The new house

As the husband so kindly pointed out....it's been more than a week since I last promised to share pictures of the new house. Yikes. The month of May came as fast as it went, and brought with it a nasty stomach bug (for me), our anniversary (that we still have yet to properly celebrate), a wedding, and a certain someone's first birthday and subsequent party. #excusesexcuses

ANYWAY. Here we go! Time to (finally!) share pics of the new house! Can you believe it will be two years in July that we've lived here? Some days I feel like we still live in someone else's house, and other days I look around to see just how much we've done to this home since we arrived.

So without further ado....the living room before (on move-in day):

And the after (but more like "progress" since "after" is just crazy talk):

Hands down, the living room is my biggest challenge. It's a formal living space! A family room! A place for the kids to play! In short? This room has multiple personalities. Coupled with the fact that the layout is super weird. The room is long & off centered. And the multiple doorways and windows make furniture placement tricky. On one hand, I love all the natural light that the room gets. But would I prefer our television to be somewhere else but smack dab over the fireplace? You bet. But sadly, the fireplace is the only option at this point. And the wall behind the couch has been awaiting some form of art for way too long than I'm proud to admit. Basically, this room has some work ahead of itself. #workinprogress 

The dining room before:

And after:

The dining room was a pretty straightforward space. We painted, added some DIY art, and replaced the light fixture with our old Restoration Hardware fixture we had at the previous house. I'm sure I'll want to change things up in here at some point, but for now the dining room is simple, streamlined, and the only zone in the house that doesn't look like we live in a three-ring circus (because we do).

The Kitchen:

With the exception of some new valances, table & a dishwasher, this kitchen is pretty much looking the same as it did on move-in day. While the space is nice (hey, I have no complaints about a new kitchen) it's definitely not our style. But one of my favorite things about this space is the eat-in area. I never realized how much I would love (and need) an eat-in kitchen until we had kids. It means our dining room is largely ignored, but I wouldn't trade an eat-in space for anything.

We have big plans to lighten things up in here (which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me!). In the meantime, we'll live with the way things are for awhile. But I'd be lying to say that I wasn't itching to get things changed up in here. Like yesterday.

The half bath:

The mirror has been changed up & the shelves met their fate with a garbage can. But otherwise, what you see is what you (still) get in here. With the weather warming up, we've shifted our focus to outdoor projects, but this space is next on my radar. We plan to add picture molding, marble hex flooring, a new light fixture, faucet, paint & art. Not that I'm wishing my summer away already...but I'm super excited to get working in here.

The basement:

We've moved some new furniture down here, mounted a t.v., and replaced the carpet (after a major plumbing issue last summer). But as it stands, things still look the same down here. Only with more toys. Because, two kids.

So there you have it! It took me nearly a month to put this post together. Which means you'll get to see the second floor three years from now. You're welcome. If anyone has any questions about room sources & colors, feel free to ask at  smigelkm@yahoo.com!

New kitchen floors!

So we got new kitchen floors. Almost 4 years post kitchen remodel (but who's counting?). Whew. So now that that embarrassing admission is out of the way...

We finally got around to having the floors replaced 3 weeks ago. It was one of those moments of "why didn't we do this sooner"?! We're so, so happy with how they look. And naturally, I meant to share photos sooner, but life just got the best of us. We spent some time at Lake Chatauqua for the 4th where this cute face enjoyed the water & two boat rides for the first time in her life.

 

 

I'm kind of obsessed with her. That's why I don't blog much. I'm sure you understand.

Anyway, we just got the 'ol bill for the floors, so I figured that was an excellent reminder to finally share pics of our kitchen, alright already.

Lest you forget (or have blocked from memory) the beauty that was the before....

 

 

Mmmm...tasty. I have no idea why our realtor insisted we have these updated before listing our house.

  

So anyway, what was supposed to be a 2-day job, turned into a 3-day job (raise your hand if you naively believed the flooring sales guy when he tells you it will only take two days....ME! ME!). The contractors worked their tails off while they were here. Which I suppose makes it easier to cope with the fact that I took a day off of work to accommodate the new schedule. Because I would have been uber ticked had they been sitting around & picking their noses the entire time.

 

Day one: the old floors come out & the subfloors are in! This seemed to be the most time consuming part of their job. And to think that the husband wanted to do the demo (this is after talking him down from doing the ENTIRE job himself...of which he has zero experience in the tiling department, btw). Yeah, ain't nobody got time for that.

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

Proof that I was too lazy to move the fridge when we painted, oh....3.5 years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

By the way--things still look the same back there. Hello my name is: LAZY.

 

 



 

 

While all of that was going on, the rest of our house was looking a little something like this...

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

I have no idea why I was so stressed out for 3 days. Because, feeding a baby next to a stove in the dining room is totally normal.

 

 

Day two: tile is in! Woot, woot!

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, down the hall, someone was perfecting her crawling skills when she should have been napping.

 

 

 

 

We've since lowered the crib after we discovered that she also figured out how to grab the monitor & play with it in her crib. Never a dull moment around here...the baby proofing has begun!

