Christmas Decorations!

We are still here! I know I've been MIA for awhile but I've just been really busy. I decided to start a new blog so that's been taking up some time as well. It's going to be based on all of my DIY projects with a lot more detail on the how-to and the overall process, so stay tuned for that!

Our projects have slowed a little bit, but I did get some decorations done for Christmas which was fun! Here are some pictures of those:

 

We also had a dog escape incodent. You see the innocent looking dog laying peacefully by our fireplace? He's also an escape artist. This is what happens when you have smart dogs! One morning he just wasn't in our yard (Thankfully this happened to my boyfriend and not me because I would have completely freaked out). We originally thought he jumped the fence but yesterday we saw him trying to squeeze through a small gap between the bottom of our fence's gate and the ground. So, this is another project. We just have to figure out how to fill in the gap (It's about 8 inches) so it's dog proof! Huskies are great dogs but they are way too smart!

I hope everything is going great with everyone else!

Pics Galore!

I finally took pictures of most of the downstairs in our home! I left out the dining/living room because it's a mess and currently has a naked Christmas tree in the middle of the floor. The office and bathroom look the same so no need for pictures there either. I left out upstairs because it's nowhere near finished!

Here are some pictures of the downstairs though! It still needs some work but I'm so happy with it for now! We'll start at the front, shall we?

Our home! The tree on the right side of the picture is a newly planted tree (Props to my mom and amazing boyfriend for this present and the labor required for planting it). It's a Weeping Cherry! I'm not sure what kind of tree they gave us (on the left). I guess time will tell!

Our guard frog by our front door! He's rusting already but I kind of like it ... I know, I know, we artists are weird.

Walking in the front. Check out that floor - whoever installed that floor is mad skilled ;)

Front door/Entry - The door color is Sherwin Williams "Watery." I love the pop of color (especially since we can't paint!)

Mudroom freshly floored

Before / After : Rug from West Elm

Hallway and basement door

Glimpse of Hallway, basement door, pantry door (also Sherwin Williams "Watery") and our beautiful fridge

Before / After

Kitchen! Freshly floored and cleaned. I'm also going to paint the basement door the same color as the pantry and then paint the top central panel on that door in chalkboard paint for notes/grocery lists/etc. The trashcan was going to be a dog food container but ended up being, you guessed it, a trash can! I got it for around $15-$20 at Home Depot and just spray painted it.

Doggy fuel station

Before / After

Morning room and my sexy table and new chairs!

Great Room - These pictures are kind of dark so my apologies! My phone doesn't have the best quality!

Love my Fireplace and big clock!

Close up!

I love my Teal Couch and funky pillows!

Back yard - left side. See those holes? We had to move our Ryan Homes trees to the other side of our fence because our dogs were digging them up. When looking into dog breeds we heard huskies were diggers .. Those sources were right. We had them trained for apartment living but home living is a little bit different .. They test our patience frequently. They are so darn cute though!

Right side of the yard - Love having a fence! We also got some solar fence caps for the corner and middle fence caps that light up at night! Love them!

Now that Christmas is less than a month away (Umm what?? When did that happen???), we started talking about Christmas present ideas. My boyfriend had a great idea about presents, and we decided to split a large cost for the house and then just get each other something small. We pretty much settled on getting backsplash for the kitchen. We talked about a grill or nice pots and pans (Calphalon has these dishwasher safe pans now .. What I would do for those bad boys ...), but ultimately we decided those things could wait and backsplash is a fun purchase! We went and looked around yesterday. We either want something simple shaped with a touch of color or  just something with a nice texture/shape (or maybe a little bit of both??).

This is called a "windchime" pattern. I liked it because some of the glass is frosted and some isn't which gives it some extra visual interest. 

I really like this shape and the color. It's hard to tell by the picture but it's about 4 inches wide. It has a tint of grayish teal (I may or may not have just made up that color..)

This is the same shape as the one above but smaller and in a marble. I really like it, but it was pricier than the others .. we'll see. We're going to look at places like Lowes and Home Depot too for similar stuff just because of price.

I hope everyone is loving their home! I feel like everyone has disappeared, but I'm sure everyone is crazy busy! I know we were for over a month (and we still kind of area).

I'll be decorating for Christmas all day today. I'll try and do a Christmas decor update! 

