Awesome Craigslist find and makeover

Moving from a 2 bedroom townhouse (where the second bedroom was used as an office/junk room) to a 3 bedroom house, we knew we would have to buy some furniture...specifically bedroom furniture. So being the thrifty, vintage lover that I am (wink), I began to search Craigslist for dressers and nightstands. I sort of planned on finding something that would probably need some TLC, like a fresh coat of paint or new hardware. I was hoping for something sort of unique. 

After a few weeks of searching, a new listing popped up with just what I was looking for (don't you love when that happens?)! a set of 4 vintage pieces that definitely seemed unique. They have a 'faux' bamboo look and are super sturdy.  

The only problem was their color. They were an ivory/yellowish color that just wouldn't do. I was excited to try my hand at painting them. But also a little nervous because they are a fairly sought after vintage name that I was worried I might totally ruin. BUT by a lot of vintage lovers standards, changing the color, no matter how amazing the paint job is, is a crime worthy of death. I had actually told the person I bought them from that I was thinking about painting them and he looked at me like I was crazy. OH WELL! I painted them :)

I thought a high gloss black would look great and stand the test of time. I had never used a high gloss paint before but had read it is a lot trickier to use than a normal paint. So I did some reading and some research. I went with high gloss paint and primer from Sherwin Williams.

From my online research it mostly seemed everyone just mentioned that it took more coats and you had to be careful of your brush strokes because high gloss paint shows off more imperfections. I mostly found this all to be true. 

Painting 3 of the 4 pieces took WAAAYY longer than I had ever anticipated. With the sanding, primer, paint, and 4 hour dry time in between coats, this project definitely ended up taking up several weekends. The picture below shows what only one coat of paint looks like. It's obvious it doesn't cover nicely in one coat. 

This vanity will most likely live in our guest room and be used as a desk or possibly a nightstand. 

The dressers BEFORE. We are using them in our room. 

The dressers AFTER. Kitty approved. 

We are pretty happy with how they turned out. The black looks WAY better in our light pink room then the yellowish/ivory did. When they were still the original color I believe one family member said our bedroom looked like an 80s Miami hotel room. LOL. And we CAN'T have that! :)

I still think the drawers on the dressers might need another coat of paint but we'll see. I'm not in a hurry to work with high gloss paint again any time soon! 

Entry Way Ideas

I am not sure why the entryway wasn't one of the first things we knocked out when we first moved in. It IS the first thing people see...and right now it isn't much to look at. 

As you can see from the photos, the flooring is old and outdated (and missing chunks around the stairs), the walls could use a fresh coat of paint, and the closet has no doors.

                                                                                      

I would also love to get a new light fixture. And add some photos or art to the wall pictured above. 

Painting and new flooring are a fairly easy fix. But the biggest change we would like to make is to turn the closet into a mini mud room of sorts. Below are some photos I pinned on Pinterest of great closet/mudroom makeovers.  

   

Hollie's pin on Pinterest.

                               Hollie's pin on Pinterest.

        Hollie's pin on Pinterest.

Jon and I have started to talk about this project and might make a trip to the home improvement store this weekend to take a look at some flooring, fixtures, etc...

Here's hoping this will be a finished project to share on the blog soon! 

LIVING ROOM

So I thought it would be easiest to start with the living room. It was one of the rooms that needed little to no 'fixing up' other than paint. It was also one of the only rooms I really had any sort of idea of what I wanted it to look like. 

This photo was taken on one of the first walk throughs we did of the house. We both loved the cut-outs in the wall that is shared with the dining room. Of course I have plenty of trinkets to fill those spaces :) It is a nice size room with two windows that let in great natural light. 

Over Thanksgiving break, my sister and brother-in-law came over for a day to help paint and do some repairs. Wheezy also kept us company as you can see. She loves to sit right where you need to paint. I believe she walked away with a little gray paint on her fur this day. This little photo shows where the room meets the entryway. When you walk in the door the living room is to your left and the family room is on your right (with the stairway and little hall space to the kitchen in between). 

These first few photos aren't great quality. Sorry about that. But the IPhone is just so much more convenient to carry around most of the time! Below is another view of the room closest to the entryway. When we moved in all the walls were an off white color. They mostly looked slightly dirty and the paint seemed to be a flat finish so it all looked pretty dull and lifeless. We decided to paint all the walls (except one) a light gray. It is Modest Silver by Valspar. 

