Category: home

Our new carpet is in! As you can see, Cleo is already enjoying it, as am I. When I wake up I feel like it’s an entirely different room.

While it was being installed I made a trip to IKEA with Meredith. I had fun shopping for some accessories (I’ll be posting more about that this week) and you can see a few of them here.

Once we got the room put back together David said, “Hey, the bed is looking good!” That made me happy because usually he couldn’t care less about my decor updates. I keep telling him that I have a vision and this is only the start.

It’s already come such a long way in just a few weeks, starting out like this:

And today it looks like this:

Now if you squint and imagine a beautiful crocheted blanket on top (which my mom has started – yay!), wooden nightstands with a matching lamp on each side, a pretty bench at the foot of the bed, some kind of headboard, and stuff on the walls…well, you can kind of see it, right? :)

Probably no one but me remembers that when it comes to decorating our house I was intending to work on one space at a time. The last time I talked about this was in May and I was going to tackle the buffet area. Well nothing has been done in that arena but I do have some ideas that shouldn’t be too hard to implement and I’ll definitely update when I get around to it. However right now I have a different area in mind:

I am so excited to work on our bedroom!! Even though everyone says it should be the first room you set up in a new place, we definitely fell into the temptation of letting it slide since no one but us sees it. Now we’ve been here five years and it is pathetically neglected. No longer, I say!

So, I can hardly believe I’m doing this but I’m going to share some before pictures with you. I almost couldn’t stand to do this without an after, so I’m compromising by sharing some “in progress” photos because recently we painted the walls & ceiling (yay)!

Here is our room in all its neglected glory. Our mattress is amazing and the room is a great size with a big window, but the rest is kind of hideous. The walls are powder blue and the trim is a dirty cream color. We painted the trim in the rest of the house white but I lost momentum when it came to our room so it’s stayed. We have hardly any furniture and nothing on the walls.

The double doors lead to Meredith’s room/the nursery and thankfully they’ve already been painted white. The knobs are roped together with fabric to keep the dogs from getting in. You can see here where portions of the carpet have been torn up by our dogs.

This is my side of the bed. I threw a quilt down on the ground because underneath the carpet is torn all the way to the sub floor. I didn’t bother to remove the other random pillows and blankets that I left there. It’s a true before, okay?

Here’s my night stand with random stuff. I love that oval box and I might keep the branches too. Definitely want to upgrade from the cheapest IKEA lamp there was. The point is it needs some thought and styling.

This is opposite the bed. The carpet…ugh. The TV needs to go because we never watch it and it’s huge. We just had it leftover from David’s bachelor days. The dresser is his old one too. I want to get a long, low one that won’t block the window. This window is also the last one that we haven’t upgraded the blinds on, and we’ve been hanging a sheet up for curtains. Really classy.

This is a little built-in bookshelf that needs styling.

This is the view straight on from the door, and I want to show how there is no door to our bathroom. My plan is to put up a curtain.

Last weekend we painted, and now the room looks like this!

Ahh blank slate.

In a couple of weeks there will be beautiful new carpet in there too. I can’t wait.

Now, on to the to-do list for the room…

• Paint the walls and ceiling
• Replace the carpet
• Replace the blinds
• Change out the light switch plates & electrical outlets for white ones
• Add curtains
• Hang a curtain in front of the bathroom door
• New blanket & extra pillows for the bed (My dream is to make a blanket like this but I know it’ll take forever, especially since I don’t yet know how to crochet. So I’ll be on the lookout in thrift stores.)
• Some kind of headboard
• Bedside table for David (maybe try and build one like this?)
• Replace the knobs on my bedside table
• Add lamps
• A bench or seating for the foot of the bed
• New dresser
• Lose the giant TV
• Hanging plants in front of the window (kind of like this)
• Art for the walls
• Styling for the tables, dresser, and built-in bookshelf

 

And who doesn’t love some inspiration photos?

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I love this for the bench at the foot of the bed, the shelf as a kind of headboard, the lived-in feel, and the mismatched bedside tables that aren’t actually tables.

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Why not do curtains as a headboard? Or hang a tapestry? We have a pretty big wall to fill so it could work. Also, a wind chime to hang in the bedroom is like a grown-up mobile. Love it. :)

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A bench with storage at the end of the bed would be fantastic. And bookshelves as a bedside table! We could so make that work.

