What We're Up To This Weekend

Around this time last year, I was drooling over deck furniture. It's just this time of year, with the promise of warm weather around the corner, I can't help but think about spending lots of time outside. And since we never got deck furniture last year, I'm again asking for it for my birthday.

Between the last two weekends we have visited exactly 11 different stores looking for deck furniture. But we've been having a tough time finding exactly what we want, between my color and aesthetic preferences, my husband's comfort and function requirements, balanced with what we're willing to spend.

Sunbrella outdoor fabric samples

All of the sets of furniture we found that were more reasonably priced at places like Home Depot or Sears either didn't have one of my husband's requirements (a glider lounge chair), or they weren't very comfortable, or they were made of wicker, which isn't a great material for on a deck where you occasionally have to brush off spider webs.

House Tour: One Year Down

Exactly one year ago today we closed on our house!

So I thought it was finally time to do an official house tour post. Back when we were playing the House Hunters game, I showed photos of the house with the old owner's belongings, but since some things are definitely looking different now, it was high time for an update.

It will probably be pretty obvious, but I should note that we are still planning on changing a whole heck of a lot in the house. Like take our front yard. We haven't done anything at all to it (except I keep changing out the front door wreath, right now I've got my Ruffled Felt St. Patrick's Day wreath out), but hope to start making some landscaping decisions soon, before the weather heats up. It will be much greener in a month from now though.

Oh, and before I jump into the house tour, a refresher on the floor plan might be useful.

Teal, White and Grey Guest Bedroom Reveal

Last weekend we had visitors, so I'd been working hard on fixing up our guest room, and I can now say it is guest ready, if not 100% complete yet.

There are still a few things in here that I'd like to do, like build a bench for the end of the bed, and I still have one blank wall with no decor on it yet. And someday we'll get to scraping the popcorn ceilings, like we did for our downstairs rooms. But it's definitely an improvement over how this room first looked after we moved in!

Target Home Department Shopping Spree

Yep, the post title says it all, that's what I was up to yesterday! I picked up quite a few items we needed for our Guest Bedroom makeover, including new bedding, throw pillows, curtains and lamps.

From left to right: ikat pillows (on clearance, similar to these), curtain rod, lamp shade, teal lamp base, tripod floor lamp (I got two), white comforter, white grommet curtains, fun polka dot sheets, crochet pillows, ruffled pillow

Painting Updates and Time Expectations {Spoiler: Much Longer Than You Think!}

Well, this past week has been very exhausting! And productive too, I guess.

Since last Tuesday I've managed to get all of the baseboards, crown moulding and door trim painted a nice shiny white in our family room. And let me tell you, painting trim is no joke. As in, takes at least 4 times longer than you think it will. Maybe even 6 times longer, if you're dealing with dark wood trim. And I'm one of those people who already doubles what I think for time estimates. As in, I think I'll be ready to go in 5 minutes, so I say I'll be ready in 10.

But no, trim is the hugest PITA ever. I dare say, even worse than the popcorn ceiling removal! Well, less messy, but soooo much more tedious and time consuming. Turning the dark wood trim in our house to white took 4 freakin' coats of primer and paint (2 of primer, 2 of semi gloss) to adequately cover it. Sigh. I am suffering from claw-hand syndrome, from gripping my trim paint brush so much!

But let me show some before, progress, and "after" (aka, as good as it's getting before we move in this weekend, but still not a true after, since a lot more work is needed) photos, before I share some painting tips I found useful.

The very, very before, with grandma-pink walls, back when the railing and post were still dividing the dining nook from the family room:

Progress, with blue walls, and of course, the smooth and popcorn-free ceilings:

And now, with pretty and modern white trim!

A Birthday Backyard Baby Deer

Recently I won a $50 gift card to Home Goods, and with all of that money burning a hole in my pocket, I decided that on my birthday this week, I would go spend it on something for our new house that we completely didn't need. Hey, free money has no rules, right?

So I wandered up and down the aisles of Home Goods for a solid 45 minutes, weighing my options. $50 bucks can either go a long way, or not even cover half of one item in that store, and you just never know what you'll find. And with no real idea of what I wanted, it took looking at everything they had to make my decision. I was just waiting for something (or multiple somethings) to jump out and grab me.

