Be Our Guest!

A house starts to feel like a home when the dining room comes together. We don't always eat in the dining room but once it's finished it makes us feel like people can come in and eat and we can spend time together!

No joke, as I was adding this gif, Be Our Guest came on Pandora!!

We changed our vision about this room when we moved into this house (see our former dining room here for a comparison). Almost everything is new (to us) and our only overlap is a rug from our old living room. We decided to host Mother's Day this year which was a great motivation to get everything finished! Other parts of the house are still in disarray or aren't in their final stage, but it feels great to have made this progress.

Painting a house is way different when you have a 1.5 year old running around. We used to be able to spend a whole day working on a project; now, we can't do that and we don't really want to. Things are taking a lot longer this time around but it's also giving us a ton of time to enjoy the new house with our family and make thoughtful decisions about what we are going to do with our new spaces.

We chose a color scheme for this house before we even moved in and for the most part it has stuck. When we chose the dining room color we knew we were heading in a whole new direction from last time. Darker walls with our lighter original wood floors seemed more modern to us and anything was going to be better than the raspberry walls we walked into. We wanted the dining room to be a bit more industrial farmhouse than its previous traditional feel.

           

One day on Facebook, I came across a table that Rob and I loved on a resale group. $100 for a farmhouse table and three metal bistro chairs? Yes please! It was such a great deal. I got the other four chairs from a resale group online as well, I am telling you it's so fun to hunt and it's awesome when a good deal comes around!

We made the decision to take the knick knack size shelves out of the cubby and use it for a larger statement piece and we are super glad we did. We didn't have anything for this new space so we had to shop (bummer, right?!) but I was pleasantly surprised that upon my first visit to TJMaxx I found this perfect mirror for under $30! The two trays in this area were also a purchase from the same trip and were 25% the cost they usually are at non-discount stores. TJMaxx (and resale groups) for the win!

     

We are super happy with the way this room has turned out. It is the front of the house so you can see it from outside and it makes the whole house look more updated in and out!

If you are reading this thinking "all they had to do was paint" let me get into the real "fun." This house is 100 years old and the "fixes" people decided to do in the past were really half-hearted and annoying. There were 12 sinkers in the walls of this one room ranging from normal to what-needed-that-much-support and more nail holes than we bothered counting. In the cubby there were another seven sinkers/shelf!! What were they putting on these shelves? They also (under an unknown number of paint layers) caulked the cubby shelves which made it super fun to repair. I think we spent more time working on smoothing the walls than we did actually painting. We are happy we spent the time to do it right though, no old nail holes makes for a much cleaner look!

We will be back with more updates soon! We made a lot of progress this weekend while the kiddo spent some time with Grandma and we had a fabulous Mother's Day with our awesome family!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mom-hearted women out there. You are all amazing!

History Is Repeating And We Wish It Wouldn't

So in our first home, within weeks of moving in we had some issues with our dryer smelling like a campfire. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, just a filthy dryer vent that needed a cleaning and it was back to new. Unfortunately, history has repeated itself at our new house and this problem didn't have such an easy fix. 

The good thing was that we learned from the first house issue. When we put the first load of wash into the dryer here at the new house, we hung out for a bit and made sure to keep our noses alert and boy, are we glad that we did! After less than 10 minutes the basement started to stink like burning fibers. Not exactly what you hope to smell. 

We switched the dryer off and immediately pulled it away from the wall. Oh my, we couldn't really believe our eyes. The problem was obvious. The gas line (a problem in itself but we'll get to that later) had rubbed through the foil accordion-type tube leading to the solid vent. Because of this hole, there was a thick layer of lint on everything behind the washer and dryer. 

      

These pictures don't honestly do the thick layer of lint justice but I will tell you that I could peel the lint off the floor in 1+ inch thick sheets. Yuck!

After scraping the floor and vacuuming up what was loose on the walls and back of the machines we left both machines unplugged until the professionals could come in to look at the issue. Here's what they came up with: the dryer vent had  too many right angles on the way to the exterior vent. The more right angles in a vent, the more chance for lint to get stuck and problems to happen. We had to re-route the vent and in order to do that, had to take out some drywall and the cabinet above the washer and dryer. Rob was channeling Chip Gaines on demo day! 

   

   

Of course the first space we broke into was where the water lines were running (something you wouldn't know by the exposed pipes - another weird choice) and so we had to move over and break into the next section. The insulation came out and the ceiling also had to be exposed to move the gas line. The professionals moved the dryer vent into the space where you can see the insulation above and they moved the exit point on the outside of the house as well. Now there are only two turns (as per usual) and it's a solid pipe so there are less places for lint to get caught. The professional said that it was a miracle a fire hadn't started because it was clearly used for a long time with the broken vent. 

We still need to have the gas line rerouted so it isn't as long as it is now (something to look forward to... ha!). This house is proving to need quite a bit of work to say the least, but we LOVE this house and are having a fun time making it our own!

Until next time, thanks for catching up!

A new space for our growing boy!

The first room in the house to get cleaned, painted, refinished floors and decorated was our little guy's room. It feels a little less nursery than before but since he is still in his crib and we are in complete denial that he is growing up we are still rocking the original nursery vibe. 

I started by painting all the trim in his room the day we closed. It was a super high priority for us to get our buddy's room done before we moved in so that he could have a smooth transition to the new house. Everything in this house is dingy and needs a good scrub and we are pretty sure that every wall is painted with flat paint which makes everything look dull. By putting a coat of semi-gloss on the trim, baseboards and windows we brightened everything up a bit. We also used satin paint on the walls to make them scrubbable and durable for little boy dirt! 

   

As you can see things get a little weird after a long day of closing and starting projects! Nothing like a painting selfie to keep you going. You can (kind of) see in the picture on the left above the difference between our fresh semi-gloss white and the flat white. In person, it's pretty obvious.  

After painting the trim, I went around and edged in the room. I don't like to tape off rooms cause I think it just takes too long so I spent a little extra time being careful when I edged with my favorite shorty brush* to get a clean edge. Rob came in while I was putting my second coat on the edging the rolled the walls. Teamwork makes the dream work people. 

We chose to go a shade lighter than his room in our 1st house because it was going to be covering the whole wall. At the other house there was wainscoting in his room which supported the darker grey. The difference in lighting between the old house pictures and new house makes the color look super similar but there is a difference, promise! 

After some decisions about what goes where and how we wanted to maximize his space we ended up with another sweet space for our boy. We love the windows and how sunny his room gets. After having his room up in our bungalow's second floor (the cave room) we are loving the brightness! The curtains on the larger window are no longer tied, we were just trying to "train" them to stay open. Blackout curtains are so thick!

   

There is a whole other view to this room facing towards the camera that we will be posting soon along with the little dude's playroom pictures! Keep your eye out! 

*This post includes an affiliate link. We were not paid to say anything nice about this product, Lindsey just loves it!