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house progress

House Progress

Status Update: Year Two

Today marks the official two year anniversary of owning this old house of ours. Today I wanted to look back at this past year, year two, and see all of the things we accomplished. I’m going to share a few (not all) of the big projects we’ve done in the last 365 days.

If you’ve never seen the before pictures of our house, you might want to start there, just for fun. This last year kind of unintentionally became the year of getting the upstairs more livable. One year ago, our master bedroom was downstairs and the only thing we had done upstairs was our son’s room. In the fall, we updated one of the bedrooms upstairs and moved the master up there.

Then, over my winter break from school, I decided to do a bit of work on our upstairs bathroom.

We also worked on finishing the third bedroom upstairs this year when we found out we were expecting our second child. The nursery is one of my favorite rooms in the house, and I cannot wait to get to use it very soon!

During Spring Break (are we sensing a pattern here? it seems like every time there was a break from school, I did a project!) I painted the porch floors on all three of our porches. That ended up being a lot of work over an extended period of time, but made a huge impact.

In a spur of the moment decision late last summer, I decided to paint some dalmatian spots on the wall between our living room and dining room. Best decision ever!

We’ve also done tons of work in the yard, and countless small projects around the house to help move the progress along. It’s crazy to see how far we’ve come. They say that people overestimate how much they can get done in a day, but underestimate how much they can get done in a year, and it’s so true! Last summer I could not have imagined the progress we have made. I can’t wait to see where we are by the end of year three! Hopefully some work in the downstairs areas… I’m getting real sick of looking at a few things downstairs. LOL! Well, that’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

Furniture Makeover, House Progress

Plans for the Playroom/Office + A Furniture Makeover

About five months ago, we moved our bedroom upstairs with the intention of turning the downstairs room into a playroom/office. It’s been pretty slow going. Drywall removal, wallpaper removal, and nail-in-shiplap removal has taken some time, and it’s not really fun work that keeps you motivated to do more.

But with our impending nursery project coming up, and the general house re-shuffling that comes with preparing for a new baby, I feel inclined to get moving on this playroom. I bought a set of chairs for five dollars a while back from a thrift store, and I knew they would be perfect in our playroom when we eventually got around to finishing it. The chairs didn’t come with a table though, so I searched Facebook Marketplace until I found one for ten dollars. So for my total price, I was at fifteen dollars. I knew however, that it was going to need a lot of work so I just stuck them in my garage and ignored them for a while.

Because of our current social distancing situation, I wanted to paint the table and chairs without going to the store to purchase anything. Luckily for me, I have a hoard of supplies in my garage, so I found a leftover sample we had used to test colors and got to work. The table was in the roughest shape. It needed to be sanded, stripped a bit, wood filled, glued back together, and clamped overnight. The painting was actually the easy part!

It’s not 100% done yet, but someone is already enjoying it!

So now that the table is almost done, I figured it would be time to work on a mood board for the space. I always find it helpful to visualize everything together in a space when I’m planning a room. I used everything I already had that I knew would go in the space, and then worked from there. So here’s what I came up with:

Obviously my table and chairs are a second hand DIY version, but I wanted to visualize what it might look like, so I included something similar. Here are a few similar options that I love: option 1, option 2, or option 3.

Our couch is the Sven Sofa from Article in the Grass Green color. It’s currently in our living room while we work on the playroom, and it’s the perfect sofa for littles. The long bench cushion comes off, and our son loves taking it down and climbing all over it.

As far as wall colors, I’m not 100% certain on what I want in the space, but I think I want to go in a beige direction. Gasp! The color on the background is Benjamin Moore Athena, but it’s just an example for now. Once we can safely leave our house again, I’ll get around to testing some actual colors.

I think the beige wall color will look really good with this rug, which I totally have my eye on. I think it’ll be just the right amount of fun for a playroom, but also the right amount of sophistication for an office.

The desk is a picture of our current desk, as we plan on putting our desktop computer in the playroom as well. It’s painted in Behr’s America’s Cup Navy. I need some new hardware, as you can see. 🙂

Other ideas for the room include built in shelves around the french doors for toy storage, and large framed fabric panels to tie the blue and green furniture together. Although I have some ideas in my mind, I just included some inspiration photos, not necessarily the exact thing I will end up going with. If you’re wondering, the fabric is here, and the built in photo I used for inspiration comes from this blog.

And just for good measure, I included some photos of actual toys that we have. You know, to make it more realistic. Most of our son’s toys come from IKEA, because they have the cutest toys.

So that’s the plan! I’m not exactly sure when we will get to finish this because of social isolation and all, but we definitely are going to get started on getting the last of the wallpaper residue off the walls. Baby steps. What projects are you planning during this time?

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

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