Progress

This is a picture of the dining room progress (with a little peek at the living room progress).
I love how the grey works so well with the blue.  Oh, and that chair rail has been a beast to put up.  My husband has been a real trooper for figuring out how to cut and put up that darn thing.
We have been working non-stop on the living room and dining room before we move in.  I am a little stressed because I feel like it won't get done in time.  Yesterday I was wondering if all this work was worth it but today I painted the grey on the dining room walls and I love it so much!

I will leave you with one more picture.  This one is of our cat who seems to be the only one in the house who loves packing.  He likes to jump in the boxes, sit on the boxes, sniff the boxes, and jump off of the boxes so that the force from his hind legs sends the smaller, lighter ones flying across the room.

It's Finally Ours!

We are homeowners!  On Friday we had our closing and it went smoothly except that I left my driver's license at home and had to go back and get it.  As soon as our closing was done, we went to the house and took measurements of the living room so that we would know how much chair rail to buy.   Then we were off to Lowes to purchase supplies to paint the living room and dining room.

After a full day yesterday, the living room already looks completely different.  I can't wait until we are all done so that I can post pictures.  I am in love with the blue paint that we chose for the living room.  It is beautiful.  We have not been nearly as successful with the chair rail but we did cut 6 of 11 pieces last night (well, my husband cut them).  We did have some unsuccessful cuts and we will definitely be needing more chair rail!  Oh well, diy is a learning process.

I have updated house tour page with all the before photos of the house.  Be sure to click on the house tour tab to check it out!

Bookcase Makeover

I cannot believe how close the big move is!  I am excited and eager for it and at the same time I need more time to pack, arrgh!  The appraisal finally happened on Tuesday and no repairs were needed and the house appraised at more than we are paying so it went very well.  We have our final walk through a week from today and our closing is next Friday.  So exciting.  This is what the downstairs of our rental house looks like currently:

The sad thing is that I don't feel any where close to being done.

Now on to the bookcase makeover.  I have two bookcases, one from Target and one from Walmart and it has been bothering me that they are two different colors of wood.  I decided that I wanted to make them match and to fit in with the decor plans for our new living room.  I figured this was the perfect time to take on this project since all the books are currently in boxes.  So I had my husband help me move them out to the garage and got to work.

 

These are the two bookcases at the beginning with the removable shelves out.  You can see that the one on the bottom is quite a bit lighter.  

After some research using Pinterest, I found that the best and really only way to paint laminate furniture is to use Zinsser Cover Stain Primer.  This primer is oil based so it was kind of messy but I just used some cheap brushes which I threw away at the end.  I applied two coats just to be safe. 

After the primer had dried (I let it dry overnight just for good measure), I painted the cases with Valspar Ultra White.  This is the same color that I will be using on the trim in my lower level.  I decided to go with a semi-gloss finish.  I used two coats of this as well and a quart of this stuff was just barely enough for two coats on both bookcases.  

 

Here is what the bookcase looked like after painting.  I didn't paint the back because I wanted to cover the back with fabric.  This was where I hit a snag in the process and it was a couple weeks later when I was finally able to complete the project.  I went to every store that sells fabric in Fargo and I couldn't find anything that matched what I was looking for.  I knew I wanted the pattern to be yellow and I wanted the pattern to be large and bold so it would really pop.  There just wasn't anything that fit so I went online and found this:

 I am kind of obsessed with damask so this was perfect.  I love how bright the yellow is and I think it will go great with the blue walls that I plan for my living room.

Here is what it turned out like.  I chose to attach the fabric to the back with Mod Podge (I used the matte finish).  Ideally, this would have worked better if I had done this when I first bought them so I could attach it to the backs before I nailed them to the bookcases.  I didn't want to remove the back because I was scared it would rip when I took the nails out, so I had to measure and cut the fabric to match up with the different sections.  It isn't perfect but I think it will look really awesome once the books and decor are on the shelves.  I will write an update post once that happens.

Dining Room Ideas

I am still waiting on the fabric to complete my bookcase project so in the mean time I will update with some living room ideas.  Once again, I did a mood board with Olioboard.

