Wonder what’s happening in our house this week? Our formal living room and hallway are getting retextured and painted!! This house will finally feel more settled once this is finally done. Every time I walk through the front room, I’m reminded that we need to get it painted so I am SO happy that it’s finally happening. We’ve have blue swatches painted on those walls for months. Not to mention, our beautiful painting from our family friend has been patiently waiting to be hung up in the formal living room for almost 6 months now and it is time to put it on display!

Why did it take so long, you might wonder? If you can remember back to May, I posted that I thought the room would get painted the following week (meaning 2 months ago)… clearly that didn’t happen. It’s been impossible to get our painter to commit to a date. Remodels, family emergencies, out of town… you name it, he’s said it. He is such a sweet guy which is why we waited for him (plus, we know he does a good job) but seriously, we were getting antsy. We would have painted the room and hallway ourselves but we really wanted it to get retextured. After the kitchen remodel, part of the opening was a different texture than the rest and, in the hallway, there was a lantern-like light that we removed and covered up. It was covered up nicely but that area was completely smooth while the rest of the wall had the funky 50’s style texture that the rest of the house has. Therefore, it was necessary that we evened out the walls and made it consistent.

Here’s what the front room looked like on Monday (the day before they started work):

Okay, I lied that was the room on May 13 but it’s pretty close to how it looked on Monday. We now have a cute floor lamp in the room, but you get the idea. 🙂

Do you like our beautiful Cost Plus bookshelf? We were eyeing that thing for years! We just didn’t know we actually needed it until we bought our house and realized that a bookshelf would be perfect on that wall. It conveniently covers up the thermostat but has an open back so we can easily get to it to adjust the temperature. Plus, we love the design on the side of the bookshelf.

Here’s a recap of our checklist. I’m checking off the painting since it will be done in the next few days.

• Loveseat

• Side chairs

• Side table

• Buy a bookshelf for the wall to the left of the loveseat

• Paint the walls a grayish blue

• Hang our beautiful wedding gift (painting by family friend)

• Buy the remaining furniture – end table, ottoman, and floor lamp
• Buy an area rug

• Pick out fabric for the curtains

• Sew the curtains (task for my superwoman mother)

• Hang the curtains

• Get a plant to bring in some life

• Hang pictures

• Make/buy a piece of artwork to hang over the credenza

When our entertainment center arrived, we quickly filled it with all of our electronics – cable box, video game consoles, internet router, etc. – but immediately noticed that the cord situation was out of control. Of course, it was good to get all of the materials off the floor (because that was driving me bonkers) but I knew that the cords needed to be covered up somehow. I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of seeing cords all over the place. I’m anti-clutter and cords everywhere is not my idea of clutter-free.

The “Before” with the out of control cords

We decided to do a mini-arts & crafts project to cover it up. We popped over to our neighborhood Jo-Ann Fabrics and bought one foam poster board and a yard of black fabric (to blend in with the back of the shelf.

I wish I took photos of the process but it’s so easy! Here’s what I did:

1. Measured the shelves
2. Cut the foam board to fit within the shelves (take off about a 1/4-1/2 inch from the height depending on how many cords to have, the cords will slide under the board)
3. Cut a small triangle on the top of the board (this will make it easier to pull the board out if you ever need to remove it)
4. Cut the fabric to be about 1 inch larger than the size of the board 
5. Glue the fabric to the back of the board (I used regular super glue)
6. Let it dry and BAM! You’re done

The “After”!

And zoomed out a bit:

One of the reasons why I love home improvement shows and blogs so much are because I LOVE seeing the before and after. It is soooo gratifying to see the difference!

Because of that, I knew that we needed to take “before” pictures of our house especially because we planned on making a ton of changes to the house. But somehow in the whirlwind that was our house buying/renovating/moving process… we never took any pictures. Well, I guess that’s not completely true, we did take pictures of the kitchen before it was ripped out but we didn’t take any pictures of the bedrooms, office, or living room until after the floor was sanded and we were painting the room.

I went on a hunt tonight to see if I could find the photos that were posted online when our house was listed and thankfully, I was able to find them online. Here’s what the house looked like when we first visited it:

Backyard

Another angle of the backyard (with the brick planter box that CJ had to tear out)

Guest bathroom (only change here is we have a shower curtain)

Guest bedroom (obviously big changes here)

The kitchen – can you believe the difference!??!

Another view of the kitchen

Formal living room

Another angle of the formal living room (that’s the front door)

Master bedroom (no changes here)

Master bedroom (clearly this looks completely different)

Office

TV/Entertainment Room

Since Day 1 (meaning since we put an offer on the house), I had a vision for how I wanted the guest room to look (thanks to Houzz.com*). We knew that we wanted a light and bright room to make it feel a bit larger and we wanted it to coordinate with my college IKEA bedroom furniture that we put in the guest room. After searching a bit, I found this inspiration and fell in love with it for the guest room:

Isn’t that gorgeous!?!? I just love the gray and yellow combination. It’s so simple yet inviting.

The white duvet cover was relatively easy to find. We first looked at Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond but the bedding at those two stores was unfortunately out of the price range we were willing to spend for the guest room. Luckily though, we made a trip to IKEA one day and found the perfect plain white duvet cover for approx. $30. We were so excited about the find and even more excited about the price tag!

