The Perfect Neutral Area Rug... So Far!

[A little PSA for my blog readers: This year, Amazon Prime Day is on July 11, but they have great deals starting on July 10. Not an Amazon Prime member? You can sign up for a free trial here!]

While we have yet to find the perfect new living room furniture (hence the lack of seating shown in the photos below), I just had to share an update about the area rug we recently got to help define our living area. I wanted a neutral rug that wasn't too light (we have two dogs) but yet not so dark that it blends in with the recently-installed luxury vinyl plank floor.

After much searching online and in a few stores, we finally decided to go with this 7x7 Safavieh Hudson Shag Collection Grey and Ivory Moroccan Ogee Plush Area Rug. I really appreciated their variety of size options in both square and round. It was tempting to go with the ivory color for contrasting with our dark floor, but practicality won out and we opted for grey. 

The rug also had some pretty stellar reviews on Amazon, and now I can see why. It's super soft and plush, and the grey color has just a hint of brown which adds some warmth. The ivory pattern and the ever-so-slight sheen also make it contrast beautifully with our floor.

Main Floor Renovation: The Walls Come Tumbling Down

Where do I even start... Somehow, it's already been more than three months since my last post. But really, is anyone surprised by that? It's kind of been my track record for the past couple years.

By golly though, I'm determined to get this blog caught back up with all our ongoing home remodeling projects. Let's backtrack to something I've skipped over until now, but it's actually been one of the most integral parts of our entire main floor renovation.

It actually started last May. As in, May of 2016. This is when we took down some [non-load-bearing] walls. Actually, my husband and my father-in-law did most of this demo work one weekend while I was out of town (and I was okay with that). 

First, here are a few before pictures of the space with walls. As you can see, our living room and dining room were disjointed and a bit claustrophobic. (Although, we did do our best to improve the situation by creating this window opening when we moved into the house.)

Crazy for Copper: Top 12 Copper Home Accents

Whether it's smooth or hammered, shiny or antiqued, rosy-hued or bronze-hued... I'm crazy for copper!  This beautiful metal is so versatile as an accent in home decor, and mixing it with other metals is a big "yasss!" in my book. 

Copper adds such warmth and richness to a space. So with fall right around the corner I thought it would be a great time to compile a list of my top 10 favorite copper looks. Well, except I had a problem narrowing it down to just 10. So with that said...  get ready to indulge in some swoon-worthy copper goodness!

Gray Matters: A Gray Paint Transformation (Part II)

So it occurred to me that I teased about my new gray paint job way back in November, and then never blogged about it again. Whoops. Bad blogger, bad! I'm sure you were all losing sleep over it, right? Not to worry, my friends. Seven months later, here is the full reveal!

You can visit Part I to see the 'before' pictures, but here's a little collage as a quick reminder. Our walls used to be a very warm beige (almost gold?), with a dark reddish hallway and stairwell. Those were the colors the interior was painted when we bought the house as the first owners. 

Ten gallons of paint later, the transformation was complete. I loved it then, and I'm still really happy with it. It feels fresh, modern, and airy. Because I've already drug this out long enough, here are the after pictures!

Shelf Display #1: DIY Decorative Vase Filler

A couple weeks ago, I revealed our new (albeit empty) floating shelves in the living room. Well, they're slowly filling up with a combination of DIY projects, travel souvenirs, and yes, even a couple of items that were just bought from the store (gasp). So I thought I'd go through shelf-by-shelf and give a closer look at each display, starting with this one:

As you can see, the glass vase contains some decorative balls, which is a project I've been wanting to try ever since I found it on Pinterest several months ago. Depending on where you go to and what they're made out of, store-bought vase fillers can run anywhere from $5-10 a piece, which can add up pretty quickly if you have a big container to fill. 

Floating Shelf Installation: More Space for More Stuff!

Until we finish our basement, I'm kind of running out of room on our main floor to display pretty things, which makes me sad. That means there's less opportunity for me to make fun DIY crafts, because I have nowhere to put them when I'm done. This is a real problem, people.

But I recently realized a solution... floating shelves! Since we can't fit any more standing shelves or other furniture pieces in any of our rooms, it's time to start utilizing the walls. I've had the idea for awhile but never bit the bullet because these kinds of shelves are so dang expensive. And yes, I know that we (i.e. my handy husband) could just make some if we really wanted to, but there's plenty of other projects on our/his plate right now and frankly I didn't want to wait six months for them (no offense, honey).

Additionally, I had extra incentive thanks to $50 in Lowe's gift cards from Christmas (thanks, Mom & Dad!). So, after much deliberation and multiple trips to Lowe's, I finally decided on four allen + roth shelves (two 18" and two 24") for our living room wall. Even with the gift card, I still ended up spending about $60.

Don't mind the lamp sitting on the floor in the corner; 

this was taken before I finished my side table makeover.

