Don't you just LOVETT {our actual street name & best believe I use that pun numerous times a day} when your house comes together room by room. It's seriously one of the best feelings ever. Check out our updated kitchen on our Humble Abode house tour page :)
Enjoy!
UPDATED: Kitchen on our Humble Abode Page
Leaving Our Legacy + Concreting the Driveway
I guess "legacy" is an exaggeration, but whatever.
When we bought the house, we knew we wanted to write our names somewhere to leave an imprint since it was our first home. We said we'd leave it on a brick in the backyard after we turfed but we never got around to it. Then, we said we would write our names in the garage after Ry's dad painted and redid the floors. But again, we didn't do anything.
So that idea died for a little until we decided to redo our driveway.
When my Elantra and his Tundra are parked in the driveway, there is literally no room to walk, let alone try to get our of our cars without hitting the other. We always ended up walking on the rocks on the side to get to the door. It wasn't a big deal at first, but when you're carrying loads of groceries, or furniture (from my Hobby Lobby addiction), and the rocks would end up on the driveway, we wanted to come up with a game plan to fix the whole situation. At first, we were going to brick a pathway like this
(of course, less pretty) but adding up all of the bricks ended up being around $300. Considering what we were trying to do with how many bricks and sand it was going to take, that wasn't too bad. But just for fun, we decided to see what the concreting option would be if we just extended it out a few more feet. We weren't holding onto any hope because let me tell you, concrete is expensive as heck. Like ridiculously expensive. The DIYers in us wasn't ready to take on a concrete challenge anytime soon, nor could we have even figure out how to do it at this scale. After going over the numbers with the concrete guy, it ended up only being $50 more than the brick and we didn't have to put in any blood, sweat, and tears. I'm game. The decision was obvious and concrete we went!
This was also the perfect opportunity to write our names and make our house owning official. We chose to do our hand prints, initials, and date it.
Let's clear the elephant in the room: Ryan's hand turned out like butthole. Sorry babe. I know it. He knows it. Now, the world knows it. Being the perfectionist I am, I was initially a little upset because it's permanent and there's not much I can do to fix it, but after staring at it for a while, I don't care anymore. You can still see his hand print, and it's not about how 'perfect' it is, but the fact that it's our first home and I get to live here with the my cuddle buddy. #score
And we added some solar lights which had to be captured at night to get the full effect. Totally worth running around in the freezing cold in my shorts to get a few pics.
It was definitely worth the extra money and is SO much more convenient.
When we bought the house, we knew we wanted to write our names somewhere to leave an imprint since it was our first home. We said we'd leave it on a brick in the backyard after we turfed but we never got around to it. Then, we said we would write our names in the garage after Ry's dad painted and redid the floors. But again, we didn't do anything.
So that idea died for a little until we decided to redo our driveway.
When my Elantra and his Tundra are parked in the driveway, there is literally no room to walk, let alone try to get our of our cars without hitting the other. We always ended up walking on the rocks on the side to get to the door. It wasn't a big deal at first, but when you're carrying loads of groceries, or furniture (from my Hobby Lobby addiction), and the rocks would end up on the driveway, we wanted to come up with a game plan to fix the whole situation. At first, we were going to brick a pathway like this
(of course, less pretty) but adding up all of the bricks ended up being around $300. Considering what we were trying to do with how many bricks and sand it was going to take, that wasn't too bad. But just for fun, we decided to see what the concreting option would be if we just extended it out a few more feet. We weren't holding onto any hope because let me tell you, concrete is expensive as heck. Like ridiculously expensive. The DIYers in us wasn't ready to take on a concrete challenge anytime soon, nor could we have even figure out how to do it at this scale. After going over the numbers with the concrete guy, it ended up only being $50 more than the brick and we didn't have to put in any blood, sweat, and tears. I'm game. The decision was obvious and concrete we went!
This was also the perfect opportunity to write our names and make our house owning official. We chose to do our hand prints, initials, and date it.