Progress, Progress, Progress!

THE FLOOR IS FINISHED

THE TABLE IS FINISHED

CURTAINS ARE ALL HUNG

Phew!

We have been busy! We finalized a bunch of stuff this past Wednesday ... aka 2 days ago. I finally finished the floor (well most of it .. not the trim, but I can't even think about that right now!)! I will be taking pictures (hopefully tomorrow) and put up some before and afters. It looks great! I looove it and I love that it's basically finished even more! Putting down flooring is quite a process and very time consuming. I'm also convinced the weird shape of the area I did made it more difficult. A lot of angles, a lot of door frames, a lot of obstacles (going around that island).

I also finished the table! It is finally complete! It has been built and stained for quite awhile, but I started slacking when I had to polyurethane it. I got laaazy. So I finally finished putting several layers of poly on and screwed everything together and I love it!

Here are some pictures! You also get to see the newly installed floor as well!

That is one sexy table! (If I do say so myself)

All ready for Thanksgiving dinner



Chairs are from Ikea! Very comfy and cute!

I'll be sure to take more pictures of the rest of the house. Everything is pulling together really nicely! I just haven't had time and our home was a mini construction zone for awhile due to the floor.


Other than that, we celebrated Loki's first birthday! He got to go to Dog Daycare (one of his favorite places in the whole world) and they took this adorable picture of him. I thought I'd share because he's just so darn cute (I may be a bit bias).


 

The dogs are also enjoying their new fenced in yard. We, on the other hand, have a love/hate relationship with it due to the digging and mud (Sod makes the yard really soggy for awhile).

Muddy dogs = happy dogs

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

 

Loki Approved!

Now it's time to decorate for Christmas!! Is anyone else as excited as I am?? I love decorating for Christmas!

Update

So I figured I'd pop in and do a quick post/update.

Things have been good! We're still loving our home as much as ever and we're still pretty busy! We've slowed down a good amount just because we were tired (not because we don't have stuff to do!). Over the past few weeks we've:

• Sealed the garage floor
• Put the TV on the wall
• Bought and installed our surround sound speakers in the great room
• Had our fence installed
• Installed all of our ceiling fans
• Put up almost all the curtains (still need to do the morning room)
• Put up shades in the Powder Room
• Replanted the trees in the backyard
• Planted a new tree in the front yard
• Installed a lot of the floor!

Since then we've kind of stalled. Frankly, that floor made me exhausted! This past weekend my dad and I worked on it a little bit. We cut out the rest of gaps needed under door frames. I also added a few more rows in the morning room and finished the area at the bottom of the steps. From here, I think I'm just going to add a little bit here and there throughout the week. Eventually it will get done! It needs to get done! The fact that the floor is half finished is driving me crazy buuut I'm tired and don't want to do it anymore!

I also have to finish our table .. I am seriously a slacker!! I promise I'll have it done soon and post pictures!


Problems

Now that I talked about all the good stuff, I figured I'd mention some stuff that needs fixing. Overall, we haven't run into many problems at all but here's a list:

1. Stain (or bleached spot) on Great Room carpet
2. Nail pops in the hallway
3. Toilet in basement barely flushes
4. Toilet on 1st floor doesn't flush great (maybe the energy efficient factor??)
5. Morning Room door is hard to open and close

Another problem, not related to the house quality, is that our dogs have destroyed a few things in our home already. Awesome, right? They chewed a banister and last night snuck away to pull up some of the carpet. They also dug up 3 or 4 of our trees so those trees have all been moved to the other side of the fence. Currently, we're trying to figure out how to make them stop. Any tips would be very much appreciated!

I hope everyone else is having great experiences!

Sneak Peak of Our Flooring!

It looks like there was a good amount of interest in our flooring so I figured I'd give a sneak peak! I finished most of the kitchen but still need to do a little bit more. I also need to go down the hallway and do the mudroom as well.

I'm taking a bit of a break from completing it, because my body hurts! The joints in my fingers are swollen and I have bruises in places I didn't know I could bruise (bruising the palm of your hand is possible, apparently). I also slightly strained/sprained both wrists when trying to remove and replace some stubborn boards. I'm a mess! This girl needs a break!

