COLOR! (in the living room)

First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day my SQUEEZIES! :) Hope you had a great one.

I’ve been working on some changes in our living room over the last couple of weeks, and I’m nowhere near close to done, but I just couldn’t wait to show you! I am LOVING how it's turning out -- so excited.

I don’t know if it’s the three inches of ice that have finally melted off our driveway (for the first time in two weeks), or the warmer temps we’re getting this week that is giving us hope for spring, or maybe it’s because the cat peed on the drapes…any one of them could be the reason for my spur-of-the-moment decision to make some changes to our front room.

What’s that? Hmmmm? Oh yeah…I skipped over the pee cat thing. She was off her meds for two long and the inevitable happened. This time though…I’m GLAD. Because that’s actually what started this ball rolling. See – pee cats are good for something! (And she’s really sweet and loving and yada yada…)

Anyhoo, enough mentions of pee for one post. Onward! It started when I took a drape down to wash it, and it just spiraled out of control from there.

For the past year or so, I’ve been trying to add more color to our living room. It looked like this back in the day:

OK, well there’s been color – it’s just been one color. Red. :)

And then I made a few more changes and it looked like this for quite some time:

Notice the trend? DARK. A ton of dark peices and accessories, and red fabrics – ONLY red. You see, for the longest time I thought our wall color was hard to work with. It’s called Beechwood Grey from Porter, and I like it – but for a long time I just felt like I needed to match it, you know?

So red was the direction I went…and I liked it for a while. But my style…it is a changin’.  :)

And taking that one drape down kind of got my wheels turning. I noticed how much brighter it got in the room with just the one panel down. So I took another down…and another…and you get the picture.

The front of our house doesn’t get direct sunlight, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell – the room was positively glowing. And I was in luuurve.

That’s what started the ball started rolling – and the wheels in my head churning. First up was to trim out the windows like I showed you here. I’ve slowly but surely done this around the house, and I’m about half way through the windows now.

And then, since I was going to paint the sills and everything around the window, I went ahead and recaulked both of them:

I didn’t even keep it clean and pretty, because I knew I was painting over it all in white.

And that I did – the new trim and drywall around the windows was painted out in glossy white. See how this started with a little bitty thing and got HUGE? :)

Then another idea came to mind. I love love LOVE my free sewing cabinet and Ballard-esque cafe shelves between the windows, but they have seemed so HEAVY to me lately:

(The iron snowflakes hanging in the windows that I tried to convince myself didn’t look like snowflakes have been gone for a while. They are now packed away in the Christmas decor. Cause they are snowflakes.)

Anyway…I’ve always felt like I needed something more substantial between those windows.

So I took it all away:

(I had just wiped down the wall – hence the dark marks.)

I contemplated leaving those windows nekked by the way, just like in our kitchen. I was smitten, I tell you. 

But then…then, I found THIS:

I was perusing Calico Corners last week (I hadn’t been to the fabric store in forEVER), saw this and couldn’t get it out of my head. It had COLOR – so many beautiful colors. And I just thought the print was stunning.

I couldn’t resist it. And I’m so glad I didn’t. Cause now that dark room looks like this:

Now, I’m showing you in between pics here – keep that in mind. I like to show the process of things so I really wanted to show you the progress thus far.

I think it’s a dramatic change, yes?:

That dresser has made the rounds around our house. It was the Bub’s changing table forever, then it moved to the office, and then it was in the basement for a while.

I made hubs drag it up the stairs to see if it would work and I fell. in. love.

Do you see how differently the wall color photographs? It drives me a little batty. It’s looking way pink in these pics, when it really has more of a greyish tint like in the nekked window picture above.

I’ve mentioned before that we don’t use this as a formal living room – we use it constantly. So the dresser is going to be fantastic storage for puzzles and other activities we do out there:

I have a Goodwill lamp that’s almost ready for the left up on top there. The beautiful wood crate? HomeGoods baby! (For $16!) Doesn’t it looked like I plucked it out of an antique store? LOVE that color too.

One of the things I’d love to do, especially now, is to get a slipcover made for the chair and sofa:

But even without covers, I love them SO MUCH MORE in this room now. It’s just crazy – I don’t know why, but they don’t bother me nearly as much. (But I AM going to slipcover. Oh yes…I am.)

