In order to show the progress we are making with out home remodel, I decided to go ahead a take some videos. Here is a before/during shot of the stairs:
https://youtu.be/FcpydWQ1ogs

We lowered them down just enough so that my husband doesn’t hit his head. In the meantime, we had this lovely large hole:

It seemed like a small decision at the time. Let’s stop using the dryer vent because it is inefficient. Next, the vent line came down, because it prevented the door from opening fully. And then, while the sheetrock needed repairing anyway, we took off the wall by the stairs to re-figure it out so the space could be used better. And since we tore off the wall, we went ahead and re-construct the stairs so we don’t hit our heads. Since the stairs were moved a bit, there is now room to move a door for a bedroom, which means we can completely re-model the downstairs.

Everything red is what we want to change.

My husband and I can make impromptu decisions together really well. I mention that maybe we should just take down a wall, more wondering than actually thinking of doing it. The next thing I know the wall is down, thanks to my husband in demolition mode. He was a bit hesitant to ask about re-doing the stairs next. It’s never bothered me much, but he has always hated it. I let him go ahead with the stairs so I wouldn’t have to keep hearing about it…but then that got me thinking about remodeling to get the bedrooms that our house sorely lacks. Now the only problem is finding the time and money to do it all. In the meantime we are living with some interesting views of the inside of our house.

I do not love painting. It took us over a year inside our home before we bothered to paint anything. The first thing I did paint was the dining room. Observe:

It was a pretty neutral tan. Not bad, except it was a different tan the the entire rest of the house. I’m not a big fan of brown anyway. Luckily, most of the house is painted in a peachy-tan color that I like. But I felt like the brown tan in the dining room clashed with everything.

So we painted it dark blue instead. Much better. I love it. The dark color helps make a long open room feel more intimate. And it’s not brown and it doesn’t clash with everything.

We moved some more furniture around, and after doing that the lack of curtains in the front living room started to bother me. I decided it was finally time to get some type of curtains up. It’s only been on my list since we moved in which is over a year ago. I’ve been content with just the blinds. For the large picture window, I decided I would continue to be content with the blinds. The front window could use at least a valance.

I perused Pinterest, Google and Amazon looking for ideas. I went to the store and picked up a length of black burlap with only a slight idea of what I was going to do, and came home and looked online for more ideas. Finally, I did something very similar to this.

I like the way it turned out. It took me about an hour of cutting and tying. I didn’t have to break out the sewing machine which I was grateful for. I used two yards of the black burlap and fabric scraps I had on hand for a grand total cost of $5.

Here’s the living room now and this is a link to the living room before.

We decided to turn the storage room into a nursery. Technically it was already a bedroom, but it is a very small room, and it had a cement floor and other various parts that were not finished . When we moved in, it was a clothes closet and then a place to store all the games and school/craft supplies. It made a great storage room. but we are having a baby and it made sense to turn it into a bedroom. I did not want to put a lot of money into this room, but I did want a room that I felt comfortable in.

I cleaned out all the various junk inside the room to other locations around the house. We started by installing some remnant carpet tiles for the flooring. It is mismatched flooring, but also very inexpensive and easy to install. I added some curtains from IKEA, got a new cover for my recliner, and set up the crib. Joe added an overhead light that wasn’t on a pull switch, along with another outlet. He also removed some redundant plumbing pipe. (That took awhile because he didn’t quite know what he was doing…thank goodness for a good friend that was able to show him what to do.)

Total cost was also under $175 so far, which included new flooring. The bedroom still isn’t going to impress anyone, but I enjoy it and it is a huge improvement over what we had. I wish I had a picture of the place beforehand, but it was never anything worthy of taking a picture of. It still isn’t quite done, the room needs molding and inside the closet isn’t finished. We might get those projects done eventually. For now it will work wonderfully as a nursery for our new little baby who is coming very soon.

