Texas House : Living Room

Our living room in this house feels a little bit bigger than our last, although if you'll remember, we had a pretty big one in our last house as well.

As a refresher, here's what the selling picture of our living room looked like :

I couldn't get the same exact angel (darn no wide angle lenses!), but here's what it looks like now from pretty much the same viewpoint :

All of our furniture kind of fit like a glove in this living room, with the exception of the rug.  I really wanted a larger area rug at the last house too, so I kept my eye out for one that I'd like that would fit into this space when we were in temporary living.  Serena and Lily had a 30% additional off sale price, and I found exactly what I wanted.

Everything else is pretty much the same, with the exception of that coffee table.  I had gotten the round one when Kalia started walking.  Our previous table (you can see it under the window in the first picture of the old house) I nick named the death table.  I love, love, love the look of it, but we obviously got it before Kalia came into the picture.  It is super not kid friendly!

We found this one on craigslist (along with almost all of our new bedroom furniture, stay tuned for that post!), and it has the same feel as the old one, but with rounded edges.  Perfection!  It is so nice to be able to set a few drinks or magazines or whatever on a flat surface without having the small circle to work with!

We left my pallet shelves screwed into the wall at the old place, so this bowl houses all of my magazines and coasters.

The fireplace wall is my favorite.  I love it so much.  The hidden TV behind those cabinet doors to the left, the fireplace itself, and the bookshelf (that looks sort of sparse, but that's what I've got to put in it for now!) make me so happy!!

I love all of the crown molding and big baseboards in this house as well.  The shutters, and all of the trim is a creamy off-white.  I love white trim, but I'm not re-painting it all in this house.  Not with the shutters matching the cream color.  Trim I'm up for, shutters?  Outside of my patience level!  It is growing on me though!

So what do you guys think of our living room?  It does feel pretty homey to us since this was our basic setup for the last 5 years!

Hope everyone is having a great week!

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House Tour : Out With The Old, In With The New

I have promised you guys a full house tour for awhile, and I'm finally going to deliver on it.

Even though this house is no longer mine.  We closed on it at the end of April.

To make a long story short, Chris accepted a job out in Dallas, TX, so for the first time in our whole lives we are no longer Floridians.  We were actually officially homeless for the first time since college!  We lived in corporate housing for a little over a month, and closed on a beautiful new home in McKinney, TX at the end of May.

Our house wasn't even on the market for a week before we were under contract for 99% of our asking price after receiving multiple offers.  We closed in less than 6 weeks.  Happy happy joy joy dance plus lots of mayhem and tears and hugs and yay's all around.  It's been a whirlwind of a few months to say the least!

Onto the Tour!

The Back Yard.  We didn't sod all the way down to the back, so it looks a little barren in this picture.  The new sod that we laid a year ago has started spreading and filling in the dead areas though.  Hopefully that'll continue on for the new owners!

The in-law suite bathroom.  We didn't really do much in here...

Kalia's bathroom.  We painted the walls, took out the old shower door, painted the cabinets, and faux painted the countertop.

The in-law suite bedroom.  I wish I had before pictures to go along with this, but I was in panic mode to get it done.  This room used to be Barney purple...blah!  I painted it Moonshine by Benjamin Moore and painted all of the trim white.

Kalia's room.  Ah, this was such a labor of love...I'm not gonna lie,  I cried the last time I walked through here.  We completely gutted this room and pretty much built everything that went into it.  I replicated this as closely as possible in the new home.  I really loved everything about it!

The daybed room.  This room used to have two daybeds in it, but I moved one into Kalia's room, and then into her playroom.  Chris installed the floors one weekend before we listed it.  It's the same floors we installed in Kalia's room.

The front door and the dining room. 

We hung up mirrors that went to the dresser in the in-law suite, and I painted little shelves and put fresh flowers in there for showings.

The exterior of the front door with the hanging pendant that we installed.

Our living room.  I painted the back of those book shelves along the wall and really loved how it turned out.  All of this trim was an off-white too, so I painted that all shiny white as well.

I also did that key art and those pallet shelves...

and made the Hart sign, and hung the ski's in an x with pictures of Chris and I from our snowboarding adventures.  I'm glad that my 'stuff' gets to stay with us!  I am happy to report that almost all of it fits in perfectly at the new home.

Here's a few of the front of the house, which we re-painted once Kalia got here.

