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Dining Room Progress + A Fun Furniture Makeover!

Hello there! Today I’m sharing some progress in our dining room that has me all kinds of excited. Of course, this room is no where close to being done (we don’t even have chairs yet), but I did some work this week, and I am loving the direction it’s heading in.

So, first, let me tell you about this dresser. I painted it several years ago for a vintage market, it never sold, and it’s been in our storage room ever since. We haven’t been using it other than to store random things, and it definitely wasn’t part of any “design,” it was just kind of there. Here is it in a display at a booth a few years ago.

So, the other night, I was up in our unfinished room, and I suddenly had an idea. I had some extra green paint left over from a bathroom cabinet project, and I needed a project to work on. So, within a few minutes, I started painting this dresser.

I painted it in Behr Sparkling Emerald, the same color I painted our bathroom cabinets. I spray painted the handles with some Krylon metallic gold paint I had in the garage. This was a complete whim of a project, but I am absolutely obsessed with the way it came out.

It’s just the addition to the dining room that I needed. Of course, we still have yet to purchase a rug, light fixture, chairs, art for the mantle wall, etc. But! This is helping me to see the vision I have for this room start to come to life.

In our previous house, I was strictly the ever trendy modern-farmhouse style in my decorating. In this house, I’m embracing somewhat of a traditional/classic/New England-esque style with blues and greens as the colors I’m using throughout the house.

The table was a thrift store find for $80. It’s massive, with two leaves, it can seat up to ten. It’s traditional and such a statement. It fits this house so well.

The plate wall has been coming along slowly. Although it’s not quite finished, it’s a combination of thrift store finds (from different states), neighborhood estate sales, flea markets, and even a couple from Hobby Lobby. I’m looking for a couple specific things to finish it out, but I love the look of a classic blue-and-white plate wall.

So, that’s all the progress for now. Lots and lots more to do in here, but I’m pleased with how it’s beginning to some to come to life.

When it comes to this old house, there’s a lot of things to juggle when it comes to making this place ours. Typically, you come into a new home and bring in furnishings to make the place feel like your own. Here, we have so many large scale projects to focus our time, energy, and money on, that it’s hard to prioritize what to do first. We’re so proud of the work we have done, but we still have so many plans for this place. So, what do you think?A bit different than something I would have done before, that’s for sure. That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

DIY Projects, House Progress

House Progress – Our Front Stairs

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share a quick update on a section of our house that isn’t finished yet, but looks waaaaayyyyyy better than it did before, and I’m happy to live with it as-is for a while.

Our front staircase is one of the original features from 1895. It is tight, narrow, and has a very abrupt turn which makes moving furniture upstairs quite tricky. Just as a reminder, this is what it looked like when we moved in:

Looking at that photo is absolutely crazy to me because it looks nothing like this anymore! Within the first few days, we pulled out the carpet, and a few weeks later while we were working daily, we painted the walls. But for a couple months, we hadn’t done anything with the stairs themselves. And then our son was born, and we were a little slow to getting things done, so it took a while before I got around to painting.

I decided to paint the stairs, back in December, I believe, but I never really shared the full details. 

And now they’re black and white and I’m totally in love! They make the space feel so much bigger and brighter, even though it really is a tiny staircase.

Pardon the glaringly bright sun, I was just too excited to wait to take these pictures!

The color is Behr’s Totally Black, with Ultra Pure White (the color you get without any mixing – straight from the can) trim, and Polar Bear on the walls. We painted the staircase with a semigloss finish, which I would not normally recommend on a high traffic area, but we do plan on adding a runner down the stairs for comfort, so they will not be getting much foot traffic at all once the runner is installed.

Here you can see an unedited look (nope, I didn’t clean up for y’all) at the stairway into the rest of the house. So aside from the runner, we do plan on doing a few other things. The light fixture will be changed, of course, but we’re also thinking about a fun statement tile to replace the parquet flooring. For now though, it’s a small makeover to tide us over until we get to the real thing!

So, if you can pardon my photography skills, that’s the latest little update. Projects are going pretty slowly around here, but as soon as we get back at it, I’ll keep y’all updated. 🙂

That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

 

DIY Projects, House Progress

Status Update: End of 2018

Hi friends! I’m so glad you’re here! If you’ve been following along on our house progress on Instagram then you probably have seen lots of little projects we’ve been working on as we’ve been doing them. These days, it’s a bit easier for me to do a quick update there than on here, just because life with a newborn is busy! In case you haven’t been following along, here’s the deal with this post. My  Status Updates (Check out the first one here or the second one here) are a series of unedited, real life photos rounding up the entire process of what we’ve accomplished thus far.

At the time of my last update, we had not yet moved into the house. We have since moved, had a baby, and continued working. To say things are a bit crazy would be an understatement. We are definitely still in “fixer upper mode,” when looking at any room in the house, there are at least five undone projects that come to mind. So, bearing all of that in mind, let’s have a look at what our house looks like right now.

The Foyer 

We lived with completely undone stairs for a little while before I went ahead and painted the stairs. This is the view from our front door, and it’s a very tight space. Painting the stairs and the walls made it look a little bit more open though. Still to do in this space: replace the light fixture, add trim along the ceiling going up the stairs, add a runner up the stairs, do something about the floors (we aren’t sure what the plan is…there are no original hardwoods, so we might lay a statement tile. We are still in the very early planning stages on that particular project), and lay a transition piece between this an the living room floor.

The Living Room

This room is mostly “done” with the exception of the transitions on the floor from one section to the next, and replacing the light fixture (we haven’t done that in any area of the house yet). If you look closely in the first picture, you can see a thin cable running along the floor. It’s something for the internet that needs to be run underneath the house. I also want to replace 99% of the furniture here, but that’s not necessarily considered a project.

The Dining Room

The dining room is the most embarrassing in its current state. It took me a month to clear the moving boxes from here, we had no table for two months, and Ethan still has a makeshift desk sitting in the corner (the room that will be the office upstairs is completely undone). We don’t have chairs or any other dining room furniture, but it’ll get there. The fireplace has been painted, and everything else is complete, with the exception of caulking along the ceiling trim.

The Bedroom

Our room has a ways to go, but since our son is still sleeping in here in the bassinet (not pictured), everything is temporarily out of place. The rocker will eventually go back into the nursery once he starts sleeping through the night, and once the extra furniture is out of there, I’ll feel more inspired to decorate and finish things in here. We need to add some trim pieces in here, and add a light fixture. This room doesn’t have an overhead fixture at all, so it’ll be a bit more labor intensive than fixtures in the other rooms.

The Bathroom 

The bathroom is small and hard to photograph, but the only thing completed in here is the cabinetry has been painted this emerald green color. As you can see, we need to replace the light switch box, which we will do in the entire house all at once. We replaced the outlets, but we haven’t done the light switches yet.

The Nursery 

I did a whole post about our son’s room, because it’s the only room that’s “done.” It actually still needs a new light fixture and light switch box, but other than that it is done. If you missed that post, you can check out more photos of it here.

We haven’t done anything else on the outside just yet, but we do have some major plans for that yellow house. (Hint – it won’t be yellow forever). We’re at a point now where we have to slowly plan things out. In part, because we spent all the money we had earmarked for house projects when we bought the house, but also because things move at a much slower pace with a newborn around. When I was 8 months pregnant, I was working 12 hour days in the house, and people thought that was crazy. It may have been, but now I can only work in one or two hour increments during naptime. So, in 2019, we’ll be moving a bit slower. Anywho, that’s the update for today. This house has come a looooooong way since our closing date, but she still has a long way to go before she is everything we envision. That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!