Living room progress. Long time coming.

Happy Monday, everyone!

My living room is slowly taking shape and becoming all I dreamed it to be back when it looked like this.

Whew... I hadn't looked at these photos in a LONG time.  Yes, this is how the house looked when we moved in! That's what you get when you buy a foreclosure, folks!

So, then we lived with furniture that didn't work well for the room for over a year. 

We had a love/hate relationship with our sectional.  LOVED the feel and comfort and the fact that the hubby and I could BOTH stretch out and lay down on it.  HATED the worn down torn up backside and the awkward layout it created for the room.  Okay, let's be real - that was only something I hated.  Hubby couldn't have cared less. :)

Then we had the wall issues... the couch wasn't a true "L" shape so it didn't fit into the corner which left an awkward space in the back.  I pulled the couch off the walls to bring it into the middle of the room.  I could never figure out just want to do with the blank walls.  I can't find pictures of the room with my shutters on the wall (which I hung up to break up the blankness).

   So I told you about our couch hunt & my score on Craigslist.

I thought I'd give you a peek at what the room is looking like now so you can see there truly has been some progress made! YAY!

 Oh and just so you also know what I deal with when I try and take photos....

Never a dull moment... our sweet Hallie.
Oh and the table she's standing on is our new coffee table we built! I'll tell you more about that in a later post. 

What about y'all? Any of you living with a room that is a work in progress? After a year and a half ours is finally coming together!

House Goals 2013

Well it's a new year and we are still in the same house! And the miracle is that we don't have plans to move any time soon!  That's big news for us.  We've lived in this city for almost 5 years and have lived in three houses.  You've seen some of the progress we've made at our current house (1/2 years and counting!). 
The Kitchen
The Kids Bath
The Dining Room

Of course every project costs $$$$ so we try and space them out and tackle them when we have funds (and energy since we are DIYers).  I thought it would be fun to take note of all the projects I would like to do over this year (and the years to come) along with some pictures that serve as inspiration.

Guest Bath Renovation
*wood countertop
*white vessel sink
*white cabinets
*tile backsplash (maybe subway tile?)

Master Bath Renovation
ANYTHING would be better than what we've got going on in there now.  Highlights... new countertops, sinks, faucets, shower & tub.  
Fireplace Overhaul
*remove the 90's brass & glass screen,
*de-traditionalize the mantle
*get rid of the tile & add stone or brick

House Trim Painted
I want to paint a shade of gray to make our brick color less "pinkish"
After seeing THIS renovation I was inspired -- our house is basically a 2 story version of the one in the picture.  Seems to be built in the same time period using a similar brick and it's traditional like this one. 

Garage Door Updated
I'd love a new one... but the hubby has drawn the line there (so far). So, I'm thinking of faux finishing it... but it may just end up painted the same color as my *wishful* gray.

Fingers crossed that something from this list can get checked off the list!
You can find all these pictures and their sources on my pinterest board.

Kids Bathroom Reveal

I hope you have had a great holiday season! Our family spent 10 days traveling and once we returned home our son came down with a vicious virus that lasted 4-5 days.  Brutal way to start a new year!

However, now that things are settling down I am hoping to knock out a few projects that I have on my to-do list for 2013!

First up - I'm ready to show you our kids bathroom renovation.  While it only involved paint and trim, it created a pretty big change and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Granted, I still need to get some new towels, replace the faucet & add some "decor" (which is pretty hard for a kids bathroom) it's a whole lot better than it started!

We painted the whole thing top to bottom.... and there is a LOT of cutting in going on in here.  The easiest and most dramatic part of the change was painting the cabinets.  For the prep work I used Krud Kutter to clean the surfaces.  I intended to get the Krud Kutter that is a cleaner AND deglosser...but I bought the wrong kind.  So, I went over everything with this liquid deglosser from Lowes.

 We set up our assembly line in the garage & I got to work priming everything.

I used a small foam roller & a paintbrush for this job.  The foam roller was perfect and left a great finish.  The brush came in handy really only for the crevices in the door insets.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane and see the before & afters!

