Bathroom Phase 1

I was in Cali this past weekend for an impromptu girls trip and left hubby all alone. So what did he do with all his time? Ripped out our entire bathroom! I thought I would be a lot more excited now that the process is beginning but I’m actually pretty stressed/overwhelmed/disgusted. Good thing we waited on putting in new carpet and furniture in our master bedroom because that room is Nasty with a capital N! Bleh. We have since moved to the guest bedroom, but I still have hanging stuff in there so I venture in there occasionally and seriously feel like I have to shower. The carpets are full of dust, debris, and who knows what. Even the air seems dirty. Oh and our bathtub is chillin’ in the middle of the room. I guess Trav couldn’t lift that baby by himself.

So without further ado here are our before pictures.

 

 

You may wonder why we didn’t just use what was there and repurpose everything? I’ll tell ya why…The cabinets were disgusting and falling apart, the countertops had permanent burn marks from some unknown heating device, the floors were linoleum and lifting in every corner possible, and the shower had everything from hard water stains to growing mold.

So with that being said we decided to demo the whole thing. Here is what Trav accomplished while I was gone.

 

 

So what’s next? Plumbing. Which works out great because Trav is a plumber and saves us big bucks not only the installation, but also on the fixtures! In fact, we just got a FREE porcelain soaker because it had a hairline scratch in it. Normally those are discounted but because Trav was using it for his own home, the manager told him he could have it. SCORE! This allows us to spend more money on other things like cabinets, countertops, ect.

Speaking of cabinets I’m most excited about what we are putting in place of the linen closet. Here is what I have in mind. (Click on pics for sources)

 

 

 

 

Travis and our cabinet guy originally thought I was crazy for having glass front in a bathroom but after I showed Trav these pics he was sold!

Anyone else taking on overwhelming/exciting projects?

Living Room Progress

Today I’m going to share the progress of our living room before I get bored and want to switch things up. Caleb my brother and photographer came over to get some pics, and with this being his first interior shoot, I think he did an amazeballs job!

We really loved the bones of this home, but the finishes just weren’t “us”. Luckily the whole house (aside from the kitchen and bathrooms) had carpet which made it super easy to rip out and put down tile (wrote about that here). The rest was a matter of furnishing, which took far longer than I expected, and adding a fresh coat of paint. As I have mentioned before Travis accidently deleted our before pictures (poor guy will never live that down) so I had to get most of these from the MLS listing which means they are terrible quality, but you get the idea.

It took us me forever to furnish it (and it’s still not complete) but here is what it looks like today.

Source List:

• All the accessories are from TJ Maxx, Home Goods, or Target
• The couch is from West Elm (Henry Sofa but it doesn’t look like they I have the color I got anymore)
• The leather chairs are from a local furniture store. I originally didn’t want any leather but Trav insisted and I’m actually glad we got them so he can sit in them when he is dirty, eating, ect.
• The coffee and end table are part of the Paula Deen collection. Her stuff is great quality which means it’s also a little pricy but look for sales. I’ve even seen her furniture on Joss & Main for almost half the price!
• I forgot where I ordered the rug from but I found them here. This thing has been great! No problems with staining, even after we potty trained our second Yorkie.
• The light is another Lamp’s Plus Purchase. Another place I always use coupons!
• And the mirrors above the leather chairs are from Target. (I can’t find them online but originally bought them in-store)

If I left anything out just ask. Hope everyone is having a great week, our weather here is in the 90’s this so I’ve been in a much better mood knowing Fall is right around the corner. And by around the corner I mean like 3 months away. 😉 Ahhh gotta love Phoenix!

