New Living Room Rug!

Our new rug has FINALLY arrived! I am so pleased. It makes the room feel bigger and yet cozier at the same time. Overall, I think it makes the room feel so much more finished! I L-O-V-E it!

We did not have a chance to repaint the coffee table this weekend but hopefully will get to that soon. Never thought I'd say this, but it is just too much gray! (On another note, I seriously don't know where this weekend went! I didn't get ANYTHING done!)

Tomorrow I'll share with you the new artwork on the other side of the wall!

How Far We've Come... Master Bath!

This room is actually COMPLETE and I have no goals for this space for 2015, but stumbling along the pictures really made me appreciate how nice this bath is now compared to when we moved in. Therefore, thought I would still share!

 

This was my inspiration board:

 

Originally we put beadboard on the upper half of the wall, but when we did the full renovation we took it down and drywalled.

And the final result:

 

As crazy as it sounds, Miles has always slept best in this room in his moses basket!

 

 

 

How Far We've Come.... Den!

Ohhh the den. How I've hated this space! I have just had complete designers block when its come to this space since the day we moved in. We've made improvements over the time, but the room just lacks purpose, warmth, and style.

Here is the room shortly after we moved in. The carpeting was d-i-s-g-u-s-t-i-n-g! We had an old, hand-me-down couch with an awful slipcover. 

The one thing we knew we wanted to do - and I actually do love - is the tall beadboard throughout the room.

We also opened up the built-ins to fit a larger TV (that we never use!)

So much about this room just irked me.. The gray paint was too silvery, the blinds were perpetually dirty no matter how much I tried to clean them, the curtains looked too yellowy, the rug is not my style, and the room overall does not look inviting.

When we found out we were hosting Christmas and having a ton of family in town, we brought in a second hand-me-down couch. It may have made the room more functional for that one Christmas with a dozen guests, but overall it did not make me like this room a single bit more.

THEN came the day when we couldn't take it anymore! The carpet had to go!

Based on a project we saw on Young House Love, we decided to sand and paint the subfloor until I could figure out what kind of carpet I wanted.

Also had to say goodbye to the silvery,blue, purplish paint. We decided to take a risk and try brown.

Much cleaner! With no furniture, I actually sort of like this room.

We were going to recover this sofa because we liked the size and shape, but it was super expensive to hire someone to make it (better to just buy a new couch!) and I just haven't got around to trying to make one myself. Also still not a big fan of the rug and the curtains.

Wow, this post has been pretty negative so far! ;) The good news is that we have a plan! Sooner rather than later, we are pitching the couch, donating the rug to Goodwill, selling the curtains, and starting from scratch. Our plan is to make this room a playroom for Miles. I picture a tepee tent as a perfect place for reading books and having adventures, a big toy box, thick cozy carpeting, and new curtains. That being said, I know the function I want this room to have but still don't have a completely clear vision of the style. I'm currently searching for some curtains that inspire me! Hoping that a year from now (or month from now!) this room looks completely different. No idea what that look will be, but I can't wait to share once we figure it out! 

How Far We've Come... Living Room!

Sorry for the delay on this post... I had the best intentions of posting every day this week and life just gets in the way! That is why I'm the worst blogger ever, but alas you already know that! (Ok, maybe not the WORST!)

 

Anyway.. The living room! The major changes we've made in here over the years are just refinishing the floors, painting, and adding a few light fixtures (Sconces by the fireplace, and a PB Photographer fixture above the artwork). Also, last year we got a new couch. Before that, almost everything was a hand-me-down or something we made!

 

You can't really tell from this photo, but these floors were SO BEAT UP when we moved in. It was the floor of a barn. They were so scratched and stained and dented.  

This is what the room looked like right after we moved in and painted.

 

 

Evan's hand drawn artwork! 

Here it is with the electrical done and floors stained..

 

Here is a shot with the new Pottery Barn Peyton Grommet drapes. Love these! 

Repainting the frames...

And for 2015, the plan is to get the new rug, new artwork, repaint the furniture, maybe add some canned lighting in the ceiling (the room is just SO dark at night!), and maybe retile the fireplace... Still debating this! I'm playing in photoshop with some ideas so I'll share these with you soon!

CONFESSION: The rug came in yesterday... the new artwork is already installed... and we plan to repaint the furniture this weekend! Tune in next week for the reveal! I LOVE IT!

How Far We've Come... Kitchen!

Ohhh the kitchen.. I love seeing this transformation! It brings back so many good memories and makes me wish I had another HUGE project I could dive into. I have so many milestone pictures that I did not include what it looked like when we first moved in, but you can see those here. For the purposes of this post, the pictures start at the point just before we started knocking down walls. (In other words, we had already painted the walls and the cabinets and had gotten the new appliances).

Here we go!

I really did love this little chalkboard wall and little nook...

The galley kitchen however? No thank you. I always felt like I was in a cave!

The fridge stuck out SO FAR when it was in this spot. It was constantly in the way!

When we first started the demolition, it wasn't necessarily planned... We KNEW we were going to renovate the kitchen at some point in the near future, but one Saturday we just couldn't take it anymore and just decided to start opening up the walls! I love the wallpaper we found behind the cabinets.

You don't even want to KNOW how hard I cried when we saw this huge pipe in the wall. All I could think about was how freaking expensive it would be to move it (and it was!)

Being able to see the light shine through the open was AMAZING! Even with so many beams still up and all of the mess, it was a heavenly sight!

Living in a construction zone = no fun. I was always buying flowers to try to make it look a LITTLE more pleasant.

We did all of the demolition, framing, and drywalling work ourselves (with the help of an amazing 80-year old city inspector who would spend hours a day at our house basically telling us step by step what to do! Thank you Gil!) We hired out the plumbing, electrical, and flooring. Here is a picture of what the room looks like with the plumbing complete. Goodbye huge pipe!

The WORST part of the whole renovation was removing the floors. You wouldn't think it would be that bad, but there were FIVE LAYERS of flooring (If you scroll up again, you can see how much the floor height varied between the Pergo flooring and wood floors - like a solid two inches!) , and I think they used a gallon of super glue and 100 nails to lay each layer. It was brutal. It was backbreaking work, it was messy, it was miserable. It was so hard that we ALMOST decided to lay the new wood flooring above the bottom layer of linoleum , but figured we'd regret it later and pushed through to expose the subfloor.

Here is a shot of what it looked like with the the electrical work complete and the floors stripped down to the subfloor.

Here is a shot with the new flooring laid but not stained. Love that it is completely level. Definitely worth all of the extra work to have a seamless transition to the dining room!

Stained floors!! Woo hoo!

And here it is with the baseboard trim installed.

The only other major construction work to do was the built-ins for the fridge.

 

Love all of the storage!

 

 

The goal for 2015 is to finally get new counters and a new farmhouse kitchen sink. Still debating the marble, but thinking I will take the plunge and just do it. Nothing in our house is perfect anyway, so if the marble gets a little beat up it will just match everything else in the house. It will have "character." My father-in-law's mother who is from Italy told me that it was a GOOD thing in Italy if your marble counters were beat up because it meant you were a good cook and you had a happy home. I love that!

 



Ok, I am not a good cook, but the happy home part definitely rings true :)

Tomorrow's transformation - the family room!