We had to leave the Gator flag.  It was actually a part of the negotiations!

Moving back to the inside...the kitchen.  Oh, how I loved that kitchen.  I pretty much did nada here.  It was the huge huge selling point when we bought the house.

Kalia's playroom.  This room evolved quite a bit since she arrived.  The pictures over the daybed are just black fabric with a picture of her from every week for her first year.  It's amazing how quickly she changed!!  I painted the chalk wall, built and painted the ledges, and then added a family picture wall above the ledges.  Both Kalia and I miss the chalk wall.  If I'm being 100% honest, I don't miss the dust though!

The entry to the Master Bathroom from our bedroom, or the vanity area.  I painted this area twice, did all of the trim white, and we took off the closet doors and spray painted them to get rid of the yucky gold color.

Last time you saw our Master Bath, it was the light blue color.  I painted it gray (moonshine by benjamin moore, my favorite light gray color to go to) because I felt it was more calm and would appeal to a larger audience.

Next up, our Master Bedroom.  I re-did that trunk that my parents gave me and added my sewing machine cabinet that I also re-did to finish out the space.  We've upgraded furniture at the new house, so I can't wait to share what our room looks like now.

Here's a picture of the office.  This room also got painted, and we took out the built-ins, sanded them down, and re-stained them.  They were a blonde honey color before.  I also painted the back of them to make our things pop.

This is the office bath that Chris and I completely gutted and re-did just days before listing the house.  There was striped wall paper and an old toilet, laminate vanity, and builder grade mirror in here.  For such a little room, it required a ton of work, but the difference was amazing.  As you can imagine, we were in a rush, so just use your imagination for the before pictures!

And last, but most certainly not least, the pool deck.  Oh pool, how I miss you.  Our new home does not have one.  I think we'll wind up putting one in, but that yard and that pool were irreplaceable!  

This house and our old neighborhood and our old state, ha, were so hard to leave, but we had to do what was right for our family.  As soon as I quit my job, Chris put out his resume, which is why things got so scattered here on the blog.  Balancing a baby plus Chris interviewing and making up his time with his old job and trying to get house projects done during naptimes and bedtimes because I knew the move was coming was quite a bit challenging.

I'm hoping that I can come back here and share projects and our lives with the four of you that still read this blog (hey 'rents!!).  I'm still working on finishing up getting the last of the things unpacked...like my sewing machine...yuck!!

In personal news, my little girl turned two last month.  Crazy how time flies.  Here's a picture of Kalia jumping on her big gift on her second birthday.  We're still a little hair challenged!!

Hope everyone is doing well!

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Mini Living Room Project

I know, you guys can't believe I'm so close to my due date and still doing projects.  Me neither.  I think breathing these days is a project in and of itself.  But things that would normally get put on a 'list' drive me nuts right now, so if I can muster the energy to get something done, I do it.  Even if it's small.

After we moved the cable, I noticed the shoe kick around the fireplace just looked...off.  It's too light, doesn't blend in with the floors, and certainly doesn't go with the fireplace.

It didn't bother me as much when the obnoxious cable was running across the harth, but now that the cable is gone, the shoe kick bothered me.

When we redid the front door, we stained the shoe kick to match the floors, and I was completely amazed at how well our 'already had on hand from another project 5 years ago' stain blended in with the floors.  I have plans to do do something else to that fireplace, so I decided that I wanted to stain the shoe kick to blend in with the floors instead of painting it to match the fireplace.

So, one night this week, when my big 'ol body couldn't get comfy, and my hubs loud snoring wouldn't allow me to fall back asleep, I got up and stained the shoe kick.

I think this needs one more coat (we did two on the front door shoe kick) to officially be done, but I might have to enlist the helpful hubs to do the second coat.  Scooching around on my rear in the middle of the night to do this did not feel so awesome.  To be completely honest though, as of me typing this post, he has no idea that I even got up to do this, or that it's done.  I'd be in so much trouble if I got caught doing this in the middle of the night!  I'm pretty hard to slow down, even when I'm exhausted.

It looks much better than it did before though.  I'm happy it's not screaming out "hey, look at me, I don't match".  Because that, my friends, was getting annoying.

