Giveaway is now closed Congratulations to Lauren2028 who said, "I wish that trying to decorate my house was 'so simple'....I can't make up my mind for the life of me!" We're not afraid to call in the pros when we are faced with a challenge that is above our skill-set, like installing a new window. Crown […]
This weekend, curtains are on the agenda. Originally I had pinned down classic white curtains with black trim (pictured below) for our family room, but I am second guessing the decision. This week I have been whipping out mood boards for lots of different spaces and I realized I didn't put a white drape on […]
9 months ago, while painting our staircase spindles and railings (ironic I was doing the same thing this weekend), I took a break and wrote a quick post about something I couldn't stop thinking about: Adding a window in the family room. Our family room looked so different back then, huh?! When we started this […]
You may remember our inspiration photo as far as art goes for the family room from our mood board: I originally found this photo here, but of course didn't link the exact post and now I can't find it again. Pet peeve. We have plenty of paintings dabbling the house, and in a relaxed […]
When we revealed our new paint color for the family room, we were so happy that so many of you loved it as much as we did. There was one issue that the paint color did bring up, that I was trying to avoid thinking about fixing it. However, when one of our readers brought […]
Is it really the 7th already? I admit, I was a bit late getting this month's drawing done and to the printers, but here it is (!): Why a cow butcher chart? I specifically remember watching one episode of Good Eats when Alton Brown was going over the different cuts of meat that come […]
The ceiling fan had to go. Not because we're not fan fans. Because we are. But I can't remember one time when we actually used it. The chains were stuck for awhile so initially we couldn't use the light without also having the fan on--so we opted out of both. So really, this huge, room-shrinking, […]
You may (or may not) remember what our old carpet looked like in the family room. It wasn't very memorable. Standard oatmeal color. A much higher pile than we would have chosen for ourselves: The carpet made us uneasy. When we moved into this home last year it was very dirty. We had to wear […]
Last night, we painted the walls. After demolition, framing out a wall, sheetrocking, and patching infinite holes in the ceiling and lots of other dirty jobs--we both agreed it felt great to do something pretty low key like painting walls. Chris and I have painting down and we can knock out a room in about […]
This isn't one of those never-buy-this-product posts. It will also be pretty evident that this isn't a "sponsored post." You know, those ones that have the disclaimer at the end where the blogger says that they were paid, but they promise all of the overly nice things they say about the product are absolutely true […]
The first pillow cover that we're working into our family room arrived over the weekend. It's gorgeous. It's thick and soft and well constructed. I mentioned I wanted to introduce chocolate as an accent color when I talked about our mood board here, and this is the exact color I was thinking of. You can […]
Or, "How to move your ceiling vents"....orrrr, "Make way for crown molding!" There aren't a ton of online tutorials about moving your ceiling vents to a different location (I couldn't find any--which made this project even more nerve-wrecking), but that's exactly what we did on Saturday. With the plans to have built-in bookcases from floor […]
Our blog was nominated for a Homie award for best DIY blog! So honored. With so many inspiring blogs nominated in our category, we don't expect to win--but if you are a reader, we'd love your vote of support as a way of saying, "Keep it up!" Thank you, everyone. You make living in constant […]
Guess what is happening this afternoon. I'm gonna try to contain my excitement during the process. I don't want to be a total weirdy and watch and stare the whole time--but playing it cool has never been my strong suit. I'm gonna take about 230 pictures and lean over the banister smiling the whole time. […]
Tuesday night was sheetrock night. It was also the night where we renamed the paint color in our home "Drywall." Isn't the color eerily similar to the paint on the walls? Nuts. I'm sure we did things unconventional, but like always--we do what works for us. "Us" being I man and one relatively weak-sauce woman. […]
We got the drywall up last night, but we still have to do the mudding and taping so we'll save that post for tomorrow so I can give the full rundown on how we checked "walls" off of our to-do list. If you already have walls, especially blank walls, you are gonna want to […]
Cheesiest, most expected title right? You love it. Last time you saw this wall, we had just finished demolition and it looked like this: Now, a few sick days and several stubborn concrete nails later, it looks like this: Chris and I finished framing this wall last night. Now, Chris helped build his parents' home, […]
Whew! This weekend involved a lot of sneezing, coughing, crying and me attempting to make soup for my sick babies (Greta and Chris). None of it was pretty, especially the soup part. Thankfully, everyone is feeling loads better which means Chris and I are back knee-deep in sheet rock--we really want to finish building the […]
Yesterday, we let you see what fun it was to take that silly half wall down--but we can barely wait to build things back up in a way that makes more sense to us than a random wall/shelf two-thirds of the way up a wall. So, here are the plans. Albeit, a very rough floorplanner.com […]
We had some technical difficulties yesterday. I thought I lost my MacBook. I knew where it was--but I thought it had gone kaput. Luckily, its sudden turning off and not turning back on was just a charging issue. So, for now if I keep a weight on the cord, it stays on. Hahaha. I'll take […]
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