Before and after... The Living Room

We really didn't get any good pictures of this room before... They had it more set up as an office/study, though. The color in here wasn't terrible...much better than the rest of the house. But I'm not a grey person. I much prefer tan, so...in the spirit of painting EVERY SINGLE room in the house, we decided to go with another shade of a gorgeous Benjamin Moore tan. :)

All of the downstairs has these neat little glass doors. We keep them all open, but it's neat to know that if we want to close the pupskis of we can...and I'm really thinking about keeping the great room closed off. Those dogs think they own our furniture. I never in a million years thought I would have an inside dog that would get on my furniture...and now there's TWO. :)

Here's after. I LOVE this room. Really quaint and cozy. Mom and I will sit in here and drink coffee before everyone else wakes up. Really neat room. There isn't any overhead lighting, which at first I thought was really weird, but now I think it's great. Lots of lamps, comfy couch and chairs. It's a great room!

Plantation shutters in this room, too. The previous owners had shutters along the front of the house on the bottom windows. We added them on the top windows. Makes a big difference! Mark loves that it keeps our bedroom so dark in the mornings...although it makes it harder on me to get him out of bed!

See how cool those doors are! :) The carpet isn't terrible in this room. Better than upstairs for sure...y'all will get to see that in a later post, but I think I'd love to have hardwoods in this room. Just to keep it quaint and cozy. Hardwoods with an oversized rug. That sounds like a later down the road plan, too.

This old chiffarobe almost went on the trash when we moved. I had in the basement of the old house and just used it for storage. But when we moved in here I thought it worked well with all the other antiques in the room. Nothing special to look at, but it fits in well in the room. And it's full of serving pieces and table linens, so the storage part is great, too.

This piece came from the old house. The people we bought our old house from left this piece in the kitchen for us. It worked as a really nice panty and fit the space really well. We weren't so kind...we didn't leave it, we took it with us. I guess that's not playing fair, but I really love the look and feel of it. So instead of using it as a panty, I've got all of my Blue Ridge dishes in it. My grandmother started collecting it for me when I was young. Then my great aunt started picking up pieces for me, too. Now I've got all kinds of neat pieces and patterns. We're having Thanksgiving at our house this year, so I think we'll put the dishes to good use here!

Before and after of the living room. Sad I don't have more before pictures. Not a ton to tell about this room either. A good coat of Benjamin Moore paint and ta-da. Looks like a totally new room!

Before...and After. Dining Room.

So here it was before...with all its glory. We were afraid our furniture would look dwarfed in the room, but it looks pretty good. They had a really large table and it was a good size for the room. Our table wasn't as big, but I think it looks a-ok. No fake ficus tree for me, though!

Here was the room empty...dingy walls, awful light fixture. Needed a little sprucing. Bill and Sandy (Mark's sweet daddy and stepmum) came up the weekend we moved in and did TONS of painting. They were the painting pair! Sandy would cut in and Bill would be right behind her to roll. They were AWESOME! Mom and dad came up, too, but Dad's too impatient to paint an I had mom helping me unpack, keep sane, etc. :)

So post-spruce... Really awesome wall color. New creamy color under the chair rail. Everything looks great! We eventually want to do some trim work underneath the chair rail, but that's for later. We have lots of those "that's for later" projects. Gotta prioritize! We replaced the switchplate covers, too. It's really amazing how little things like that really make a difference. Other than new paint, new switchplate covers and a new light fixture, this room really didn't require too much!

Here was our fun find for this room. If any of y'all know me at all, you know I love a good bargain. I got this light fixture at a garage sale in the neighborhood. It had great lines, but it was brass. I don't do brass. So...leave it to me and mom to get a few cans of spray paint and wa-la! Looks pretty good if I do say so myself! Still need to find some new shades... something with some fun beaded trim or something to jazz it up...

Here's mom's contribution to the room. She found this mirror at an estate sale for CHEAP. I like it in the room...adds a neat vintage look. We needed something for this wall and so when mom brought it up to see if I like it...that's where it ended up! :)

Make-shift buffet. I had the buffet and mirror in the foyer of the old house. I needed some more furniture in the dining room of this house, though, and there wasn't a good spot for it in the foyer, so it was the perfect size and piece.

And here' s view of the front wall of the dining room. I loved the arched windows. That's one fo the things that really stood out when we were looking at the house. We had to get over the cluttered, dated, not-our-styleness of the house when we looked at it. As I told Erin over and over when I showed her pictures of the house...it's got good bones!

I got the cool painting at the Buy for Rise sale here in town. Awesome sale that I made mom come up for this year. I think she'll agree, it was worth the drive to T-Town.

So, that's the before and after of the dining room. I'm a little partial to the after. :)

Long time, no blog...

Okay, so I haven't updated this in a while (sorry Ms. Catherine! :) ), so I'm going to do a mega-update today. Football season is nuts for us...company in town every weekend for the games, traveling to away games, tailgating, etc etc. And when we're not watching football we've been working on the house, so...the blog has taken a back seat. Hopefully I can get back in a routine of updating. I'm all about some routines! :)

We leave for Puerto Rico in a week and a half, so this may be the last update for the month of October, so Happy Halloween!!

My parents came in town this weekend, so when mom comes to town I put her to good use! She's super crafty, so I put her up to making some new, fun Halloween decorations...and ta-dah! Looks good, huh??

So that's the front door...here's the garage door...my personal favorite craft/project/ta-dah of the weekend:

We went to Tannehill State Park's Trade Days. They do it the third weekend of each month from March - November. It's like a big arts and crafts festival/flea market and it's lots of fun. I got those ornaments there...the elephants are the cutest things in the world and then I found the houndstooth ornaments at another booth. Roll Tide Roll!! Although...that game last night was less than stellar....although I'm not blogging about football, so back to the house.

Okay, I think I'll post about each room on it's own. Still haven't taken pictures of the two upstairs bedrooms or the kitchen...or the breakfast room for that matter..still a work in progress there.