The Rest of Our Thrifty Abode Part II

Our tour continues today with the second and third floors of our house.

Disclaimer:  You are about to see some mess.

Here's how our second floor is laid out:

In the last post I mentioned how we had a lot of wall space and hallway in our house.  See what I mean?  Only two windows on the whole floor.  It's not really that noticeable until you start decorating and there are big open expanses of wall to fill.  Other than that, having so few windows is not problematic and the window in each room does a good job of giving enough natural light.

This hallway leading to the two bedrooms is my arch enemy #2.  It is the catchall space for everything that doesn't have a home of it's own (or that I'm too lazy to put in it's place the second I'm done with it).  The laundry room is also just to the left, so piles of laundry (I think you can see a little bit of one in the bottom left corner) end up in the hallway.  There's a full bathroom to the left before you get to the two bedrooms that's a lot like the powder room on the first floor.  I haven't done and thing to it.  It's pretty far down on my priority list so I didn't even bother taking pictures of it.

My main goals for the hallway:
-find a way to keep it clutter free
-gallery wall of family photos between the laundry and bathroom

This is the room on the left, the nursery.  I'm currently in the middle of re-doing most of it.  I'd had it mostly finished, but we kept having issues with the window treatment.  The old one had to go because our house is east-facing, so we really needed a way to black out the windows in order to have successful naps.  Plus my previous curtain looked way too matchy-matchy.  What's in the room right now is one panel of my DIY sun blocking, striped curtains (I will be posting a how-to in the near future as soon as I finish the other one).

Here's what I have in mind to get this room finished up:
-finish the other curtain panel
-finish the art work above the crib
-put a gallery wall on the wall with the changing table
-find somewhere to hang my Ikea shelves since I put the ones that were in the nursery in my living room

This is how it used to look with the shelves and old window treatment in case you're curious:

The bedroom to the right is our guest room.

Yikes, right?  This room is the most neglected space in the house.  It used to be our office with a daybed, but it's mostly served as a giant closet.  If we don't know what to do with something, it goes in that room.  Every few months or so I have to reorganize all the clutter that's found its way there. I'd love for this to be a beautiful and inviting guest room someday, but I don't really have a specific plan in my head yet.  I almost don't want to do too much because by the time I'm finished we may have to use this room for baby #2. (which may still be years away... I'm just that slow at decorating)

Our third floor makes up for the fact that our first floor living space is so small.   Our master suite is pretty huge and it takes up all of our third floor.

We've just recently started to really live in this space.  We used to just sleep here, but now that our office stuff is in our master suite we're really making the most out of the square footage.

This is how the furniture used to be laid out:

Our queen size bed looked so small and lost in our huge room that I decided to break the room up into two distinct spaces and move our office furniture from the guest bedroom up into our bedroom.

This is how our furniture is laid out now:

There really isn't much to show in this room.  I only have one picture of the bed so you can kind of get a feel of the colors I'm working with.

As you can see I'm working on picking a paint color.  Still haven't decided.  This room is kind of overwhelming because there is so much of it.

These are my ideas so far:
-paint the walls
-new window treatments
-chair, ginormous mirror, and rug for a sitting/changing area
-new night stands and move those to the guest room
-put stuff on the walls

Well, that's it.  Our little, awkward, practically windowless townhouse.  I hope you'll stick with me as I jump from room to room to get the place decorated!

The Rest of Our Thrifty Abode Part I

I'm still moving pretty slowly on some of those projects I was working on over the weekend.  I'll have more to share later.  Until then I thought I'd give a little peak into the rest of our home since I've only shown the living room.

We have been in our house for almost three years and it is nowhere near being "done."  I held out showing off our living room until my re-vamp was over, however, for the rest of my house, I'm going to bring y'all along for the ride...incomplete rooms and all.  I don't have a specific budget or timeline to work with to complete each room.  I'll probably be jumping around from project to project, room to room. 

Let's start with the outside of our little townhouse.  Here it is:

Our townhouse is built in a big building of other townhomes and they're back to back.  Our unit is not on the end so this means we have 5 (I can count them on one hand) windows and a whole lotta wall space.  It also has three stories which means we have a whole lotta stairs and hallway.  The square footage of our house doesn't sound bad on paper, but because it's so split up over hallways and different stories, our house feels a lot smaller than a one story house with the same square footage would.  I don't have the measurements on each room on the layout below, but when you see the pictures, you'll see how small it is.

This is the layout of our first floor (notice the 1 window). I've made the most progress with this floor, because it's the floor that guests see.  (One of the positives of having so many floors is that I usually don't have to worry about 2/3 of my house being perfectly clean when people come over.)

I didn't bother staging for these pics so excuse dog and baby toys.  When you enter the couch is to the left and our (teeny tiny) dining area is to the right.

