More Living Room Progress

In my last post, I realized that I actually posted a picture of the second step in our living room update. This is how the room looked right after we painted it and got moved in:

This was taken with my back to the front door, and you can see that it's a little crowded. We were also using Walker's old media stand, which he and his college roommates bought with the $100 someone paid them to set up a tent on their lawn during some event on Main Street (Bulldog Bash, maybe?) We also had Walkers' 7-8 year old TV, which was slowly losing pixels every day. 

From the other angle you can see that we were using Walker's old desk as an entryway table. (Hi Kirby!)

So we were on the lookout for both a new TV and a new media stand. We weren't in any hurry for these things, necessarily, but when we got a coupon for hhgregg in our new homeowner's packet, we decided to go check it out...and of course we came home with a new TV:

Hello beautiful. The thing I love most about this TV is its slimness. It's about 1/10th the thickness of the old projection TV, about a million times lighter, and even though the screen is bigger, it actually looks the same size as the old one, because that one had such a huge frame around it. And it's a smart TV, which I'm kind of in love with. 

You may also notice a couple other new items in this picture. First, the dresser/TV stand: 

We had been scouting out a consignment store near our house for a piece like this, and one day, there it was. Not only was it the perfect size, but it was also a great price. Originally priced at $165, it had been there for a while, so it was marked down to around $108. We offered $100 cash, and it was ours. You can see that it has a few scuffs and scrapes, which is why it was priced so low. I used some Milsek orange oil cleaner, which helped with most of the minor scrapes. I still need to use some Restor-a-finish to give it a nice shine and cover up that chip in the front, but I love the extra storage it adds to the room, and the mid-century look is exactly what we were looking for. (Kirby seems to make cameos in most of my pictures, along with his favorite ball...)

And speaking of mid-century, we found this piece at our local Habitat ReStore. Originally marked at $35, we got it for $25. It's the perfect spot for the record player we got for Christmas, and the style fits right in, even though the wood is a different tone than the media stand. 

If you look back at the third picture in this post (with the new TV), you'll also notice a new chair that we got for $5 from some friends who were moving. I'll post a better picture of it soon. I wasn't sure about the yellow seat, but it actually works well with the yellow accents on the fireplace. Which, now that there's not so much yellow in the room, I sort of like. 

There's one more item in the room that's set the tone for this space, but I don't have a picture of it right now. I'll post about that, as well as our newest updates to this space, in my next post...

Have you found any noteworthy items at consignment sales or ReStores lately? 

First up: Paint!

Once the papers were signed (on Friday morning), our first task was to paint before moved in the following day (Saturday). Yeah. I knew that it would be much more difficult to paint once we had all our stuff in the house, and I couldn't imagine living in a room with this gold and brown faux-finish for even a day.

Thankfully, I have some wonderful in-laws who came up from Mississippi armed with paintbrushes and ready to paint. Oh, and then they also helped us move in the next day. We are ridiculously blessed. 

We chose Sherwin Williams SuperPaint based on a recommendation from my mom, who had used it previously. I also had a coupon for both paint and supplies at SW, so that didn't hurt, either. It's a paint and primer in one and is really, really thick. I had actually also purchased a can of primer from Sherwin Williams as well, based on the recommendation of the sales guy when I told him we were painting over a faux finish. But we decided to try the paint without primer first and see what happened. Even though we eventually did two coats, we could already tell after the first coat that we were going to have enough coverage without the primer. Thankfully since it was a primer, not a mixed paint, I was able to return it without a problem. 

The color we chose was Collonade Gray, from the HGTV line. I knew I wanted a light gray, and I wanted to create a cohesive color scheme throughout the house. After going back and forth about a million times, I chose three colors from this line. (I'll share the other two colors in their respective room posts.) I was able to take my swatches to the house as seen above) and hold it up in a few different places, and was pretty happy with it. And this also gives you another close-up of the original wall color (shudder). 

Here are a few progress shots. I told you that I have an awesome family!

And an after, with furniture: 

This is from the side door. 

