El Comedor

So if you remember, this is what our dining room looked like when we moved in, complete with striped walls, a shiny brass light that hung way too low, and zero furniture!

To fill you in on the layout of this room, the opened door on the left leads to the screened-in porch in the front of the house. This shot is taken from the living room looking into the dining room and the doorway on the right leads to the kitchen. Now, the first project we tackled in here was raising the light fixture. All it took was each of us hitting our head to realize that it had to be raised pronto. This is also the room I painted first because, what can I say, those stripes just didn't do it for me! And it was just too neutral of a color so I decided to be bold and spruce things up! Using a piece of art that Matthew got me for my birthday as inspiration (it's a New Orleans scene because that's like our second home), I went with a navy-ish color and it really made the trim, windows, and french door pop! I'm very pleased with how the color turned out! Here is the picture that I used for inspiration in this room (sorry about the quality of some of these photos, I took them with my phone)

The other art on the walls are jazzy pictures we got in Savannah, GA; the trip that Matthew proposed:) 

Thanks to the sis and bro-in-law for loaning us a table/chairs for the first 2 years we lived here but eventually we replaced it with this amazing antique that belonged to my grandmother's sister. We absolutely love it and it fits the space perfectly! Thanks Mom:)

 

Once we got this table in the house we purchased 4 Verona chairs from World Market, along with the matching buffet. We also have a smaller buffet in this room that was a wedding present from our good friends, Jason & Jenna. 

Now, if you know me, I'm constantly changing out the decor in our house. For now, the centerpiece on our table is a work in progress. Here's the story: recently, Matthew and I carried our kids (Dodger and Waylon, of course) to the beach. I love to bring back treasures from our trips but couldn't really find anything where we went, (Apalachicola/ St. George Island, FL) which I highly recommend especially if you have a four-legged friend. So this is where I thank my sweet husband for putting up with my quirkiness. I convinced him to go with me on an adventure to look for some driftwood. Crazy, I know, but I really wanted a large piece to decorate my spring mantel (which you'll see in the next post) So off we went, and luckily we hit the jackpot at our first stop. I used some of the smaller pieces for my centerpiece and  I've also got wine corks in it with special dates written on them. Example- we drank a bottle one night on this trip so I wrote SB11 on that cork. (Spring Break 2011). I want this to eventually be full of corks so it looks like we need to get to drinkin'. :)

Our light fixture was a shiny brass color when we moved in, so I quickly took that down and spray painted  it a dark pewter. I would eventually like to replace it with something similar to this Addie Pendant from Ballard Designs, http://www.ballarddesigns.com/addie-pendant/lighting/pendant-lights/14196

and hang curtains like these from World Market:

I think using a celadon/ lime color for an accent will lighten the bold blue on the walls. I also want to get a rug but haven't fell in love with one yet.

So over the past few years, our dining room has gone from this:

 to this:

It's amazing how paint and some furniture will instantly transform a room! Stay tuned for more!

The Heart of Any Home (well at least in the south)

Being in the south, it seems like the heart of any home is the kitchen. (Or maybe I just watch a little too much Paula Dean, haha) I thought I would first update everyone with how our kitchen is looking these days- and I apologize for a lack of photos throughout this post, but turns out I didn't take a whole lot of before/ after shots during the past 3-4 years. That has changed now, though! Remember the kitchen was that blue color. I don't have a problem with blue kitchens (or ceilings), it just wasn't for us.

 

So we first tried painting it a light yellow and unfortunately that didn't look very pretty. It just really washed everything out. So we went with a darker color called Mark Twain House Olive from Lowe's. (Valspar Signature, my fave) We loved the color and how it added contrast to the white cabinets and trim. Now, about the hardware on those cabinets and drawers. I know this is a "vintage" kitchen complete with metal cabinets, and I love vintage, however I didn't really care for the cabinet hardware. Before shopping for something different, I tried taking one off and found that there is an actual cutout where the hardware goes. So that really limited the type of hardware that I could replace it with. But I finally found some at Target, and at $4.99 a pop, this project totaled a little over $100 since we needed 20. With a fresh coat of white paint on those cabinets, actually it's Ivory Dust, again Valspar Signature in Semi-Gloss, the new oil rubbed bronze hardware totally transformed the look of our kitchen.

