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New Bedroom Duvet

While I was in Oregon, the most wonderful package arrived at our house! Before I left I ordered a duvet cover from West Elm. As if coming home wasn’t fun enough, that made it even more fun!

Previously, we had a white duvet cover which we had gotten as a wedding present 12 years ago. I loved it when we got it but it was starting to show it’s age. Really, that is a pretty long time for a duvet cover or, actually, anything in this house! (There really aren’t that many decorative things that have had that kind of longevity for me.) We also alternated with a brown coverlet depending on the season. They both have had a good long run but it was time to switch it up. As soon as I saw the chevron duvet cover from West Elm earlier last year, I knew it had to be mine :) Then, it went on sale and the dream became a reality! Yay for me!!

Just as a reminder, here is the room with the white duvet:

And now, here is the new duvet:

Oh my, I am completely in love!! Now I need to work on some new pillows for this room. The previous pillows are striped and don’t really work anymore. Plus, I have been using them in the living room for a while now and so new pillows are definitely in order. I have some ideas, we shall see how they turn out. I also wouldn’t mind some new curtains (since the current ones are left over from another room anyway) and I have some other things I would like to tackle in this room. Isn’t it fun how things are always changing and evolving? I love that!

Also, looking at this photo, I realized I could have done a bit more primping. Oh well, it is what it is :) When I do a final reveal, with new pillows and everything, the cover will be free of wrinkles and the pillows will be to perfection. At least with this photo you get to see how we roll…

So stay tuned! It will be interesting to see what changes next time!

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Tagged: Our House

Dining Room and Entryway Changes

This will just be a quick little post to show you some small changes I made to the entryway and dining room. After all, I am on vacation so I’d better make this fast :)

Just like the living room, I put all of the Christmas stuff away and decided not to put the same stuff out that had been there before. Nothing too drastic, just a new vignette. In these rooms, all the furniture is still in the same places.

Does it look the same to you? Look closer…

I added some different frames to the wall. The bottom frame has an old post card from Oregon that I found in an antique shop here in Tennessee. The post card is a drawing of a place close to where I lived when I was born.

And for the dining room…

A peek from the living room.

I changed the vignette on the console. I like it. Even though it is a small change, it was time. It’s nice to have something new to look at now and then.

Now I need to be thinking about some new artwork. Doesn’t that sound like fun?!

And that is all for today. I’m going to go enjoy being with my family some more because vacations go by so fast!

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Tagged: Our House

Living Room Change Up 2012

You all know by now how I love to rearrange my house, right? It’s one of the best free things I can do to cure my boredom. And do you know what? I am not the only one. Victoria from sfgirlbybay does it all the time, even more than I do. My Mom does it too, at least as much as I do, possibly with more frequency. So if you haven’t tried it and you are bored, do it! If you change things around and don’t like it, change it back. It’s fun, trust me :)

I always tend to change things around New Years. The Christmas stuff comes down and it’s time for something different. This year is isn’t as drastic of a change as last year but it’s still fun. Ready to check it out? Here goes!

The main things that I changed is the addition of the rug, the cabinet, and another chair.

I don’t normally give sources but I figured now would be a good time just in case anyone cares. The problem is, most of them were thrifted so it’s not easy to duplicate the look.

My cat is crazy :) The pillows were all made by me using various fabrics at different times. I talked about the multi-colored pillow here some of the others are mentioned here. The couch was a thrifted find, one of my best ones yet!!

At Christmastime, I moved my plants around and they ended up grouped together on the coffee table and I liked it so they stayed that way. They are all from Ikea, the pots and the plants. The tray was a thrifted find that I covered in fabric. The vase was a gift from my Mom and the branches are from a tree at my house. The coffee table was built by my wonderful husband. He really is the best!

The elephant was a thrifted find that I sprainted white. It was formerly in the family room but I decided he needed to hang out in the living room for a while :) The lamp was also thrifted, I talked about it here. The floor pillows were the cushions to some chairs that my Mom had and she didn’t want them so I brought them home with me :) The frame is from Target and I have had it for forever.

The gallery wall has been a work in progress for quite some time and I have been collecting the frames from various places and sprainting them white so they all would match. The chair is another thrifted find and I made the slipcover. You can read about it here. The ottoman? Thrifted. My Mom actually found it for $5 and after a lot of begging, she gave it to me :) The lamp is from a wholesale outlet and I got it for $6, lampshade included! The metal bucket is from Lowe’s. I made both of the pillows, you can read about the zig zag pillow here.

The cabinet used to be in the family room and you can read about its makeover here. Both chairs are thrifted finds. The one on the right was in Jason’s office/library and I borrowed it for the living room :) The artwork was a thrifted find. Most people say it looks like Michael Jackson. I tend to agree. The ruffle pillow was made by myself, you can check out the tutorial here. The crocheted white blanket on the back of the chair was a high school graduation gift from my Grandma way back in the day.

The curtains are from Ikea and the rods are from West Elm. The rug is from World Market from quite a few years back. I used to have it in storage but I whipped it out to see if it would work for a while. Ideally, I would like to have a black and white rug in this space. And hardwood floors painted white. Is that too much to ask?!

The lamp is from Walmart and the shade is from Pottery Barn. Both I have had for a while. The paint color was mixed by me. You can read about it here.

See, wasn’t that fun?! If you aren’t tired of reading about the living room yet, check out this progression post where I catalog the changes this room has gone through since we’ve lived here.

