living room tour

Here are some pictures of our living room that I snapped right after I cleaned it the other day. Usually the girls have their drawing supplies littered all over the coffee table, the pillows are on the floor, and various books and toys are scattered about the room and I like it that way too.

When it comes to decorating I am a slow one. I tend to take my time and let the decor of our home naturally evolve as I come across something I love here or there. Since we started out with practically nothing when we moved in it has taken some time to fill up the place. We've been living in our home for a year and five months now and I finally feel like our living room feels put together enough to share. I'm sure it will always be changing in little ways and I'm not sure that I'll ever feel like it is completely 'done,' but at least there are pictures hanging on the wall which is more than I can say about the rest of the house.

Since I don't have a large home decor fund at my disposal what you see here was almost all found at the thrift store or through our local classifieds. The chesterfield-style couch, West Elm rug, vintage Lane coffee table, and vintage bar stools were all found second hand for great prices. The little sewing cabinet under the gallery wall is an heirloom from my mother. I remember her sewing atop that cabinet my whole childhood and I am glad to have it in my home now. Most of the little finishing touches like the pillows, throw blanket, plant pots, and picture frames are from either Target or Ikea.

I'd like to add some hanging plants, keep working on the gallery wall, get a new floor lamp that makes more of a statement, and make or find some colorful pillows to add to the couch, but for now we are enjoying this space as it is just fine.

The girl's room is the next closest space to feeling finished, I'll share their corner of our home soon.

making a house a home: before & after - downstairs

You've seen the upstairs renovation before and after pictures, now it's time for some peeks of the downstairs! As before, these pictures (except the last one) were taken before we moved any of our belongings inside. I am looking forward to the day I can show you these rooms lived in and decorated, but that is happening veeeery slowly. I am working on it :)

The downstairs of our home doesn't have any original mid-century charm going for it other than an awesome brick wall with a wood burning fireplace. The rest of the basement was 'finished' poorly much later on and painted horribly in dark colors so it felt like a cave. Now it is much brighter and more open! Let's take a look...

We ripped up the old dirty carpet on the stairs and originally wanted to keep them wooden, but after some thought we ended up carpeting them. It made our budget happy and made us feel a little better about any kids taking potential tumbles down them (and, yes, Lark has fallen down the stairs once and I was so glad the carpet helped cushion her fall). Also, the way the stairs are positioned you don't see them unless you are walking on them, so aesthetically the wooden stairs wouldn't have made a big difference.

The stairs lead you to the downstairs family room with the brick wall and fireplace. That door is a second entrance to the garage.

This is the view of the same room from the other side. You can see we ripped out the lovely red metal roofing acting as wainscoting, built a half wall railing, and carpeted. We also put drywall up over the wood paneling which was painted in stripes. They used the wrong kind of paint so you could peel big pieces of it right off. Instead of trying to sand and paint over that nightmare we just covered it up.

The peek you see of that dark room is where we have the TV set up. It has no windows and the very first time we saw the house Husband claimed it as the 'theater room'. I have to say it is nice to have the TV tucked away with a door to close on it, and it is also nice to have a cool, dark relaxing room to watch movies in at night :)

There was a laundry closet in the upstairs hallway but we decided to convert it into a pantry for more storage space and build a new laundry room downstairs. This room had a laundry hook up but was totally unfinished. After knocking out a wall we were able to create a nice sized laundry room that is very functional. Not pictured are some cabinets and a hanging rod around the corner of the door. This room also has a not so nice story of a homemade non-functioning ejector pump in the floor that I will spare you the gory details of... I am happy to say we got a professional plumber to put a proper pump in and now all smells well :) 

 The playroom was the darkest corner of the basement and in my opinion one of the biggest changes. This carpet was a compromise between Husband and I. I wanted to lacquer the concrete with a fun aqua color so the kids could easily push ride-on toys and even roller skate like I did in my basement growing up. Husband thought it would be too cold on little feet and once again there was the carpet provides cushion for falls argument. We settled on getting a colorful carpet with a low pile so ride-on toys and trains could still easily be pushed around on it, but I was never certain of that choice.

At first I thought we made a horrible decision. It was the only change we made that I wasn't completely happy with when I saw it. It took me a while to get used to the color which was not exactly what I was expecting, but now I think it is fun - it is a playroom after all! I know I will like it better once it is decorated and all put together. All of the toys are still pretty much where they were placed when we moved everything in and just plopped them down. I have big plans for this space being more functional, organized, and fun!

