August 7th, 2010
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We’ve been working on the foyer (here), and I’ve been trying to determine what to do to make it as warm and inviting as possible. One of the things I’ve been looking up are ideas for the stairs. Right now they’re painted completely brown, but I found these two photos where the vertical portion is white with the top brown/black.
Decor Pad
Decor Pad
I really, really like the second photo with the dark, slate gray color wall, but alas, we will not be painting our foyer that dark. However, I really am thinking I’ll paint the backside of the stairs white when I paint the window sill on the second floor. The other option is a stair runner like this one:
Decor Pad
Hmmm…which way would you choose, or should I do both?
August 6th, 2010
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We have an outside unit that we weren’t sure what we wanted to do with it. The practical side of me wanted to rent it out to help us pay for projects inside of the house, but the entertaining-live-your-life-only-once side sided with Steve who wanted to turn it into a “man cave” of sorts. So which side won out?
If you guessed the man cave, then you’d be right. We bought a pool table several months ago, and now we’re focusing a lot of thinking power on how to set up the room in order to get the most use of it. Having a sort of party room was also one of the things on our list when we were looking for a house to buy. It needs a lot of updating and a good thorough cleaning. Here is how it looked when we got the place:
I have no idea how long that carpet had been in there, but I’m not sure that I want to know. We have removed all of the carpet in the upstairs to expose the wood planking underneath.
We are considering several options for the flooring, and if you have any advice, we’d love to hear it. We have three main stations that we want up here: the pool table, seating/tv, and a bar. Ultimately we want this area to be where we entertain and host, so that the house won’t have all of the heavy traffic (especially with the animals). I think out first goal for this room is to host a party for Halloween and decorate it like a haunted house, but we will see if that happens since that leaves a mere three months to plan and execute. I think we may have to wait until Halloween next year.
August 4th, 2010
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August 3rd, 2010
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I’ve recently been focusing on the foyer, because it’s the first thing people see INSIDE the house. Here is what it looked like before:
While it doesn’t look terrible in the photo, there’s a lot left to be desired. For one, the walls and the ceiling were the same color, and I wasn’t too fond of it. Second, the walls on the way up to the second floor were extremely dirty and scuffed, and the second photo shows a bit more of that. Since we’re updating the flooring in the foyer soon, I realized that we’d need to paint the trim and walls beforehand.
So we started to tedious process of painting the ceiling first, which has made such a difference right away. We used a plain white, flat paint for the ceiling in here:
It took two coats of paint, but here is the final product:
Next we started to paint the door and the trim, but luckily, after cleaning the trim it really didn’t need to be painted. There were a few scuffs that needed touch ups, but the doors were all that really needed painted. With as much trim that we’ll need to paint in this house, I was glad to be saved of painting some of it.
We’re now in the process of picking out a paint color for the walls. I’m definitely thinking of gray that will match the bolder colors we already have in the house, but it will transfer well upstairs since the foyer wraps around to the second floor.
I also found another blog that just updated their foyer here. Seeing those photos almost made me want to paint the trim black (I’ve seen it on another blog), but I realized it wouldn’t go with the plum in the living room at all so my sanity was saved.
July 30th, 2010
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My friend, Nicole, gave me a mirror she had in the garage, and I loved it. I knew exactly where I wanted to put it, and that happened to be the dining room on the fireplace. When she gave it to me, it had a nice wood finish, but I knew that I wanted it to be white in order to mesh with my ultimate plan for the room. So when we purchased paint for the ceiling, I made sure to pick up some for the mirror, too. Here is the before:
And here is the after:
I love how it matches the trim in the dining room now, and it helps to bounce the light beautifully in the room and into the living room.
July 28th, 2010
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It seems that everyone has some weird quirk or thing that they really like. For some people it’s a billion roosters decorating everything in their kitchen, sometimes it’s cows. I have tons of quirks, but I love owls. Luckily for me, they seem to be in style right now as I found at least five different types and styles of owl necklaces the other day. I bought two, and I love how the one combines my other quirk as it looks like a Harry Potter owl.
The other necklace I bought looks more professional, and one of my friends, Holly, laughed and couldn’t believe I used “professional” and “owl” in the same sentence when I told her. Don’t worry, I’ll rock both of them at work.
(The first was purchased at Claire’s, and the second one was from Forever 21)