I have a plan for the wall above the dresser too – I already have everything I’ll need. Can’t wait to get it up there!:

And yes, there ARE about 50 holes in that wall from the various changes I’ve made to it. :) They’ll all be covered with my plan. I’m not even gonna fill them. Buwahahaha!!!  :)

I’m hoping to get the rest of the changes made to this part of the room by the end of this week, so I’ll show you as soon as I’m done. There’s some other stuff I’m working on elsewhere in the space too, but that is going to take a bit longer.

But for now…I simple cannot believe the difference a little editing and new drapes made…the before:

And after:

WHOO, swoon, ACK…Happy Valentine’s Day to ME…I am love! Ha! :)

Can’t wait to show you the rest! So far it’s turning out just like it looked in my head…just hope the rest of it does. (I love when that happens!)

P.S. I have not even hemmed the drapes yet…that’s how not completed this room is. Did I mention I have little to no patience?? :)

Like my version of the Ballard Designs cafe shelves?
You’ll LOVE Knock Off Decor!

Searching for a sofa

Well the time has come people…and I AM SO EXCITED!!!

Yippee!! :)

Because we are now debt free (did I mention that??), I can move forward with my plan for a new sofa in our family room.

SO EXCITED!

Excited because it will be the first time we’ll pay cash for a major piece of furniture since we moved into this house seven years ago. And excited because I am so, so over our sofa, it’s just ridiculous. (More on that in a bit.)

I showed you back in January how I went against the sofa rules and removed the loveseat from the family room:

We love love LOVE it!! It’s made a huge difference in this room. I have another big change in the works as well that is going to help a ton too, but for now, it’s time for a new sofa.

Are you excited?! SO EXCITED. :)

I get emails asking about our sofas often – and from far away they look really great. They have that going for them.

They are comfy too. They’ve got that too. But that’s about it.

We bought the sofa and loveseat about three years ago from a local furniture store. They look like we’ve had them around for about twice as long.

I’m thoroughly annoyed with how they’ve held up, considering the cost. Over the years, I’ve found more and more things that bother me and have learned what to look for in a future purchase…

When you lay on the sofa and put your feet up against the arm – it pops in and out:

It feels like cardboard under there. For reals. (That’s what I’m doing in the pic, by the way. :) I can do it with my hand – it’s that flimsy.)

The sides and back are not wrapped in any way, other than with the fabric:

That’s part of the reason I ended up getting a sofa table for behind the sofa. I was so afraid the fabric was going to get punctured with some random pointy toy and then we’d have a gaping hole.

The frame is flimsy, at best:

Another reason for the sofa table – people would lean against the back of the sofa and kind of sit on it, and I would nearly have a heart attack every. time. It creaks and pops, like it’s about to snap at any second.

Those are some big issues, but the biggest for me is the fabric. OHHH the fabric. I feel like a total goob because I used to work in the decor biz and would create custom sofas for people – so I know about fabrics and those that are good for wear and tear.

This stuff is not. It’s a chenille-type fabric, and it’s already worn really, really thin:

And my very favorite part (NOT), is that when you try to clean them, this happens:

Did I mention we have a preschooler and THREE cats? It’s hopeless with these sofas – everything changes the color of the fabric. You can’t use water and soap to clean them. Well, you can, and I do…but that’s what I get.

I can’t even use the cleaning stuff they gave me to use – now how does that make sense? They can only be professionally cleaned. I’m not calling professionals every time a drop of milk spills.

DUMB on my part. I don’t know what in the world I was thinking. Gah.

So now, up close, they look positively grody. I mean, they’re clean, they just look GRODY.

SO…(excited giggle)…I’m starting to look for a new sofa.

And we’re doing it right this time…I’m doing my research and we’ll probably spend a little more, but I want something that will last and is built well.

Like I’ve mentioned before, our family room is really large, but we have NO walls for a sofa. (Again, dumb on my part when we built.) So we have space issues as far as the size of the sofa is concerned – it can’t be too large.

I’ve been researching for months now and finally found one that works perfectly size-wise:

It’s the Buchanan Chaise Sofa from Pottery Barn. It’s absolutely the PERFECT size. We need to watch how wide we go, and this one is just right. (I feel like Goldilocks right now.)

I love the chaise part, so more than one of us can lay on the sofa at one time. It’s also great extra seating for when we entertain.