Real Office

I’ve recently been showing updates and reveals of my craft/office, but today I want to share a snippet of my real office. This is where I blog/pay bills/waste time on Pinterest/browes Facebook/check emails, you get the point. I also want to take this time to let you know why I haven’t really shared too many “progress” pics. It’s because my camera skills suck. Not to mention my brother is an amazeballz photographer, but he has been so backed up with weddings, couples photos, and traveling that I hate to bug him with my measly home photos. Although today I spent 2 hours trying to capture a decent photo of my desk so I’m ganna show the dang thing! Even if it is in awful lighting and looks a bit blurry. 😉

Here is the before picture of the desk that was here when we bought the house. It doesn’t look so bad in this picture but imagine permanent gunk on the desk top with scratched/poorly built cabinets. Don’t worry we took them off carefully and donated! One man’s trash is another’s treasure.

Here is the new built-in. We had our cabinet guy who built the kitchen cabinets also build these and we used left-over kitchen granite for the desk-top.

In this pic you can get a pretty good perspective on where this is located. It isn’t a closed off room, more like a den with an open double-doorway. Our living room is located on the left and the front door is to the right of the den. Confused yet?

So that’s all I have for know, but hopefully I can persuade my brother to come take pics soon!

Craft/Office Sneak Peek!

My Office/Craft room has been a work in progress, but it has come a loooonnnnngggg way from what it used to look like. Here is what it started as:

Basically it was a junk room for our junk! Thankfully we (and by “we” I mean “I” since hubby was conveniently busy that day) had a garage sale a few months back and got rid of most of the above. I decorated very Tuscan in my apartment and I knew I wanted to go in a completely different direction in our house. So I let people haggle me down until I pretty much gave everything away. 😦 I am terrible at garage sales. Anyway back to the topic… so to the right of this door there sat a cheap and poorly made built- in desk. Silly me forgot to get a before shot of the desk before taking it out so use your imagination for this one:

And now it looks like:

And this is why it’s a sneak peek, because the rest of the room is empty right now, which I guess is still a huge improvement from what we started with.

Here is a source list of what I remember( I’m working at keeping better track of things):

• Rug: Urban outfitters
• Chair: TJ Maxx find
• Desk: Ikea
• Vase and flowers: Pier One
• Tray: Home Goods
• Frames: Ikea
• Prints: Etsy

Kitchen Progress

I have decided to start sharing progress photos of all the rooms in my house. It has been a full year that we’ve been in our humble abode and by golly we have accomplished a lot! I guess I was always waiting for things to be completed before sharing, but heck nothing is ever complete. The first room to reveal? The kitchen.

Oh and now would be a good time to mention Hubby accidently deleted the folder with all my before pics of the house. 😦 So here is what we could come up with after trying to recover said photos. 

Here is an action shot of ripping up the flooring. Hooray!

Upper cabinets are getting installed and painting is complete.

And here is what our kitchen looks like today. We decided to vary the height and depth of the cabinets for a more custom look. It also makes the space look bigger as opposed to making them go all the way to the ceiling (that would have made them 5 ft cabinets). Plus I would never use the space up there. To be honest I don’t even have enough stuff to fill all my current cabinet space! Hence the pitchers and fake plants in there. I am still searching for the perfect items to take their place.

And a reminder of the before and after:

So there you have it! A whole lot of progress on our kitchen. We couldn’t be happier with the result.

Oh and in case you’re wondering:

• Granite color is Kashmir White
• Cabinets: We kept the lower cabinets(replaced doors and drawers), and had a cabinet guy my hubby used to work for build the upper cabinets. He was originally going to paint them himself, but with flooring and other projects going on he opted to have them professionally painted too.
• Appliances are all LG and have held up amazingly
• Faucet is from home depot you can find out more about it here
• Cabinet hardware is from Lowe’s
• Lighting is from Lamps Plus

And I think that about covers it! If you’d like to know where I got anything else, just ask.

Entry Way

We don’t really have an entry way but I wanted to create a little space to hang things when you walk in the door. I had been searching high and low for a shelving piece with hooks  but came up empty handed on seversl occasions. That’s when I found prints from Jenna Sue and got this great idea:

I love walking through the front door now!

Pillow Talk!

