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!