Hope everyone enjoys their 3-day weekend.  My tired body and tired brain are excited to have an extra day off of work.  Why in the world I thought it'd be a good idea to work up until Kalia gets here is beyond me.  For future reference for any of you guys, working up until your due date (and even possibly past...please Kalia come this weekend!), isn't recommended.

Keeping my fingers crossed hoping that Kalia comes by her due date, which is Monday.  I know, I know...enjoy the carefree life with just Chris and I...it's just hard to enjoy when you can't breathe, sleep, or get up from low places on your own, let alone are a constant sweat ball from this amazing Florida heat.  Come on Kalia!!!  Yes, I think I said that I was ready for her to get here 3 or 4 times in this post. That's how ready I am though....

Happy Friday everyone!

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Chris the Cable Guy

I really wanted to title this post "My Dad is a Big Butthead", but I decided it worked better as a subtitle.

Let me explain.

When we moved in 2 years ago, we went around and around on different configurations for our living room.  Within a few months, we found a couch off of craigslist, bought some bucket chairs, and eventually had a layout that we were both happy with.

The one problem with our layout is that there is no cable behind the TV.  That, in and of itself, is not normally that big of a deal to fix, however the wall that the TV is mounted on goes directly to the outside pool deck, and is solid concrete.  We've had "move the cable" on every.single to-do list for the past year and a half or so, and it always gets neglected.

So how does any of that fit in with my Dad being a big butthead?  Well, if you know him, you know he just is one regardless (my sisters will agree!), but that's besides the point.  Back in December, I wrote a post to the weather about our frigid Florida winters, and included this picture of how we sleep during the winters (this was prior to us getting our new a/c and heat system installed a little while ago) :

Chris told me not to post this photo, and not because the lighting was horrible with it, but because the cable cord was showing.  I told him all of my readers were too nice to comment on that.  I was right...a few of you guys even commented on how much you loved our coffee table.

My Dad...not so much!

I forgot to take into account that he reads my blog too.  He left the comment below :

Biggest.Butthead.Ever.  The funny part about this too is that my Dad knew that I had pre-posted that and was out in Hawaii by the time that post was published.

Sigh...

Well, enough is enough!!  My parents are staying here with Kodi when we have Kalia, so, once again, we put "move the cable" on our to-do list.  This past weekend, we finally crossed it off.  Chris said he didn't want my Dad coming over yet again with that stupid cable still running across the room.

Ugly Cable

As expected, this wasn't an easy project.  Chris got up in the attic and pulled the cable up from the previous exterior wall and attempted to drop it down into this wall.  Since the wall is solid concrete, that wasn't working.

We drilled a hole in the top of the ceiling to see if could find a hole to send the cable down that way, but all we did was create a hole for us to patch.  Beyond the drywall is more concrete.

We decided our only option was to bring the cable in from the exterior wall again.  Not exactly a seamless pretty project, but much better than the cable running across our fireplace.

Chris drilled behind where the TV is mounted :

The drill bit sticking out through the other side made us both laugh.

After that, Chris drilled from the outside to the inside to try to widen up the hole a bit ...

That's the cable sticking down from the pool deck area ceiling.

Yeah, things are starting to look worse at this point instead of better, huh?

This was the hole from the inside :

And this is the most ridiculous drill bit I've ever seen :

But hey, it got the job done!

After much finagling, we got the cable from the outside of this wall to the inside, and pushed back up as much of the cable as we could back into the attic.  For the outside, I can't decide if we're going to get some sort of tubing, paint the cable to match the house, or mount something to this wall to cover it up.  This is one of those 'domino projects'...check one project off the list, add a few more.

You can see in this next picture what you see of the cable from the majority of the pool deck.

For the inside, we still have to run the power line up to behind where the TV is mounted.  Because there's already power on this wall, that, hopefully, shouldn't be as bad.  Famous last words, right?

Woo Hoo!!!  No more cable!!!

We were both entirely too tired on Sunday night to do anything more with this, so it's another "good enough for now" project that we're checking off the list.

Oh, and as a side note, I actually finished off the front door this past weekend too.  I painted the trim, the wall around the trim, and Chris helped me grout the missing tile piece back into place.  So that project went from a "good enough for now" one to a completely crossed off the list.  Whew!

It's true that my Dad is a big butthead, but I'm really glad we've finally gotten this project crossed off the list.  Chris too...it's been one of those things that's just been an eye-sore for entirely too long now.

Love you Dad!!!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

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