Sunday, June 17, 2012

Tired.

Man oh man. I have been Tired lately.
I was sure that moving into my new house would be the motivation I needed to get going on my blog again. However, the last weeks of school are draining me (I am sure my teacher friends can relate!) And weekends have been super busy with organizing & painting, trying to get our house up to par and weddings and family stuff. And I'm tired. What is a girl to do?

I can give you a preview of some of the changes we have made, though. We painted the living/dining room:



And our sitting room.



Things look muchly improved.

Last weekend we cottaged with my family during my cousin, Laura's, wedding weekend. It was a great weekend! I don't know if there is anything more relaxing than an Ontario lake at this time of the year!


Thursday, June 7, 2012

House Tour

I think it's about time that I post a tour of our new house!
Now that we've lived here for 2 weeks, it is definitely starting to feel like home. That being said, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

This tour will be much the same as the tour I showed after we bought the place (found here). Except that now it has our stuff in it. Consider these pictures to be the Before version. We are hoping to repaint everything. And redo a few things (bathrooms/kitchens).

Let me start with the front of the house. I think it's pretty cute looking! I love the dormer windows.
My hopes for the front: To repaint the ugly brown front and garage doors. Colours yet to be decided.


The Main Floor

When you walk in the front door, the hallway connects all of the room on the main floor, and has a stairway going up to the bedrooms.
Joe and I are wondering if it will be possible to somehow shave off the globs of plaster on the ceiling. Anyone have any ideas?


We bought a bold paint colour for the hallway. Plumage by Martha Stewert. It should offset the neutrals we plan on putting in the rest of the main floor.


To the left of the entryway is our long living/dining room. We contemplated making it a sitting room only, but once we started placing furniture in there it just seemed kind of...empty! So, now it will be our living and dining room. One flaw of this room is that there are no lights installed in the ceiling. That is another thing we hope to add.



**We have already re-painted this room in Behr's Parisian Taupe. It looks SOOOooo much better. We also went out and splurged on a new couch and chairs....Photos to come soon!


To the right of the entrance is what is supposed to be the dining room. We have decided to use it as another sitting room. We are even contemplating getting a TV to put in it (*Gasp!*). Right now we have a rug we bought in Bolivia in there. I'm not so sure about it, but Joe loves it, so we'll see!



**We have also repainted this room! We were busy last weekend. It is in Baked Biscotti by Behr. I will show photos of this soon, as well.


At the end of the hallway is the kitchen.
At first I hated this kitchen. I still don't love it. But it is functional, and will probably stay this way for a while. We are going to see how repainting the cupboards look, and maybe doing a complete redo in a few years. For now, it will have to stay as is.



Upstairs
The office room: 


The bathroom. I'm still trying to decide whether to completely renovate or to try painting the tile.


The guest room


The Master Bedroom.



The Basement

Right now, the basement is almost empty. There is a spare bedroom, a main area, a bathroom (the Funhouse) and the laundry room. I think it will be a while until we get around to doing anything down there.







The Backyard

The backyard was probably the selling feature of our new home. It is beautiful. Here are a few different views:





That's it for now. 
I'm excited to get going on all of the changes we have planned :) 

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Dining Chairs!

Yesterday Joe and I got down to business.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we need new furniture.

Probably the one things that has been driving me the *most* crazy in my house is our old dining chairs.



I got them for free when I moved out on my own from a friend who used them through university.
Needless to say, these chairs have been very well loved.
I also got the bench that we use on the side of the road on garbage day. Imagine that! And it has also been well-loved.

So, after searching the internet for inspiration, Joe and I decided we wanted to pair our old table with a more modern dining chair, and more specifically with an Eames-style chair, as seen in these pictures:




I feel like the mix of modern and traditional is just what I am going for. So, after much searching, we finally found some at Schreiters Furniture (in Downtown Kitchener).

And here they are!



They look better in person... and will look much better once we repaint the walls to a bit of a nicer colour :) It is a work in progress!

Oh yeah, and we leave for Europe in 1 month today! Woo hoo!