Dumping Ground Gone Rouge

Our living room and front entry way has become a dumping ground for mail, keys, garbage from another project, scatted shoes, left over Christmas decorations and the dog towel.  It drives me absolutely bonkers. And while it's not the main door we use we pass though here from everything. This space is the mail hub of the house, if you will.  Hence the trash/junk/whateverelse collector. 

I had two extra bookshelves that I was trying to find a home for. They are cheap and look even cheaper, so they needn't be anywhere on display. But they are very functional, so I didn't want to get rid of them.

So they were collecting dust and taking up space here - The collector of all random things

I really wasn't sure what the heck to do with them at first.

The ugly front door and lack of closet door are kind of distracting to the creative process 

So I got this cute mail folder and bulletin board from TJ Maxx for $19.99 each to help organize

 

Then I mixed some vintage finds that I already had, with a few more TJMaxx finds to create this:

(For a full list of my finds look below)

• The cubbies are two separate pieces from Target, I already had them from a previous organization at my last house. I turned them on their side and put them together.  They are cheap are $45 each.
• The two wooden floating shelves are from an garage sale. I paid $1 for all three.
• The small chalk board is from Michaels. $2.99
• The tall glass colander is from TJMaxx and was $12.99
• The small clear glass jar is from and estate sale and was $0.50
• The teal glass thingy ma-bob is actually an old insulator from an electrical line. I picked up a ton of these around $0.50 a piece 
• The orange vasey and black metal ball are from TJMaxx and were $12.99 and $6.99 respectively
• The three ducks were from The Container Store and were $15.99 for all.  Not only do they hold mail, but they hold keys too. Amazing. I know.

• The two teal glass jars on top of the old wooden floating shelf are both from estate/garage sale. I got them a while ago and can't remember the price. But I never pay more than $2
• "Wag More Bark Less" is from TJMaxx (Have I told you how much I love that store) for $4.99
• And the tiles on the other old wooden floating shelf is from an estate sale. There are more where these came from. They were $1 each (they tried to charge us way more, but ooops the original price [I'm sure from a long time ago] was still on the back of the tiles)

As you can probably tell, I'm obsessed with both estate sales and TJMaxx.  Estate sales are great because everything you get from there has a history, or some sort of story.  If you search and bargain hard, you can get great prices on many things.  TJMaxx carries such an assortment of things, you never no what you are going to find there. Plus, you can find some really great deals.  Basically great deals and unique things give me a tingling sensation.

So there you have it. A place to collect everything while looking pretty.  Now, to replace that ugly front door, the closet door, and add back some molding and we will be in business.  If only.

Sneak Peak: A Bedroom Transformation

There has been a lot of work going on in our master bedroom. And if you have seen this picture,  you can understand why.

(The furniture in this picture is not ours. It was the previous homeowners.)

First, we tore down all of the drywall, thus removing the wallpaper.  This allowed us to re-insulate the entire room, remove the built in window air conditioner and re-size the closet. 

Then, we took out the carpeting which revealed beautiful hardwood floors (ok, we knew they were there before we purchased the place).  The floors were in amazing condition. Although, I suppose that's what happens when you install hardwood floors and then immediately cover them in ugly carpeting. Why, just WHY, do people do this? What is the point?  But we are grateful because after 50+ years they were brand spakin new. There was no real need to have them refinished.  But I have always loved dark hardwood, and it's easier to do it before we loaded the house with all of our wears and furniture.

We removed all of the oversized shoe molding that the builder was trying to pass off as real molding.

The we primed the room. And filled it will all of our furniture because we were sick of sleeping on the floor in the den.

(I need to get all of the pictures off my old phone!)

We lived with it likes this for a while.

Romantic, right? I know you are probably really jealous at this point. I mean, it's completely normal to have a night stand just chilling in the middle of your room and a sweet spotlight lamp for mood lighting. (Also, please note the fan)

I had an old sleigh bed from my old house.

Which was great considering the enormity of the bedroom. Really - I needed something ginormous just so it wouldn't be swallowed up in that room. But the reality is, new bedroom is much smaller than old bedroom, and it just wasn't going to work in this space.

So I found this bed on Overstock.com

It spoke to me. It all of it's tuffeted goodness. I had actually planned on making my own tuffted bed. But let's face it - there is so much more important things to do in this house than construct a bed.  Plus, I got a for $379.99 PLUS 20% off and FREE shipping.  I figured when calculating the cost of the materials including, lumber, fabric, buttons, etc plus my time, I wouldn't be able to make it for much less than this. And clicking that button was oh so easy. (It took me and Krys about 1.5 hours to put together.)