 

 I have chose a yellow and gray color palette for the dining room.  The walls will be painted with Valspar City Storm.  I will also be doing a tone on tone stencil pattern.  I have chosen a stencil pattern called Moorish Trellis from Royal Design Studio. I will be using the same Valspar City Storm shade but with a semi-gloss finish to get a subtle patterned effect.  The chair rail, bottom half of the walls, and the built-in will be painted with Valspar Ultra White which I am using in the living room as well.  Eventually I would like to get a table more like the one pictured.  The one we have extends to a very nice long length but it is oval so it makes it a little uncomfortable with a lot of people.  We also need new set of dining room chairs.  The capiz chandelier is a wish list item because light fixtures are expensive!

Living Room Ideas

Not much has changed since my last post.  We are still waiting on the appraisal.  Our mortgage person at our bank said it would be done by the end of May and of course it is now June.  Hopefully it will be done soon so that we can have some peace of mind.

Our closing date is the 22nd of June but we set our actual move-in date for the 30th of June.  We decided to hire movers since we needed some for the piano and dining hutch anyway.  It will be nice to have the furniture and most of the boxes moved because moving is such a long and painful process.  We have been busy packing and I forgot how long it takes.  I thought it took a long time the last time but now we have accumulated a lot more stuff from wedding gifts when we first moved in and other stuff we have accumulated over the years.

The reason we set our actual move-in date for a week after our closing is because we wanted to get some work done on the living room and dining room before we have furniture in them.  This weekend I discovered another fun website where you can make mood boards.  That is actually what I thought Pinterest was before I got an account.  I've spent some time making a mood board for both the living room and the dining room.

  

I've chosen Valspar Beach Sparkle as the color for our living room.  There will be a chair rail a third of the way up the wall and the bottom third will actually be white with frame molding to create the look of wainscoting.  All the trim will be painted white (Valspar Ultra White) as well.  I tried to find a couch that matched ours but ours is a sectional with a chaise lounge and is a little lighter brown than what is pictured.  The chair in the picture was just a fun approximation of a future diy project.  I have a wing back chair that is in need of a makeover so look for that in future posts.  The bookshelf is a project that will be posted in the very near future which is about 2/3rds of the way done already.  The fabric sample to the side of it is what will go on the backs of the shelves and I am waiting for that fabric to come in to finish the project.  

I will be shared the dining room ideas once I finish my mood board.  I am so excited for this house that I can barely wait but I am glad to have a nice long time to pack.  Packing is a lot of work, uff da!

Inspector Gadget

I just wanted to give a short update on our house.  We had our home inspection this past Saturday and wouldn't it be cool if our inspector's name was Gadget.  Just kidding. Anyway, we asked the sellers to do a few things and they agreed to everything so we are pretty excited.  Now on to the appraisal which probably won't happen until the end of this month.

House Hunters Fargo

So I am kind of obsessed with HG TV.  Funny thing is, I don't have cable.  In the winter, the only thing that really motivates me to go run on the treadmill at the Y is the fact that some of the treadmills have their own TVs.  I almost always watch HG TV when I run at the Y.  I am also a very crafty and creative person.  I have been waiting a long time for the event that has recently occurred which is the beginning of the process of purchasing our first home. 

It seems like our house hunting adventures have been a whirlwind and we found the house of our dreams within two weeks of really beginning our search (in reality I have been searching online for a LONG time).  Looking for a house is fun but at the same time it is very stressful.  You can't expect to find the "perfect" home.  However, I think we came pretty close although we did have to compromise a little bit on the yard size. 

Here is a look at some of the homes that we looked at:

This one was one of our top contenders but it had no dining room which was one of my big things

This one had a beautiful patio and nice updates inside but there was no dining room and the kitchen was tiny

This was also one of the top contenders.  It had beautiful landscaping but unfortunately it only had one bathroom:(

This house was like stepping right back into the 1920's.  It was so cool inside but would have been a lot of work to update

And here is the winner in our search.  Pretty much everything we wanted except not quite as big of a backyard.

So, of course it is not quite a done deal, but it is looking very favorable.  We just had our home inspection and it went very well.  Now we have to have the appraisal and cross my fingers that that goes well.  We should be closing on the 22nd on June if all goes well.  I am so excited!