, started tearing apart a house, filled that house with wedding decorations, emptied the house of wedding decorations, painted walls, fixed more leaky pipes than we can count, and tried day after day to turn that house into a home.
If you had told me last year, on January 8 that we would have a house that we not only got a great deal on, but a house we can afford, a house we can afford to fix, and a house that really does feel like home, I would've assumed this house was in the worst part of town. But God had the perfect house for us in the perfect place for us at the perfect time for us. And in the last (almost) year of this house adventure, I've learned a few things...
1. If this is the house God wants for us, the inspector and appraiser will give the go-ahead, no matter what issues come up.
2. It's okay to have a house that isn't finished. There's a reason it's a "fixer-upper."
3. Fixing things the right way by yourself takes time, and that's okay.
4. Sometimes the budget doesn't allow for the prettiest option.
5. Temporary solutions are just fine. And they are just that, temporary.
6. Even unfinished homes can feel cozy. When people walk into our house, I don't know what they think about our flooring issues (that melted carpet padding that looks like mold), or the rooms that aren't finished (or even started). But when they come into the living room, I know they can feel comfortable in the warmth of the space and the hospitality we offer.
7. It's okay to "undo" the finished things that were waiting for us in the house, like the basement. The house just becomes more "us" every time we do.
8. Painting isn't as easy as it looks. And it is ALWAYS more time consuming that you plan.
9. When house issues come up, sometimes you have to prioritize. Not everything can be fixed every time.
10. Always look around at the store. You might be surprised to find a $400 10x12 rug that's in the $80 bin because it has a tear. Or a $20 coffee table because it's "out of season" (whatever that means).
11. The sooner you quit being a perfectionist, the easier it will be to finish a project.
12. Kids are messy. Let go of how "nice" things should look now. That will make sharing life with children so much more enjoyable. Besides, kids spill milk and vomit on couches sometimes, that's just life.
13. DIY blogs often have big budgets. DIY doesn't necessarily mean "inexpensive."
14. Sunlight can make any dull space spectacular. Just open the blinds already!
15. Don't compare your house or your stuff to others'. Comparing yourself to others only leads to arrogance or shame, but never happiness.
I'm sure 2015 will bring LOTS of lessons. Here's to hoping that I will add to the lessons learned instead of starting over at square one.
Friday, August 1, 2014
Slow and steady wins the race to not have things finished first.
If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen a couple fun things here and there from our house! Isaiah and I got married four weeks ago tomorrow and time is flying! But we still haven't managed to do a TON. It's been a struggle to figure out how exactly to make our house feel like a home and still be able to remodel things. I don't want to be completely trapped in a construction zone, so things will be slow for a while. :)
Our lovely wreath on our lovely door!
"Hunter's White" by Valspar. This is the color that we used for the upper half of the bathroom walls, and the lower half is "Lilac Muse" by Valspar, which is our go-to white paint for house projects. :)
Isaiah working hard on our floating floor! Obviously not much could be worse than the yellow and pink "before," but I absolutely LOVE the Franklin Hickory floating floor we found at Lowes. :)
Progress!
Almost finished! All that's left is the closet, threshold, and quarter-round around the walls!
A better angle of the color. :)
Isaiah moving in the new couches by himself. ;)
All tuckered out after working so hard. :)
A better look at the progress of the living room. :) That rug??? 75% off at Lowes because of a tear in the bottom. For the win! If you have plans to come over, don't expect it to look like this. ;) I already have new plans to rearrange!
And a peek at our new "playroom." :)
Since I last posted, we got married, we all but completely finished painting our main bathroom, we basically finished the bathroom floor, we had my inlaws over for dinner, we acquired some couches from Craigslist, we opened and unpacked wedding gifts, we hung a wreath, we rearranged some bookshelves, and we're finally starting to hang things on the walls. :) Here are some progress pictures from the house!
I've realized that these pictures are already a little outdated. But what good is having a house if you can't change things whenever you want!? :)
We have a couple fun shelving projects up our sleeve, but the short term goal is to have things cleaned for a birthday brunch on Saturday and having some of our besties over on Tuesday! :) But seriously, I can't wait to show off the newest projects!
P.S. Thank the Lord for long lines at the social security office that has given me WAY longer than an hour to write this post. ;)
Monday, June 2, 2014
The current state of affairs.
So it's been forever since I've updated the blog, and for that I'm sorry, but while I wasn't blogging, I was finishing up my third year of teaching! Since I survived, I decided I should probably start working on the house again! Isaiah works in the farming industry so he doesn't have much free time either, so when we do work on the house, we try to knock out an entire project in a very short amount of time, like crazy people. The other side of that is us taking about an hour to work on something (which ends up being mostly set up and clean up)!
Our house is starting to look and feel more like a home now! I have a couple before pictures and several after pictures that show some of the progress over the last three months! :)
Our kitchen when we moved in. :)
The same view from our current fridge placement. We're trying to figure out what exactly to do with the odd space in our kitchen, but we're thrilled that our kitchen isn't tiny!