I had known from the beginning that I wanted to have an accent wall. I really wanted a cool patterned wall paper or stencil. Jon was fine with the idea and I started to look up different removable wallpapers. I found a lot of beautiful patterns but was a little thrown off by how expensive they all were. I ordered a sample piece from a seller on Etsy but decided we just weren't willing to spend that kind of money. So, my mom suggested we make our own stencil from the pattern we liked. Great idea! That is where this teal color comes in to play. The design we ended up liking had teal, gray and white in it. So we painted the wall teal and planned to stencil over it with gray and white. The teal is called Teal Zeal by Olympic.

Well, as you can see from the 'finished' photo below, we still have yet to stencil. We knew it would be a time consuming task so decided to wait until after the holidays. But the more we looked at the teal wall, the more we liked it just as it was. I found that awesome artwork at a thrift store (more on that below) and it just works for now. I am still flirting with the idea of stenciling a pattern but have no immediate plans.

The couch is from Macy's. It has a great MCM feel to it and is the perfect shade of gray. Having a living room AND family room was new to us so we had known we would need to at least buy a new sofa. We had found the one we wanted a few months before closing. Waiting to purchase it was hard :) But it was fun to be able to finally buy it once the house was officially ours.  We had the black chairs in our previous place. I found them at an estate sales several years ago. The beautiful silver branch side table was a gift from Jon for Christmas. I had seen it in Home Goods a few weeks before Christmas and really loved it.

I just love this embroidered cat pillow. I found a pair of them at an estate sale (the other is on the matching black chair).

The bookcase was also in our old place. The good old Expedit from IKEA. I have already filled most of the shelves....but working on making it look not so cluttered.

I had seen this painting in a thrift shop sometime in late October right before we closed on the house. I had thought it was pretty cool at the time but hadn't bought it because it was big, I wasn't sure where I would put it and in my opinion it was priced a little too high.
I must have liked it more than I realized though because it crossed my mind several times in the next month and a half and once we decided not to stencil the wall right away, I realized it would be a perfect place to hang it. It had been almost two months though and I was afraid someone would have snatched it up already. But one Saturday morning I went back to find out and I was so excited to see it still hanging there! The woman almost didn't sell it to me because she said she thought the guy in charge just meant it for display. I almost freaked out on her (lol) but then she saw a price tag on it and went and asked and was told it was for sale. Perfect!
It has the right colors and look for the room. I especially love that it hangs like a vintage school room map. That was Jon's least favorite part :)

So there you have it! the first room 'tour'. There is still a little left to do in the room though. I still want to hang some more art and pictures on the other walls and we are still searching for the right curtains. Will give a little update once we finish those things. :) 

2014 (!?!) and a long overdue update!

Well, I hadn't planned on basically taking a 3 month hiatus as soon as I started the blog but moving into our house and the holidays didn't really give me any free time (Duh...I guess any normal person would have realized this)! I had had grandiose plans of updating the blog every few days with what progress we had made but, as with most moves and renovations, many unforeseen situations popped up and I just had a million other things on my plate.
SO... now that it is the New Year and we more settled (sort of) I am making more of an effort on blog updates. Today I thought I would start with just a high level overview of what's been happening the past 2 months.
We closed on the house at the very end of October. It was a long time coming and we were very happy. It was funny because after going through the set backs we had gone through up to that point Jon said he felt like there should have been fireworks or a parade at our closing... not the half hour signing papers at the bank. It was a very anti-climactic ending. :) But as you can see below, we were ok with that.

We didn't move in to the house right away. We wanted to paint and work on a few things before moving all our stuff in. We thought a week or two at max...but then we got the bright idea to completely renovate the only bathroom with a shower...on our own...And of COURSE that took a lot longer than we anticipated as well. So we didn't officially start living there until about the first or second week in December. And that was only once the shower was usable! The bathroom still wasn't completely done at that point. ANYWAY, all that to say that it has been a hectic 3 months with moving, the holidays, regular life, etc...So I thought I would just share a few 'before' photos of some of the first things we focused on in the house and really get into individual room posts in the coming weeks.

This is the before photo of the family room. Wood paneling everywhere. We aren't fans so we painted over it. We were a little worried about just painting over it as opposed to tearing it down but are very happy with the results.

