Cottagy Porch Décor

We spent our last week of summer here:

This is the lake at my mum and her partner, Rick's, cottage.
I love being at the cottage. It is so relaxing, and it is amazing living by the lake. Since summer holidays are over, I knew we'd be missing the cottage so I thought I might try to recreate the cottage feeling in the outdoor space at our house: The porch. While we were at the cottage, Joe and I kayaked to the island (on the right side of the photo) to go driftwood hunting. We came back with 3 great pieces. When we got home, one was a clear winner as it perfectly fit the space we had wanted to fill. It didn't even need anything to help it hang on the nail... it just worked! Best of all, we had been wanting something to hang there since we moved in, and this was free!

One problem with our porch, however, is our old wicker chairs. This might be the last season for these babies. To be fair, I have used them for 4 summers (mostly outdoors, uncovered) after scoring them for free off of Kijiji. And the chair pads were a thrifting purchase for a few bucks a piece. Needless to say, they are starting to look pretty sad, and aren't really too comfortable anymore.

So, back to my cottage inspiration. My mum bought these amazing faux-wicker chairs a few years ago at Winners for the covered porch at the cottage. Joe and I would LOVE a comfy style chair like that for our porch, especially considering we have spent most of our down time out there since we moved in. We love it! I think it might need to wait until next summer, though. That is, unless we find something great on clearance! 

The Things That Didn't Get Blogged About

I would have thought that maternity leave meant that I would have oodles of time to blog. Well, I was wrong! Apparently, I also had trouble blogging during the last months of my pregnancy. I got so far behind on the list of things I wanted to blog about that I have almost stopped blogging altogether!

So, I've decided to put those things to rest. Instead of detailed posts on each project, I will simply put them all in this post so that I can move on, and blog as I wish from now on! 

1. Adding interest to our sitting room: We finally got around to putting up some art work, and bought a few colourful pillows and a purple throw to add some colour and tie things together. We also found an amazing teak table on Kijiji and added some lighting.

2. Painting the spare bedroom: This is still a very boring room. But, it is better than barfy yellow!

3. The nursery: While I still have a ton of ideas to add to the nursery, (now that we know that Henry is a He!), I didn't really show much of the nursery itself. This is what it looks like now... it still has a lot of work that needs to be done. For now, Henry is still sleeping with us in our room, so this is really a glorified baby-changing room.

4. Painting our bedroom: Apparently I don't have any great photos to show this... but we repainted our bedroom a soft blue. 

5. Our en-suite bathroom: We repainted (using up the leftover light blue paint from the bedroom), took out the ugly wall cupboard and replaced it with artwork, and added a new vanity. It is a huge improvement.

Before

After

6. Updates to the sitting room: We have definitely livened up this room, and it has become my favourite place to hang out in the house!

We bought a nifty plant from Ikea, found an amazing original painting at a local thrift store, and found a great mirror to put over the liquor cabinet. 

7. Long before even moving into our current home, we bought this hutch for $45 at a thrift store. We had plans of repainting it. Then, it sat in our garage for months. Finally, we got around to painting it! Joe chose a shiny black, and we polished up the hardware to make it as good as new. It looks amazing! Now we just need to put things in it...

Before

After

I'm pretty sure there are other things that I have forgotten. On another note... we are currently in the process of updating our kitchen cabinets. I'm pretty excited about it. I will (hopefully!) give the update on that soon!

Updated House Tour!

As of now, we have been living in our home for just over 7 months!

(It is also just over 7 months since finding out we were pregnant... I took the pregnancy test the day we moved in to determine whether or not I could go into our new hot tub :)

Anyway, I thought it is about time that I do an updated house tour. We have done a lot of smaller projects and things are really starting to shape up around here. Most of our rooms are still "in progress".

Some of the things you will see on here are things I have already blogged about. Feel free to browse!

Front of House

When we moved in, the garage and doors were painted an outdated reddish brown.

