See this Little Ebates Button on the Left?

I started shopping through Ebates over the holidays and did recieve my rebate check!  I don't know but for me it sounded to good to be true that I could find almost any store online through ebates and get some kind of rebate.  Even ebay and itunes...yes itunes.  They email me what they call a "daily double" every day where the rebate is doubled on some purchases.  You can even shop for appliances people!  I haven't done that yet but I think when we start loooking for appliances I will go to the stores and see what I like and then find it here. Anywho...just thought I would share a fun little shopping find that floats my boat!

Now who wouldn't LOVE this???

Just had to share something awesome!  This would be a great way to start your morning..Roll out of bed and slide on down to your coffee..You would have to crack a smile now matter how groggy you were!

LOVE IT!
Found here:  http://design-milk.com/an-nyc-home-with-a-steel-slide-by-turett-collaborative-architects/

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;)!

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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!

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Our First Bath Reno

This was Mr. Stinky's guest bath. He had seen better days. You can't tell from this first picture that there was wallpaper but oh trust me there was! It was that thick "vinalish" stuff from the 80's and was a pain to remove for sure. Lots of hot soapy water with one of those wallpaper perforator thingies and hours of elbow grease finally got it off. We ended up putting in a new low flow toilet which we either got for free(through a city of austin waterwise program) or minimal costs(this was 7 years and three pregnancies ago;) I can't remember.  See that hot pink stripe of tile in the shower?  We lived with that for the 4 years we were in the house and finally did something about it right before we put him on the market(see next picture with handsome hubby, cute kid, and beautiful new subway tile and hardware).  Shower curtains are great for hiding that kind of thing but why is it that we wait until we want to sell to do all the things we wanted to do?  Budget of course!  The truth is I do wish we would have done it sooner because it looked like someone had removed a couple of rows of the original white tile and put those in with super thick calk lines.  Needless to say we had to replace the backerboard and everything when we finally decided to do it.

We replaced the flooring(same tile through most of the house), added a new mirror, new vanity lights, new paint of course(I would't do this color again but 7 years ago it was okie dokey), new sink, faucet, added some blinds(to cover a not so nice older window), oh and a new door and trim throughout the room(we got the crown molding at a salvage store) and the absolute best thing we did was make the concrete countertop!  We  didn't have a clue what we were doing but thankfully the first one turned out great.  Concrete is cheap and so is MDF do we knew it wouldn't  hurt to try.  We cut a piece of mdf to size, added 4 edges or ends(picture a shallow rectangular open top box) and then cut out 2 pieces of mdf in the shape of the sink(the template was provided with the sink).  Then the mdf in the shape of the sink hole was screwed into the middle of the rectangular form.  We then painted on a sealer and added a bead of silicone in all the joints so it wouldn't absorb the wet concrete(in hind sight we should have used melamine so we didn't have to seal it but it was more expensive) then we put our little electric palm sander on the edges of the form to get the bubbles out.  After it was hard as a rock(imagine that) we unscrewed all the pieces of the mold and oh so carefully flipped it over.  There were lots of tiny holes on the smooth side so we made a little concrete slurry and wiped it over the top until it gave us the smoother look we were going for.  After that dried it was time to polish it with a beeswax sealer and some crazy  little cloth wheel thing that attached to our drill.  The only challenge after all that was getting it inside.  Oh how I wish I had a picture of that! It involved a wheelbarrow.....

So what do ya think? Have you tried any concrete projects? I don't have any real #'s here but I bet this whole project cost us under $250.00 not including the professional tile job that we had done right before we moved. Have I mentioned we are determined not to tile anything ourselves again and have the utmost respect for professional tilers?

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Christinas Adventures

Meet Mr. Stinky

I know I know that isn't a very endearing name for your first house. The first home you and your husband purchase together, the first home that your first pet as a married couple came home to, your first child's first  home,  your first big time project. He really was stinky and a bit sad when we bought him though. That doesn't mean that we didn't grow to love him. Maybe that is why I had to have him! Seriously as we started walking away from Mr. Stinky with our realtor upon the first showing hubby was quite surprised when I said "we can make this really nice and it is cheap in our price range!".  Although I have to admit I did shed a few tears of fear when I got a good grasp of what we had gotten ourselves into. .  So over the next several posts I will share a little about how we turned our sad little sittin on the market forever house in 2002 which was unheard of in Austin at the time house (I am really good at run on sentences..are you following?) into a let's put it on the market oh my goodness we have a few offers where are we gonna move house in 2007!

