House Tour - The Office

As much as things are SUPER unfinished around here, I thought I would take the time on Fridays to do a tour of a different room in our house. I've learned things will never really be finished with me because I am constantly tweaking and rearranging!! Plus, it's fun to see how far we've come!!

The first tour is going to be of our home office. Kevin doesn't work from home very often, but when he does it's nice to have a nice big desk area with two different workstations for both of us. All of the furniture in this space is from Ikea except for the little, round side table. Before we see current photos, let take a trip down memory lane to see what this space looked like before it became "the office."

First, it was an empty, lack luster, beige carpet filled formal dining room....



Then we painted it merlot, but we still NEVER used it as a formal dining room.....





Then we turned it into a awesome homeschooling space for our kids, but it was so dark and sort of a catch all for junk....







Then we closed it in, added french doors and painted it a bright, fun chartreuse/apple green - Sweet Daphne by Benjamin Moore. These are the progress photos... what a mess! But what a transformation!!















Now, it's our home office!!! Here it is today.














We seriously use the heck out of this room. All of the kids' school books are in our generously sized Expedit wall shelving. We have plenty of space for everything!! I am still going to be adding more decorative pieces to the Expedit and changing some of the white boxes over to baskets at some point. We still need art for the top of it as well. I would also like to get a desk lamp and some cute plants for the Lack shelf over the desk. And of course once winter hits again, we'll want some sort of warm graphic rug to keep our feet warm while blogging!!

That it for this Friday's house tour!! Hope you enjoyed it!! Stay tuned for next week when we tour the kitchen!!

Master Bedroom Ramblings/Cane Chair Progress

Can we all just agree that Pinterest is soooooooo addicting? It's bad people. I need an intervention! One good thing about it is that it's helped me come up with some great ideas for all of these in limbo projects we have going on here. Take the master bedroom, for example. It's slow going, but progress is progress. Right? Kevin and I stayed up until 1 am last weekend working on the thrift store cane chair. We had a few issues (most of which came from the fact that we were sampling a few new beers we picked up at the Sprecher Brewery in WI), but all in all I'm happy with it! We still have to get some more staples to finish the front - see how the fabric is sort of hanging off? And I have to buy some of that cording to trim out the back and bottom edges so you won't see the staples. Then we'll call Candi the cane chair DONE!

My daughter Abby (sewing genious at age 8) and I also made up some throw pillow covers to match!! I'm super pumped about how things are looking so far. Here's a photo update and inspiration pics/notes about where my brain is headed with the rest of this transformation. :)


Nice, dark picture!! My camera sux!!!


Up close..... fabric hanging off needs to be cut & trim added to it


Another view... prob going to do a couple of large pieces of art OR maybe a smallish gallery wall?? Like these....





OR



More photos.....

New bed pillows to match chair fabric... prob going to hang a sunburst mirror over the bed and add some frames over each nightstand like these... (and we still need some cool lamps too)





Near....


And far...... ;) grover reference


The door dilema or doorlema is going to be solved by adding a full length mirror to the front of the closet door (door #1 or the door on the far left). The door into our room (door #2 or the middle door) will stay as is. Door #3 or the bathroom door will be replaced with a full view frosted glass door. I feel like that will help open up the space of all those doors without making it look super weird. Here are a couple of idea photos...


Mirrored door for closet....


Frosted glass "bath" door :)

A few more photo updates that have nothing to do with the bedroom and then I will stop pic spamming!!! The laundry room lighting has always been total crap. We found an inductrial looking pendant light on sale for $15 on our latest Lowe's trip. Woo hoo, score!!! Here's what it looks like hanging in our laundry room.




How much do I love the giant Minion Abby drew on the chalkboard door?? So much!!!! :) Nevermind the fact that I almost sh!t myself every time I walk into the laundry room thinking it's a real person. Yes, I need new glasses.

In other thrifting news.... check out my super awesome $39 find!! They don't just sell cane chairs!!! :)



It's an old server, but Kevin and I plan on turning it into a bathroom vanity when we redo the kids' bathroom this fall/winter. :) It's going to look amazing!!! Picture it painted a bright turquoise with a cool vessel sink on top!!! Like this:


LOVE this color combo....


The vessel sinks at Menard's are $49, so this little project will be under $100 and look like a million bucks. Fingers crossed.

Well, that's it for now. Whew, that was a lot of pictures!!! Hopefully this next couple of weekends will bring more progress in the way of wall art for the bedroom. That is if I can make up my mind!!!

Fabric Guru & Candi

Happy Summer, everybody!! After a cold and extra rainy start, summer is officially here. We have been out enjoying the weather, so I haven't had a lot of extra time to blog or work on the many home improvement projects that I have going on. I wanted to post a quick update on my bedroom cane chair project before we head to the pool to soak up some sun!

BEFORE:


DURING:


AFTER:
?????????

You'll remember my chair update, pictured above. We ripped it to shreds - tore off the old fabric, pulled out the disintegrated foam padding and springs that we inside of the chair. I primed and painted "Candi" (that's what we named her. Yes, you can name a chair!) in same color we painted the drawer fronts of my Ikea Rast nightstands. It's Olympic's 'parchment white', which if you're wondering is the PERFECT match to Ikea's white furniture finish. Pure awesomeness!