Before

We repainted the doors/garage in a more modern neutral. We have also done a bit of pruning and removing of some plants in the front. It is looking much nicer!

After

After

The Main Floor

1. Front Hallway
Unfortunately the only "before" picture we have of the hallway was taken during our initial house tours before buying the house. As you can see... the hallway was painted the same yellow as the rest of the house. 

Since moving in we repainted in a dark teal and we love how it turned out! It helps to balance out all of the other neutral colours we have chosen.

2. Living/Dining Room
We have made quite a few changes to this room. When we first moved in, we didn't even have proper furniture for the room, so we simply put in some existing furniture for the time being while we awaited our new couch and chairs.

Since then, we have made quite a few changes:
- We repainted the walls in a lighter and more neutral colour
- We replaced the window coverings with white curtains (The front window had heavy, dusty yellow drapes)
- We purchased a new couch and chairs and a new carpet
- We scored a cheap and large teak coffee table on Kijiji!

And we finally found some nice throw pillows for the couch to add colour and pull a few things together. We still want to add more art to the walls and a few more accessories.

3. Sitting Room
The same ol' yellow. The same heavy yellow drapes. At least the previous owners were consistent ?

Before

Before

We have made quite a few changes to this room, including:

- Repainting in a neutral grey
- Replacing the drapes with white curtains
- Replacing the light fixture (originally a heavy, ugly fan)
- Adding a couple of big bookshelves

After

After

 

4. The Kitchen
The kitchen is the room in the house that I have the most issues with. It is u-g-l-y! However, we looked into cabinet refacing, and it was so expensive it just isn't worth it right now. Instead, we simply freshened it up with new paint. It looks much more inviting!

Before

After

After

Upstairs

1. The office

 The office has now been turned into the spare bedroom, since our spare bedroom has turned into a nursery :)
We have repainted the walls using leftover paint from our sitting room downstairs (why not?!) and simply removed the heavy yellow drapes. It looks much better! Although it could still use some sprucing up with accessories.

2. The main bathroom
A great example of the "special" tile that was a part of our house when we bought it. I painted the tile and Joe took down the sliding brownish glass door over the tub and the awkward hanging cupboard. We replaced it with an extra-long, fun shower curtain. I also replaced the light fixture covers to make it match a little nicer.

Before

After

3. The spare bedroom

This room is currently being converted into our nursery! Here is the before.

We replaced the curtains, repainted the walls, and have been slowly aquiring some baby things to fill the room. Only 2 (or so) weeks to go until this room gets some use! We  have quite a bit of work to do in here still, as it is still really an empty palette, ready to be decorated according to our baby! We also plan on repainting and refinishing some of the furniture...all of which we bought off of Kijiji!

4. The Master Bedroom

When we moved in, the master bedroom matched the rest of the house in colour. Since then, we repainted a light blue and changed the window coverings. We still need to add some artwork and maybe a few colourful throw pillows to add interest. 

5. The Ensuite bathroom

We decided we wanted to take down the wall cupboard and replace the pedestal sink with a vanity that has storage underneath. We thought this would be a small project, but it ended up being much more challenging than we originally thought! Mostly because I attempted to do the plumbing myself with zero experience. Needless to say, I learned a lot through trial and error, and am pretty impressed that I did it! And we are really happy with the result... it is a much better use of the space. 

Before

After

The Basement

We have pretty much left the basement as-is so far. I think this will be the last part of the house we tackle, since it is the part of the house we use the least. 

Main area

Spare bedroom...aka storage room

The "Fun House" is still the same...Yikes!

Laundry Room

The Backyard

We haven't needed to do too much in the backyard. However, we did choose to rip out the awful fountain (it just wasn't my style!) and re-seeded that part of the lawn. It looks much better!

After taking out the fountain and adding seed

It is fun to look back at all of the progress we have made. It's exciting to think about the changes we still have to make!