Oh these bring back some crazy memories!  We were so excited and so overwhelmed at the same time.  Little did we know we would be even more overwhelmed as we dug in and realized there would be very little that we could save.  We bought this puppy with 0% down for a reason...we had no money..

 So you might wonder why we would buy such a fixer upper?  I don't know..cause I wanted to!  I was ready to do all that fun stuff they did on Trading Spaces and we ended up charging a lot of it (which I don't recommend for most people) but I am one of those people that wants to pay off a credit card bill before I even receive the statement.  I can't stand it and I will move around that debt to every 0% offer I can to avoid paying interest.  We are also super thrifty and bought the best value for the least money kind of stuff..if it looked good of course!  Thankfully we don't have to operate that way anymore but I am glad we took the plunge and did it.  It all worked out in the end.  We had a house that we loved that sold quickly for a profit..what more can you ask for?(oh how the market has changed!)

Here is a sneak peak of how it all turned out.

Funky Junk Link Party

Going Backwards: Bedroom and Bath Before and After

I'm taking a shortcut here and reposting something from our family blog in September of 2009 since we don't have any big projects going on right now. It is exactly the same and we still love the changes! On a side note: while reading through it I noticed I had been "waiting on the hubby to paint" and remembered I was preggers with #3 for most of this little update..and now she is almost 15 months old!  Time flies!

Really there is nothing huge about this little project that we

 have had going on for almost 6 months! But....we are so glad 

it's finally done and makes what felt like an apartment feel 

more like a home.

Before.

 

After

We have had the furniture for a long time now but just needed 

a "little" color on the walls, some curtains, and a few things to 

hang. I bought the stuff for the walls here and there months 

ago and a new bedspread about a year ago so this has been 

a slow transformation but it is finally basically complete and 

has a warmer feel(and when you really spread it out  like we 

did it'a almost like it cost nothing;)! I usually go a little more 

bold with colors but we think we may move in the next year or 

so so I had to play it safe. The not so bold color change still 

made a big difference:)

BEFORE

AFTER..


Not a huge change here but the curtains and a slight tint to the walls makes it much warmer!


Now on to the Bathroom Revamp

6 months ago we had ceramic tile laid(we officially retired 

from tiling after laying 1,000 sq. feet in our first house..don't 

know how people do that every day!) in our upstairs baths to 

replace the fancy linoleum that the builders put in (Thanks to 

a nice donation from the in laws!) Then we started 

painting....and Hubby was able to finally finish the painting in 

our bath two weekends ago. He painted our lovely builder 

grade oak cabinets a nice grayish color(this is my new 

favorite color! urbane bronze from sherwin williams) and this 

weekend he framed the mirror. After a few Ikea shelves a 

couple of pictures that I probably bought a year ago(not 

kidding) and replacing the cheapy plastic hand towel rings I 

think it looks and feels a ton better! I don't have any before 

pics of the bath but you can imagine, white linoleum, white 

walls, plastic towel holders, and no frame around the mirror or 

accessories. Blah.

So now pretend the before is here:















And here is the After:

Just a little side note:  I've just recently discovered I don't like 

having those fuzzy toilet lid covers around.  It just started 

looking silly to me and feeling a bit gross even though I wash 

them frequently.  It's so crazy how I just go with things for the 

longest time and then all of a sudden am like "those are 

weird" there outa here! In the past I've thought that 

bathrooms looked stark and sterile without it but do we really 

need rugs on our potties?  What is the purpose?

Anywho, I digress!

Here's another view.  

And a close up of the shelves...

The shelves were by far the best thing we did for this bath revamp. It was an easy way to make a big change with a little budget.

Linked to: Thrifty Decor Chick