 

 

Day three: a new crew came back to grout, install thresholds, & moldings--a supposed 2-hour job that turned into an all day event. Again, I guess I can't be too upset as they continued to work their hind ends off. Those, my friends, are the types of contractors I love to work with...the one's who you don't have to babysit, who do their job, do it right, clean up after themselves & then get the hell out.

 

 

 

 

 



And here ya go...official "after" shots of the kitchen...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

It's almost impossible to take pictures of this space, since it's enclosed and small (but this should give you an idea, right?). I also didn't bother to remove the crap from the fridge or clean up the counters before taking these pictures. Styled shots aren't our reality folks! The bottles, box of Cheerios & vitamins is our everyday life. Although, true story--our pantry really is that tidy & and organized on a daily basis. And that's saying a lot since a certain someone--cough, husband, cough--never puts anything away.

 

So there you have it, the kitchen! Now what project can we start working on next? 

 

Seeing green

We've been super busy this week getting ready for Sunday's house tour. Who knew getting your house ready to show was so. much. work? I'm fairly certain this is the most clean & organized our place is ever going to be. Or at least until we sell it one day!

At any rate, I wanted to take a quick break to share an update to the entryway....a little change that's made this space complete! When this picture showed up on Janice's blog, I was super embarrassed. Sure, the focus was on the floors, but would you get a load of that cabinet?

 

It was my $35 faux painted, missing a back & has no shelves find. A beaut, right? This thing has been hanging out in our front entryway for the better half of 5 months and really needed a paint job. Unfortunately, I was too busy sleeping during my first trimester. And when I woke up I wasn't able to work with oil based paint. So I enlisted the help of my mom who painstakingly primed for me.

The original plan was to strip the paint....but that just sounded too exhausting and time consuming. So we went the oil based adhering primer & a whole lot of sanding route instead. It didn't produce the most professional of results (what do you want...this cabinet was a $35 dinged up mess), but I must say I'm super happy with the end results!



I styled and re-styled the top of this chest over & over, but nothing was clicking with me. I worked with what I had on hand, but ultimately it was these peonies from Michael's that did the trick. I'm not normally a fake flower person, but these I liked. I paired them with an old vase that we were using to collect wine corks. Voila--styling complete! 



 

The color is Lime Twist by Valspar--thanks to the green March issue of House Beautiful for that suggestion! But oh my god, this thing was a huge pain in the ass to paint. It required 1 coat of primer & 3 coats of paint. I think it speaks to the quality of the paint (I'm not a huge Valspar fan, unless it comes in the form of spray paint), and the fact that this chest is way more detailed than it looks! All the nooks, crannies, twists and turns...this baby has me longing for a quality spray painter. One of these days...

Anyway, there's no rest for the weary...I'm back to getting this house into shape! Hope to see some of you on Sunday!

Some before & afters (without the befores)

I got a little spray paint happy this weekend. It had been awhile, so my hot little hands got a hold of some gold spray paint, and away we went! Naturally, I never thought to take before pictures. When I've got a project on the brain, I've got all I can do to pick up a camera. High tailing it to the finish line is far more important!

Awhile ago I had the genius idea that this formerly oil rubbed bronze bowl would look way better gold (I thought about it a solid 3 months before pulling the proverbial spray paint trigger). I had just purchased the sculpture-like sea creature above, with full-on plans to make it gold. So, as they say...have gold spray paint, will spray everything gold (or something like that). I'm loving my new gold sculpture-like sea creature. But the bowl? Not so much. These pictures don't do it justice, but it's so gold, it looks like one of Liberace's Goodwill outcasts.



Maybe my expectations for a spectacular after were too high? Or perhaps I sat on this one for way too long, overthinking the whole thing. Yep, that's it. So I'm planning to live with the results for now. Mostly because I'm too lazy or cheap to go out and purchase some oil rubbed bronze spray paint. It's the age old question....what would you do?



Give me an "R"!

Our home has seen it's fair share of letter K's come waltzing through the door, so I'm guessing the husband was super confused when I brought home these babies...

You see, a good friend and I have a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch your's" policy. Except neither of us is scratching each other's backs, we're just looking out for one another (duh). So when I spied these letters (her item of request) I snatched them up, shot her a text, and carefully guarded my items within an inch of my life. Although, looking back I don't think the older gentleman with the 8 year-old child (who had come to chat with the sales clerk) was going to fight me for two letter R's. But you never know. It's always best to play it safe.  

After getting the go-ahead to purchase them (and spray them black) we were officially in business. I took the liberty of  leaving the smaller letter as-is, since the silver texture was very cool & vintage-y. But the gold letter got the usual...primer and 2 coats of paint...

I'm happy to report that I had a very pleased client...um, er...friend. She's hosting a gathering at their place this weekend & I can't wait to see where these letters will call home! Hey, maybe that will be an update for next week! Hmmmm, yeah...now I'm thinking. 

I'll be back tomorrow to share details of our master bedroom makeover! I'm still in the very beginning stages of hunting & gathering some goods, but I'm excited to share what I'm working on!