At first I lingered near the entrance, drooling over pretty vases for the many built in shelves in our new house. But when I wandered by the garden section, this little guy definitely jumped out at me.

Introducing Bernard, our new little stone carved baby deer, so we'll always have a deer in our backyard!

I Know I Already Got What I Asked For, But...

Well, my birthday is in a month. And I've been telling my husband for the last year that all I want for my big 3-0 is a house.

So, he's off the hook now for getting me a birthday present! But I can still dream about presents, right?

We have a deal that we're not allowed to buy any furniture for our new house for at least several months, since (boring, responsible) things like a new roof and maintenance and repairs are a higher priority. But if I had my way, we would also sneak in the purchase of some new deck furniture.

Yep, that's what I'd be asking for for my birthday, if I hadn't already gotten what I'd asked for. We have this huge new deck, the weather is getting nicer and nicer by the day, but it's sadly going to be months until we can really enjoy it with new furniture.

I know I've mentioned on here several times how we've been living with old furniture for years and years, waiting until we buy a home to get new things...well our current deck furniture might just be the worst of all!

I present to you exhibit A, from when we had our 12 hours of snow a few weeks ago:

See those chairs? It's not easy to tell from that angle, but a bunch of the white paint on the arms and legs is chipped off down to the metal. And the plastic woven parts are so old now that the plastic isn't very flexible anymore, so they aren't particularly comfortable. And worst of all, there is a seam in the metal where the frame comes together under your legs, and any time you sit on the chairs after it's rained in the past week, the chairs pee water on your legs from the seam!

Or maybe that's not the worst part. Maybe the worst part is that senior year in college, my husband found these chairs discarded under the stairs of his apartment building. And we've been moving them with us now for 8 years, because according to my husband, "they still work." I know, I know, first world problems.

But can y'all see why I'd really, really like some new deck furniture?!?

And this is the set I'd love to get, with comfortable, water resistant cushions, and a table big enough to actually sit more than 4 people:

The Belmont 4-Piece Brown Wicker Patio Thick Woven Conversation Furniture Set - $699 for the set

As well as the Belmont Wicker Patio Dining Furniture Collection - $709 for 1 table, 1 bench and 4 chairs

Plus I'd need to get 4 extra matching pillows to place on the built in bench on our deck, to extend the seating area - $38.98 for 4 pillows

I've got it all planned out how this pretty new furniture will fit perfectly on our new deck. To scale, of course:

Sigh! Maybe by mid summer we'll be able to buy all this furniture, to actually get to enjoy our new deck. Perhaps it can be our anniversary presents to ourselves. I know my husband isn't caving on the fact that technically he already got me what I asked for for my birthday. :(

Do you ever dream about birthday presents you know you won't be getting?

 

To-Scale Room Planning: Guest Bedroom

Last week, I shared how I've been planning out what we want to do with the color schemes for the different rooms in our new house. Now, I'm going to take the planning a step further!

I've a very visual person. So I like to see how things are going to fit into a room before I actually implement it. Even when I was a kid, when planning on how to rearrange my bedroom, I would measure my furniture and cut out everything to scale on construction paper, so I could arrange it all on a piece of graph paper. Yep, I was a planning dork even as a child!

These days though, I do this type of thing digitally.

In Adobe Illustrator (although this would also work in Microsoft Word or Publisher) I will set up a document that is the same size as my room dimensions. One inch = one foot. Then I can measure my existing furniture (or use measurements for new furniture I'm dreaming about online) and make to-scale shapes that represent the furniture I want to include in the room. From there it's easy to move things around with my mouse and see where they will all fit. Much easier than pushing heavy furniture back and forth across a room, and also, it's something I can do before we move into our house!

Here is an example of what I've mocked up for our guest bedroom, with the room dimensions and all of the furniture to scale:

Once I've got the room laid out the way I like it, it's fun to take it even another step further! I can mock up the walls of the room using elements from my color scheme board. I don't have any of the great room design programs they use on HGTV, but I can still work with basic shapes and photos I've found online in Illustrator to get a decent mock up representation.

If I'm feeling ambitious, I will do more of a 3D mock up, showing three walls of a room at once. But doing 2D versions, showing one wall at a time is much easier, so that's what I've been doing lately.