So, so much better!

Details:
I ended up doing a coat of primer & two coats of color on the cabinets.  We used Sherwin Williams paint and had them color match to Valspar Mountain Smoke.

The walls are Olympic Gray Beige. The handles and hinges are all new and came from Home Depot.

Linked here:
Handy Man, Crafty Woman
Someday Crafts
Not JUST a Housewife
A Bowl Full of Lemons
House of Hepworths

Goodbye Sectional - Hello New Sofa

I feel like I've blogged before about how my sectional sofa just wasn't working in our current living room (or at least I've complained enough to my hubby & friends). 

Well, over the summer I found a piece of furniture on Craigslist to go behind one side of it to fill the space a little better.  I LOVE the piece of furniture - but the room was still not working.{I had a picture of this with my sofa in front of it... but can't find it (and probably thought the blog was dead so it didn't matter anyway! haha)}.

So, over Thanksgiving we went to the "big" city to spend time with George's family and on Black Friday we hit the town on the hunt for the perfect new sofa.  I say "big" city because in College Station we have about 5 furniture stores in town - none of which are worth much in my opinion.  So, the Big D had to have something!

We hit three different Weir's, Freed's, Haverty's & finally on the way home (disappointed) we stopped at Dillard's and FOUND IT!

 

While I liked almost every couch equally the same it all came down to price (we saved $500), comfort (both George & I could sit and not be too uncomfortable and it was deep enough for him and yet my feet still touched the ground).  BTW, have you shopped for a sofa lately.  WOW it's such a hard thing to shop for.  Color, comfort, style, depth, PRICE it's almost impossible to find the perfect piece!

So, my next move was to find a buyer for our well-loved 8 year old sofa.  After having many people come look and turn it down I was desperate! Finally a sweet college girl who was moving into her own place suckered me into selling it to her dirt cheap.  But it was GONE! 

Next up... sell the round coffee table that doesn't work with a straight couch.  Do you notice a theme here?  I get something new and have to sell something old... amazing how that works! haha

So, on to finding something cheap and perfect for the new layout...

Kid's Bathroom Renovation

SEVEN MONTHS... are you kidding me.  We haven't posted in SEVEN months!!  That's ridiculous.  I'd like to say that it's because we were so busy crafting/renovating/designing all that time and we have LOADS of stuff to catch you up on.  But, sadly the real reason is we were flat out LAZY!

We've been busy with our families, part-time jobs, getting ready for a craft show, homeschooling preschoolers...you name it, we've been doing it!

With that said, there have been things happening around here and hopefully we'll start to share with you what we've got going on NOW (and maybe catch up on months past).

Earlier this summer we had a a handyman come and install new crown molding and beadboard in our kids bathroom upstairs.  There were too many cuts and precise measurements that we weren't confident in our skills to tackle it ourselves. 

THIS week we began the process of painting the whole thing: top to bottom. Crown to baseboards. Cabinets and walls. EVERYTHING.  We had a quote for someone to paint it for us because it was apparent we weren't making time to do it (remember I said the process began this summer!).  However, we decided it would be wiser to take care of it ourselves.  Yay for saving money - and getting one more thing checked off our list in this foreclosure purchase!

I'll leave you with some before & during pictures and hopefully by the weekend I'll have some FINISHED pictures to take.

Then I attempted to make it better by removing the wallpaper, changing the lighting and painting the walls.

I VERY quickly realized that the paint color didn't work in that room with the awful cabinet color.  It just made a very ugly room even uglier.

So, I made a plan - put up beadboard (because I love it so much) which evolved into new crown moulding when my husband suggested it & a cabinet/shelf above the toilet.

 

Apparently I don't have any pre-primed before shots showing the beadboard (probably because I thought the blog was dead so there wasn't any use photographing it! :( ).  So here's how it looks today after we primed everything last night.

So, there you have it! Oh... and in case you're curious what I'm leaning towards color wise - here are some inspiration photos.

All these (and more inspiration) sources can be found HERE.

Hope to hear from some of you!