Let's clear the elephant in the room: Ryan's hand turned out like butthole. Sorry babe. I know it. He knows it. Now, the world knows it. Being the perfectionist I am, I was initially a little upset because it's permanent and there's not much I can do to fix it, but after staring at it for a while, I don't care anymore. You can still see his hand print, and it's not about how 'perfect' it is, but the fact that it's our first home and I get to live here with the my cuddle buddy. #score
And we added some solar lights which had to be captured at night to get the full effect. Totally worth running around in the freezing cold in my shorts to get a few pics.
It was definitely worth the extra money and is SO much more convenient.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Today I finally had some time to get some decor done in the house. I decided to start in the dining room since I bought the picture frames a few days ago (Micheal's had a coupon). It's not done yet, I still have to add some more vases and things on the shelves + a plant or 2 on the stand, as well as figure out where the dog food bin is going to go, but it's almost there! I couldn't wait 'till it was finished to share it.
Of course, I'll update it once it's done.
Here are the before and afters
[Source List: Table - Craigslist, chandelier - also Craigslist, {painting process here}, place mats - Ross, salt & pepper shakers - Walmart, fake flowers and silver tin - Michael's, white 18" shelves - Home Depot, picture frames and pictures (came separate) - Michael's, silver vase (on shelf) - Hobby Lobby, silver picture frame - wedding gift, but I've seen similar at any of the stores already mentioned]
Hope you like the progress!
Of course, I'll update it once it's done.
Here are the before and afters
[Source List: Table - Craigslist, chandelier - also Craigslist, {painting process here}, place mats - Ross, salt & pepper shakers - Walmart, fake flowers and silver tin - Michael's, white 18" shelves - Home Depot, picture frames and pictures (came separate) - Michael's, silver vase (on shelf) - Hobby Lobby, silver picture frame - wedding gift, but I've seen similar at any of the stores already mentioned] 
Hope you like the progress!
Sunday, April 13, 2014
I updated our House Tour page with some 'befores' of our new abode.There aren't any 'afters' just yet because we are still working on the major details that need to be done before I can start decorating, but it's all too exciting.
Check it out! xoxo
Check it out! xoxo
DIY: Painting Our Entryway Table
This DIY project, like pretty much all of my projects, took quite a while. I blame the government for delaying this post because I didn't have a house to put it in, therefore I waited to finish it....yeah something like that.
Anyways here's the before and after
(We bought the table off of Craigslist and the bluedrawer nob is from Hobby Lobby)
This bad boy took 2 coats of white primer and 2 coats of white paint. We decided to use an electric sander, which also happened to be the first power tool we bought since the move. It was amazing on the flat surfaces and then I just hand sanded the legs.
pain in the ____.
I also just used your standard spray paint and then rolled/brushed on the white paint. Some of the areas were tricky like the legs because of the grooves but nothing a teeny tiny paint brush couldn't fix.
This is the nob up close and personal.
And yeah, that's pretty much it. Just your typical paint job with a little blue touch.
Anyways here's the before and after
(We bought the table off of Craigslist and the bluedrawer nob is from Hobby Lobby)
This bad boy took 2 coats of white primer and 2 coats of white paint. We decided to use an electric sander, which also happened to be the first power tool we bought since the move. It was amazing on the flat surfaces and then I just hand sanded the legs.
pain in the ____.
I also just used your standard spray paint and then rolled/brushed on the white paint. Some of the areas were tricky like the legs because of the grooves but nothing a teeny tiny paint brush couldn't fix.This is the nob up close and personal.
And yeah, that's pretty much it. Just your typical paint job with a little blue touch.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Finally, this baby is up and at em. What do you think??
It took long enough to the point of me almost giving up on it ever being hung up and lit. But i hung in there, oh brother, and am soo incredibly happy with how it looks. #ilovepuns
It WAS a bit of a process trying to switch this baby out with the one that came with the house but my boo was looking hot being all manly and junks. He's awesome and figured out how to install it all on his own WITH missing pieces. I'm so proud.
