Our Home Tour: Family Room

The family Room is the only room in our house that I feel is somewhat "finished". I still have a few projects I want to do for it but they are small. So I figured its about time I show it off a bit! :)

One of my future projects: This lamp needs some lovin' and updating. We have

also discovered how NOT sturdy this little end table is...Lucy enjoys knocking it over :) So I need

to replace it soon....

I Love, love, LOVE these curtains from IKEA. $25 for a PAIR!!! Future project:

I want to add some stripes to these curtains

 Chad made me this curtain rod! I love windows and I didn't want to break up our view by hanging individual curtain rods 

over each window. But as you might expect, its not easy finding a curtain rod over 15 feet long! :)

We found this easy and cheap tutorial HERE, total cost under $20!

 This DIY ladder was another simple Chad project :) I stained it with a simple 

vinegar stain to help it look worn. 

Window as vintage Picture gallery. There are pictures of Chad and I as babies, 

his Mom and family, and Chads G.Ma as a baby. I need to get pictures of my parents 

when they were young to fill in the empty panes.

Its coming together! I still have a little more work to do and I will update as I finish!

Our Old Rental; Before and After

I have been meaning to post these pictures FOREVER! They got tossed to the side when we started packing and moving. We did a lot to fix up the house we were renting before we purchased our home and I thought I might as well share some pictures!

Kitchen:

The first thing that need to go was that hideous carpet!!!!

 

 We ripped the carpet up and started laying down the laminate flooring. Our landlord was buying it and wanted whatever was on sale and cheapest! :) But ANYTHING would be an improvement!

Ahhh....much better :)

The cabinets came next. We painted them "chocolate" brown using a cabinet painting kit from Home Depot, it was from Rustoleum. The kit was only $75 and it included paint color, glaze, and clear protective coat. For this small kitchen we ended up only using half of it! I really liked it and would use it again!

Before picture of cabinets: 

 

Last were the walls. We stripped off the wallpaper (easier than I though, it all came off in about 20 minutes!) and we also painted the family room that connects to the kitchen the same color to add a better sense of flow to the house. Here are some before pictures of the family room:

 Love those walls? ;) And The green carpet!?!

The family room was also SUPER crowded. Our landlord still had some of his furniture in the house which made fitting all of ours difficult. Thankfully we were able to put his stuff in a storage unit and rearrange our stuff!

And Afters of everything:

These were taken right before we moved, so there aren't any pictures up and I had already bought another couch for our new place...so it looks a little crowded :) But I LOVE the change it brought to the house! Paint color is "Gentle Rain" by Behr.

This cream couch is the extra...   :)

Painted Picture Frames; Trying out Gesso

I Love Pinterest :) And I am sure a lot of my ideas and decorating tips will be coming from there as I try to decorate our new house! I bought these beautiful picture frames from Hobby Lobby--I just happened to stop in one day when they were 50% off!! I put them on my wall and decided that they needed something different then the black high gloss paint. I had seen a few pins floating around about gesso....so I decided to try it!

Before Pictures:

Try to ignore the mess and boxes....

Naturally, the first thing I did was paint them grey; one of my favorite colors :) I did not feel like digging through the boxes in our garage and pulling out our spray gun and all of our paint, so I just ran to Walmart real quick and grabbed a few cans of their cheapest paint!

After spray painting them and letting them dry (several days if your like me and get sidetracked..) you are ready for the gesso! Ok, I had never heard of this before so if you are like me I will give you a few tips. I found it at Hobby Lobby in the art section. Its not cheap, the little 4 oz bottle was $6! But I was prepared for this and brought my 40% off coupon. It was labeled as a canvas paint primer....and I will just say right now that I am not even sure if I bought the right stuff! But I did get the results I wanted, so hey :)

I didn't take pictures as I did this but it is super easy, if you have glazed furniture before it is the same technique. 

Using a foam brush, I quickly spread the gesso over one side of my frame. The gesso is a lot like paint and dries fast so only do small areas at a time.

Next, use a damp rag ( I use old socks! They seem to work the best for me and don't leave lint!) to both take off and spread the gesso around evenly until you get the desired affect you want. Feel free to add more gesso if you want a heavier coat.

Repeat on the rest of the frame!

After:

My thoughts on Gesso after; It felt just like Latex paint to me! Did I get the right stuff? I dont know, I will have to research it more, let me know if you know! :) I think next time I want this effect I am going to just try paint and see if it works...it definetly would be a lot cheaper! If that doesn't work I know you can buy clear glaze and tint it to whatever color you want...I need to start trying that as well! But I am happy with the results, I LOVE how the frames turned out! :)

We Have a Yard!

We Have a Yard!

We have been working like crazy this last week and a half getting our yard ready for sod. Chad and I have never been so tired! :) Our bodies are no longer used to such labor; digging a hundred holes, building our patio which consisted of about 1000 pounds of gravel and over 2000 pounds of bricks, putting our trampoline in the ground..more digging, gravel, and bricks; and just getting our yard smoothed out and finishing sprinklers (more digging). But it is done!!! 

Here are just some quick pictures I took just now, I'll do some more detailed posting later. We still need to clean up our yard more so everything is just a mess, please forgive :)

Chad had fun digging the hole for our trampoline:

Starting on the Patio: This picture was taken right after the trailer tipped, dumping 2,000 pounds

of bricks where Chad was standing.....my heart gave out! I was so sure he was going to be at the bottom... Thankfully Chad was super fast and rolled out of the way without getting hurt!

 The sod is down! We are so grateful for our friends and family that came to help!

We need to finish racking the gravel on the side, but our trailer will park there.

We Love looking at something besides dirt :)

Here are just a few pictures of the inside, for those who don't follow me one Facebook or Instagram and haven't seen them. Sorry I don't have more yet, our house is a disaster :) I never thought that it would be so stressful.......The hardest thing were are dealing with is couches, we haven't seemed to find anything we like. We have literally bought and returned (or resold if from KSL) 3 couches just in the last week.....its getting frustrating. Ahhh.....I'm trying to take a break from it for a bit and focus on the rest of the house, we'll see if I can ;)

Chandelier we put in our dining room

Mirror I got 50% off at Hobby Lobby! To go on our staircase.

We did get a recliner, Lucy has already claimed it ;)

Large picture frames for the family room, I'm painting them now though :)

Pendant light above sink. This looks so cool at night! Like a glowing globe :)

I got if for $6 at Restore!

Our pot rack out of an iron wall art piece! Detailed posting on this soon!