The bed pretty much still looks like this..... although I have two Ikea lumbar (14x22) pillows on it now. Still looking for some sweet matching lamps for the nightstands. I am also planning on taking the vinyl wall decal off and replacing it with some sort of a sunburst mirror. I saw some nice ones at Hobby Lobby yesterday that were 50% off, but still not in the budget right now. But anyways, I DID score a suh-weeeeeeet deal on some fabric seconds at http://www.fabricguru.com. The fabric is by Richloom and it's called 'Campione.' It has a slight, barely there defect so it was marked down to $5.95 a yard! Now that's what I call a deal!! Here it is shown below on a pillow so you can see what the pattern looks like:



Don't you love it??!!! I think it will look amazing on the chair!! And I ordered enough fabric to recover the lumbar pillows on the bed as well. :) I adore the bright, happiness of the pattern and colors. I also love how it has the exact blue and yellow of the pillows and throw I bought from Meijer!! So excited for it to get here so I can finally finish "Candi" the cane chair!! When all is said and done, I will have spent $23 for the chair, $22 for the new foam padding and $12 for new fabric. That's less than $60 for a beautiful bedroom chair!!! :) Hooray for thrifting!

More photo updates soon!!! We're off to enjoy the day!!!!

I've Been Framed - Part Deux

See how I just used french right there? :) Nevermind the fact that I took french for three years in high school and that's all I remember!!! You know that post awhile back about my gallery wall in the front room? Well, I've made some small progress in finding fun art and things to put in those frames. I'm taking my time with it so it's still not done, but I wanted to throw up a few update pictures for fun anyways. Here's how it looked before:



And here's how it looks now:







I have a new pillow cover (still deciding on other prints for the other two - bringing in red & brown somehow), I finished painting the back of the fireplace tan to match the walls & added more objects, and I have several new prints in the frames!! The pointe shoe is from the etsy seller BalletArt, the drum set printed on sheet music is from the etsy seller FauxKiss, and the Chicago destination print is from tinyowlstudios - also an etsy seller. I have lots more things in my cart on etsy just waiting to be purchased!! The small, square black frame that you can barely see has our wedding invitation in it. I have some shadow box plans for the other two small frames - I was thinking of putting the kids' hospital bracelets in one. For the other one I want to put our first house key and our first car key in. Don't ask me why I still have them, but I do and I think they'd look cool inside a shadow box. I love how this wall is turning out. We have a ways to go, but we're getting there!!

AND I finally decided on a frame configuration for the other sofa wall in the family room! It took long enough. But if I've learned anything from home renovation/decorating it's that you can't rush it.

This was my inspiration photo for this wall:



Here is the blank wall before:



And here is how it looks now:





This darling print from Made By Girl will be going in the largest frame and the other ones will hold family photos. I love the big number six in the inspiration pic, so no doubt I'll be on the lookout for a number five for my shelf. Hobby Lobby perhaps???



So that's it for my little update! Progress is slow, but sure. In other updates, we got some great news about our little Lulu the other day. Her EEG came back normal! The neuro says that she has a benign form of epilepsy that will eventually correct itself. So she could definately have some more seizures, but most likely she will outgrow them in a few years. We are so relieved!! Thanks to everyone for keeping her in your prayers!!!

Cane You Believe I'm Doing This??

Cane chairs. Remember them? My mom had one back in the 80s. Well, what's old is new again because cane chairs are making a HUGE comeback in the design scene. They have great lines, are afforable and pretty easy to find if you know where to look. I have been stalking my local garage sale website and craigslist, but most of the cane chairs I've come across have either been in rotten shape or more than I'm willing to pay.

Since Kevin is on vacation, we decided to check out the local thrift store in hopes of finding the perfect chair. Thrift & Dollar on Lake Street in downtown Aurora - how did I not know about this place?! They had the coolest old stuff!! And talk about hitting the chair jackpot!! It was a wonderland of cane chairs!!! Yay!!! We picked up this beauty for all of $24. Woo hoo!!



I should have taken a photo before I ripped the back off. The fabric is toast and so are the guts, so I will be replacing the back and seat with new foam as well as fabric. Pulling all these staples out is going to be pretty time consuming. And since I've never really upholstered anything before, I don't really know what I'm doing. But for $24, I'm not out too much money if it turns out looking like crap right??

I'll be the first to say I've never been big into thrifting. Something about other people's old stuff freaks me out a little bit. It's not really a germ thing, but more of a past life thing. Furniture can have a past life right??? Ahhhhhhhh!!!! Let's just hope I didn't bring home a possessed chair. My plans for this thrifty beauty are undecided as of yet. I could go black or white as far as paint color. If the chair gets painted black, I'll probably go with a striking white fabric for contrast. If it gets painted white, the fabric will either be yellow or blue - maybe a print. Either way, I think it will make the perfect bedroom chair! Here are some of my inspiration photos....


Black & yellow, black & yellow!!


white looks nice too & would match my bed...


love the contrast


white & blue


so fun!


Love how they look in a room!


Different style, but I love the black with the white fabric


Another different style, but I love the print on this fabric!

Decisions, decisions!! Stay tuned for a more detailed tutorial of the chair demo. Hopefully it isn't a giant chair fail. I can't wait to see how it looks in its new home in my master bedroom!!