But all in all, I think it was worth it as I sat there an supervised most of the time he was putting it up. THANKS HUBBY! I owe you a back massage. Let's see how long it takes for him to read this and realize he had one waiting for him the whole time -insert evil laugh.
*As you can see, you can only be right-handed to sit at our dining table. HA!
If you haven't already, you can read all about how I painted it here. Enjoy!
It took long enough to the point of me almost giving up on it ever being hung up and lit. But i hung in there, oh brother, and am soo incredibly happy with how it looks. #ilovepuns
It WAS a bit of a process trying to switch this baby out with the one that came with the house but my boo was looking hot being all manly and junks. He's awesome and figured out how to install it all on his own WITH missing pieces. I'm so proud.
But all in all, I think it was worth it as I sat there an supervised most of the time he was putting it up. THANKS HUBBY! I owe you a back massage. Let's see how long it takes for him to read this and realize he had one waiting for him the whole time -insert evil laugh.
*As you can see, you can only be right-handed to sit at our dining table. HA!
If you haven't already, you can read all about how I painted it here. Enjoy!
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Now that our house is FULLY on the way to being ready for us to move in this week, there are a few things that need to get done: fixing holes, painting, shampooing carpets, cleaning, general moving, etc. But I'm here to talk about the paint. Instead of keeping it all white, which is what the house started out to be, we decided to paint the down stairs grey and the upstairs dark beige-ish.
Our adventure began at Lowes (because they give military discount, woo hoo!) where we grabbed a few choices of grays/browns that we thought would fit well. *fair warning, my spelling of 'grey' will flip back and forth between A-E. I'm English and American all at once, heyyyyy.
Anyways, we decided on a brown that I cannot remember the name to save my life. Sorry. But it turned out a little lighter than we hoped, but still absolutely gorgeous! The grey we picked...not so much. We wanted 'Voyage' by Valspar which looked like this from the little sample that we got
This is the exact color from the website and everything (it looks a little lighter on the card sample, but still grey enough). So we got 10 gallons of it and dropped it off at the house for the painters. This was our biggest mistake. Neither of us have really 'painted' anything this large before. I mean I've done my DIY crafts and painted a bunch of little things and some furniture, but never any walls of this scale. What we should have done was get a small sample and test it on the walls, but we assumed that the grey would be grey and nothing would change because they are white walls to begin with so no real priming was needed.
After the 1st day of painting we went to check on our house to see how the paint looked and make sure everything was going smoothly. When we walked in and...everything was blue. No, I am not exaggerating, everything downstairs was BABY BLUE! My first initial thought was that the painters did something wrong like mix the paint or add too many chemicals or something for the it to change colors and that's what I get for assuming. My high school math teacher once taught me that assuming is making an ass of u and me: [ass=u-me]. Excuse my French. Well I should've listened to him because I was definitely the donkey because we took the left over paint and tested it and low and behold it rolled on blue. We were in complete shock, how can something so grey turn out so blue? Well it did and we were screwed.
This isn't a super great picture because A. we don't have much lighting in the house yet, and B. because the blue was SO INCREDIBLY hard to capture on camera this is the best we could get. As you can see, we had to go back to Lowes, literally about 5 times to get samples of every shade and semi-shade of grey they had. Starting from the left, the first shade was too dark, the 2nd too brown, the 3rd too red, and the last too blue & dark. Thankfully, the 4th shade we tried was perfect. And guess what? It was on the same card just one shade over from what we had originally chose. KILL ME NOW. But all in all, we learned our lesson: NEVER TRUST THE PAINT SAMPLE CARDS, oh and of course, to test the paint out on your wall.
So as of today, the paint should be done by tonight. I'm praying it looks good (even though it did when we tested it) and that everything else goes smoothly and isn't a wallet draining mistake.
