Moving on....

You may recall I've been slowly but surely working on helping Marc and Lori with their master bedroom makeover.

Well guess what?  It's still not done;)  Thankfully none of us had the expectation that it would get done quickly but sheesh!  I am so ready to post some real before and after pics!  Put two working moms who live 45 minutes away from each other on a project and watch how it moves at a snails pace;)  Our shopping for the room consists of me trying to find time to "get away" and look for pieces that will look good in the room.  I then send her a picture and she says yay or nay.  What did we do before smart phones?

In the meantime we have become a little distracted;)  While I was looking for accessories for their bedroom I saw this rug and thought  " those are the colors Lori was kinda leaning towards for their  living  room".

You see they also want to overhaul their main living area.  At this price and only one available I did what any girl would do and sent her a picture and said do you want me to get this for you?

She said Yay!

I also found these 3 pictures that I thought looked great with it.

She said "yay" again..

I have learned over time that it is easier to start a room based off of a rug or a fabric than to try to find the rug after the fact.  Hence one of the reasons I think I'm struggling finding a rug for the master bedroom makeover.  Oh and when you are looking for a decent price it makes it even more challenging too right?

Anyway, after I found the rug I came home and put together this mood board.

Marc and Lori have had big dark leather furniture and were ready for a change.  It's really fun to have a client that is ready and willing to invest in new furniture too!

Here is the "somewhat before".  Since we hadn't planned on tackling this room until the bedroom was done we don't have a real before.  This is it after she got her brand new 8 x 10 rug home.

Another phone pic of course because that is how we roll!

One of Marc's requests is that we find a recliner for him.  Uh oh...right?  Thankfully recliners aren't all as bad as they use to be.

We also need to make the HUGE tv and console work.  I havent' even started thinking about this area yet.

This is an angled wall to the left of the wall with the t.v.

Anyway, after the rug purchase we got busy talking about and looking for a new sofa, a recliner and an accent chair.  I thought we should lighten it all up a bit and go for a light microfiber since they have a little one and also thought the tufted leather ottoman was a good option for their growing family.  It brings in a cozy element too.  With a large tray they can still sit drinks and what not on it.

We thought we may have to abandon the tufted ottoman when we realized how much it was going to cost!  Thankfully when I sent them to a recent Four Hands sale(I've mentioned my love for this place before and I'm sure I will again) they found this handsome feller..

 Lori texted me a picture and I got to say "yes" this time!

So now we were here....

Lori placed the pics up on the nails where the original wall art was just to see and they sold their furniture on craigslist and viola!  No place to sit in their new room!  We have got to get this done pronto.

Lori's main mission has been to find a light colored microfiber sofa at a good price point and a decent looking leather recliner and she did!  Or shall I say they did..don't want to leave you out Marc.

We are getting there.  She already has the curtains we just need to find a rod that we like.  Then once we get pillows, and lamps and some little finishing touches we are golden!  So exciting to get to this point and who knew I wold love shopping vicariously through others so much.  Since we are in between homes and don't have the budget or the room for new house stuff this has been a great way for me to get it out of my system for sure.

Meanwhile I have changed the mood board a little to pull out the orange in some of the rusty color of the rug and I think we are going this route now.  Can't wait to see how it all turns out and frankly I just can't wait to see if we "get er done!"

Join in

I am totally out of the blogging loop these days! In some ways I miss it but it others it has been liberating not to feel like I have another part time job when I should be rolling around on the floor with my babies! That being said my friend Dana over at Make Them Wonder has recently posted about the Roomspiration Blog Hop and it got me motivated to join in.  It is always fun to see all of the great and usually thrifty ideas that all you creative ladies come up with!  So I had to join in.  Go take a look.  Peruse through all the before and afters grab some great ideas with us!

I joined in over at View Along the Way to link up our little family room revamp.

 and then over to Homemaker on a Dime to share a few of our bathroom transformations.

Hope you'll join in and don't forget to go show Dana at Make Them Wonder some new blogger love!

While we're on the subject of living rooms...Another Before & After

This is our current living room.(I mention "current" because of the recent blast from  the past posts about our first home)  Or should I say this was our current living room..have I lost you yet? This little space is the most used area of our house yet is so hard arrange in a way that makes sense for our family.  See that corner on the left?  Stuffed to the brim with toys!  That had become the toy box and free for all for the kids.  We had super large furniture that took up too much space and as you can see it also had to be butted up against the walls.  Ideally we would have had a sectional to put on the back wall that wrapped around onto the right wall but since we are always "about to put the house on the market" we didn't want to make the purchase.  Although I did search about a 1 1/2yrs ago for the perfect kid friendly gray sofa and believe it or not couldn't find one(one that didn't break the bank that is).  Now they are everywhere!  I even when to Bassett where you can pick your own fabrics and had no luck.  Crazy how much things change in a year.  Anywho, that wall there on the right has always driven me crazy.  It is really hard to decorate around a thermostat so we just threw something up and lived with it.  I mean we really lived with it....all three of the photos on that wall are of our first born child and we have two more that never got there pictures up;)