Here is what I have mocked up so far for what I'm thinking the room is going to look like. Imagine you're standing in the doorway, looking into the room from the hall.

There's the bed, storage bench at the end of the bed, bedside table, floor lamp, the window...it's all there in 2D and color! I even added real lamps and pillows I found online. It makes room planning so much easier for me, to do these types of mock ups. Paint chips, photos of furniture and fabric scraps are nowhere near as useful, especially for how visual of a person I am. :)

Next, imagine you turn to your left 90 degrees, to look at the next wall.

There's the two chairs for our guests to use if they like, the bookshelf, and the door to the closet. Like I said last week, I'm going for a posh beach house feel for this room, hence the beach canvas prints. Eventually I'd like to add white beadboard wainscoting too further enhance the beach house feel.

Now, turning another 90 degrees to your left, we have the wall that is along the hallway, and the door to the hall. Two more bookshelves, and another floor lamp, and room for the closet door to open on the right complete this room's mock up, since I don't currently have anything on the last wall, to the side of the bed.

So now that I have a plan for how my furniture is going to be arranged, what colors I'm going to use in the room, and what types of accessories I'm thinking about, I can put together a list. And you better believe I love lists, even more than making digital layouts!

But this list is important. Working with my mock ups, I can now write up a list of all of the things that need to be done in the room, assign estimated costs to them, and then prioritize them on what order I'm going to implement them. This is going to be a big help when it comes down to our budget, since I won't be able to just snap my fingers and have a magically complete room. No, there's going to be some saving up, some painting and DIY'ing, and slowly, things will come together. But it's going to be even easier now that I've got my plans all mocked up and planned out!

Here's my current list for this room, in case anyone is curious. These are all in prioritized order, and not counting the popcorn ceiling scraping (that's under an overall house budget on a different list), the estimated total for this room is $622.87. That's because a lot of the furniture is stuff we already have, just being updated in one way or another. The main costs are new lighting and bedding (Did you see that HEATHER! We're getting new guest bedroom bedding just for you!!!).

Get popcorn ceilings scraped
Prep all woodwork
Prime walls and all woodwork
Paint ceiling white
Paint walls storm cloud grey
Paint woodwork and doors white
Make wood headboard and add moulding
Paint headboard
Paint apothecary table
Buy 2 floor lamps
Buy 1 table lamp
Buy sunburst mirror (or make?)
Buy teal sheets
Buy white comforter
Make/find white curtains
Update/find brushed nickel curtain rod
White chair slipcovers
Paint 3 bookshelves
Make wood end of bed bench
Paint wood bench
Make or buy 5 throw pillows
Canvas wrap art
Make/find frames for DIY shell art

So, that's one room down! Assuming I don't change my mind or anything (totally could happen!). I've also added an "Actual Cost" column next to my "Estimated Cost" column on my list, which will be interesting to fill in. Hopefully everything will come in under budget, or at budget. And this is probably going to be one of the cheapest/easiest/shortest to-do list rooms in our house.

Do you have any efficient ways you like to plan out how you're going to re-arrange your furniture, or add new decor to rooms in your house?

   

I Just Can't Help Myself!

So, you all know by now that we bought our first house. Or, more accurately, are in the process of buying our first house, since we don't close until March.

And I've been trying to not let myself get too excited too early. After all, we haven't done our home inspections yet (happening this weekend though!), and something could be wrong with the house, and we might not be able to go through with the purchase. Or the sellers could still back out. Or something else could happen that would cause us not to actually get this house. Until all the paperwork is signed, we hand over the biggest check we've ever written in our lives, and the keys are in our hands, this house isn't ours.

But yeah. Sitting idly by, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for our closing date just isn't my style. I have to do something to pass the time, and dreaming about how we're going to decorate our new home is about the only thing I can think about lately.

So throwing caution to the wind (because everything IS going to work out and this house IS going to be ours <-- sending those positive thoughts out into the universe can't hurt!), I've been busy planning color schemes and designing furniture layouts and making mock ups of 2D walls to bring to life some of my plans. I just can't help myself! And of course, I felt the need to blog about these ideas! If only to be able to look back once I've got the rooms decorated, to see how/if my initial ideas play out in the end.