The living room is to the left.

and the dining area is to the right.

Thank goodness the living room is finished.  The dining area, on the other hand, needs some help.
Here are some things I have in mind:
-I've had that mirror for almost two years and I've been meaning to frame it
-find a different light fixture
-maybe add a runner or table cloth
-possibly cover the chairs

The kitchen is at the back of the first floor.  I already changed the prints in the gallery wall and painted the letters above my cork board, now all I have to do is change out a few other accessories in the the kitchen.  I'm also looking for another drawer pull for the our little cart.

This counter between the kitchen and the dining area is my arch enemy.  I'd love to find a way to keep it clear, but I'm afraid it will always be filled with clutter.

This is what the powder room looked like on Friday.  It looked exactly the same as it did the day we moved in.  I hadn't done a thing to it.  We changed some things up over the weekend and I'll share those later.

So that's the first floor.  The small living space is sometimes an inconvenience, but in day-to-day life it's not a big deal and it's been a great starter home so far.

To keep this post from getting too long, I'll get to the second and third floors tomorrow.  There's a lot to do up there.
 
Have a great Tuesday!

My First, and Perhaps Only, Attempt at Flower Arranging

I definitely learned that flower arranging is not as easy as I thought it would be. I bought a huge bunch of flowers at the Farmer's Market for my mom, and while it was pretty, there were some flowers in the mix that I didn't like and the bouquet didn't really have a distinct shape.  I decided that I was going to DIY an arrangement.

This is what I had to work with:

I went to Martha for some help and found this:

via

I don't think my tape was strong enough and after about 15 minutes my first arrangement that looked like this (not bad, huh?)...

...looked like a hot mess.  Everything started falling over.  Not good.

Back to Martha.

via

I edited a little (less is more right?) and put the peonies, one apple, and a few snapdragons together with a rubber band.  I used a container with a smaller opening this time so I was able to shove in leaves and other branches of flowers without them moving.

Here's version #2:

Good, not great. 

Next time (if there is one) I'll have to invest in something to help me out a bit.  Like one of these or one of these.

I hope all the mommies had a wonderful day on Sunday, and since I didn't mention it on the blog yesterday because I was a little busy with our Mother's Day festivities (lunch out, trip to Costco, dinner at Gramma's), "Happy Mother's Day Mom!"  You're the best mom and Nana!

 

Happy Weekend

Happy Friday everyone!  I hope the weather will be as nice where you are as it's going to be here.   I'm currently in the middle of a few little projects that will get finished this weekend.  These are my projects in various states of incompleteness. 

I'll have lots to share on Monday.  

All the mommies have a great Mother's Day!

Anyone Need a Rug?

Because this one is on sale for for $70 at landsend.com.

via

This one is not on sale, but it is awesome.

via

This super short post is brought to you by my cold and the fact that I need some rest.

Y'all have a good Thursday!

Mixing Patterns & Prints

I showed off my living room yesterday, and let me tell you, even though it is far from groundbreaking interior design it was a little bit of a stretch for me.  I say that because I used multiple patterns in one space.  I'm typically a little afraid of pattern and color.  I usually have one pattern and then solid colors that match that pattern.  In the old version of my living room I only had two throw pillows that had pattern on them.  Everything else was solid.  Solid couch, solid curtains, solid throw, and the 10 other pillows I had were solid.

Here's what helped me get over my fear of pattern and color.

scan of House Beautiful via

The February issue of House Beautiful had an interview of Christiane Lemieux, the founder of Dwell Studio. (Did you notice that she has the yellow rosette Target pillow on her bed? Love that!)  Usually House Beautiful is just pretty to look at.  I feel like I, a completely untrained, non-designer, could never duplicate most of the looks in the magazine, the products featured are mostly way out of my price-range, and the tips from designers aren't all that useful.  After looking through an issue I just think, "How do they do that?  How do they make that look good together?"

I was surprised to read something so helpful in the short feature on Christiane and her bed.  This is what she said when she was asked about the prints she used in her bedroom.

"...Usually my formula is three prints--one large, one medium, and one coordinate that ties the other two together with color."

How easy is that?!    I, the completely untrained, non-designer, found that sooooo easy to remember and implement. Some of you may be thinking, "Duh!", but I had never heard a tip for using pattern and print explained so simply before.
  

It's definitely a tip I'm going to keep in my pocket and use as I try to finish the rooms in the rest of my house.

How 'bout y'all?  Any mind blowingly, easy tips you've put into practice or wanted to put into practice as you decorate your home?  I'd love to hear more!