BEFORE

So back to the we are going to " put our house on the market" comment.  We have been thinking about selling for the past two years but the market in general has made us weary of making the move.  The builder is still building in the neighborhood and it is tough to compete with them.  So instead we have been in constant staging mode.  I took all of our family photos down over a year ago and we try not to add anything that would get in the way of it being staged to sell.  That being said we decided that it was time to move the big brown beasts out of the living room.  They were weighing it down and there were a couple of huge rips in the leather that we didn't want to spend the money on because we didn't know if we could use them in the new place or not.  So the big sofa is now in the garage and we moved the chair into the formalish living room.  Not wanting to spend a lot I scoured Craigslist for microfiber sofas (we have 3 kids a cat and a dog) I found these brand new looking sofas and an accent chair for $500 or 600 I can't remember.  The accent chair wouldn't fit and was too matchy matchy anyway so I sold it.  Even though I wasn't really looking for blue I felt these were a good enough deal that we could sell them after we sold the house and at the same time they would lighten things up a bit.  We had already bought the rug at the Crate and Barrel outlet and it has some aquaish blues in it and I apparently was in an aqua mood because I had bought the lamp for $30 at marshalls. So here we are with a ton of blue in the room.  This is not what I had envisioned at all but hey it lightens it up a bit and looks clean and tidy.

As for the toy corner..there is a small closet under a staircase over to the right and we placed a low bookcase from Ikea with 8 large containers full of "stuff".  The kids each have their own box labeled and it seems to be working out pretty well.  I recently threw those pillows on the sofa(they were here and there in other rooms) and they add a bit to the sea of blue that we find ourselves in.

AFTER

So that's how our current living area became the staged good enough living area!  I think it brightened it up for sure!

Now if it only always stayed like this!  This is what I had to throw into the formal living so I could get a decent picture;)!

Linked to:

Homemaker on a Dime

Meet the Living Room

You met the outside of our first home here last week.  Now come inside it's fun inside(couldn't help myself..the kid's are watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as I type).  Here is the view of the front door from the living room.  Here's what we got rid of: screen door, half wall dividing the dining, vertical blinds, peel and stick "wood look" flooring, you can't see much of it but the thin non insulated door that went into the garage there to the left of the breakfast area, brass chandelier and every bit of trim and door in the house was replaced.  See that entry to the hall there on the right?  We decided to round that off and add more interest(see pic below for in progress shot..not sure if we would do that again but that is where we were in our design style in 2003).  Oh and we scraped the popcorn ceilings throughout the whole house, sanded every wall with a belt sander because they had a prickly texture(I am now not a big fan of the belt sander..that was rough!), and you see that back wall in the breakfast nook?  That was a faux brick pattern made out of joint compound.  Its was about an inch thick..I sure wish I could find the pictures of me sanding that off. The air was so thick with dust we couldn't see each other and mid sanding we ended up bubbling off the area..Live and learn through home reno for sure!

Below is what you first saw when you walked into the house.  Hubby built a new mantle one day while I was at work(better than flowers!), we of course got rid of the vertical blinds, we also scraped every window in the house because they had a film of something all over, replaced the sliding door with double french doors that both opened out towards the one day to be deck(does every girl love the thought of pushing open double doors to her veranda..or is it just me?), replaced the the fan, painted the beam white to make the room more airy.  I scrubbed most of the smoke stains around the fireplace off with a wire brush, removed the rusty fireplace screen and painted the inside of the fireplace with an appropriate heat and fireproof  paint.   Those are the same peel and stick vinyl "wood look" planks mentioned in the bath reno that were of course replaced with the tile that we put everywhere except the bedrooms.

So here is how it all eventually looked. There was a time in between these before and afters where we had a dinky tv cabinet, and none of this furniture.  See that large armoire for the t.v?  I am a lucky woman...hubby built that too.  We saw one at a large furniture store..took a picture and he eventually whipped one up that fit our space.   All the trim in the house was done with MDF boards that we ripped down to size and routed the top edge of. Otherwise there was no way a tallish baseboard was going to be in the budget.

Here is the armoire almost done..I wasn't so good at taking In Progress pics..or I have lost them(it's a little bit of both I'm sure)

Here is the other side:from standing near the breakfast nook.

The view from the front door.  That's the master bedroom to the left of the credenza.  

Just another shot of the same area.  I had apparently changed up the stuff on the credenza a bit at this point.  

If you look at the pictures below you see how much the room progressed over time.  I tried to go with a yellow color(shown below..yellow is tough for me to figure out) but felt like we were going to get a sunburn just walking into the room. Then I  tried a faux finish look that was just all wrong.  Eventually we landed on a paint color called "winter wheat" but I can't remember the brand..I can say that it was from home depot though:) (that was our home away from home) A lot of this look is thanks to new furniture and just collecting some fun stuff to decorate with.

Isn't it amazing what some paint and new furniture can do for the feel of a home?  We bought that little chair for $5 when we were first dating(probably our very first project together) and I am embarrassed to say we first covered it in fuzzy leopard print(I mean the super fuzzy classy stuff..that was a long time ago friends) and then this lovely little faux leather number.  It now resides in storage because we just can't let it go;)

So there it is! We loved this warm and cozy room!

Linked up to: 

Houseography

Between naps on the porch

The Shabby Chic Cottage

Somewhat Simple

 Savvy Southern Style,Blue Cricket Design

At The Picket Fence, Fingerprints On The Fridge, Between Naps on the Porch, The DIY Showoff, The Girl Creative, Sumos Sweet Stuff,

Skip To My Lou,makin cute blogs, Tater Tots and Jello