But the first order of business was making a cleaner digital version of our house's floor plan, rather than the photo of a print out of the floor plan that I'd posted before.

Then, once I had the floor plan laid out (in Adobe Illustrator), I could start playing around with wall colors. Being a renter for the past 11 years means that I've always had to live with no color on the walls, and add color to the rooms with furniture and accessories. Now, I'm excited to finally be able to paint our walls in bold colors, and invest in more neutral colored furniture. After all, if I ever get tired of the colors in the future, it will be easy to paint the walls another color, that will still work with neutral colored furniture.

As you can see, as of right now (I'm reserving the right to change my mind, especially since all of this playing around with colors is just for fun until I'm 100% sure. Plus, I want my hubs to sign off on the paint colors, to make sure he'll be happy with them too.) I'm thinking of using lots of greys, and repeating the same shades throughout several rooms in the house. Hopefully this will allow me to use different color schemes throughout, but still make the rooms feel tied together. You can also see I'm thinking about jumping on the stenciled walls trend, in the dining room, entry way, and even on the ceiling in the laundry room. These are a few of my inspiration photos:

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I still don't know yet what we're going to do in the master bedroom (although likely it will end up in the same sage green, chocolate and cream color scheme we have currently, at least at first), the bonus room (aka the pool table room, which may end up with similar colors to the formal living room), the office (I know, it's weird, but we're thinking about making that the 'cat room,' where the kitties can have their cat door to outside, we'll build them a new kitty jungle gym, and they can have their own out of the way space to hang out. Yes, we're those people. We have more rooms than we need, so might as well give one to our fur babies!), and Alex's home office, which he'll probably never want to paint or decorate. And I've got nothing figured out for any of the bathrooms yet either. Eventually we'll probably re-tile them, so color scheme decisions are much further off for the bathrooms.

But as far as the rooms I'm already decorating, I've put together little color scheme boards, to start playing around with the accent colors I want to incorporate, and looking at some different patterned fabrics. I put these color scheme boards onto my floor plan as well, with the wall color being the largest square in the top left corner.

I just did these color boards in Illustrator as well, making squares from colors I like on the Benjamin Moore site, and finding fabrics on sites like Joann and Fabric.com.

Here is a closer look at the formal living room color scheme (for which I'm planning to search flea markets to furnish on the cheap. Hooray, furniture to paint and re-cover! This is going to be our "hello, person at the front door, glance over my shoulder to see how clean and orderly our house is" room. It's main purpose will be to look pretty, so people won't know what a mess our real living space is! 'Cause otherwise, I don't really know what to do with a formal living room, even though every house seems to have one.):

My dining room color scheme board:

If this color scheme looks familiar to any of you, it's probably because it's the same colors I've been dreaming about for a dining room since last May. You might remember this room mock up I did in Illustrator:

Yep, I'm still thinking about doing something very similar to this for our dining room!

The family room colors (which will also spill over into the breakfast nook and kitchen, since they're all open to each other. This is a similar color scheme to what we've had in our main living space for years, with bright blues and greens, but I'm hoping to achieve a more sophisticated, but still fun, look this time around, and bring in some accents in red and yellow, to tie in the living room and dining room colors.):

The guest bedroom color scheme:

Which was inspired by this headboard. I'm hoping for a posh beach house feel to the room, and would eventually like to add white beadboard wainscoting to the walls.

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And finally, the color scheme for what is going to be my combination home office/craft room/walk in closet bedroom. I'm going to try to make the most of the small space by dividing the room with some custom cabinets I want to make, so I'll have a defined office space and clothing/closet space. And this room uses some of my very favorite colors, and is close to the colors used for our wedding, and this blog!

Anyone else enjoy playing around with color schemes and planning which colors to paint walls? I can't wait to get into our new house and start painting--we're hoping to hold off on moving in until about a month after we get the keys, so hopefully we can get a lot of the painting done before we have furniture in the way!

Guess What I Was Doing All Weekend?

Living on my computer, researching and pinning home decor ideas. Which is nothing that out of the ordinary for me, but this time it was different. This time I actually let myself look at decorating ideas that are permanent, only-things-you-can-do-when-you-own-instead-of-rent kinds of ideas!