Here's a look from the other side: 

Not the best pictures, I know, but you get the idea. There's also a small hallway that was also painted gold, which we painted the same color. I'll get to that space later.

I also debated painting the trim on the two windows in the room. It looked like that had been painted previously, but the previous owners had stripped them, maybe because they added the brown curtain rods? And the brown tones in the faux finish? Either way, once we painted the room I decided they didn't look as bad as I initially thought. Also I was really tired of painting at that point. They might get tackled later, but as long as those wooden curtain rods are there and unpainted, I'm leaving them the way they are. 

I'll do a separate post on furniture and furniture placement, because that's already changed since I took the pic above. The room presents some interesting challenges because there are two doors and one doorway in this small space, plus the fireplace. So there's not a lot of flexiblity with arrangements. But I'm pretty happy with where we are now. 

I'll be back soon with more! In the meantime, do you have any advice for choosing a paint color? Any stories of paint color choices gone wrong? Worst color you've ever seen in a house? 

This old thing, er, house?

In my last post I said that I wouldn't go into a ton of detail about what's happened over the past three years since my cardigan posts ended and I pretty much dropped off the blogosphere. But since I'm telling the story of our house, I thought it only fair that I at least go back that far. Back to last November, to be precise.

Walker and I had been looking at houses online for about 3 years. We had actually gotten an agent and started looking seriously not long after I stopped blogging last time. But a combination of factors prevented us from going through with it at that time. The timing just wasn't right. But we knew that was something we wanted to do eventually, so every few weeks we'd check out the listings to see what was available and what the prices looked like. Then we saw this house. 

I fell in love pretty much the moment I saw that bright red door. It was in a neighborhood I had only ever dreamed of living in, it was in our price range, and it was the perfect size for our small family. This was the house that got us talking seriously again about buying. We contacted our former agent (who was more than happy to work with us again) and set up a date to go house hunting. However, by that time this house was no longer listed online, so we chose a few other houses to see. Naturally, we were disappointed, but by this time we'd made the decision that we were going through with it this time, and we would certainly be able to find something we'd love. When we shared our list of houses with our agent, he emailed me back and shared a link to another house, saying "what do you think about this one?" And (since I think you see where this is going) it was this house. He said that there had been an offer, so the sellers took it off the market, but then the offer fell through, so the owners decided to take it off for the holidays and re-list it in the new year. But, since the sellers were also using an agent in his company, it was an in-house listing, so he could show it to us. We met him on a rainy Saturday morning at this house, looked at 5 others, came back to this one, and then went inside to make out an offer. Long (stressful) story short, the house was ours in February.

Some people have been amazed that we chose this house in only one day. And although I had a few doubts as we were going through all the stress of waiting for it to be ours, I am so glad we bought THIS house. All those years of looking at houses online (and watching a lot of HGTV) prepared us. We knew exactly what we were looking for in our first home. We knew what we were willing to compromise on, and what we weren't. We knew what things we could change and what things we couldn't. And most importantly, we knew when we found it. 

In no particular order, here are a few things we were looking for, and some pics that show how this house fit the bill. Sorry for the terrible quality. They were just taken with our phones on a very rainy day. 

- A fenced-in, mostly-level backyard (or a yard that was already partly-fenced and relatively easy to finish fencing). With a dog, this was an absolute must for us. 

- An easily accessible deck or patio area that we could actually use. In our old house, the deck was just on the other side of the kitchen window, but there was no door onto it. You either had to walk around from the back, or go through the front door and around the porch. It was also open on both sides, so we had to find ways to block it when we were outside grilling so that Kirby (and other visiting dogs) couldn't get out and into the street. 

- One story. Not that our entire lives revolve around our dog (which you might think from the first two items on this list), but stairs aren't good for dachshunds. Not to mention that we weren't really keen on taking a lot of stairs ourselves, nor lugging a bunch of furniture up stairs. A two-story wouldn't be a deal breaker, but we wanted to be able to do most of our living on a single story. 

- Hardwood floors. Look at those beauties! Dog thing again, his black hair would turn our carpet black. And I LOATHE vacuuming. 