Note: It may sound like this flooring is crazy hard to put in, but it really isn't that bad. I think it is definitely a doable DIY project for people, but just be prepared for it to be time consuming and a bit tiring (and you may hammer your fingers a few times too ... I'm speaking from experience...). I'll go more into detail on everything once I'm completely done the flooring!

While I'm taking a break from flooring, I may work on getting the table all ready to be put together (I'm polyurethaning the legs and top separately since it's easier than doing it after I assemble everything). Hopefully, I'll have pictures of that soon!

Anyways, as promised, here's a sneak peak of my beautiful new flooring!

Really poor picture quality!! Sorry about that!

Please excuse our messy counters!

And just for reference, here is the old flooring:

I'm in love!! I just need to finish the kitchen, hallway, and mudroom and then add on some quarter round. It's going to look fabulous!

 

We Closed!

Hi everyone! I've been keeping up with everyone's progress and every home looks amazing!!

We closed on the 22nd and did the big move that Saturday, the 25th. We have been BUSY! I mean really busy. Did I mention that we have been busy????

Not only have we been busy, but we couldn't get internet and cable until this past Thursday, so I successfully went over my data plan for my cell phone and had to limit all internet access. Plus, we missed all of our shows this week (we are definitely TV people).

We may have internet and TV now (which is fabulous), but we are still busy. I am currently in the process of putting the flooring down. I'll definitely post pictures of that once we're done. I am LOVING it so far, but it has proven to be a much bigger project than I thought originally. I'm not sure if I would ever pay to have someone else do it (It would have been about $1200 - $1400 with lumber liquidators), but I can say that it is definitely a physically and mentally demanding project. Part of this is because it is our first time doing a floor so we had to really think things through and find a rhythm. Not having internet to look up tutorials, videos, or other instructions was also pretty terrible!

We've also sealed the garage floor, hung up some curtains, painted the front door, and painted some interior doors. We also had our fence installed which is awesome! Other than that we have just had to make countless trips to Lowes and Home Goods for small projects and so we can make our home livable!

Here are the pictures from our first day in the house as promised in my last post. I'll definitely post pictures once we have the floor in and everything is cleaned up, since right now we are living in chaos!

I'm also posting a picture of our new bright red front door! Love it! The table is basically done, but we just have to put two more coats of polyurethane on it, which I have not had time to do! Flooring is first priority right now!

Dining Room

Hallway/Front Door

Powder Room

Staircase going upstairs

 Mudroom

Great Room

Taken from kitchen - Door is to office 

Bean bag is our dog's 6 foot wide dog bed (relocated to our basement)

Office

Our collection of paint we can't use for 10 months! haha!

Kitchen & Morning Room

Taken from office doorway

Basement

Stairs down to the basement

Basement Powder Room

Hallway to main area of basement

Right side of basement (door is to storage area)

Left side of Basement (with morning room area finished) and egress window

Upstairs

Stairs from second floor

Guest Bedroom # 1

Laundry Room

Guest Bedroom # 2

Secondary Bath 

Secondary Bath

Hallway going towards master bedroom

Guest Bedroom #3 - Aka my future art room

Master Bedroom (hard to get a picture of these bedrooms)

Master Bedroom

Master bath

Master Bath - double vanity

Roman Shower (the two shower heads are seriously awesome)

Master Bath toilet room

Master closet - Right side

Master closet - taken from left side of closet

Exterior - The old door was definitely more of a rusty red than a bright red. I was not happy with the color so I went to Sherwin Williams and got a nice bright red (Poinsettia is the name of the color there). I LOVE it! Once I painted it I felt so much better! Some people may think I'm crazy but it made a huge difference to me.

Here are some pictures mid process - The old paint looks so brown against the new red!

Before

Old picture but best picture of the older door

After

BEAUTIFUL BRIGHT RED DOOR (I can't take credit for the better lighting in this picture - thanks Mother Nature!)

Close up!

Other than that things are going good! We actually already found a few nail pops so I'm glad we're not painting for awhile!  Plus, we are so freakin' busy that I can't imagine taking on another project right now!

The dogs (our fur-babies) are loving the new house! They have made themselves at home!

Bear passed out on his new favorite couch as I was writing this post - he has such a hard life....

I'll post updated pictures of a furnished and updated home ASAP!