I love the lines and traditional look of the slipcovered Basic Chaise Sofa as well:

But it’s a LOT more expensive, and it’s about 20 inches wider, which I think is going to be too big.

I went to check out the Buchanan in the store today and it was SO comfy – the seats are really deep (one of the things you want to look for). It was so funny though – it looked so teeny in the store. WAY smaller than our current sofa. I took some measurements – seat height, back height, etc. – and checked them against our current sofa when I got home.

It turns out it’s actually quite a bit bigger than ours. It blew my mind. I’m sure it has something to do with it’s placement in the huge showroom compared to our normal family room. But the fact that it’s higher off the ground and taller made me fall in love with it even more…so I’m getting really excited. :)

I picked out a few color and fabric options:

We’ll go with twill or canvas – I don’t care for the microsuede look, at least the PB version. And the really light options you see up there? Yeah…those were knocked out of contention as soon as I got home. No way can I keep up with that. :) On a slipcovered sofa sure, but not on an upholstered piece. My goal is to NOT worry about stains this time around.

Sooo…this is where I ask for some input my Squeezies. Do you have a sofa you LOVE? What fabric is on it? Does it hold up well? Are the cushions still cushy for your tushy? Where did you get it? Do you own or have you owned a Pottery Barn sofa? (We never have.)

I’ve heard really good things about the slipcovered Ikea sofas as well – anyone have feedback on those? I’ve also seen great things online about some sofas at Macy’s.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Like I mentioned, we’re not going the microsuede route, and won’t be doing leather either.

And FOR SURE none of that chenilley, nubby, whatever-it-is stuff we currently have. Did I mention that is the fabric we have on ALL of our sofas in the house? GAH! And OH YEAH, we have THREE cats? I swear, they are so much harder to keep up with than our son! (Hairballs people…hairballs.)

Now that I’ve left you with that lovely visual…I’d love to hear your thoughts! Fill me in on the sofas you LOVE. (And the ones you don’t!) Thanks in advance!

P.S. The Before and After Party is ROCKIN’! Check out the more than 430 links…awesome!

P.S.S. Now that I look at the pics of our sofa and realize how nasty it looks, I hope you all realize that it really is clean. Cross my heart, pinky promise, swear. But you see why I’m ready to banish it to the basement, yes? :)

Work what ya got

Well hello!! I got a fun little project accomplished yesterday that I absolutely LOVE. :)

It started with some house envy, believe it or not. :) Yes, even I see beautiful homes in blogland and sometimes that little green monster starts rearing it’s head. You all know I LOVE our house, so it’s not a big monster, mind you -- just a little one.

I just love little corners, niches, interesting spots in homes, and I adore how some people use awkward spots to their full potential. Like hallways – I just love a long hallway with hardwood floors, a beautiful runner and woodwork as far as the eye can see. Add a gallery of family photos and I’m swooning.

I have a recurring dream about a house we buy and are fixing up, and in each dream I find a new little nook or a tiny room I didn’t know was there before. I LOVE that dream. :)

But alas, we have no nooks, no niches. Not even a hallway. Not one hallway in our entire house. That’s the new open concept for ya – plenty of open spaces (which we love), but sometimes I do crave a little nook.

About a month ago or so, I realized we a needed a storage solution for our son’s dress up stuff. Now, not dress up like princess dresses. Manly dress up like policemen, train conductors and firemen.

(Insert Tim the Tool Man Taylor grunt here.)

So I thunk and I thunk, and I thought of the closest thing to a hallway we have – the half wall in our playroom/loft:

And the idea hit me. I knew exactly what I wanted to do!

First step was to paint the wall out in semi-gloss white:

Didn’t he do a great job?:

I kid! I kid! No child labor here folks.

Mostly because he wasn’t doing it right.

I kid! Not really.

OK, onward! You’ll notice I didn’t even paint the edges of the wall. I didn’t need to because it was going to be covered up with my next step. I took primed mdf from Lowe’s and started installing my vision:

I took some video to give some more detail, but it’s so straightforward – boards across the top, bottom and sides. Then I did some measuring to figure out the spacing between the rest of the boards.

The math went like this – the space between the two outside boards was almost exactly six feet. So I took:

6 feet x 12 (for inches) = 72 inches

The boards were 3.5 inches wide, so I figured out how many sections I wanted (five) and knew that would take four additional pieces of mdf:

3.5 (mdf boards) x 4 = 14 inches

Take the 72 inches minus 14 and you get 58 inches.