Sometimes I’ve found it very easy to get caught up in dreaming. Dreaming made easier by the world of Pinterest, and Houzz. Before I moved into my new home, I love perusing photographs of lovely homes, saving ideas and pictures I dreamed of copying. Then I bought a house. Our house isn’t perfect. When we moved in, I was much more interested in making the house comfortable and safe than copying the ideas I saved. Projects like finishing off a threshold, installing a toilet correctly, and getting rid of anything I found hideous came first. I stopped looking for ideas, instead going off of my limited budget and own desires. I love my home now if I let myself, and I didn’t create it by copying ideas on the Internet. I am creating my home by responding to my own desires and ideas, and by often being content with less than perfect.

Sometimes I still find a blog or post that makes me want to re-do another room or abandon my simple decor and strange floor plan. I have to take a step back. I stop comparing my home to another and instead ask, “Am I comfortable here? Does my house function well for our family? Is it a place I love to be?” There are still projects I want to do, but they don’t necessarily match the goals of the wide world of home decor out there. This is my home, and the only people who need to love it is my family and me.

I re-did a nursery and I’m not getting any awards from it. But I stayed in our budget, and I’m perfectly happy with it. That’s far more important to me than to try to impress anyone else.

Usually the decorative state of a laundry room doesn’t matter that much, but ours is also the hallway to get into the downstairs. I walked through there all time time. Out of all the room in our house it was the one that bugged me the most. I didn’t like a single thing about it. Boring, ill-painted (and damaged) walls, and awful stick on tiles. I hated the flooring. It was stained and ugly. So one day I started to see if we could get rid of it.

That started weeks of scraping off the stupid flooring. My husband got a good system down and did most of it. After a very short time, we had decided it really wasn’t worth all the effort. But when you start a demolition project, it is hard to change your mind. So we just lived like this for a month, and eventually it all got ripped out.

There was a good layer of adhesive left behind. I took a small section and scrubbed it off with a bunch of chemical, and then applied a coat of concrete stain. Just a little section to see if it would work out as I hoped. I was surprised and happy when it did. I wasn’t trying to do something that was unattainable!

I exposed myself to far too many chemicals one Saturday and scrubbed the rest of the adhesive off. That part didn’t actually end up taking more time than I imagined, but I would prefer not to ever have to deal with all the chemicals we used again. Final step was a couple of coats of concrete stain.

On hindsight, I would have not picked black, it shows dust and everything else far too much. (I bough the stain spur-of the moment on a home improvement store trip, so there wasn’t a lot of thought that went into color choice.) But, I am liking it much better than the stick on tiles. It was an inexpensive project, although it did take far too many labor hours.

Joe and I have been working and working some more on our house. We are completely unpacked, most pressing fix-it problems are done, and all the awful meatball shrubs outside are gone. We like having projects to work on, it was one of the reasons we decided to go ahead and buy a house. I’m not as prone to boredom as I once was.

Thought I would share one project that we did together. We had an old fridge that we decided to keep. I wanted to paint it with chalkboard paint, something I’ve seen done many times online.  Here’s the after picture. A before picture would be an old white fridge, and I’m pretty sure you’ve seen one before.

(And Christmas is coming! I didn’t realize just how close it was until I put this up.)

Many projects like this are a bit of a mystery as to how hard they are going to be. We painted our dining room table (twice) and it was pain and didn’t turn out as good as we hoped. But painting a fridge was easy. Easier than painting a room or a table.

First we sanded the fridge down with sandpaper we had on hand. Just enough to start to see the metal coming through.  Now the hard part: while cleaning the fridge I discovered a bunch of sticky carmel/jam mess under a shelf in the freezer, and under the fridge. It was awful cleaning that up. But it was (I hope) abnormal to come across such a mess.

After cleaning, my Joe took the fridge apart (I wouldn’t have, but I think guys just like to take things apart sometime). We had leftover chalkboard paint from the previous owners we used on the doors. (Actually we have gallons and gallons of leftover paint. If you ever need spare paint I might have some.) It covered pretty well, and we did two coats on everything. We painted the body of the fridge with black high gloss paint, which was of course left over from the previous owner. It only takes less than a quart of paint for the whole fridge. 

The handles were originally painted with normal paint. Not a good idea–I went and bought silver spray paint that was labeled to stick to plastic and it worked much better.

The total cost of the project was $5 for spray paint. And I like having two fridges. Big grocery trips don’t end with a impromptu game of tetris.