House Tour - Main Living Area

The other day my house was clean, like really clean so I decided to snap some photos to show you all and finally document the start of a home tour on this little blog of mine. 

We bought a house that needed lots of work and have been doing house projects ever since we moved in.  I'll be showing before and after pictures too. 

I took all these pics with my Iphone because my nifty fifty lens (while being awesome) does not have the capability to zoom out or in and yeah, that wasn't going to work with taking these pics.  So in true amateur blogger fashion, here is my house tour via my Iphone :)

Here is our home.  We moved here almost 3 years ago and it was the best decision we made. While it's definitely not the biggest house on the block, we are so happy here and love that we have created this house into our home.

Our very first house project was painting the outside of our house - you can read more about that here

Here is a side by side before and after photo of the front of our house.

First up - a look when you enter the house.  Here is what it looked like when we bought the house....

and here it is now.  

Straight ahead is our kitchen. It is a galley kitchen and I wasn't in love with it at first but now I've  grown to love it.

Here are some before pictures...

And after...

I spy a box of mints - LOL :)

There is a half bathroom off the kitchen and I don't have any before pictures of it (darn, I know you were dying to see a hideous, outdated bathroom!) but let me just tell you it looks 100 x's better now.

I loved everything I saw from this  pin and pretty much duplicated it.

I love this faucet so much!

Around the corner from our kitchen is our dining/eating area.  

Here is the before...

And the after! 

Our kitchen counter wraps around to the right and it's nice to have some extra counter space.

Here is the before picture 

While we liked the extra counter space, what we didn't like was the empty wasted space below it.  So when we remodeled our kitchen, we made sure to add cabinets underneath.

When you turn right from our eating area you enter what was originally the formal living room.  We gave this room to the kids and it is now their play room.  We have a family room that we figured would be ours and they can have this room, yet they seem to follow us to the family room all of the time... :)

Before pic - brace yourself for the GREEN carpet and the serious mess LOL

And after

You can get to our living room by going right into it off the entry or through the kitchen.  Now we're back to the entry where we have our shoe cabinet and a galley wall.

So there it is, a house tour of our main level. Hopefully it doesn't take me 2 more years to finish the rest of the house :)

Our Kitchen Table Reveal

I've yet to show any of our house remodel yet (just can't get around to taking some decent pictures!) but I will show you our new kitchen table!!! I am literally in love people!!

If you remember back when I was still dreaming of our table, I was considering hiring a guy to build it for us. Well, after talking to him and going back and forth, we decided to build ourselves, and by we, I mean the husband, and by ourselves, I mean himself. 

We were quoted $1500 for the table and bench, I thought his pricing was a little much considering I knew what he charged for a standard table and he was charging much more than included the special kind of legs I wanted.  We knew we could build for MUCH less.

I started with printing off Ana White's husky farmhouse table plans and giving them to the hubby - he tweaked them a little and we didn't follow exactly but it was definitely the foundation of our project.

Here is our new farmhouse table!! Isn't she beautiful!!!!!!!!??? 

I am still so in love every time I walk in this room and see her!! I don't think I could ever get tired of this table (at least I hope I don't!)

It was a lot of work for my hubby and he managed to squeeze in working on it on the weekends and still give his attention to me and the kids.  I am so grateful he built me my dream table! Saving money was of course a plus, but just having such a nice piece of furniture that we can tell people my hubby made us is so rewarding!

I ended up ordering these chairs from Amazon - I wanted solid wood black chairs and also didn't want to spend more than the table :)

Now if I only I can get around to showing off the rest of our house...maybe by Christmas :)

Kitchen Table Love

Now that we are sooooooooo close to remodeling our main floor (new floors and a new kitchen, yay!!) I have really been thinking about a new kitchen table.  I have known for months that I wanted a new one, but knew it could wait until after our remodel.

I am IN LOVE with a farmhouse table, like seriously swooning over it.  Part of me wonders if I'll always feel this way and of course I tell myself yes! :)

I found this table online from the very popular Ana White - gorgeous, right?!?!

Ana's site provides the plans on how to make this table and while it does seem do-able, I wonder where my sweet hubby will find the time.  I looked into the legs I would want from Osborne Wood and after pricing those out for a table and a bench (I want a bench for one side and then 4 chairs for the rest) it came to about $200, then I estimated what the wood would cost ($75) and then the paint and stains ($75) - this is all pure estimation, it could be more, or it could be less.  So to build the table would cost us around $350 for materials alone.  Then per Ana's instructions, you definitely need a power sander, which we do not have, so we could buy one for about $50.  

Now we're at $400 (or more, who knows) and we still need the most important factor to build this table...TIME.  Which we just don't have with working full time and taking care of 2 kids.  My hubby has already done so much around our house and will continue to do so after our floors get put in.  Plus the weather is finally becoming nice that I know he won't want to spend his weekends building this table and I won't want to wait months for it.  