My Thrifty Living Room Refresh

Well, here it is.  My little living room went to this (above) from that (below) for about $300.  Since I had such a small budget I had to rely on fabric and accessories to change the feel of the room.  The two main things that I would like to change about the space are still there.  I would love new couches (or even better, a couch and two upholstered chairs) and I would love to paint the walls.  I think it will be quite a while before I get to change either of those things.  Right now I'm genuinely happy with my space even though it is far from ideal.  

 

Here it is from a slightly different angle.

I had three main goals for the switcheroo.  #1:  get rid of the leaning shelves to prevent possible injury to my 14 month old son and to provide space for another seat.  #2:  edit.  As you can see I got rid of a lot of stuff.  I'm currently resisting the urge to fill up every inch of blank wall that I now have. #3:  freshen up the color palette,  rust, olive ---> aqua-ish teal, chartreuse-y green.  $200 of the $300 I had to work with went to the chair.  The rest was spent on the curtains, fabric for pillows, the jug lamp and shelves.

Oh, the shelves.  I could write an entire post on those shelves above the TV.  I will spare you the boring details and say that those are not the Lack shelves from Ikea (that I drove 3 hours to buy) because they were a nightmare to hang.  Those shelves are from Lowe's and I ripped them out of my son's room (which I was planning on doing any way) to put in our living room because I got so fed up with the Ikea shelves.  The shelves from Lowe's are shorter and more expensive than the Ikea shelves, but they are a breeze to hang.  Thank goodness I was able to cover the 15 or so holes that are now in my wall due to my attempts at installing the Ikea shelves.

I'm really happy with the way the shelves look now and I'm glad to have somewhere else to put photos.  I already had most of the accessories that are now on the shelves. The only new things I bought were the books between the bookends.  I got them from a thrift store because they went with my new color palette.

I took a photo of the pillows on my couch to show my fabrics off a bit more, and our dog Rufus could not be bothered to move, so here he his with my pillows.

Even though I won't be getting new couches or painting in the near future I'll probably be making small tweaks here and there.  I'm keeping my eye out for a large sisal basket to put between the TV stand and the side table to keep toys and extra pillows.  I'm also keeping my eye out for a new side table.  Our current side table is actually a $14 TV tray and it's just about as unstable as the leaning shelves that we had.  I pretty much have a small panic attack every time my son gets anywhere near it because my beloved $18 lamp is on it.  

Of course, I'll keep the ol' blog updated with any tweaks that I make.

I hope everyone is having a great Tuesday!

Stenciled Curtains

There has been a lot of fabric painting going on in the blog world lately and seeing painted chairs and rugs inspired me to paint my no-sew curtains using a stencil and some fabric medium. 

I decided that my living room needed a little something more after I got most of the new stuff in place for my living room re-vamp.  What was missing was a large scale pattern and a little more green.  I was inspired by the curtains in Kirsten's living room over at 6th Street Design School.

I wanted the look of large printed medallions on my curtains, but I could not find a large stencil that was cheap.  Craft stores only had small scale stencils and the big ones that I saw online were about $40 and up.  I'd already spent more than I planned on my curtains so I was not about to sink $40+ more into them.

I bought the biggest stencil I could find at Michael's (it was $10) that looked the most like the pattern I wanted, and even though it was the biggest stencil they had, the medallion was only 8 inches.

I had to put four of the shapes together to get the size that I wanted.  That's the fabric that I tested my paint and pattern on.

The paint I used was just plain acrylic craft paint.  I had to get a few bottles to mix in order to get the color I wanted.  I added fabric medium which makes the paint not crunchy and less likely to bleed.  The bottle of fabric medium was $4.50.  I think I've read that it's available at Michael's, but I didn't see it there so I had to go to an art supply store to find it.

Once I got my paint the right color I measured how large my medallion would be and used tape to space out the pattern on my curtains.

Then I started stenciling.

Not to discourage anyone from trying this, but stenciling took so much longer than I thought it would.  I think I ended up spending about 4 hours figuring out my pattern and then stenciling my first panel.

I was so worn out from the first curtain panel that I waited a couple of nights to get started on the second one which didn't take as long.  For the second panel I only taped off my pattern horizontally, I wasn't as precise with the paint, and it doesn't look any different from the first panel.

Here's what my complete curtains ended up costing:

• about $40 for the fabric and Heat 'n Bond
• $10 for the stencil
• $8 for acrylic paint and paint medium

$58 is more than I'd budgeted for the curtains, but I was able to cut costs in other places.  

Even though I spent quite a chunk of time (and money) on my curtains I'm really happy with the way they look.  And I'm looking forward to finally sharing my complete living room tomorrow. 

I'll be linking up to:

Welcome and Thanks!

I'm excited to have so many new followers!  Thanks for taking the time to skim through my blog and sticking around to see what's next.  I've got some pretty good stuff coming up. 

Thanks to Knock-Off Decor and Centsational Girl for likely sending y'all my way!