Christmas in our New Home

Happy Holidays!

House Updates: Living Room(s)

This house came with two living rooms. This still baffles me. It is certainly a design challenge. Right now we have it set up so there is one more "formal" sitting area, and another by the TV. Eventually I'm thinking 1 living room and 1 dining room. We'll see. Either way, it is working for us now.

We made a trip to IKEA soon after we moved in and bought this new couch with a chaise and navy rug. We also bought the chair below, which I highly recommend:

The midcentury pieces were thrifted either in Michigan before we moved or here in Utah. The record holder above was $5 and the side table was $8. The record player two photos above was $40.

We painted all the wood paneling in the living room with a fireplace, but left the built in shelving as is. It adds some nice warmth to the room.

House Updates: Master Bedroom

House updates in our new Utah house are long overdue. We've been hard at work on things here... just haven't been sharing. We stayed home for Thanksgiving break so I decided we should work on a room that we hadn't touched yet... our master bedroom. We didn't even have a headboard. It felt like a college apartment. Much better now!

We got the lights at Lowes and TJ made the headboard out of a 10 foot board cut in half (to make 2 pieces the same length). We then stained, sealed, and attached it to the wall with some mounting hardware meant for picture frames. He also made the nightstands before we left Indiana. Luckily they survived the move.

Here's the before... we had some interesting off-white textured wallpaper to deal with. We took it down on one wall but decided to make the other our accent wall. The blue is Glidden "Rich Navy" and it took just 2 coats. Now it looks like navy blue textured wallpaper.

Utah House Before

We have been in our new house about 6 weeks and the place is shaping up. The beauty was built in 1964 and it shows. We have some major reno ahead of us - namely the master bath and the kitchen, but a few of the living spaces have really come together. Before pictures below, in progress pictures coming soon.

Teal carpet and wood paneling:

Golf course view in the backyard:

Very overgrown landscaping:

36 ft. long patio:

The kitchen is a real gem:

But you just can't beat the view. :-)

We're moving...

Moving day is closing in on us and I am realizing just how excited I am to take up thrifting, building, and DIYing again for a new house. I spent a lot of time on this blog the first few years I lived in our current house and when the projects I had envisioned from the start were complete, the time spent DIYing and writing the blog was quickly replaced with more "serious" work endeavors. But summer is here and we are moving to Utah! I'm not sure how much I will post about the new house but I can hardly stand not showing off some before and afters of the projects I've been working on lately... and we haven't even moved yet.

We are still under contract but I will post pictures of the new house as soon as it's officially ours. The house is a 1964 ranch and we have taken to the idea that we want to find some cool mid century modern pieces.

First up, I found these industrial bar stools that were in rough shape at an antique/thrift shop for $10 a piece.

I thought the chairs might have a wiggle problem due to all the tape on the legs. When we took the tape off we discovered that the legs extended another couple feet and were very stable. NO idea why the tape was on there...

We sanded the bar stools down and I used about 3 cans of white Rustoleum spray paint on them. The wood on the seats was soaking up spray paint like mad so I used some regular white paint on the seats and finished them off with Minwax poly for protection. 

Oh by the way.. Utah is beautiful. This is Bear Lake, about 45 minutes from the new house!