So we are looking at alternative options, AKA having someone build it for us.  My SIL used a local company called Rustic Elements Furniture for her table & chairs so I am in contact with the owner now. You can see on his website that his tables really aren't too bad, if you want a standard 6 person table, it's only $550.  It is an additional cost for the bench and the legs I want aren't considered standard so I am waiting to hear back on how much my table would be.  But, if it is anywhere close to the $550 I really think this is our way to go! It will save my hubby tons of time and we can just focus on spending time as a family on the weekends.  We have been doing so much DIY around our house that I think it's time we pay for something we want.

I hope it works out with Rustic Elements and I hope I can share my new table in the near future!!!

Fireplace Makeover

This is a project that has been done for a few months now but I'm just getting around to document it :)

Here is what our fireplace use to look like - you can say it, GROSS!  At least to us it was, just so old and not our taste, plus it took up the entire wall!!

Before we moved in, the only picture we have

We knew we wanted to do a fireplace remodel before putting in new carpet, and we are so glad we were smart enough to do that because knocking down that old fireplace sure did make a MESS of our old carpet.  

We hired a guy to do the demo part of removing the old fireplace.  Part of me (the cheap part) was not happy to pay someone to do something that we could have easily done (of course I say this after I saw it get done) but I knew with 2 little kids, both the hubs and I working full time, and weekends jam packed there was just not time for us to do it. 

We searched the internet for different stone options, I knew right away I liked the thin stacked stone look. We ended up using Eldorado Stone in Dry Creek.  

Initially we only went half way up the wall.  As soon as it was done, the hubby was not happy.  He wanted the stone to the ceiling.  Again, the cheap part of me was perfectly happy with the stone only going halfway, see, not so bad right??

But then the idea to go to the ceiling grew on me more and we ordered another box, paid more money to have it installed, and viola! Here is the end result! Just gorgeous if I do say so myself!!!!

The hubby put in new woodwork around the windows, ripped off the wood paneling on the walls, painted the walls and ceilings and bought new window treatments. Of course the carpet is new too and is sooo nice and soft. This room has totally transformed and is now our favorite room.

Now just for fun, a before and after:

The Yellow Brick House has been painted!

So remember when I talked about getting our yellow brick house painted?? Yeah, that was months ago and it has finally been painted and I am finally getting around to posting about it.

This is what we started out with.  A very old brick house, that at some point, was probably a completely different color, but with age, turned yellowish and just looked dirty and dingy.

We've done alot so far to the outside, as I mentioned before, we are doing a complete house reno inside but first wanted to focus on the outside.

Here is how our house looks now.....

It is like night and day!! At least I think so.  I could not be more happy with our white house! At first the hubby thought maybe it was too white, but after a few days his mind changed.  I think going from a dingy yellow to a bright white it such a huge change that some people need time to adjust.  Me? I loved it from the second I saw it.

Now time for the next project....a fireplace remodel!!

Doors Doors Doors

I recently shared our first *big* house project which is painting our yellow brick house white.  With that, we needed to also get new exterior doors, wall lights and shutters.

We chose this door from Home Depot for our front door and 2 back doors - I just loooooooooooooove it!

 Now the problem I'm having is what color to paint the front door?!?! The 2 back doors will be white but I want the front door to *pop*  Originally I was thinking a forest green, then saw some pretty pictures online of more of a teal green and also liked that, I like the red/maroon color but in some ways feel like this has been done over and over, I like yellow but this will be a hard one to get the hubby on board with.

Now I need some help! Which color do you like best?? I am VERY indecisive so any input is greatly appreciated!















Also --- Don't forget about my Giveaway going on until Monday, go check it out, it's pretty awesome!

Our Yellow Brick House

We've lived in our house for 8 months now and as I've mentioned, it is old, like reaaaaaally old.  It has great bones and a great layout though, which are the major reasons we bought it.  That being said, there is a ton of work we need to do.  We are planning on remodeling the entire inside next Spring but our first big project is actually getting done next month and I am beyond excited!!

Our house is all brick, and old, did I mention that yet?? Here's a pic of the outside as it is now.  I'm sure 50 years ago this brick was beautiful and probably not even this yellow, but time has not done this baby good and she needs a facelift.  We knew the first thing we wanted to do was paint the brick, I figured let's get the outside looking nice for now until we can focus on remodeling the inside.

We have always thought of painting it white and adding black shutters so I've been scouring Pinterest and the www to find some good images of white houses.  Here are a few that caught my interest and have me SO excited for this project!

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I can't wait to turn our yellow brick house to our white brick house! Now I just need to think of a good color choice for our front door!