Weekend Update No. 1

Taylor and I pretty much make plans to tackle a small project each weekend.  One small project equals no less than 17 trips to Home Depot.

Lights

A couple of weekends ago, Taylor and I put up lights.  Well, Taylor put up lights while I kind of held them and followed him around holding his ladder.  It is a high impact project!  You put those lights up and suddenly your backyard feels like Disney World.  We followed the directions from here.  Basically, we bought a large pot that we filled with Quickcrete and placed a 4x4 inside and held it until it dried.  Since we didn't have a tree close enough, we used stick-in-pot to act as a tree.  We used these lights in case you were wondering.     

Dresser

Another small project we completed two weeks ago was decking out an Ikea Tarva dresser.  The dresser is no longer sold online, but I managed to find one last time I was at Ikea.  We cut the legs similar to how Sarah did it for her son's changing table.  I used knobs from here and painted the dresser Hidden Falls by Benjamin Moore.  I can't wait until there is no longer ugly carpet in the picture!  Here is the before:

Completing the Hallway

Last weekend, I took a day off work, and I spent that day scraping popcorn ceilings, painting, and searching Craigslist.  Since we are trying to keep our house as livable as possible, we are only doing one space at a time, so we completed only the hallway. Then Taylor put in floors and baseboards.  I don't have a great before picture, but here is the after.

I'm thinking about this light fixture.

New Chairs

Lastly, look at these amazing chairs I found!  We purchased two from a lovely lady who inherited them from her grandmother.  They swivel (cool) and remind me of mermaids (weird).  Looking around our home, I would say a majority of our furniture was built by a Brack (ok. Taylor) or found on Craigslist.

Spring Break is next week; I might take the week off, but I am sure I will be inspired to do something.  What small projects are you completing this weekend?

Hello, New (but actually old) House!

Welcome to our 1970s ranch!  We have moved from our track home neighborhood to a neighborhood FULL of trees, people who walk their dogs, beautifully maintained yards, and general jolly-ment that I am so grateful to be a part of.

Photographing this house has proven challenging.  It is much darker than our last home, and it is still rocking brown sagging carpet, brown paneling, brown cabinets, brown counters, BROWN, BROWN, BROWN.  However, it has a 4th bedroom (meaning we will never outgrow the house), a fireplace, over 20 trees (!), and some vaulted ceilings. Our dogs spend 50% of their time squirrel hunting in the backyard which has been my new favorite hobby-- watching them do this.

When you walk in, there is a large dining room on your left and the living room is straight ahead.  The dining room is where we keep our bar stuff and our record player; it is also where we do most of our dancing

.Through the dining room, we enter the kitchen.  Our kitchen has lots of natural light and the sink looks out to the backyard.  There is lots of work to be done in here, but it is functioning just fine for now.

On the opposing side of the kitchen is our living room.  Our living room has beautiful builts in and a huge fireplace.  It is open to both the dining room and the kitchen.  It is pretty dark in there, but I can't tell if that is due to lack of windows or it is the brown paneling and heavy stone.  TBD.

The downside of 20+ trees is the raking.  We have spent the last three weekends trying to get our yard ready for Spring.  And that means just trying to get all the dead leaves bagged and thrown away.  We have used over 40 bags and still have the front yard to go.  We put up string lights last weekend, so we are spending our evenings outside watching the dogs play.

Also, is backyard one word or two?  Two for now.

On the other side of the house are all of the bedrooms.  Look at that green vanity! We have short term plans to update our bedroom (scrape popcorn/new floors/paint), but long term plans to gut the whole vanity/bathroom/closet space.  The master bedroom is huge and the 3 other bedrooms are decent size too.

The two rooms in the front have actually gotten makeovers.  We had some friends moving in for a couple of months, so we booked it to get their rooms prepared.  We scraped the popcorn ceilings, painted the walls/ceilings/doors, ripped out the carpet, patched 1000 holes, and put new floors down.  We can't wait to do this to the rest of the house!  It is not a small feat by any means, but we are taking our time with our home.

That is it for now.  Not pictured: our laundry room-- huge mess, our creepy old shed in the backyard, and guest bathroom.

To Do List for 2017

• Scrape 1700 square feet of popcorn ceilings
• Replace carpet with laminate floors
• Replace baseboards
• Paint paneling in living room
• Make the master bedroom not suck

Goodbye, House!

Oh, hi!

Please excuse the break from blogging.  I was doing a bunch of other jobs: working for my sister, taking on an additional role at my school, and taking a pretty intensive class at The Austin Stone. 

Now that I am back, I have big news!  We sold our last home, and bought a new house! Before I show you pictures of our new home, I am going to share the last pictures I had of our first little home.  Our Parrish home was a great starter place; it boasted natural light and window seats. We didn't have to do much work (except paint all trim/doors/walls/ceilings) to make it our own.

Our move in the Austin market was a gift from Jesus.  We were able to buy and sell a home in one fairly simple (but mind boggling) way.  Anyone who has had to make a contingency offer on a house knows that you get rejected a lot.   I can't wait to show you the new place.

Photos (except for the last one) by Katie Webb.