Decorating the Study

The study is coming along slowly. I thought I'd share an update with how it's looking these days. We haven't done anything special to the room except for painting (the color is Sherwin Williams Techno Gray if you're interested) and adding crown moulding.

Michael's parents gave us this beautiful antique piano when we got married. I LOVE it. We had the bench recovered, but that's about it.

Obviously, my favorite colors are neutrals and soft greys, greens and blues :) And a tad bit of contemporary fabrics!
We got a desk for cheap at Target for now. It does the job until we find something we like better.

That's about it! It has beautiful French doors that open up to the study from the living room, but I could not get a good picture of those. One day we'd like to get a nice club chair for reading, but we're making do for now. Have a great weekend!

Bathroom Reveal!

Our bathroom is finally finished! It has actually been complete for about a month and half, but I've been waiting for my window treatment to share pictures. We gutted the entire bathroom, but we did keep the vanity/countertops that we had purchased right when moved in, so everything else is new. Goodbye, disgusting linoleum floors! Without further ado...

Another view:I looooove our monogrammed shower curtain. We were also able to keep half of the original built-ins, which was a huge plus:Our little shower nook for all of our bathroom products: One of my favorite parts - the showerhead and faucet!

I love having a bathtub SO much. I'm definitely someone who enjoys a good bubble bath. I think the new bathroom goes well with the Craftsman style of our house, so we're very pleased. Let me know your thoughts!

The Current State of our Bathroom

And this is actually progress! We are finally renovating our master bathroom and I could not be more excited.

We are pretty much gutting the entire thing, except we are keeping our vanity because we bought that new last year. We had this awful pre-fab shower stall (and that was our only shower/tub), so that was ripped out (would have liked to have taken the sledge hammer to that) and a bathtub has been installed. Praise God! I can't wait to have my bubble baths back.

Plumbing and electrical are basically finished and drywalling should be done tomorrow. Hopefully tiling will start Thursday!

Michael and I are SO tired of showering at the gym, so I'm hoping we only have a week or so left. I'll post pictures as soon as it's finished. Have a great week!

Pantry Redo!

Michael and I finally got around to tackling our pantry this weekend. It's a great space, but it was pretty bad on the inside. There were wire shelves (WHY does anyone install these?), nasty scratched up white walls, etc. We took down the old shelves, patched the holes, sanded, painted, and finally, built and installed shelves. Here are some pictures, if you're interested:

Before (ick!):

Once we took out all of the shelves and started painting:
Painting fun:

The backings Michael installed for the shelves:

AFTER! The color looks terrible here, but it's a lovely light blueish grey:

And with all of our stuff organized:

I love it! And I especially love that everything doesn't fall over like it always did on those wire shelves. What do you think?

Our kitchen is finally finished!

We just added the finishing touches to our kitchen...finally! The final additions were window treatments, adding the above-the-range microwave, and crown molding to the cabinets! Here are some pictures (sorry for the poor quality, but I am definitely not a photographer):

I absolutely love how our kitchen turned out! We have done so much - we have painted, put in new granite countertops, replaces the hardware on the cabinets, installed hardwood floors, bought all new appliances, tiled a new backsplash, and the other items mentioned above. I really love cooking in here now - having an updated kitchen to cook in makes such a difference! Please tell me what you think!

New Porch Furniture

We are finally finished with the front exterior of our house! It's taken about 8 months, but we are finally satisfied with how everything looks. We bought some new porch furniture a few weeks ago, which was the final touch.

New chairs and table:

We also got a new address plaque (which has been blurred, of course), and Michael painted our light fixture black:

If it weren't so dang hot, we would probably be spending a lot of time out here!

To recap, since November, we have landscaped the yard, painted the house, added a new porch swing and furniture, and added accessories. I think we're going to relax for a while!

Updated House Pictures!

We have had quite a bit of work going on in our house lately. It's finally time to update with some new pictures! We still have quite a bit of work to do, but we are enjoying the process and the results.

Most of the work we have done so far has been in the kitchen. We painted, put in new granite countertops, put in a new subway tile backsplash (thanks Chris!), put down new hardwood floors, bought all new stainless steel appliances, and added new hardware to the cabinets. Here are some pictures:

Another view:

I found this lovely piece of furniture for our teeny sunroom at this great store in town - and for super cheap! I love having a place to store all of my kitchen linens. The view when you walk in:
There are also some before pictures way back in my blog somewhere...probably in December? We still have several things to do before we are finished. We need to rip out the ugly, old vent and replace it with an above-the-range microwave. I also found some subtle window treatments I love for the big windows over the sink. Lastly, I'm contemplating putting beadboard on the sides of the lower cabinets that are exposed. Please tell me what you think and if you have any suggestions!

Beautiful Bungalow

One of my random, favorite activities is to browse houses on Rate My Space. I found this adorable cottage the other day and I just had to share.

Front of the house. I love the paint colors and perfectly maintained yard:

Beautiful, light, and airy living room:
Relaxing master bedroom:

Adorable kitchen with all sorts of interesting details:

I LOVE this guest room. It's so relaxing...it'd feel like staying in a hotel!

~All images from HGTV's Rate my Space~

Kitchen Update!

I have finally taken some pictures of our updated kitchen to share. So far, we have painted the walls a greige, added new granite countertops, and added a white subway tile backsplash.

Keep in mind that we still have to put hardwoods down in the kitchen, get all new appliances, and of course, add some decorative details (please ignore my horrible photography skills, as well).

View when you walk in:

Close up:

Another view:
Close up of the subway tile backsplash (which my awesome brother did ALL by himself!):

So, what do you think? It's far from done, but we are making progress!

2010 House Projects

Since, I am so excited about the upcoming house projects we have for this year, I thought I would share!

• Living room: Add crown molding; get new area rug
• Dining Room: Add chair rail molding and crown molding
• Kitchen: New kitchen appliances; new hardwood floors; window treatments
• Guest Bedroom: Paint the bedroom
• Master Bathroom: Tile floor and shower
• Back Porch: Power wash and stain deck
• Front Porch and Lawn: Buy front porch furniture; paint exterior; landscape front yard

Wow...it actually seems like quite a lot all written down! Hopefully Michael and I can do a lot of that ourselves to save some money. Any tips and/or suggestions are much appreciated.

And I PROMISE to take some picture tonight of all of our updates to the house...including our new granite countertops and subway tile backsplash!

Updated house pictures!

So we are finally unpacked in our new house! We also had tons of rooms painted over the last week. We even updated the master bathroom some! Without further ado, here are some pictures...

Living Room - we painted the fireplace,mantle, and hearth (it was this horrendous painted red...)

View from the Living Room into the Dining Room. We still need to replace that ugly brass chandelier:
Another view of the newly painted fireplace:

Powder Room - we painted this room a light grey with some hints of green. It used to be this extremely bright sea foam green:

Kitchen - this was painted yellow (NOT my favorite). We painted it a greige (grey + beige):

Another view of the kitchen:

The sun room - this was also painted the yellow:

We removed this massive, outdated ceiling fan from the kitchen ceiling and replaced it with the flush mount light fixture:The hallway to the bedrooms. This was painted BRIGHT red:

And finally...the bathroom! We put in a new vanity, counter tops, and all new fixtures. Eventually we'd like to tile the floors, but that will have to wait.

You can see the before pictures in the post below. Next up on the list are new kitchen counter tops! Hooray! Also, do you like our Christmas decorations? If you can't tell, I LOVE colored lights!