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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

Humpty Dumpty Laundry Room

My poor laundry room is like Humpty Dumpty. All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put the laundry room together again. Or should I say, didn’t put the laundry room together again. There is a story here, and it goes something like this…

A long time ago, we tore the laundry room apart. The reason? All of our house had old pipes. Some of these pipes were replaced before we moved in. Some of them weren’t. The pipes to the guest bathroom had not been replaced. The guest bathroom sits directly over the laundry room. These pipes began to get stopped up and corroded. To get to the pipes in the above bathroom, we had to take out the ceiling below in the laundry room. So we did. We got the guest bathroom working again. But not the laundry room. And that was 4 years ago. It’s somewhat functional (we can do laundry) but it’s definitely not pretty.

It’s the room we try and forget about. We just keep the door closed and try not to see it. When we give house tours it gets skipped. I will just gesture to the closed door and mention that it’s the laundry room. It also doesn’t get any blog time. Believe me, it’s an eyesore. And I’m about to show it to you. Because we have finally started working on it again. Yay for us! Here are some before photos:

The laundry room is actually a half bath/laundry combo. There are two really small square-ish rooms connected by a doorway with no door (although at one point it had a bi-fold door there that we took out). This photo looks an awful lot like when I posted this post back in 2008. It’s so sad it’s funny.

Neither of us remember why the door molding is gone. We removed it at some point. Why? I have no idea. There are some crazy holes in the walls here and there. All of the molding on the walls was removed too, in preparation for our little redo that has been 4 years in the making.

I forgot to take a shot of this area before so this is actually once we have started working which is why there are tools everywhere. The toilet and sink have been out of commission for the whole 4 years too. We tried to fix the toilet at one point but we aren’t really sure what’s wrong with it. The sink faucet leaks like crazy so we just keep it turned off. It’s a bummer too because all of our other bathrooms are on the top floor. This bathroom joins our family room so we have to go up 2 partial flights of stairs to reach the other bathrooms. It will be really nice to have our extra half bath working again.

And the walls? Umm… gross. They have this weird texture that was just painted over and I hate it. All of the places where we removed things (like ugly towel bars and toilet paper holders) have this underneath that shows what it used to be. Plus, everything was painted in a very glossy white. Which, you know me, I love white! And I don’t mind gloss. But in this case, it just accentuates the ugliness.

On into the laundry room… The floors need major help too. They were painted glossy white that didn’t reach all the way to the walls. Then, at some point, touch ups must have been made. But when they were touched up, they used matte paint so it’s really obvious. Weird too.

There is a laundry chute (the door on the wall). The top part to it is in the guest bathroom closet. The bathroom and laundry room have also become a catch-all for the stuff we don’t have anywhere else to store it. Like this clock that I was temporarily storing until after Christmas. And the huge box that my computer came in. And other things that don’t belong in a laundry room. I guess that’s what happens when a room doesn’t function like it should. It becomes storage :)

The only thing I liked in this room were our washer and dryer and the cabinet painted a bright teal. My brother built that for us for our wedding present and it fits perfectly in our laundry room.

At one point a while back we did put the drywall up on the ceiling but we never finished mudding and taping it. We also had taken down the light fixtures in both rooms for when we did the drywall work and never put them back up. We couldn’t ever do laundry in the dark :) Then a couple of months ago, Jason put up this old light in the laundry room so we could at least see in there at night. We never even put the globe on it or anything. We just quit caring what it looked like. So sad.

Another thing about the light fixtures. The previous one that was in the bathroom area hung too low (these ceilings aren’t 8 feet) and the door hit it every time it was opened. So we didn’t really want to put it back up until we got something different. Why do old houses have so many quirks?!

Here is a shot headed back out of the room towards the family room. I took this shot right before we started work while I was in the middle of removing our Christmas decor so the mantel is blank. See the huge boxes by the toilet? One is for my computer and one is my wedding dress. Talk about using this as a storage space. Weird things end up here :)

Although they don’t show in the photos, another thing to fix is a couple of the window panes. Two of them got broken in the April tornadoes (from the golf ball sized hail) and we need to replace them. It’s something we have never done before so it will be an adventure!