Exploring My Dark Side: A Side Table Makeover

Just call me butter, 'cause I'm on a roll! 

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm just feeling pretty good about myself and the long overdue projects I've been tackling lately, after what seems like weeks (if not months) of getting nothing done. Well, nothing fun, anyway.

Last time, I showed you my Goodwill cabinet makeover. And now that I've crossed over to the dark side... I like it there! We actually have quite a bit of dark/black furniture, and I'm on a mission to make some of our random pieces of furniture fit in a little better. Case in point: this little side table. (Or is it an end table?)

You can hardly see the table in these pictures because it's practically blends in to our wall color. Blah. I believe it was a hand-me-down and it's really nothing special, but I've kept it around thinking that it would make for a good project someday. And that someday finally happened last week. 

Blinded by the Light

You might remember my window woes from last month. While I received some good suggestions, I still haven’t fully envisioned what to do with this wall of windows. However, I did decide that we needed to bite the bullet and at least get some real blinds up to replace the temporary paper shades. I figured it could be my Christmas present – that was all I really wanted, how boring is that?

Old paper shades. Ugh.

After browsing through the window treatment options at Home Depot once again, we decided that spending several hundred dollars for custom blinds was not going to be in the budget. That left us with the boxed blinds that you can cut to size. We chose faux wood, which hopefully won’t be a decision that we regret in the future. We got white to keep the room lighter, plus we also have other white doors and trimwork in the house, so the blinds don’t look out of place. Luckily, we found a size that matched our windows almost perfectly (35” x 72”), so we didn’t even have to trim them!

But before we could put them up, the two-year-old paper shades had to die come down. Initially I was worried that they would stick to the trim and leave gooey paper residue, but they peeled off pretty easily. I must say, removing them was quite satisfying!

Nekkid windows

The installation process for the new blinds went surprisingly smooth as well. Luke worked on that while I touched up some paint in the bathroom, providing assistance as needed (and taking photos of him hard at work, of course).

One down, two to go!

About three hours later (including a break for lunch), our blinds were installed!

We still don’t have the valance pieces up yet because they need to be trimmed down a little bit so they’ll fit inside the window frame. But I just couldn’t wait any longer to post about them! It’s amazing how much more natural light we can get; I got so used to the temporary shades which always covered the top half of these south-facing windows. And at under $30 a pop, these blinds were pretty economical, so I don’t know why it took us so long to finally get some.

Phoebe approves.

Our living room feels almost like a “real” room now, but it’s still missing the warmth and homey-ness of curtains. I’d like to try making my own if it means saving money, so I think I’m going to take a field trip to Hancock Fabrics to see if I can find some inspiration there. Anyone have any suggestions on colors, patterns, types of fabric, etc? (If I do make them myself, I’ll be using the no-sew method and ironing the seams!)

Window Woes

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Christmas decorating is in full swing here now, so you can expect to see all of that soon (although there's a bit of a preview up in my header). But, first things first.

I was trying to hold off on posting about our living room windows until I had actually done something to them. But obviously -- as our "temporary" paper blinds can attest to -- that's not happening. Yes, it's been two and a half years and these $5 blinds are still hangin' on, long past their intended life span.

(Yes, that would be Phoebe in her favorite spot. And yes, I need to replace a light bulb.)

It's a little embarrassing, because I've become so used to them that I almost forget they're not real window treatments. I mean, they've got these nifty plastic clips to fold them up and everything. Classy, right?

But I just know that our living room would feel so much more homey if we had real blinds or even curtains. I just can't decide what to do!

The windows in our office and master bedroom also have paper shades, but no one sees those as often and I think they'll be easier to tackle. Sadly, there are only two other windows in our entire house that have been appropriately dressed:

Entryway

Guest bedroom

Both these windows were rather large, but the only real difficulty was finding 96" curtains instead of the standard 84" length, and that wasn't really all that hard. But this wall of windows in our living room has been far more intimidating. 

So, I need some window covering counseling from my fellow stylish and thrify bloggers. What would you do? Blinds? (Wood or faux? White or matching the trim?) Roman shades? Curtains? Any inspiration photos to share? Something must be done, if not just for aesthetic enhancement, then at least to add a little more of a barrier between the drafty windows and us (especially now that winter is right around the corner).

And obviously it would be ideal if this project could be done on the cheap. If it comes down to DIY, I may not be able to sew, but I can Steam-A-Seam!

Oh, and for what it's worth:

- These windows are south-facing (so it's nice during the winter when we can let some sun in).

- The loveseat under the windows pretty much has to stay put. Our living room is small and our three big pieces of furniture only fit a certain way. *sigh*

Flashback: Our Hole in the Wall

I've already shared with you some of the major tasks we've taken on outside our house (sprinkler system and sod). Now I'm going to reveal the most drastic change we've made inside our house since we moved here. So get comfy and settle in for a long (but hopefully interesting) read!