These were my inspiration photos for our bedroom:

Color and Tufted headboard

I think from this blog but I cannot find the original.

Mirrors and lamps (Oh how I wish I could have the chandelier)

Again, having trouble finding the original source but the best I can tell it's from Skinny Mom

I love the overflowing linens. I feel like it could swallow me up and I would be happy never being seen again.

Link doesn't work.

And the closet pinspiration

Link doesn't work.

And  little more color love

Some where on this site maybe.

Our bedroom looks NOTHING like any of these. But we are well on our way. Here are a couple in progress pictures.

The bed is a lovely color. But it just hides on that wall. (Those are the box springs pilled along the window, we were trying to decide if we were happy with the platform bed or if we would miss the box of springs. We don't)

Check out the Helicopter Fan.

Can you guess who picked that one out? I didn't think I would like it, but in the end it adds a lot of drama to the room.

So I decided to add a little color

I even took the time to cover the new bed

The "finished" product

(With a sleepy puppy)

The room is no where near done, but you can see the progress. What a difference the color on the one wall makes. It's much more romantic.

I can't wait for the final revel. 

The House Tour 'Before'

A little gem, nestled on .67 acres in Rockland County, NY. About .2 miles from the New Jersey boarder. We fell in love like with this house. It's pretty pink bathroom. It's 1960's decor. It's tiny kitchen. It's price tag!

With a little lot of vision we knew we could make it in to something. So here she is. Built in 1958 and still in the same 'vintage' glory. (In the condition we first viewed it in)

The outside

(note the awesome 'window' AC unit I mentioned in my last post)

The outside from the back corner of the property

The really small kitchen, made smaller by a huge table

The Living Room

The dining room

The down stairs (Complete with a bar and sliding doors that open to the back patio)

The pretty in pink bathroom

The Rockin' Gold bathroom

The Master Bedroom

The 2nd and 3rd bedrooms

Can  you see the potential?? I can't wait to show you the afters!

Because this is every girls dream closet...

Said no one. Ever. Yes a nice spacious closet complete with a beautiful pipe and cracked gnarly walls.  This may in fact be the real reason we bought the house. And actually this space is even BIGGER than when we bought the house.

You may recall this beautiful bedroom, a picture of beauty.

Why yes, that is grass cloth wall paper, thank you for noticing. And that big huge chest of drawers? Yeah, that would be hiding the "window" air conditioning unit that was WALLPAPER OVER. Yes, we are not using it anymore, why not cover it in wallpaper versus removing it. Wallpaper will do.

Obviously not much in this room was going to work for us. So instead of removing this wonderful wallpaper we just tore down the walls. And by we I mean we actually paid someone to do this because we were having our hardwood floors redone in 3 days and there is no way we could tackle it in that amount of time and maintain our full time jobs.

So smash, and down came all of the drywall. This actually worked out very well because it allowed us to do a few things:

1. Remove the "window" AC unit (there is a whole house central air unit) and patch the wall
2. Add additional insulation 
3. Widen the closet

All of that for only $500 more than it would have cost to just remove the wallpaper. What a bargin.

I, of course, was initially totally against this. Why should we pay someone for something we are completely capable of doing ourselves. But alas the time crunch won out, and I was sick of sleeping on the floor of the will be office in a mess of all the clothes, dog, and whatever else.

So we were left with this beauty

You may notice that nice wall on the left there. That is just the start of our electrical problems. But more on that later, when were aren't discussing my dream closet.

What to do with that B-E-A-utiful pipe. We talked about boxing it in to look like a nice column. We talked about putting a shoe rack in front of it. I thought of taking a hammer to it. But all of these things A. lost room in the closet and since it's just so ginormous that didn't seem wise, B. Would take more time than it would ever be worth. So we decided to spray paint it black and call it a day. Personally, I was ready to just take the spray paint into the closet and have at it. But Dear Fiance thought that might cause to many fumes and make me nuttier than I already am. So while he removed it and spray painted it outside (amist 30mPh winds), I painted the inside. We went with ceiling white on the inside walls and a nice dark grey on the main back wall.

We put the pipe back in and started to assemble the closet.  The closet was custom designed from The Container Store. It seemed to be the best design to work around that beautiful awkward pipe. Plus they were having a 30% off sale, and really, who can resist a good sale!

Then we stack up the clothes.

Woooo, we now have like 7 less boxes scattered around our bedroom. This doesn't really hold all of our clothes, but it certainly hold our 'go to' items. Next, doors. Drywall for the missing section, a bed, oh and some molding would really help. But at least it no longer looks like this

Sharing with:

Evolution of Style