Positives. Negatives. I'll take neutral.

WHAT?!? Do you mind? I'm busy here!

 *This picture has nothing to do with this post*

Carry on.

The living room. Ah. When we were in the process of purchasing the house (which seemed to take FOR-EV-ER) we planned out the entire house in our heads. Yeah. That worked out well. HA

Originally the upstairs living room was going to be 'my' room aka the 'lady room' and the downstairs family room would be the 'man cave' and where we spent most of our time. But the 'man cave' has really turned into the dumping ground of all things without a home. It is set up nicely (although we need lesssss furniture), looks fairly decent when de-cluttered, but is FREEZING. It has some serious energy efficiency issues that we are looking to address, but that's another post for another day. 

So 'my' living room aka the 'lady room' as become our main hang out space. It's no where near complete, but one of our first issues we addressed was to paint it. Can you guess the color? Grey? Good guess. I have a seriously love affair with the color and all of it's wonderful shades of beauty. Sometimes Krys gets a little jealous of that love affair, but for the most part he respects it. 

The previous homeowners had a love affair with a semi-gloss blue. Why? I will never no. But they had a lot of bad tastes. Especially in electricians.

That blue is all sexxy with it's shine and shimmer

The second issue that we felt needed to be immediately addressed was the floor. For whatever reason, the green stained goodness on the floor was just not going to work for me. So, I overcame the need to roll in all of its disgusting glory and tore it up. Actually no. We hired someone for that.  

What happened under that chair? Bad diarrhea? Maybe. Probably.

Not much is cheaper in Rockland County vs Buffalo. But for whatever reason having the hardwood floors done here was CHEAPER than it was in Buffalo. Crazy right? Plus, they put 4 coats of poly on. And, let's be honest, I don't have the patience.

So they removed all of the carpet and the TILE. Yes, tile. Because apparently it's a good idea to cover hardwood floors with ugly, nasty tile.

Tile and carpet removed

Then sanded (with a dustless sander!). Which left us with some great oak floors.

Bare Oak Floors

Then stained. All in one day. We picked a fairly dark color – we love the dark wood floors and thought it was grand. Then I saw it after day 1. I hated them. They were very dark. I thought we made the wrong choice. But it was too late. 

They came back the next few days and applied 4 coats of polyurethane. And I LOVE, LOVE them. I couldn't believe what a difference it made. Thank God – we did not just chuck all of that money down the drain.

My mother has been asking for a few months to see pictures of the floor. But I haven't taken good photos of the room in the daylight. So here is a little teaser. Just to torture here some more. Plus our cat is really cute in his cat-cave.

Monster in is Cat-Cave. 

Mmm dark wood floors. They look even better when you see the whole room and not just a cat in his cave.

Taylor will be really jealous if he doesn't get a pic. This was from a little while ago when we were still living out of boxes. Ok it's probably from like 2 weeks ago, before we did the closet. But really, he's cute.

This cuddle works a lot like this:

Via

That's all folks.

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!