Wood Stove: Before and After

Another change I've been meaning to show on the blog is the wood stove and chimney. 

This is what the wood stove looked like when we moved in and the house still belonged to my grandparents. Oma's style is very...Oma-ish, haha. The walls were cream, the border was floral, and, well, there was a lot of stuff. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the black parts of the stove were turning red.

Then we moved in and painted the wall gray and the chimney red. This was also before we put in out entertainment center. Shortly after this I painted the black areas of the stove with black stove paint (Did you know there's such a think as stove paint? I didn't; my dad had some).

And this is what it looks like now. You can see how much darker the stove is (except that one red strip at the top that I missed). Most recently, I painted the chimney that dark gray, and I am so much happier with it. We liked the red when we did it because we had red, teal, and mustard accents in the room, but I've slowly been cutting back the colors until it is now just gray with teal accents. I love the way the zinnias pop against the dark background. It's harder to see in the photo, but our family picture pops nicely too. Eventually we want to pain all of the trim white to match the trim around the door to the dining room. I'm actually super pleased with our living room right now, even with toys all over it. Again, small changes over the past four years have made a big difference.

Kitchen: Before and After

I have about a billion blog posts I want to write, and never seem to be able to actually do them. It's not that I don't have time, I just don't have time and the ability to focus at the same time, I guess.
Plus, someone likes to wait until he sees me on my laptop then come over and touch everything that he knows he's not supposed to touch (and I have a touch screen laptop).

But, I thought I'd write this one right now before I have time to forget it or do something else (also my house is moderately clean right now, so I don't have to feel guilty about typing instead of cleaning...except for the four baskets full of clean laundry that need to be folded and put away :/ ).

I was looking at my Timehop app today, and came across some pictures of my kitchen four years ago on the day after we moved in...or rather moved up because we had already been living in the basement. I was shocked at how much the kitchen had changed. I mean, I know we did a ton of work on it, but it was all done a little at a time, so the change now seems so dramatic. The pictures clearly aren't professional grade, and my kitchen isn't perfectly clean, but you can still see the difference.

 

 We still want to change the counter tops, particularly the island (you can't see it in these pictures) which is still pink. I really want butcher block counter tops and maybe and under mount sink, but that's WAY down the road at this point. Almost all of the changes we've made so far have been relatively inexpensive. Obviously we painted. We also put the new backsplash up which is actually pvc laid over the old backsplash.

We bought the new cabinet hardware from Ikea and the new faucet from Home Depot. Most of the plates come from Target, Pier One, and my (and my mom's) cabinets. I covered the switchplates with scrapbook paper, and it's one of my favorite updates. I know that sounds silly, but it adds the pop of color I like. You can't tell in the picture, but the design is little kitchen appliances and utensils. I think the only other update is the dishwasher which we just recently bought. The one we had was ancient, and although it worked decently the springs had broken on the door and it very easily fell open if we didn't keep it locked. We thought we had fixed it, but then it fell open one day and missed Cai's head by about two inches. That's when Steve decided we needed a new one. And we were able to get one that had everything we needed and was deeply discounted! Also not pictured, we replaced the ceiling fan above the center island with a cheap light fixture from Walmart. We made the switch right before we listed the house on the market two years ago, and picked something that was modern but inexpensive (from Walmart). It's probably not exactly what I would have picked had I known we wouldn't be moving, but it's a major update from the fan (which we didn't really use).

I love that even though my kitchen isn't perfect, it's a bright and sunshiny place that I enjoy cooking in.

Dining Room: Chairs

I meant to make this post forever ago, but had the pictures on my phone and kept forgetting to put them on my computer. Better late than never I guess.

I still don't have a full dining room update as I'm waiting until we hang our pictures up, but here's a taste of some of what we've done. To see the "before" and the "during" click here and here.

When we got married, Steve's grandfather refinished a dining room table that was his parents' and his grandparents' before them and gave it to us as a wedding gift. I LOVE it! It's a dark mahogany table with two leaves. The feet are metal, bronze I guess. Overall it's just gorgeous.

Unfortunately, we had no chairs to match it. When we first got married, my Oma bought me chairs at a yard sale. Actually, she bought bar stools, and my dad cut them down to chair size. There were three of them. So when we moved into the house, I was desperate for matching chairs. Steve and I combed yard sales and came up with nothing. Until my friend Karen told me that she had a set of six mahogany chairs that were her grandmothers sitting in her attack, unused. They just weren't her style. Being the amazing woman that she is, she gave them to us for free!

They needed a bit of work. Actually they still do as some of the veneer on the detailing is coming off, but we can easily fix that. The biggest thing that needed to be done was reupholster the seats.

You can't see very well in the picture--it's from my cell--but they were stained and faded. Karen said they were last upholstered in the 40s I think.


So I stripped it all off and saved as many of the upholstery tacks as possible. Steve and I picked out a fabric that is kind of the revers pattern as our dining room rug with the colors we have carried throughout out our kitchen and dining room; teal/turquoise, green, and brown. I upholstered all six chairs myself using a combination of the old upholstery tacks and a staple gun. I'm sure it's not done totally correctly, but it looks pretty good if you ask me.

Here's how it looks in the dining room, which again isn't done, and again this is a crappy cell phone picture.

I'm really happy with it. It's pretty much my favorite room in the house, especially because of the area around the corner to the left, which I'll show you in a another post sometime.

Living Room: Finally Put Together!

Boy, has it been a long time since I posted anything! But I finally have found time to share with everyone what our new living room looks like. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, read about it in this post.

Let me preface these pictures by saying that I used my Droid to take them, not my camera (the battery was dead) and it was already starting to get dark (my least favorite part about about winter). I really wish I had the before pictures to post also, but they're on my laptop (I'm using Steve's because I temporarily misplaced my cord).

I did find this picture which is not so much a "before" shot, more of an in progress shot, but you can see what the chimney used to look like (far right).

Woodstove. So thankful for this.

View from the left of the woodstove.



Computer desk.

Top of computer desk.

View from couch.

French doors between living room and dining room. They are usually open, but I wanted to show the snowflakes. :o)

Scrapbook paper wrapped canvas.

Christmas tree.

New recliner.

Love this coffee table. We bought it unfinished and painted the bottom and stained the top. It's the kind on hinges so the top lifts up to come closer to the couch.

Eventually I'll post pictures of the dining room too. I love the way that turned out, but it's not totally done yet.