First of all, our house does not have what you would call an "open" floor plan. The rooms are small and divided for the most part. However, the walls that separate our entryway, living room, dining room, and kitchen don't go all the way up to the ceiling, so that makes it feel a little less claustrophobic.

Even so, we knew right away that someday we'd end up doing something to open up the living room and dining room to each other. ("Someday" happened about 6 months after we moved in.) These are the few pictures I took shortly after we moved in. As you can see, the wall behind the couch made these two rooms feel very enclosed and very disconnected. It was pretty much impossible to have people over and be able to utilize both the living room and dining room at once, which was kind of frustrating.  Oh, and we couldn't watch TV from the dinner table, either... we love our Wheel of Fortune :)

 

 

It would have taken some major renovation to remove the wall completely, because it's also connected to the archway between the dining room and entryway, which is connected to the archway between our entryway and living room. Confusing. So anyway, we decided the easiest way to open up the space would be to make a window opening in the wall. 

The whole idea made me a little nervous, and I wanted to know exactly what it would look like. Luckily for me, Luke is an architect, so he has access to a sweet design program called Revit. He was able to draw up a rendering of our rooms with a window opening, and this is what ended up sealing the deal for me:

Cool, huh?

We didn't want a wimpy window, so we settled on an opening that was 5' wide by 3' tall. Rather than centering it in the wall, we decided to center it with the light fixture in the dining room. I pretty much let Luke take over the details of measuring and determining the exact placement of the opening, because he’s just really good at that stuff.

Once the outline (and placement of wall studs) was determined by a pencil line and some painters tape, there was nothing left to do but bite the bullet and CUT A FREAKING HOLE IN OUR WALL. Can you tell this is when I started getting really nervous? If we screwed this up, it wasn't going to be an easy fix. Needless to say, I let Luke handle this part too, because I had no experience with such things and didn’t want this to be my practice. Here he is, cutting out the drywall by scoring it several times with a utility knife and a straightedge.

Then, it was time to do cut the drywall on the dining room side. This is when we really started to get the full effect. Just look how excited Luke is!

Once the sheets of drywall were finally removed from both sides of the wall, this is what remained:

While it was tempting to just stop there with the "jail cell" look, we thought it best to get rid of those studs. :) But first, we infilled between the studs with 2x4 blocking at the head and sill. Then we created the jambs by building out from the closest stud still inside the wall cavity. THEN, it was time to cut the studs out with a reciprocating saw. (Using a hand saw would have created too much torque and taken much longer.)  I was in charge of holding the stud from vibrating so much while Luke sawed away until his arms were sore. This was probably the scariest part because of the potential for the drywall around the opening to crack -- and we did NOT want to have to replace/patch that, especially because of our textured walls. Anyway, after a lot of swearing sawing and breath-holding, this was the result:

 

You probably can't see it in the picture, but there are three holes cut in the 2x4's up in the head. We ran allthread through these holes up through the top plate of the wall and secured them with nuts, in order to create tension and prevent the head from sagging (because we didn't have a true header).

Finally it was time to frame it out. We used oak veneer for the head and jambs because it was free from Luke's dad (yes, we're cheap and will take any breaks we can get). But we used 3/4" solid oak for the sill because we wanted to create a sturdy ledge. 

We found trim and decorative corner blocks at Home Depot to match the existing trimwork in the rest of the house. We also lucked out by finding a can of stain in the basement that the builders used for the trimwork. Score!

In the midst of all this, we were also planning an open house, so we were on a tight deadline to get the window done. All in all, it took about a week from start to finish, since we mostly only worked on it during the evenings. We managed to get everything done just in time for the open house except for setting the nails and filling in the holes (which we didn't get around to until weeks later, for some reason).

I'm sure you're ready to see the end result now, so without further ado, I present to you our window opening (which we affectionately call our hole in the wall):

 

 

Not too shabby, eh? Notice how Phoebe manages to get into the pictures...

I'm really happy we decided to do this -- it's made a huge difference in many ways:
- Opening up the space and letting more natural light through
- Allowing people to hang out in both rooms and still have a conversation
- Leading us to utilize the dinner table much more now that we can watch TV while we eat (such a bad habit, I know)
- Creating more functional space as a leaning ledge that's wide enough to sit drinks or decorative accents on
- Increasing the appeal of the house if and when we sell it someday. I have a feeling the wall initially turned off potential buyers (before we came along) because of how small it made the rooms seem. 

Well, I think I've patted myself on the back enough. (Luke actually deserves a lot of the credit for doing most of the hard work while I "supervised" and handed him tools). Now I need to give YOU kudos for making it to the end of this post! I'd love to know what you think of the transformation. I left out a lot of details (and yet this still turned into a novel somehow), but if you have any specific questions about how we did something, ask away!