All of these photos (and more of my favorites) have white walls which is why I decided to go that direction. It’s so calming and lets all the natural textures and colors be the focus. I can’t wait to start decorating for real.

I am not sure what this space is actually called, but I call it the buffet. It’s a nice little storage and display area, but I just don’t know what to do with it. I’ve just been putting random stuff there without trying.

Get a load of what it looked like when we moved in:

So much wood, right? Way too much. It was suffocating. Already it’s a big improvement over that.

Right now it’s a really sad space. I have actually moved things around since then but it doesn’t look a WHOLE lot better. This is the most central spot of the main part of the house so I like having the speakers there, but they are pretty ugly. We use those little drawers to hold cords and chargers but I am not sure if they’re my style or not.

In the upper cabinets I store vases which I will probably continue to do.

The bottom cabinets have mostly games, but it needs to be organized. My goals for this area are to organize the cabinets and make the horizontal space pretty and functional. Mostly pretty, because we don’t really need it for much. So, any thoughts?

This is the first area of the house that I’m calling “done.” It’s actually the only place we eat in the whole house because we don’t have a traditional dining room right now. I scoured deep into the archives of my photos to find a “before” picture for you. Here it is when we moved in:

There was a lot of wood. The paneling extends to the entire living room as well. A funky light fixture. Pinkish cream paint. Cheap blinds.

Here it is now:

The first big project we did in our house was to have the paneling professionally painted. Back then I was obsessed with this green color. I still like it, but now I am kind of itching for a change. It’s such a huge undertaking though, so it probably won’t get done for a long time.

One of the things I knew needed to be done was to switch out what was on the wall, and I finally did that recently.

I have a special love for this table. Other than our bed, it was the first piece of furniture we bought for this house. I found it in a local antique store, and although I think it annoys David because it’s a little wobbly and has scratches all over it, I think it’s beautiful.

The chairs are from IKEA and the cushions are Target. I would love to do a mix of vintage chairs, but that’s the kind of thing that you have to put together over time and these are sturdy and comfortable and I still like them well enough.

Since I knew I wanted to keep this area simple – it’s not very big after all – the last thing I had to do was finish off the table top. My original idea was to put down a pretty vintage tray with a wire basket for napkins and a vase of flowers. I still love that idea, but I couldn’t find the exact tray I had in mind, and anyway I thought it would be smarter to use what I already have. So I just used these placemats as a base and stacked the napkins. This is how I leave it when it’s not in use, then when we eat I just push the vase to the side and pull out the placemats and napkins.

Lastly, I used this gorgeous vase that was my grandmother’s and that I recently found while “shopping” in my parents’ garage. And instead of buying flowers, I clipped these pretty branches from a huge overgrown bush in our backyard. When these die I will just clip some more branches. So pretty and so free!

I admit that it’s a bit green overload here, and I wouldn’t mind bringing in some different colors, so I’m on the lookout for more cloth napkins to mix in and of course I can always splurge on flowers. I am also thinking of getting a different color chair cushions. Any thoughts on colors for those? (Okay, now it’s sounding like the room isn’t so “done” but really, I’m happy with it and feel good about moving on for now!)

Oh, and if you’re wondering, which you probably aren’t, I went ahead and took down our high chair because Meredith refuses to use it anymore. Most of the time she just sits on my lap, which can be annoying but I know I will miss it one day.

It feels so good to actually get one space finished!

I have a vision for our house. Even though we’ve lived here five years there is still a lot that needs to be done. My vision is to keep things simple but comfortable and inviting. I don’t like a lot of stuff, but I do still lean toward a traditional/eclectic style with a lot of handmade touches. I love neutrals and washed-out colors.

We don’t have much money to spend on our house right now, but we plan to be here a long time so as long as we are making progress it will come together eventually. I am diving into crafts that will help decorate on a budget, and my husband and I have decided that we will try our hands at woodworking together. We will make it happen.

I got the idea from Manda to focus on one small corner/nook/area of the home at a time. Things are much more manageable that way. From here on out I will be giving you before photos, asking for advice, and updating with my progress as I slowly make our house into what I envision it to be.

And now, some inspiration photos! I love all of these and I hope you can get an idea of the style I’m going for from them.

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