Always Something New or Different

Every season I'm always doing something different to our home. I'm either rearranging furniture,

adding new decorative elements, or maybe even a new paint color.

The trick with this place is I am very limited on

rearranging furniture.

But I was able rearrange our living room furniture.

Better TV viewing and I feel a better flow as well.

So now I'm re-doing the decorative elements,

you know, where to hang the pictures now and how to arrange the wall art.

I want to hang our TV but before do that I want to make something that will hide it.

Since I don't a television an attractive wall art, that big black rectangular thing.

I saw a great one on Pinterest, I love that site!!

via Pinterest

 

What a great idea. I can either sew a pretty fabric or find a Tapestry piece to hang up.

 

And I saw this beautiful antique buffet on savvy southern style

 

What a beautiful piece, I love the scalloped details and the wire on the doors.

 

We have our TV sitting on an antique buffet as well

 

Can't see it too well but we bought this at a great price years ago and it has such pretty details but I can't bring myself to painting it. Maybe one day I will.

So as soon as I am done with the decorating I will post pictures of our new living room set up. This is the old set up you see above.

 

 

 

 



Kichen Before & After

We have finally finished, well, kind of finished our kitchen remodel.

The only thing left to do is choose a back splash, which is proving to be very difficult.

At our last home, after our kitchen remodel, I could never decide on a back splash so it was never done, maybe the new homeowners did something.

So for this house, I plan on not letting that happen again,

BUT

if only I could decide.

The last homeowners had their version of a backsplash,

A high gloss bright blue!

Kitchen cabinets that looked like came from a doctor's office.

Appliances that if they worked were falling apart like that lovely dishwasher.

Stove and microwave were done for.

The refrigerator worked fine but was so disgusting I had to use bleach water to clean it so we could use it during our home remodel.

At least they had a theme, they tried to match by going with a blue and white theme

but it all had to go, even the window, it was original to the house so was not cost effective.

Now the after:

Below you can see the imperfections on the walls so I need to cover that with a backsplash

We also had to add a light over the sink they didn't have anything there

 

Picture below, they only had the refrigerator on this side so we added more cabinets for storage and to balance out the space 

Pantry had bi-fold doors that when you opened them there was a cow them contact paper all over the place, not so pretty so we removed the doors and the awkward placed shelves and put in wire shelving and I sewed this curtain to hide my collection of food, I originally left it opened and after so many

"wow you must like pumpkin" or "it's amazing how you have every can facing just the right way in here"

OK, enough of that time to hide my food 

Found this print on Fabric.com

And my overhead lighting, sorry its a little dark but I saw this at Lowe's and had to have it

Now that the major stuff is done, I have to decide on the one thing that will finish it completely.

Will I do tile or wainscoting,

just not sure?!

 

 

 

 



Redecorating

 

We've been here now over a year, where does time go? I can't believe how busy it's been since we moved here.

Still doing projects, probably will be until the end of the year, and that's inside the house.

We still have our backyard to do yet, but the work that it needs will require a lot of time and money, so that'll be next spring most likely.

On the inside though, I was able to do my seasonal changes.

I love to change out curtains, pillows and bedding according to season.

For the Spring/Summer I chose to go with, blue's, tans, and some orange touches

Bought some fabric and made new curtains

 

Some new pillows from TJ Maxx and Marshall's, love those stores!

 

 

I don't know why it is when you take a picture and things look different through the lens?

Those pictures on the wall look lost, but in person they look fine. Don't like how it looks here, oh well.

 

I thought I would have to change out the pictures but it's amazing when I added the blue from the curtains, all of a sudden I could see the blue in the pictures.

Less money to spend, that was fine with me

 

Changed out the curtains here as well and the table cloth, lightens up the space for the summer, although I saw some fabric that I just love and I'm thinking of purchasing it and making curtains out of them for the dining room

The sheers above have embroidered flowers so it's not a plain white curtain.

Just little changes to the space makes a difference.

 

 

 



Plate Decor

Target! 

Went there and decided to walk through the clearance aisle and found these fun plates.

I was thrilled to find them for $1.70 a piece. 

Fun, aren't they?

New Home & New Beginnings

 Bonjour!

Hope you are all enjoying your summer.

Here in Maryland it has been terribly hot and humid.

We have not been able to enjoy the outdoors, I can't stand the humidity.

Plus, we've been so busy remodeling our home, busy with painting, sanding, gutting, replacing, shopping and having

meltdowns.

But it's been three months since we purchased our home and we've done so much to it, I can hardly believe it.

We still have some painting to do, but we're on the home stretch.

I've tried to be quite particular with purchases and making sure everything matches. 

I want to do it right the first time, which I know everyone wants to do, but when you have a budget then it's a little harder.

We pretty much used every penny we had on this place so we have to just wait and use what we have, make it work.

This is where creativity comes in and thank goodness for internet, so many ideas out there.

We have two rooms done, yes DONE! Woo Hoo!

Our Living and Dining room. 

I'll give you a tour of our living room, it's not big but it is cozy and we love it.

The picture on the left, obviously is the Before, with lovely red high gloss paint, and an off white high gloss ceiling paint that showed off every imperfection. The windows were broken and if they opened you were afraid you might lose your hand since they would slam shut, very scary. 

So after priming every inch of this house and repainting the result is below.

The After is what we worked so hard to get. Oh what a nightmare it was. 

But we sanded all the floors and used a clear lacquer, we like the natural look of oak.

Here on the floor is the ceiling, yes the ceiling! When we primed everything some areas bubbled, so we'd scrape the areas and prime again.

Well, the ceiling, when we scraped we scraped chunks of paint. It was like peeling a sunburn.

At first it was fun, then aggravating, since we primed all that and it was for nothing.

Oh well, it's done and we got to put on a nice fresh coat of white.

Looks so much nicer without the ceiling on the floor, heh?

This is the right side of the fireplace, again that lovely high gloss red with a high gloss dark pukey color. This house doesn't have too much natural light and the previous homeowners went crazy with dark paints every where, it was so gloomy and depressing.

The paint colors we used were a Martha Stewart paint called Sisal, I really love this color with the white trim, oh, don't look too closely at the stair rails, they're only primed there.

Need to get that done.

So this is part one of our renovation series. 

I'll next post our dining room pictures as well, contractor just finished up fixing the new sliding doors in there.

Bonsoir!