Another small project was replacing our old faucet with an oil rubbed bronze one to coordinate with our new hardware. We ordered this one from www.overstock.com for around $80, and you can't beat that $2.95 shipping! This was Matthew's first plumbing project, and he rocked it! I was definitely impressed :)

The next project we talked was the empty space above the range. I would have love to install a hood vent, but that would have require a lot more work than we really wanted to do. So we decided to purchase something to hang our pots and pans. This turned out to be one of the most useful and practical purchases thus far! We love it and it only cost around $150. Once it arrived, it was just a matter of finding the studs to hang it on since it would be supporting so much weight.

 

Since we do do lack some counter space, we decided to purchase a small island. We went with a stainless steel one from Target. I think we paid around $100 for it and it's been great for additional storage and workspace.

 

The vintage Pepsi bin on the bottom rack is a purchase I made a few weeks ago while my mom was visiting. We hadn't really used the bottom rack much, and we needed a place to keep fresh produce, so this has worked out well. It was $10 at a local antique store.

Here are a few more pictures of our kitchen these days. Of course, I would have loved to gut it and build my dream kitchen, a cottage style kitchen with a farmhouse sink, but that really wasn't a part of our plan for this house. So we made it work for us! We replaced the light switch covers with oil rubbed bronze ones from Target and added some art and other decor.Still on my to-do list are replacing those "faux brick" floors, upgrading our range to stainless, and maybe replacing the countertops with dark butcher block or stained concrete, so I'll update you on that when/ if the time comes.

The final project for the kitchen that I can think of is the herb garden in the corner. After buying my herbs from the local Lowe's at $3.50 a piece, I used old soup/ vegetable cans to pot them. Most of these are the jumbo size that you would to feed a feast, but this was a look I was going for and cheaper than buying 5 flower pots. I soaked the cans for a couple of hours to remove the labels, drilled a few small holes in the bottom, and voila I was done! Also, I bought 5 of the medium- size round cork trays and painted them with chalkboard paint. Just remember, anytime you paint a surface with chalkboard paint you have to prime the new surface before writing on it. You do this by shading it with the long side of the chalk. Then erase it and it's ready for use! (the little table they're on was from the same antique store as the Pepsi bin, for $5!)

So that's pretty much how our kitchen went from this:

to this:

It's Moving Day!

Rewind 3 years and 10 months to May 2007. We were so excited to move into our new house! We were a family of 3- Matthew, me, and Dodger, our Golden Retriever, aka the best dog in the world!

So we only had one major problem when we finally got the keys to the place. I noticed that the kitchen looked a little empty. That was because the previous owners took their refrigerator. I guess since we were first-time home buyers, we didn't realize we need to specify that the leave their old, outdated fridge. Anywho, a trip to Home Depot was in the very near future! Here is the interior, not so fully furnished, with mismatched furniture from college :

Master Bedroom

Guest Bedroom (just pitiful)

Hall Bath

Living Room

Office/ 3rd Bedroom

Kitchen

Kitchen (with blue ceiling)

Kitchen again

Screened Porch

Living Room

Living Room Nook

Dining Room 

 Back yard

Back yard + Dodger

 Garage

Back yard

So there is a brief preview of our house from Day 1 (really it was probably more like day 4 or 5 but I don't guess I took pics before we moved our stuff in)

Our lives changed in more ways that one that week. We grew from a family of 3 to a family of 4 with the addition of Waylon, our Wheaten Terrier. He flew in from Oklahoma and we picked him up at the airport in Birmingham (and yes, he has been spoiled since).

And we can't forget Dodger. He loved finally having a backyard to run and play in!

So, there's the beginning of our little story. Stay tuned!