I had my first encounter with a sewing machine the other day! Well… I should really say a friend of mine helped me sew my first pillow. And now I can’t wait to get a sewing machine of my own. 🙂

Okay so here is the fabric I found… It was only 18 dollars for 3 yards of fabric on clearance! Score!

I watched my friend do the first pillow, and then she left me alone to sew most of the second. I didn’t want to tackle sewing the final side quite yet. I figured that is something I could practice with scrap fabric one day.

So here is a pic of how they turned out. Oh and don’t mind the pooch, he thought I wanted his picture. 😉

Kitchen Progress

This last week has been crazy and I’ve had no time to update, my apologies. But it’s about time I let you in on the kitchen progress. Our cabinet guy called early last week to inform us that he would be installing cabinets Friday or Sunday. YIPEE!

I was also a bit frazzled because this meant I had to pick a color and paint the entire kitchen by Friday. Well after 3 or 4 trips to Home Depot we decided on this color (The Perfect Taupe by Behr). It goes very nicely with the paint we chose for the majority of the house which I wrote about here.

So when Thursday rolled around we eagerly awaited the much-anticipated phone call from our cabinet guy to confirm he would be coming the next day. Sadly no phone call came and we went to bed. However, we were abruptly awoken by Trav’s phone and it was none other than the cabinet guy himself! Cabinets were going in Friday after-all. Yay.

Here is a reminder of our kitchen cabinets before:

And here is a pic of how the cabinets look today. All bottom drawers and doors are missing, the crown isn’t finished, and glass still needs to be installed (our cabinet guy should wrap it up by next week). But hey what an improvement! We are also planning on starting the backsplash next week and will hopefully have appliances in by the next weekend. Can’t wait. 🙂

Oh and you can see the paint color we chose ABOVE the cabinets, I love the contrast between the paint, cabinets, and flooring.

It will be only a matter of weeks before I have a fully-functional kitchen again! Can I get a WOOT, WOOT! Sorry, it’s been 62 days since I’ve had a kitchen. Let’s just say I’m pretty tired of eating out 24/7!!

Renovation Reality

I vowed that I would share the good, the bad, and the ugly of our home renovation and design. So today I decided to reveal a bit of the ugly as I experience a renovation reality check.

For starters, this is our spare bedroom… we avoid this place at all costs. Unfortunately it contains most of our possessions, so we really hardly ever avoid it.

And this is what our house looks like on a weekly basis. In these pics we were adding several cans, pandants, and other various light fixtures. If you were wondering, we didn’t do this by ourselves. Travy’s Uncle Jeff came in town to show us the ropes! However now Trav thinks he is an electrician and has lots of other projects he wants to attempt (let’s just say this scares me and Keva).

Not only do I have a mess on the inside, but I also have this beautiful pile o’ junk to look at outside. I thought having weeds was bad enough, but add thinset stains, tile scraps, and old countertops to the mix and it just gets plain unbearable!

So there you have it, our embarrassing mess of place we call home, for now. But don’t you worry! Cabinets and flooring could possibly be done this week. This means I’ll finally have something other than messes to show you. 🙂

Home, Sweet, Home

And so the blog begins! Well let’s start with some background info. I’ve been married for over a year now to my fantastic hubby Travis, or Travy, as I like to call him.  We just recently purchased our first house and we can’t wait to turn the plain and simple into chic and elegant. In reality, we will probably turn it into a hot mess, but we’d like to start off optimistic. 😉 Nevertheless, I’m here to show you the good, the bad, and the ugly of our home renovation and design.  So please bare with our corny jokes and confusing metaphors as we dive in to tackle our biggest project to date! But enough babbling let’s get to the BEFORE pics…

Here she is! Aren’t you wowed by the charm and gorgeous finishes? Kidding! No, she’s not gorgeous, but we love the floor-plan and location and believe that with some TLC and a few DIY projects, she will turn into quite the beauty! Our first conquest will be the floors, which as you can see now, consist of linoleum, carpet, and cheap wood. Not really the look we’re going for… So stay tuned to see what we chose and how much progress we’ve made!