Our adventure began at Lowes (because they give military discount, woo hoo!) where we grabbed a few choices of grays/browns that we thought would fit well. *fair warning, my spelling of 'grey' will flip back and forth between A-E. I'm English and American all at once, heyyyyy.
Anyways, we decided on a brown that I cannot remember the name to save my life. Sorry. But it turned out a little lighter than we hoped, but still absolutely gorgeous! The grey we picked...not so much. We wanted 'Voyage' by Valspar which looked like this from the little sample that we got
This is the exact color from the website and everything (it looks a little lighter on the card sample, but still grey enough). So we got 10 gallons of it and dropped it off at the house for the painters. This was our biggest mistake. Neither of us have really 'painted' anything this large before. I mean I've done my DIY crafts and painted a bunch of little things and some furniture, but never any walls of this scale. What we should have done was get a small sample and test it on the walls, but we assumed that the grey would be grey and nothing would change because they are white walls to begin with so no real priming was needed.
After the 1st day of painting we went to check on our house to see how the paint looked and make sure everything was going smoothly. When we walked in and...everything was blue. No, I am not exaggerating, everything downstairs was BABY BLUE! My first initial thought was that the painters did something wrong like mix the paint or add too many chemicals or something for the it to change colors and that's what I get for assuming. My high school math teacher once taught me that assuming is making an ass of u and me: [ass=u-me]. Excuse my French. Well I should've listened to him because I was definitely the donkey because we took the left over paint and tested it and low and behold it rolled on blue. We were in complete shock, how can something so grey turn out so blue? Well it did and we were screwed.
This isn't a super great picture because A. we don't have much lighting in the house yet, and B. because the blue was SO INCREDIBLY hard to capture on camera this is the best we could get. As you can see, we had to go back to Lowes, literally about 5 times to get samples of every shade and semi-shade of grey they had. Starting from the left, the first shade was too dark, the 2nd too brown, the 3rd too red, and the last too blue & dark. Thankfully, the 4th shade we tried was perfect. And guess what? It was on the same card just one shade over from what we had originally chose. KILL ME NOW. But all in all, we learned our lesson: NEVER TRUST THE PAINT SAMPLE CARDS, oh and of course, to test the paint out on your wall.
So as of today, the paint should be done by tonight. I'm praying it looks good (even though it did when we tested it) and that everything else goes smoothly and isn't a wallet draining mistake.
Pottery Barn Finds
The other day I had subbed for my cousin-in-law and I had one of those long preps that allowed me to pretty much do whatever I wanted for 2 hours. Of course that means taking a trip shopping for the house or thats my excuse anyways and there was a Pottery Barn right around the corner. YAY! Usually Pottery Barn is a little too expensive for my liking but I like to go every once in a while to see if I can find those cheap treasure.
I saw this zebra skinned picture frame for orig. $24.99 but it was on sale for $13.99. SCORE! I thought it would be perfect on our entryway table that's currently sitting on our patio waiting for its last coat of paint before I do a post on it. Sorry people, I have no excuse.
And the frame is actually furry so thats cool too! I also picked up these quatrefoil printed napkins that were orig. $20 but on sale for $11.99. They match perfectly with my chandelier I just painted! If you haven't seen it, you can read the post here.
Our house has closed and now it's being fixed, painted, and shampooed so no pictures yet but they're coming soon I promise! I'm just glad I can add little touches with these cute finds before the move-in chaos starts.
I saw this zebra skinned picture frame for orig. $24.99 but it was on sale for $13.99. SCORE! I thought it would be perfect on our entryway table that's currently sitting on our patio waiting for its last coat of paint before I do a post on it. Sorry people, I have no excuse.
And the frame is actually furry so thats cool too! I also picked up these quatrefoil printed napkins that were orig. $20 but on sale for $11.99. They match perfectly with my chandelier I just painted! If you haven't seen it, you can read the post here.
Our house has closed and now it's being fixed, painted, and shampooed so no pictures yet but they're coming soon I promise! I'm just glad I can add little touches with these cute finds before the move-in chaos starts.
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