{dining room progress}

After lots of small peeks at our dining room over the past few months, I finally feel confident showing off pics of the entire space. While it is still a work in progress, I'm excited at the changes we have made so far.

What I'm most excited to show off is our "new" dining room set that we found on Craigslist. You probably remember my post about recovering the chairs with a fun and bold fabric. Well, I finished recovering all four of them and now they have a table to sit around!

They aren't a matching set, but we bought the chairs and table from the same Craigslist seller. For...get this...$75 for the chairs and $60 for the table! And she delivered the table. Pretty sweet deal.

We love the midcentury details...

All of the pieces still need to be refinished...you can see a few bad spots on the table top here...

But it has a really lovely grain. I'm wondering if it is teak? I'm a total wood dunce though, so if someone can educate me, please do!

So for now the table is sporting a tablecloth to keep its unfinished surface safe from toddler {or Mandy} spills. I'm actually clumsier than they are.

And during these crazy hot summer months our friend that we love to hate, Mr. AC is out in the open...

Oh what a love/hate relationship I have with him.

And the gray curtains. Not sure what to do with those. They are pretty blah now that we have some fun colors going on with the chairs and artwork.  I'm thinking once we have the walls painted something other than white, some white drapes with a fun fabric accent would add a lot of brightness to the space.

The wall opposite the fireplace has this little art gallery of sorts...

And then there is the corner to the left of the fireplace. Right now it has this sad bench and a random pillow...

Remnants from when this space was our family room. Working on some ideas for that little nook.

And of course we want to paint the walls, and I'd like all of the trim to be white. And still on the fence about painting the fireplace. Gotta remove that brass door. Lots to do. But when I look at the space now I smile, and that is a good feeling.

When we moved in it looked like this...

And now it looks like this...



I love a good before and after, even if it is still a work in progress.

{floored}

When we bought our house {almost two years ago now!} I was bummed about the flooring. Our old house had hardwoods that were in great shape, and our kitchen had a brand new wood parquet floor.

The new house...well...had old unfinished hardwoods in the front room and two of the bedrooms. And yucky carpet in the kitchen and family room. The entryway had old, stained linoleum.

You could say it was a flooring disaster of epic proportions.

And I never thought we would be able to afford to replace all of that flooring so quickly, but we did. And on a tight budget! I thought I would share our flooring journey to give some inspiration to others who are on a similar budget.

So let's take a look at the before and after shots, shall we?

The entryway went from this...

To this...

Much more welcoming, right? And at 99 cents per square foot, the laminate we used was very easy on the budget.

We put the same laminate in the kitchen/family room to replace the yucky - and yes, I have to say yucky again - carpet.

Here are some super before shots from the inspection day...

Oh yes, friends, the toe-kick is carpeted too. For optimum comfort.

And yes, the area in front of the door was tiled but not the kitchen. Genius.

And here is the after, although this ginormous room is still a major work in progress {I'm still hoping that Genevieve will knock on my door one day soon with a brand new kitchen}...

Love the random toys and laptop on the floor. I like to keep it real friends.

The flooring in these two spaces cost us around $1200 and that was for installation as well. Considering that was a total of around 600 square feet, it was a great deal and a good low budget solution for such a large space.

Next up is our front room which we currently use for our dining room and office/crafting area. This space had original hardwoods but they were in terrible shape.

Here is the best worst before shot I could find. It really shows the lack of finish and stains that were on the floors. Of course the cute two year old distracts your eyes just a tad...

And here is a a photo from inspection day...

And here is the after...

And for a comparison...the old and new finish...

Now that they are refinished I can't believe we lived with them for over a year. But you do what you gotta do, right?

This project cost a total of $600 because we used a local independent contractor who was able to keep the cost down for us. We also live in a low cost of living area, so I'm sure that helps us out as well.

And finally, just last week we had carpet installed in our bedroom and Landon's room. {Ben's room already had a nice shag carpet so we left his alone.}

The hardwoods in these rooms were in the same shape as our front room, and since they are bedrooms we opted for cozy carpet instead of refinishing the wood.

And boy does it really cozy up those spaces...

Disclaimer: **Ignore the random toes in this shot, and the fact that our bed is sitting on the floor. The boys love jumping on it that way so who knows how long it will take us to put it back on the frame. Plus it kind of takes me back to our just got our first place and can't afford a bed days, and that makes me smile. **

Here is Landon's carpet...

And the transition from the newly finished hardwoods in the hall to the carpet...