The front bedroom today (as I finally unpacked most of the stuff)!
The empty boxes from moving, our new curtain rod for the living room (Threshold from Target), and the beautiful oak mirror my dad made that still needs to find a home on our wall. :)
Our front door. :) [Elephant Gray, Valspar]
Our Kenmore gas range. :)
My desk in the front bedroom (complete with Mrs. Meyer Clean Day Lavender countertop spray, which is my FAVORITE).
And we painted the vents white too, and I think it looks awesome. :)
And that's how things are looking nowadays! We have high hopes for some other projects around the house, but with work and wedding planning, it'll take some time. :) Thanks for stopping by and being patient! We're learning to love working on the house together, and we're excited about all the fun stuff we get to show you down the road!
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
After April showers.
I had my first bridal shower over the weekend and was given quite a bit of fun stuff for the house! I am thrilled to say that all of my thank you cards are written and most of the things are unpacked just waiting to be used (and a few have already been put to use, like the dish scrubber...)!
Since we painted the outside of our front door, and the living room walls, the inside looked pretty sloppy being a nasty off-yellow. We chose Elephant Gray by Valspar. We have it chosen for another project that should be done within a month or two. :)
(See, I told you the lighting was bad!)
The lighting in our living room at night leaves much to be desired (which should change sometime!) but I wanted to show you a little bit of what things are looking like now. Pardon the low quality iPhone pictures...
Our living room has furniture once again! Isaiah finished painting last weekend and my mom and I vacuumed tons of dust out of the furniture and put it back where it goes for now. :)
We still have some paint to scrape off the window, but the after is SO much better than this before...
Our dining room finally looks like a dining room. :) The desk in the corner should have a new look one of these days, and that will hopefully be the home of our piano, a buffet (which we're still on the lookout for) and who knows what else. :)
Before:
After:
There is SO much change since we bought the house just two months ago! I'm pretty impressed with us being two amateurs with two (beyond) full time jobs and planning a wedding, not to mention taking care of other house stuff that's not so fun. We'll share more on that later!
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Shut the (red) Front Door!
a.k.a. the post that we tell you why we haven't been updating a ton...
This is what painting after sunset looks like. Our house doesn't have any light fixtures in the living room. :/
Lots and LOTS of sanding and prepwork went into the living room and hallways. We removed the old crown molding (that wasn't even touching the ceiling) and we (Isaiah) had to remove some liquid nails from the wall, and patch holes where the molding was. The trim was covered in more than one thick coat of lacquer and that all had to be removed also. Our Friday night consisted of sanding, sanding, and way more sanding (and sweeping walls). We took our dust-covered selves and went to Lowe's to get paint and supplies for Saturday. :)
So this home improvement stuff is fun, but when both of us work full time, and we have to fund every project we do (while we're planning a wedding, a marriage, and a million other time consuming and expensive things), things don't always look SUPER glamorous in the blog format. So this post will be more like I'm spitting out all the things I remember from the past two and a half weeks (yikes!).
Two weekends ago, I moved out of my apartment, and all of my stuff moved into the house with Isaiah, and I moved into my (future) in law's house. Since things have been moved, Isaiah is living in the new house with all of my stuff. :) It's starting to look like a fixer-upper turned bachelor pad with lots of unpacked boxes and chick stuff here and there.
The bathroom is at a stage of partial completion (meaning that the shower helps you get clean and the toilet flushes). More on that in the near future also. :)
(and yes, that shower curtain was already mine)
The main update I have tonight is paint!!! We scheduled a painting party with our small group about a month ago, so we had to pick out some paint colors and get lots of prep done! Some of our close couple friends came over yesterday with brushes, rollers, paint trays, and a song in their hearts.
After several paint samples (eight to be exact), we decided on Valspar's Filtered Shade for the living room. :) We are thrilled with our choice. It makes the house feel so much cleaner, new, and fresh!
[Valspar Filtered Shade]
Progress!!! That yellow really stood out once we used a cool, clean color!
This is also the "basically finished" product. After this picture was taken, Isaiah touched up a few spots and painted the baseboards white. We used the same color for the trim that we used for the fireplace (Valspar's Lilac Muse).
I will *fingers crossed* be able to take some more final pictures tomorrow with sunlight lighting up the room. The white trim makes EVERYTHING look more fantastic!
While we were at Lowe's picking out paint, I reached for a paint chip of a FABULOUS fiery red (after seeing a room I LOVED over at apartmenttherapy.com) and I asked Isaiah if we could use it for a certain project (more on that later too!) and he replied "Sure! Let's just get a gallon and paint the front door too!" So... a gallon of this beauty came home with us too! :)
(front door before, complete with weird, crusty tape stuff. and that door handle was our very first home-related purchase!)
Tada!!!!! :)
So now, we're the New Kids on the Block (our WiFi name!) in the corner house with the red door. :)
Until next time, I'll just be sitting on the plasticy stuff admiring the beautiful walls and trim. ;)
P.S. Our yard is huge and we met the neighbors, but more on that later!
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