Divide 58 inches by the five sections I wanted, and you get 11.6 sections between each vertical board.

Does that make sense? Math and I are not friends, and I swear it’s easy. Once you do it one time, it’ll make more sense for the next time. :) I use that method for any spot where I’m adding molding to a specific amount of space (and I want it to look uniform.)

I took a quick video to show you a couple of my other tricks:

 

Sooo…anyhoo, after a couple more coats of paint on the mdf, some caulk (remember, it’s your BFF folks!), and hooks – I got this:

Isn’t it gorgeous? I mean, really. I want it all. over. my. house. ALL OVER. It’s just classic and pretty and yummy.

I can’t believe how happy woodwork makes me. It’s just ridiculous.

Now we have a spot for all of the make believe outfits:

I almost hated to cover it all up, but it’s for the sake of my sanity. Those hats have been laying around here and there for months because I haven’t found a good spot for them.

I especially love how it ties into the mdf I added to the staircase last year:

And you smarties will notice that NO, I have not painted that railing yet. Only the bottom section is done:

That is how I roll. :)

I just love how it turned out! I took an empty wall that wasn’t doing anything:

And made it functional and pretty:

Gotta love that!

The wood was el cheapo – I think I spent $15 on the mdf. I got the ORB hooks at Lowe’s as well. Love, love, LOVE!

Now I’m so pumped to get moving on the board and batten in the office! My plan is to get started on that this weekend.

Have a GREAT one!

Well, it’s official. We’re WEIRD.

You know that guy Dave Ramsey I keep talking about? You know how he says people who don’t have debt are WEIRD?

Well, if you don’t know him…that’s what he says.

“Debt is normal…be weird.”

Well.

As of this morning, we are officially,

completely,

gloriously,

totally,

happily

WEIRD.

WE’RE


DEBT


FREE!!!

(Except the house.)

Whoo, people!! WHOO!!!!

It still hasn’t hit us. Surreal is an understatement. I haven’t cried yet. But I will. Buckets. :)

It’s major. Like, $125,000 in just about three and a half years, MAJOR. (Yes, there were three zeros.)

I told you about our debt story here, (I way underestimated how much we had already paid off at that point) and for the past three years or so, we’ve been fighting, scratching, clawing at it -- taking our finances BACK. And it’s truly been a fight.

We had flooring debt, school debt, hot tub debt, medical debt, clothing debt, I-have-no-clue-what-we-bought debt – you name it, we had it.

We were so tired of it. It was a monkey on our backs. A large, 125,000 pound monkey. And it was exhausting carrying him around. ;)

Getting rid of that monkey – exhilarating.

I thought it was impossible to live without a car payment.

I thought I would be paying off my student loan till I was 45.

I thought I couldn’t pay for a piece of furniture unless we charged it.

I was wrong.

We decided to live like no one else. So now we can live like no one else.

And it is rockin’ our worlds.

We can live without credit cards. We can save for something and pay for it when we have the money. We can save for our future and change our children’s lives.

It makes me so emotional when I think about how we are completely changing their futures. We will leave them security, not a financial mess. That makes every minute of this process worth it.

Yes, we could have done this without Dave Ramsey. It’s not rocket science. It’s making a budget every month and sticking to it – and telling our money where to go. That was a biggie for me. We were never telling it where to go, we were just floating along. La dee da, la dee da.

But Dave Ramsey inspired us. His conviction and enthusiasm is absolutely contagious. You want to attack your debt like a raging BEAR after you listen to him for five minutes.

And today, I clicked the button that sent the payment to my student loan – our very last debt. It’s all gone – forever and ever and EVER.

It’s the first time in our adult lives we’ve been debt free. We’ve both had debt since we were 18 years old. I have never been an adult and NOT had debt.

Till today. I feel like I could float away, it feels so good.

We are SO WEIRD!!!!

And if being weird is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

I wanted to take a minute and thank you so much for sharing this journey with us! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your comments and emails about our story. It absolutely makes me smile every time.

One thing I know for sure – if we can do it, YOU CAN DO IT. It may take you longer, it may take you less. I know you will be so proud of yourself.