So now you've seen most of the house. I didn't have good before and after pictures of every space, but it gives you a good idea of the work we were doing for all of those months. It was a lot!

See all of our house renovation posts here.

making a house a home: before & after - upstairs

The picture above is mainly because I just couldn't stand having the picture below be what greets you to this post. But I suppose it also tells you that, yes, we moved! We are here, living in our very own home and it only took me 5 weeks to sit down and write that sentence out.

Does anyone want to join me in pretending January didn't exist? We moved in and promptly got sick... and then sick again. Somehow the boxes were unpacked (I give Husband most of the credit), but I feel like I went into hibernation mode with the freezing weather and inversion keeping us holed up inside along with at least one family member feeling unwell at all times. February has been much nicer to us. Thank you February.

Before we moved all of our boxes into the house I snapped a bunch of 'after' pictures. After spending time searching for 'before' pictures to go with them and being reminded of just how disgusting this house was I think we must have been a little insane... I mean, good grief that was A LOT OF WORK.

Here is a little 'before and after' tour of most of the upstairs of the house...

(I didn't put many photos of the bedrooms since that was pretty well documented in this post.)

The kitchen. Needless to say it had to go. We gutted it entirely and started from scratch. I wanted it to be bright, clean, functional, and pretty and I am very happy with how it turned out. Since we are missing a formal dining room and the space for a table in the kitchen is quite small we decided to add a built-in bench to maximize our seating. I think benches are so great for kids, and a bonus for us is the girls love standing where it overlooks the counter to help me in the kitchen. I plan to make a cushion for the bottom seat, and eventually we will also get a table custom-made to fit the space better. Our tulip table is a temporary classified's find that works fine for now.

Once we add a tile back splash we can officially call the kitchen done!

You can notice in these pictures that we removed the big cast iron casing around the fireplace to bring it back to it's original three-way open style. We converted it into a gas log which pleased the city inspectors and it is a wonderful central focal point of the house, making things nice and cozy when it's lit (the children are carefully supervised whenever it is on and are well aware they aren't allowed to touch it, lit or not). We also cut a hole in the wall between the kitchen and living room to open up the space and create an eating bar. Here is the before and after from the living room side:

The metal railing around the stair opening wobbled terribly so we removed it and built a sturdy half-wall in its place. We also refinished and stained all of the original hardwood floors. This room was especially bad because at some point it was painted black and the paint was peeling. The floor is still a bit dusty in this after photo but it is nice and shiny now.

One of the most time consuming projects we did was convert every door frame to match the original bull-nosed bedroom door frames, and we replaced every single door (or missing door, more likely). You can see in the picture above the edges of the wall 'roll' into the frame - that is a bull nose. It is one of those small details you may not notice, but it looks really nice and now all of the doors in the house are uniform.

My father-in-law did an excellent job building new shelving units in all of the closets to best utilize the space. Our master closet above we jokingly call our 'step-in' closet is not that big but we easily fit all of our clothes with room to spare. 

The girls are thrilled with their pink closet and our guests will have a nice surprise with an aqua closet. I think I told you in a past post the room with the aqua closet was the play room, but we were able to finish the basement earlier than we expected so things were shuffled around a bit and for now it is the guest room.

So that is some of what we have been up to the last six months! I'll give you a peek into the basement soon, I still need to take some 'after' pictures down there. 

It's good to be back :)

finally

I know I have been absent from this space lately and I hope you will forgive me. I owe you an update at the very least, not to mention a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! To begin where I left off, we did not move in before Christmas like I was hoping. We just couldn't get everything done in time and that was fine. No need to put added stress on ourselves - we have had enough of that in 2012 thank you. We did some traveling for the holidays and were able to relax for a few days with family, but mostly we just worked, worked, worked on the house... And I am happy to say we have set a move in date for this coming Saturday!

As I type there are boxes stacked behind me and many more empty ones waiting to be filled. And that picture up there is proof of the amazing family support we have received. My entire family came over and cleaned our house quite literally from top to bottom. There is no longer a speck of dust or a single cobweb hanging from those ceiling beams and the floors are shining. I also would be entirely ungrateful if I didn't mention my wonderful in-laws who traveled four hours one-way every weekend in December to help us finish not only the main floor, but the basement as well. We never dreamed we could get so much accomplished before we moved in and it was because of them it was possible.