Call me a dork but this shot really makes me smile.

We hired Lowe's for this job, because they had a great deal on the carpet {94 cents per square foot!} and we were able to finance the project into easy payments. Including installation this project came to a total of $550. Not bad for two cozy new bedrooms!

So are you still with me?

I hope I haven't bored you with my adventures in flooring, but I'm super excited that we finally have good quality flooring in our entire house. And for less than $3,000, we were able to get over 1500 square feet of brand spanking new/re-finished floors.

I hope this gives my fellow small budget decorators some hope!

{stripped}

Our hardwood floors are a little naked right now...and I can't wait to see them when I get home tonight! The area at the bottom of the photo is pre-sanding - you can tell such a difference!


Picture sent to me by our contractor - how sweet, right?

{happy feet}

My feet have three very fun reasons to be happy this morning...

1. My grey boots!!! Ahhhh...I'm finally the owner of these lovely suede boots that I've been drooling over for months and months. And they make my feet look tiny! Bonus when you wear a size 9 and some change.

2. New entryway rug thanks to TJ Maxx. I'm a sucker for this color combo and pattern, and the modern pattern will still jive with the midcentury modern vibe I'm going for in the space. It makes coming and going at our place a lot happier, even for the cats!

3. And the most exciting news of all (once the honeymoon phase with my boots wears off) is that we are getting our hardwood floors refinished! Our front room, hallway, and bedrooms all have hardwoods, and they are in a sad state...our front room especially. Here is a photo from before we moved in...

The previous owners must have had this planned as well, but stopped at the sanding stage, which means we were left with mostly unfinished floors. Not quite what you want, especially with two toddlers spilling their sippy cups and dropping spaghetti on it.

So starting on Friday our front room and hallway floors have a date with an electric sander, stain and a few coats of poly!

I am beyond excited to get this project completed and have fresh, clean floors. It will be quite interesting keeping the boys (and the cats) off of it for 4-5 days, but it will be well worth it! You can bet I'll be posting some before and after pics next week.

So there you have it, three reasons my why feet want to do a little jig today (well, maybe after I have my first cup of coffee).

Happy Monday friends!

{where we live}

The space we spend about 90% of our time in these days is our kitchen/living room...which is one big space that works so well for our family. It is also the biggest work in progress in the house.

When we moved in it looked like this...talk about a blank slate...

Thank goodness we were able to replace the ridiculously awful carpet with wood laminate last fall...

That was a glorious day.

We've also begun our budget reno of the kitchen by painting the upper cabinets white and replacing the hardware with oil rubbed bronze handles for the doors, and the drawers will be getting bin pulls.

We left the cabinets on either side of the window open to make the space feel lighter.

And above the stove to store our cookbooks and some other pretty items...

We also replaced the recessed light over the sink with a pendant kit which was fairly easy to install. I wasn't able to find a glass shade in the right size that I liked, so we used this small olive green lampshade we already owned. I fashioned some curtains out of an extra pair of chocolate brown panels from our bedroom, a tension rod, and some ring clips (that I spray painted in an oil rubbed bronze finish to match the hardware)...

The lower cabinets are going to get a darker paint treatment, and the retro tile backsplash will probably be getting a coat of celery green paint until we can afford to replace it. I do wonder what color those tiles are underneath that chocolate brown paint...

Smack dab in the middle of both rooms is "toy central"...our IKEA Expedit bookcase with great canvas bins from Walmart for the boys' smaller toys and books.

The only other item in the room that will definitely be staying in the final design is our chocolate brown sofa, which is extremely comfortable. Even though I would love to get a more modern sofa, there is no room in the budget for that, and we can definitely modern it up with some fun pillows...two of which we already own.

This one was originally in the boys' nursery...

and this one (originally from Etsy shop joom) was a gift from my wonderful friend Allison...

]
Eventually we will be painting all of the trim in the room (major project) white and the walls a shade of tan.

I've put together a little mood board for how my dream "great room" would look. Hopefully I can make this plan a reality over the next year or so.

The green chairs are from Urban Outfitters, as well as the side table. Those are dream items and definitely a little out of our budget right now, but what's life without dreams, right? I found a gray lamp very similar to the one in the mood board at our local Big Lots over the weekend. It is definitely on my wish list. A fun canvas from Walmart and gray curtains will finish off the look.

{click on the image for a larger view}

We are doing it bit by bit, but having a plan to admire makes it seem more real and possible. Hope you hang around to see the transformation!