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Tagged: Our House

Laundry Room Sink

One of my favorite things about my new and improved laundry room is my new sink. I am seriously in love with this thing. It is a tank and I can’t wait to put it to work.

You may recall that previously, there was just a little sink in there. Since it’s a small space, I understand why there was just a small sink. But I needed more room. I wanted a sink that I could actually use for more than just washing my hands. One that was deep enough for cleaning out paint trays and buckets and the cat’s litter box. Currently, all of that stuff has to be done in the kitchen sink which in my opinion is not ideal and I have to clean the sink out with bleach just to make sure it is disinfected afterward. How wonderful to have a sink that is meant for dirty jobs!!

I mentioned back in June that I found a sink on the side of the road for free. Oh happy day! I actually found it a couple of years ago and have been storing it in the garage ever since, just waiting for the day that it would end up in the laundry room. Well that day has finally come, it has a new home!

Isn’t it great?! And this thing is a beast. A heavy beast! (You can also see where I stopped painting in this photo!)

We got a new drain and faucet for it. It was quite the process finding the right drain. You can read a little bit about it here.

I wanted a faucet that was taller to make sure I could fit buckets underneath it. Plus, I didn’t want a little dinky faucet because I thought it would look funny with this large sink. But, it already had pre-drilled holes and so I had to find one that would fit. My best bet was a faucet for a bar sink and it worked perfectly! Isn’t the little stopper so cute?!

And lastly, the base. Also back in June I mentioned that we found a table saw attached to this base on the side of the road, again, for free. The table saw didn’t work but we kept the base and I spray painted it matte black and we attached the sink to it. It worked out really great and I love how it looks together! I can’t believe I found two independent things on the side of the road and matched them up to work so well. I was telling my Dad about this and he said, “I feel a blog post coming on.” He was right :)

We still have yet to connect the pipes because we ran out of time before my brother got here but soon it will be a working sink! Now, it just looks pretty :) The ironic thing is that the whole time we have been doing this project we were wishing we had a large sink to clean up all of our messes in. Oh well! We will have one for next time!

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Tagged: DIY, Our House, Thrift Finds

Laundry Room Update

Isn’t it such a joy to take something ugly and turn it into something beautiful? It is for me. Seriously, I get giddy with excitement. It’s actually a little bit ridiculous :) But that is how this whole laundry room project feels to me. I feel a bit giddy. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I have been waiting so long for this to happen and now it finally is and I love the way it is turning out. I have to keep poking my head into the laundry to take a look at the progress and then pinch myself that it really is getting better. And, soon it will be done! Yay!!

Last time I left you with the before shots and that was it. There weren’t any shots to show you what was to come (except for a few sneak peeks here and there). First of all, I will show you the inspiration:

This was the bathroom that did it for me. I love the simplicity and the black and white color scheme. I already knew that I wanted it to be black and white. I also knew that we would be covering the nasty walls and make it look like wainscoting. But this photo made me itch to paint the floors black. I mean, really bad :) It wasn’t too hard to talk Jason into it! Here is our process so far…

I don’t have any photos because it was so dirty, but first Jason had to do all of the drywalling. It’s a no-fun dusty job. I’m so thankful he took care of that part! The rest of our house had white foot prints throughout but it was so worth it! Then Jason moved onto putting up the paneling and trim. The paneling came already primed which is why it’s blue.

Haha! I caught him in the act of cutting some molding on our driveway. It’s our make-shift shop. We were thankful for the decent weather we had last week even though it was cold at times.

The laundry room, paneling and some of the trim hung.

Then he added the floor molding and the corner pieces. We had lots of holes to putty as well :)

Fixing the door trim that we had taken off at some point. You can see in this photo that for a while there I thought about painting the wall behind the sink gold, and I even tried it a bit. But in the end, I decided to stick with the black and white and I painted over it. I’m really glad I chose the white.

After giving the room a good scrub, I primed the walls and ceiling…

We also painted the floors black just like I wanted. I really love them! Then, we covered them with rugs so we could continue working in there.

On Tuesday, my Dad came and helped us out for a few hours. We are so glad he did! The toilet sits really close to the wall. So close that there really wasn’t room to even add the paneling behind the tank. So my Dad, being the master craftsman that he is, made the cuts to the paneling so it looks like it goes behind the tank but it really doesn’t. Plus, he whipped it out in no time flat. Jason and I both are so happy he came to help with that part! Thanks Dad!

My job is mostly just painting. I got all of the upper walls and ceilings painted and started working on the paneling. First I concentrated on the sink wall and washer/dryer wall because that was where Jason needed to work next but the walls had to be painted first. As of today I still have some other painting left but those two spots are completely done :)

We started working on the crown molding but didn’t get it finished before we had to move the washer and dryer back in place. We desperately needed to do some laundry and we had a deadline to get as much finished as we could because my brother came into town and we wanted to be able to spend the whole next week with him and not with the laundry room! So, we will take a little break on our work and pick up where we left off later.

For now, that is pretty much where it stands although there are a few more things finished which I will show you later. For now, we are just enjoying the time with my brother and then at the end of this week I will be going to Oregon with my Mom for a little vacation to see the rest of the family. When I get back, we will hopefully be able to wrap up the rest of this project! On one hand, I really wished we could have finished it before Brett got here. On the other hand, it’s nice to have a break because we were putting a lot of hours into it. When I get back from vacation, I will be really ready to pick up that paint brush and finish up!

This poor humpty dumpty is getting put back together again. And I’m thankful for that!

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Tagged: Before & After, DIY, Our House