We will still have some renovating to do mainly in the bathrooms and we haven't gotten around to the kitchen back splash, but other than that it is basically a new house.

We can't wait to start 2013 off in our very own home, and I can't wait to show you what we've done with the place! I better get Husband working on our internet connection... ;)

home stretch

Oh, hi there. I blinked and it was next week.

We are still deep into house projects around here. Living and breathing to-do lists that somehow seem to get longer rather than shorter even though we are checking things off left and right. It's the little finishing things that add up (and sooooo much painting). But, we are starting to see all of our hard work pay off and it is some kind of awesome. We are doing this and it is starting to look like a normal-put-back-together-livable-waaaaaay-better-than-it-used-to-be house. I know no one else will realize just how much sweat and tears we put into this place, but we know and we are so proud.

I can't wait to show you more of our progress, but more often than not I am there late at night after the girls are asleep (my dad stays home with them in case they wake up) and it's too dark for pictures. It will look much better after we give it a nice deep clean anyway - ooh, that's going to be nice!

Thanks for sticking around while I put all of my creative energy into painting baseboards.

(rotten) apple picking

When we were searching for a house one of the items on my 'would-be-nice-if' list was mature fruit trees. This was not a deal breaker, but if there were fruit trees my eyes would light up just that much more. So when we first looked at our house way back in February I was happy to look through the window and see rotting fruit hanging off of two big trees in the backyard. There were no leaves and it was cold and getting dark so at first we guessed they were peach trees, but we soon discovered they were apple trees - one red, and one green.

Since six months passed before we finally owned these trees those rotten apples we first laid eyes on from last season were never picked off, and the new harvest was taken over by worms and birds. This left us with a lot of rotten apples on our hands. But, we were determined to find some good ones among the bunch this year - and we did find a few to taste! Mostly, though, we just have a lot of clean up to do.

I look forward to more successful harvests in the future, but for now I am just happy to call these trees my own.

making a house a home: PAINT

Oh, these walls. We have been patching/sanding/patching and sanding again/painting these walls for weeks and weeks and we are so close to being done (with the upstairs at least)! Close enough that I want to share the before/afters of the hallway and bedrooms with you. I swear these poor walls never got a hole patched in 50 years, and although we didn't count there had to be hundreds of them. On top of that there were some pretty horrible paint jobs that needed to be scraped and skimmed over with mud. And then, once all of the prepping was finally done we rolled a coat of primer and 2 coats of paint - Benjamin Moore Marscapone to be exact. I wanted to brighten up the place with (almost) white walls everywhere. It looks so fresh and clean!

(We haven't had time to take all of the tape down yet, sorry it's a bit of an eyesore)

The hallway was painted a beige color. The before is a bit blurry, but I'm glad that I could find one. In the after you'll notice we also ripped up the Pergo flooring and the door frame around the first door on the left. It is the bathroom door and we are fixing it to match the height/style of the rest of the doors (why is it different - who knows?!) so, yes, we will have some more patching/painting to do once that is done.

The girls will continue to share a room when we move since I know it will help with the transition, and they love being together. They are starting to ask to sleep next to each other. Just last night as LM was hugging Lark on her bed she said, "I love my sweet Larkie. I want her to sleep next to me." I promised them they can sleep next to each other when Lark is a little bit older. It is too cute to see their love growing. Anyway, their room was a light yellowish-tan. LM was disappointed I didn't choose to paint their room pink, but I told her we could paint the closet pink as a compromise :)

The master bedroom is one of the more dramatic changes. I don't even know what to say about this brown gold-faux thing going on. It was even worse when we realized it was covering up a grid pattern underneath (see the bottom left corner?). We had to scrape the whole gooey wall down and then sand like crazy to get rid of the grid pattern. We were so happy when we covered up this mess!

A fun discovery happened when took the door hinges off to freshen up the door jams. The original colors that were painted in the master and the girl's room way back in 1958 were hidden underneath! The master was originally a pretty aqua blue, and the girl's room was a peachy-orange. I left the colors there in homage - I love these little connections to the past.

The third bedroom will be the playroom for now (eventually the nursery). It was a dark army green and had a peeling chalkboard on one wall...but, you would never know it now! We also got rid of the swamp cooler in the window.