- 2-3 bedrooms or 2 bedrooms and an office area. This home had the latter, although I guess you could actually call it a third bedroom since it has a closet. 

- 1-2 bathrooms. At first, we were adamant about having at least 2 bathrooms. But honestly, most of the 3 bed, 2 bath homes we saw in the areas we liked were just not in our price range. So that was something we had to be willing to compromise on. 

- A kitchen that had a decent amount of storage and at least an eat-in kitchen. We don't host dinner parties or holiday dinners, so a formal dining room wasn't a priority for us. 

And although I said in no particular order, these were probably our two biggest "musts":

- A home that was move-in ready. Although I love watching a renovation show just as much as the next HGTV-er, we realized that right now, we didn't have the time or money to sink into a big renovation. Instead, we wanted something that was mostly finished and updated, but that we could slowly make our own, too. 

- An older house. We didn't want a cookie-cutter house. There were PLENTY of those for sale. We wanted an older home with some character was looking for some extra love to bring it out. 

As you can see, this house fit the bill. And it definitely needed some love. It was built in the late 1940's, and the previous owners had started doing some updates (hello, granite countertops!) but it was not quite where we wanted it to be. 

And that's where our journey begins. You've seen our before pics, so in the next several posts I'll share some during and after pics to show where we are now. Stay tuned! 

Oh yeah. I had a blog once....

WeYes, it has been THREE YEARS since I last posted on this blog.

And in that time things have happened. 

I think one of my biggest problems with keeping a blog or a journal has been that I try to include every detail. Which takes a lot of time. And I don't have a lot of time to devote to that much detail. So I'm not going to try to go back and talk about everything that has happened in the last three years. 

Instead, this blog has a slightly new focus. See, the biggest thing that happened in our family in the last year is this: 

We bought a house! I know, you probably thought I was going to say a baby, right? Well in a way this is another baby (Kirby being my other one). And just like a baby, I'm learning that a house doesn't "grow up" overnight. It takes time to learn about it, to find out what it likes, to figure out what's best for it. Okay, maybe I'm stretching this baby thing a bit far. 

But when we first bought the house I immediately wanted to get it to "perfect." I wanted every room to be decorated and painted and to have artwork and photos hung all over them. I wanted new furniture, new sheets, new everything. But, not only does that take a lot of money (that you don't have when you've just bought a house), I've also learned that it's not realistic to try to make everything perfect when you haven't lived in the house yet. Although Walker has been trying to tell me this from the very beginning, I'm slowly coming to the realization that it's going to take time to do all the things I want to do. And that's a good thing. One of my new philosophies for home and wardrobe is to buy only the things that I love. To be willing to wait and splurge a bit if necessary on something that is totally satisfying, rather than just getting something cheap to satisfy my urge to fill that space. 

So, my newest passion is home decorating in a budget-friendly, real-life, inspired way. I have been inspired by blogs like Young House Love, House Tweaking, Bower Power, and Beautiful Protest to discover what I love and just do it. In that tradition, I'm going to chronicle what we've already done in this house, what inspires me, what's going on in our little lives, and what we hope to do in the future. 

Enjoy! 

Still cold...

Remember the picture of that fountain in my last post? Well here's what it looks like this morning:


It was 12 degrees this morning, there's a good possibility of snow overnight tonight, and the temperature hasn't broken freezing for a few days. However, this did enable us to go ice skating at the outdoor rink in Greensboro on Saturday night!



Also, our trivia team came in third for the season! Next season, "It's an illusion, Michael" is taking it all....

Baby, it's COLD outside!

One of the things that I love about North Carolina is that you really do get all 4 seasons here (unlike MS). But winter seemed to come a little early this year! We got our first snow last Saturday:



We only got about an inch or so, but I can't help it - I love snow!

While we haven't gotten any more snow yet, the low temperatures have persisted, leaving some of the fountains on campus looking like this:



I'm glad that I love sweaters, because I've definitely needed to bundle up recently. And there's more winter fun to come!

Pictures from Maine!