The photo below is of the 3 season room that is (was) off the back of the house, attached to the family room. You can see it in the above photo. The photo below is part way through demolition. Unfortunately, the room needed to come down because it was built poorly and was falling apart. It was way cheaper to just get rid of it than try and fix it. No worries. It will make a nice stop for a deck one day :)

The next two photos are of the main bathroom. The first is a 'before'. Pretty outdated. Some tiles were falling out in the bathtub and the bathtub was wayyyyy too small for my liking. I like a deeper tub to soak in :). I was sort of digging the floor title but since we were gutting everything else, the floor kinda had to go too. Jon redid the whole thing by himself (well, with a little help from my dad or his brothers on occasion) and I am so proud of him! Can't wait to share the after photos!

When we got to this point I was a little worried. I think he was too. :) No turning back now!

And of course we have been spending a TON of time in Lowes and Home Depot. But mostly Lowes. I guess we are more Lowes kind of people..... whatever that means :)

We still have SO MUCH to do but we are really happy with what we have accomplished so far. Looking forward to sharing some of the progress we have made!

Lately

Tomorrow is finally the day. We get to close on our new place! We are beyond excited and can't wait to get started on making it our own. 

But we will still be staying at my parents for at least another week or two while we paint and have some things fixed. And we certainly aren't complaining about that. We have been quite lucky to have such a lovely place to stay while waiting on our home and I wanted to share some recent photos I took of our temporary living space.

Beautiful views that we all enjoyed.

Even the cat :)

And the room we are staying in is so cute and charming. My mom collects vintage animal and floral pins and displays them on the curtains in the spare room. When she first started out they were displayed on two little throw pillown on the bed but quickly collected too many pins for the pillows. So the curtains it was!  Such a special way to display her favorite pins and adds instant whimsy to the room!

Here's hoping next time I post it will be about updates to the new house! ;)

The waiting is the hardest part!

Waiting is SO. HARD.

All I want is to get in to our new place and start painting, decorating and making the repairs we need to make! But unfortunately, buying a foreclosed home always seems to present some problems and we are experiencing those at the moment. So we have to be patient. Which is hard. Really hard.
So I spend a lot of time thinking about the changes we are going to make, the paint colors we will use, the style couch we will buy for the living room....etc...
There are 4 things that I really seem to be stuck on most at the moment. Master bedroom paint color, accent wall in the living room, entryway makeover and painting or staining the existing kitchen cabinets. So of course I have been scouring Pinterest for ideas!
For the master bedroom I have actually been considering Pink. I KNOW. I shocked even myself with that one. My go to colors are normally grays and blues so I was trying hard to go for something different. And since our bedspread and a few other bedroom accent pieces are gray... pink came to mind! I think it stemmed from THIS article I read on Apartment Therapy.

Click Here!

They suggested a super duper light pink and I think I like that idea. The Paris White above is pretty (I think the true color sort of got lost in translation....check out the link for a better image).  I even ran it by the hubster and he was on board without much hesitation! I just don't want it to end up looking like a little girl's room....so we'll see!
In this new house we will be fortunate enough to have a living room and family room. I am so exicted about this! For the living room I definitely want there to be an accent wall. I would LOVE some kind of crazy wallpaper (and by 'crazy' I mean birds or flowers...which to my husband is crazy) but I don't think Jon would be a big fan so we are working on finding a stencil or wallpaper that we can both agree on. Here are a few that I like - All found on Etsy.

Large Graphic Herringbone Shuffle Allover Wall Stencil

Moroccan Wall Stencil

Arrow Pattern Self-Adhesive Wallpaper

Scallop Pattern Self-Adhesive Wallpaper

For the entryway we definitely need a new light fixture and flooring but I am most excited about making over the closet. We plan on doing something like this...

Coat Closet Redo - click here

And then there are the kitchen cabinets.

Excuse the blurry photo... but as you can see from the picture, they are great cabinets with plenty of storage,

which we are sooo stoked about. BUT neither Jon or I are fans of the light colored wood (which are even lighter in person. This crappy photo doesn't do them justice). And can we talk about those handles for a minute...WHO THE, WHAT THE?? They are terrible. It's hard to see them that great in this photo but they are just oversized ivory balls.  SO, we plan on staining or painting the cabinets...not sure which way to go yet but here is some inspiration for that project.... 

Gray is definitely a favorite of mine! Could be a nice little twist.

Gray Cabinets

Minty Green would be a fun, unexpected color!

Minty Kitchen

Or a classic white is always nice.....with a little pop of color!

Classic White

So researching and 'Pinning' ideas is keeping the hope alive for me right now! I would love to hear about any home decor ideas that are really inspiring you right now!!