Well, you know me, I wouldn’t be showing all of this to you if we weren’t working on making it better! Jason and I have been working on this room non stop for about a week now. Literally, from morning until about midnight almost every night since last Thursday! My Dad even came over and helped us for a while. We are making progress and I’m excited about it! But for today, all you get to see is the before. Next time I will show you some in-progress shots of our transformation. Plus, you already saw a progress shot on Monday so you know it’s getting better! Yay! Stay tuned…

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Tagged: Before & After, DIY, Our House

11.11.11 Roofing Day

Happy 11.11.11!!! It’s kind of fun when a date like that rolls around! I made sure I took a photo at 11:11 this morning. Did you guys celebrate in any way? I use the term celebrate loosely because all I celebrated with was a photo :) Most people think of today as just Veteran’s Day but I simply think of it as my Mom’s birthday. So happy birthday Mom! Send some love her way by posting a comment for her :) I know she will read every single one!

This year, 11.11.11 is also roofing day for us. That’s right, we just got ourselves a new roof. I was just thinking about how some projects are super fun to do and have a big impact in the looks department. And then there are others, and you can’t see a difference at all. That’s how the roof was. An expensive project with no exciting results. Although I’m sure my husband would disagree because he is very excited for our new roof :)

Earlier this year, you may recall, we had tornadoes pass through our area. We didn’t think we had any damage except for 2 broken panes in a window. Unlike a lot of other people, we still had a roof over our heads. What we didn’t realize is that all that wind and hail did significant damage to our roof. We had such a dry summer that we didn’t have any problems. And then September came. You may remember we had another storm with lots of water. Not only did we get water in our basement but we also realized we had some problems with our roof. We now have a bunch of spots on our ceiling and we have had to bring out the buckets several times since then. No fun! Thankfully, right before the storm in September, we had a friend suggest to us to have our insurance company take a look at our roof just in case there was any damage. We are so glad we did. Because of the storm damage, we got our roof replaced by our insurance company! So here is a peek into what went down starting yesterday and finishing today:

This is the before photo. I wasn’t sure what the after would look like so I wanted to make sure I documented it :)

Around noon, the truck with our roofing materials came. I stood inside the living room watching him unload them. I sort of felt like a reverse peeping tom!

Shortly after the truck came, the workers showed up. They started by laying tarps all the way around the house. Then the demolition began. And it was loud! From inside the house I could hear lots of scraping and pounding and things were flying past the windows. It was kind of fun… at first :) After a while I grew tired of it… remember how I said it was loud?!

Out the front window.

Out the breakfast nook window, right side.

Out the breakfast nook window, left side (look! I even got one in motion!).

I’m pretty sure these roofing guys thought I was crazy for taking pictures so I started sneaking around and taking them through the windows. I can’t help my need to document everything! It was a really weird feeling to know that there were several people on my roof all day. Weird but good knowing the problems would be solved.

After a while of demolition, they had gotten all of the old off and started working on the new.

Seriously, what a mess! I’m so glad they clean up after themselves!

These guys worked hard. All day and even into the night once it got dark. We were kind of wondering how they could see out there. Then, this morning we woke up a little after 7 am to them back on our roof, working away. Not exactly the way I would have chosen to wake up! I’m telling you, it’s really loud when they are working, it sounds like they are jumping around up there. Our poor cat was so scared all day yesterday and this morning. She couldn’t figure out what was going on and kept hiding under the covers.

They had this cool pulley system to get the shingles up to the top. I had to watch them a little this morning. Again, I’m sure they thought I was crazy!

Once they were done and had cleaned up everything, they went over all the grass and other areas with a magnetic rake-like thing (I’m sure that is its technical name!) He just swept the ground with it and it would pick up any loose nails and such.

And finally, just before noon today, they packed up and left and ta-da! The roof was all done. See what I mean about before and afters? It doesn’t look any different to me :) Here is the before and after again:

Before…

After…

The only difference I can really see is that metal thing sticking out is now black instead of rusted white which was a bonus for me because I didn’t even know they were going to do that! Yay! Although I can’t tell a big difference in the looks department, hopefully I will be able to tell a difference when it rains.

Next up, the gutters! Another non-exciting project that will (hopefully) make a difference. Now I need to paint all of the spots on the inside of the house. Yeesh! There is always something to do, isn’t there?

Have a fantastic Verteran’s/11.11.11/weekend!!!

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Tagged: Our House