It's like a breath of fresh air! Next on the long list of to-do's we need to lay tile in the kitchen and down the hallway (where we ripped out the Pergo). We are also waiting on kitchen counter tops and then we will tile a back splash too. I have to think only a few steps ahead or it all becomes too overwhelming. We got ourselves into a lot of work, but it has been satisfying work!

making a house a home: snapshots

We got to check some pretty major fixes off our house renovation list this past week. Including a new roof, and prepping the kitchen for the cabinets to be installed today (I haven't seen it all finished yet but there is a peek above, eep!). Husband has been working hard to help my father-in-law frame new walls in the basement to utilize the space better, and we are finally done patching and sanding all of the walls upstairs and have begun to paint!

There is still quite a bit of work to do, but we are moving along at a much quicker pace than I had anticipated. It feels so nice to slowly wash away the presence of past owners and make this house ours.

And, I have to say, it is starting to feel like home.

make a house a home: demolition

These pictures are not going to be very pretty, and if you are not interested in our home renovation please feel free to skip this post altogether. We are in the demolition phase, and everything looks like a big 'ol mess right now. We bought the house knowing it needed a lot of work and it has been a lot of work. So far we are loving it though!

The first time I walked in the front door I immediately thought, "This place has so much potential." It was exactly what I was looking for - a house with good bones for a decent price that we could fix up and make our own. On top of that it was something I never thought we would find - a house with mid-century architecture including all beam ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and quirky character. So here we are, jumping head first into a grand adventure! 

The entire kitchen was the first thing to go. It was old and gross and I couldn't even begin to think about cooking a meal in there. The black cabinets made the space seem much smaller than it is, and the tile counter top was poorly done. Once Husband ripped everything out the space seemed to expand and give a sigh of relief. We also discovered the pop of color that showed in the back of the original cabinets, how fun!

   

When you walk in the front door your eye is immediately drawn to a fireplace at the end of a stone wall dividing the kitchen from the living room - it is the focal point of the whole main floor. This big metal monstrosity surrounding it was not original to the house, but was added later as a practical way to keep the house warm - there was a blower attached that would pump warm air from a fire throughout the house. Since there is no longer a need for it and it was a complete eyesore we removed it. It looks so much better! 

We also decided to open up the space even more by cutting out a hole in the stone wall for an eating bar connecting the kitchen to the living room. This instantly brightened up the kitchen as all of the light from the floor to ceiling windows in the living room came streaming in, but most importantly to me, we now have a good view of the backyard. I wanted to be able to see the kids playing outside while I was inside preparing food.

My father-in-law helped us cut the hole and it was no easy task. The saw was big and heavy and water was spraying everywhere. I was so nervous the entire time, especially since Husband said it wasn't his fingers I should be worried about but his legs! It turned out perfect though, and in the end doing it ourselves saved us a ton of money - the highest quote we got to cut the hole was $1700 and we did it for $103.

My mother-in-law is an expert wall patcher and spent hours filling holes, sanding, and prepping the walls for painting. She ended up staying almost a week and did so much work by herself while Husband was at work and I was taking care of the kids. I have the best in-laws!

All of the shelves and bars were stripped from the closets since they weren't making very good use of the space. We also ripped up some Pergo flooring in the kitchen and down the hallway. Since we are going to refinish the original wood floors it looked silly to have fake wood floors next to them. Below you can see what the original flooring looked like underneath, a speckled laminate. We also knocked out a little wall in the basement.

Speaking of the basement, we ripped out some disgusting carpet from the stairs and unearthed heaps of dirt and dust. The wobbly railing was taken off, and the metal roofing acting as wainscoting was removed. I would love to keep the stairs wooden, but it would cost a lot more and I have to give up some things for others, so... we are leaving that for a future project. Sigh. This room will be carpeted to cover up the (most likely) asbestos tiles after we seal them. Since I get my wood floors upstairs Husband gets a little bit of carpet downstairs, it's all about compromise. :) The rest of the basement we have left alone for now.

In addition to all of this we also had some electric work done, put in an air conditioner, and the roof will be replaced this week (not the wood beams, just everything on top). Phew!

The next step is painting...the entire house. And the new kitchen cabinets will be put in next week, I am looking forward to the 'putting back together' phase!