That's because this week we are FINALLY starting to look at homes to purchase!

Ok, really only one house, because one just came to our attention that is for sale only a few streets over from our current rental. And we love our neighborhood and the area, so we would be remiss if we didn't go have a look at it, even though this is a couple of months earlier than we were planning to start looking.

And so of course, I've already started decorating this not-yet-seen-in-person house! It's ok though. Most people would probably say "don't get your hopes up, don't get your expectations up too high, blah blah blah." But the number one goal my husband and I have agreed upon is we absolutely won't settle. We definitely have a list of what we want in a house, and know we will have to compromise somewhere, obviously. But location, lot size and floor plan are our sticking points, no matter how long it takes us to find the right house. So I think by actually getting my hopes up, and building each house we go see up in my mind, it will actually be easier to reject them when they don't tick all of our boxes on the list, so to speak. And that will mean we won't settle until we find the perfect house!

That's why it's a good thing that the one we're going to go see tomorrow meets all of our location, lot size and floor plan criteria! (Well, meets all of our recently changed criteria, which is now: within about a 5 mile radius of where we currently live, minimum of 0.4 acres and 2,000+ square feet with a garage and open kitchen floor plan. And the house is a great price, so we would definitely be able to do the cosmetic renovations that are needed (I bet nobody is surprised I want a project house, right?).

And here's just a look at what I've pinned on my Pinterest, for our hypothetical new house:

For a sun room/bonus room, a beadboard vaulted ceiling.

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Maybe also with beams.

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I LOVE the color of blue of these walls for a family room/TV room, with beige and white furniture and decor, and pops of yellow and green.

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Especially when paired with extra tall bright white baseboards, crown moulding, and refinished walnut hardwood floors, like these ones.

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And of course, you've gotta have some built ins around the fireplace!

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As far as the kitchen goes....well, there are too many little details to show them all, but basically white cabinets + medium grey counters + green back splash + dark wood floors = perfection. Sort of like this, but brighter and simpler cabinets, and not the cherry wood island that doesn't match:

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As much as I love my blues and greens, I'm leaning toward a more posh and sleek grey, neutrals and red palette for the formal living room.

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And in this one I'm intrigued by the idea of a grey window and baseboard trim, to complement the color scheme.

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And the outside living...oh the maybe-we-can-afford-something-cool-a-decade-from-now possibilities with a large yard. I love the yard layout in the photo below, but with more of the aesthetic of the images below that.

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And I absolutely must have an outdoor fire pit, so I can have s'mores and roast Little Smokies sausages, without having to then spend the night in a tent!

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Ok....maybe that's enough for one post. As you can see, I kinda went crazy on Pinterest with the home decor stuff this weekend! But it was so refreshing to let myself look at more than just rental-friendly projects. :)

So anyway, I'm super stoked, after almost a year of studying and researching the Raleigh real estate market, we can finally jump in. Wish us luck!

Grasscloth Wallpaper as Picture Matting

Lately I seem to be seeing grasscloth wallpaper a lot more in design magazines and all over HGTV. Candice Olson seems to be a big fan of bringing it back into style, since I've recently seen her use it on two separate shows (she even has her own line of wallpaper, with some grasscloth options).

But I can't say I'm a huge fan of it myself. I don't mind the look of it (although I think I might get tired of it relatively quickly on my walls), but all I can think about when I see it is how much dust it will collect. As someone with asthma, I'd definitely think twice before putting something with that much texture up on my walls.

via CasaSugar

However, one place I really like the use of grasscloth is in picture matting! You can still get the textured look, but in a smaller, more manageable dose. And the best part is that it's covered by the glass in the picture frame, so you don't have to worry about all of that dust.

Have a look for yourself, with these pieces I just hung up in our downstairs bathroom.

I'm loving the organic feel the textured wallpaper matting gives off, and it goes well with the rattan accessories in the bathroom as well.

Plus, the soft green color goes great with our guest towels.

What are your thoughts on grasscloth wallpaper? Would you commit to putting it up on the walls of your home? Or maybe only on an accent wall? Got any more creative uses for it, that might minimize how much dust it collects?