It made us more mature, it bonded us, it changed our marriage, in a really great way. It is one of the best things we have done in entire lives.

And I’ll say it again – WHOOOOOO!!!!  :)

**And yes…we will be calling in to the radio show to scream. But now we want to take a trip down to Nashville and scream it in his lobby. It’s a big deal, and we want to celebrate it.  :)

***I’m quite sure my Google ads will go crazy with credit companies after this post – I don’t personally endorse any of them. Just sayin’.

A DIY memo board

Well hello there!! I am just overwhelmed at your response to my last post. You made me feel SO much better! :) I was so happy to read your comments and to hear many of you are making time to take care of YOU! It made my week! (Really.)

Because of I’ve been organizing like mad, and throwing in a few more work outs in here and there lately – my DIY/crafty/decorating time has been suffering. :) I rectified that today with a project I’ve been meaning to do forEVER.

I needed a new memo board for the light and bright office redo I’ve been working on. I made this one years ago:

It’s looking a little sad now. :) To make it, I just covered a piece of insulation foam with fabric. I wrapped the ribbon around it and hung it -- done!

I wanted something huge and it worked perfect! (See that squishy face in the picture on top? That’s my Bub’s birth announcements. Still LOVE.)

Well, about a year ago (yes, a YEAR) I found this huge frame for $10 at Goodwill:

I think it was even half off – it’s been so long I can’t remember! I knew it would work perfect for a new memo board. (I was planning ahead.)

I liked how chunky the frame was, but it wasn’t in the best shape:

It also had a band of linen-type fabric that I actually quite liked.

I had a plan in mind for this baby and I absolutely luuuurve how it turned out! Not just love – LURVE.

First step was to prime the heck out of the sucker. I laid it down on my “spray painting” sheet on the garage floor and did a couple quick coats.

I need to mention that it was NINE degrees outside when I did this. It was unreal, it was so cold.

I am nothing if not dedicated! :)

Once I got feeling back in my hands, I brought it inside to dry. (Spray paint takes forever to dry in extreme temps.)

After that it was ready for paint. Because I wanted to use only what I had, I painted it the blue ceiling paint I used in the office. While it was drying, I moved onto the “memo” part:

This stuff is that thick foam insulation you can get at the hardware store. I love it! I got a few sheets to cover our crawl space openings into the basement years ago. It works GREAT – keeps the cold and the spiders out! Eww!

Anyhoo, I wanted to reuse the foamy stuff for this memo board as well. I measured the size I needed, then used my Dremel to cut it out:

Awe-some!! (Said in a sing song voice.)

I wrapped it with my fabric, securing it to the back with hot glue:

I nail gunned it to the back of the frame and it worked like a charm!

For now it's hanging right behind the desk:

I think it will stay on that wall, but not sure where exactly. :) My plan for the board and batten includes a small ledge, so after that’s done I’ll have to play around with the memo board.

Of course I used the stripe fabric, which is a pain in the booty to get just right:

It has to be perfectly straight or it will drive. you. MAD. Or maybe it just drives me mad. :)

When I primed the frame, I sprayed right over the linen fabric (one word: L.A.Z.Y.) and the primer didn’t even cover it. So weird – it looks just like it did before!:

I just left the little gold strip inside the frame primed. Again…laaaaazy.

I got the fabric pretty straight:

Enough that it doesn’t give my hives to look at it. :) It’ll be covered with notes anyway. That’s what I keep telling myself.

Did you notice my little addition to the DIY drum shade fixture?:

A picture in a magazine inspired it – I saw a beautiful drum shade trimmed out with beautiful, large glass beads. It was GORG. I searched ev.er.y.where. online and couldn’t find anything that looked like it – and then one day I checked out Hobby Lobby and found this.

It is just a precious little beaded trim – I adore it:

Is it possible to be in love with cute beaded trim? Is it normal to be in love with cute beaded trim? I don’t care – I am. :)

I am loving how the room is coming along! The time has come though – I need to buck up buttercup and just get that board and batten DONE.

I still can’t believe the transformation so far. The office before:

And after:

WHOO! Love it! And my office will be extra insulated now. ;)

**I still don’t know what I’m doing with that chair – the cover I had was the wrong blue, (total clash with the memo board) so I took it off for now. I think I have something in mind. (Do you hear my mind crankin’?)

Hope you have a fantastic weekend!!