So, as I said before, decorating the house really is a process. Below is a picture of the guest room on the day we moved in. I didn’t have the energy time to iron the sheets so I just laid them on top of the bed to give the illusion that it was made. I know, so sneaky. I would have fooled you if I didn’t tell you my secret.

Day 1 – February 10

As time went on, the room started to evolve more. We put the nightstand to the left of the bed, I ironed the sheets (GASP!) and finally put them on the pillows and duvet cover, and we bought a nice gray blanket to mirror the inspiration room. So that brought us to this:

Not winning any awards but still progress. That brought us to our latest project that I reference in my last post. We bought 5 frames at Aaron Bros (as I fondly call it) and wanted to do a nice little arrangement on the left wall. We also got an adorable lamp and pillows from Cost Plus and then BAM! We were ready to start making the room feel more inviting.

Step 1: Pick the photos & put them in the frames
This part is pretty self-explanatory. We chose a photo of the mother-son dance, father-daughter dance, my bouquet, me and the groomsmen, and CJ and the bridesmaids.

Step 2: Choose an arrangement
I saw a super helpful post on my favorite blog YoungHouseLove.com that talked about first doing the arrangement on butcher paper, sketching it out, and using that paper to help with hanging the photos. We decided that, since this was more complicated than the master bedroom, we needed the extra help.

So we bought a big roll of white paper (it was impossible to find butcher paper, for some reason), and rolled it out on the floor to lay out the arrangement.

Step 3: Trace the pictures with a pencil, mark where the nails should go, cut the roll of paper, and tape it up to the wall.

Step 4: Mark where the nails should go in the wall by following the guides on the paper and nailing a small hole in each area.

Step 5: Remove the paper, find the small holes that we made, and nail it in!

Step 6: Hang the pictures!

Step 7: Admire your work 🙂

I now creepily walk past the guest room several times a day to stare at our work.

Here’s a close up of the lamp:

It has the gray and yellow to go with the color scheme and has a cute owl base!! Oh, I’m so in love.

Right now, the lamp is hanging out next to my bridal bouquet but we’re not sure if that’s the permanent home for the bouquet. I’m afraid someone will knock it off and then we will lose our wedding keepsake.

We still need some blinds, curtains, and a rug for the room. I also think we might get a bookshelf for the right side of the room; that wall is looking pretty lonely right now. But we’re content with how it looks right now! No need to rush through the rest of the enhancements. 🙂

*Houzz is an amazing source for decorating ideas so if you ever feel stuck on what to do with a room, I highly recommend going there. They have a great app and their website is super helpful too. You can create ideabooks for whatever floats your boat (I’ve created them by room, it’s easier for me to find stuff that way).

Two weekends ago, my parents came over for dinner at our house and after my mom did her usual “inspection” of the house to see what’s changed, she turned to me and said, “You really need to start hanging some pictures.” Man, is that the truth! I knew that was the reason why we still didn’t feel fully moved in. I completely agreed with her so my goal for last weekend was to hang all the frames that we bought a few weeks ago.

First up, the master bedroom! I would have to say that the hardest part of hanging picture frames is figuring out what pictures to put in the frames. We went through a ton of our engagement and wedding pictures and chose three – one of us holding hands in our engagement photos, one of our wedding date from our engagement photos, and one of us holding hands on our wedding day. We wanted to keep it simple and thought that these ones were really sweet and romantic.

Hanging these frames wasn’t too difficult but it was a lot more difficult than the method we used in the guest room (to be talked about in a later post). The hardest part is making sure that you’re nailing everything in the right place especially since I’m a perfectionist and will notice if something is even a 1/2 inch off.

Here’s a before and after:

Anddddd here’s a close up of the photos above the bed:

One thing I’ve learned throughout this house process is that it really is a process. You can’t just move in and have everything set up and decorated the next day (unless you have superpowers). It’s really not possible and, even if it was, it’s better to take your time. It’s so much more gratifying to enjoy the process of picking out the decorative items and to see the house come together step by step. I LOVE seeing how one day the guest room is just a bed and then the next day, after just a few pillows, it’s a bedroom. (More on this in another post!)

And last but not least, CJ, my mom, and I participated in the Silicon Valley Kidney Walk on June 1 in support of our wonderful friend Sheila. Go Team Fred!

One of the most common questions I get when I haven’t seen someone in a while is, “How is the new house going?”, and I normally respond with, “It’s good.” When really, I’m thinking, “Well the packing is done. We have furniture to get for the formal room and then need to actually decorate the place – curtains, pictures, decorative pieces to go on the furniture, rugs, yada yada yada…” But I try to avoid bogging people down with the details. We have so many plans for the house that it’s hard to say that we’re done moving in when there is so much left to do to until it feels complete.

Our painting is propped on the sofa so you can imagine what it will look like when it gets hung up

Once we moved the furniture in the layout that looked best, we could see that there was a void in between the two side chairs that needed to be filled. We saw a little Tibetan stool in Cost Plus a few weeks ago that I fell in love with but had no idea where it would fit in the house. After seeing the front room come together, I knew that it would be the perfect side table so we stopped by Cost Plus and snatched it up. I’m so in love with it because it’s functional but also is a piece of artwork.

With the cute little stool!

Our guest closet has needed an upgrade for quite some time. Because we reduced it from a full closet to a half sized closet, it wasn’t set up for functional use when we moved in. We were using it for one of our hampers and for the ironing board but I realllllly wanted to hang up my coats in there. Up until now, I had them on a clothes hanger in the garage because there wasn’t enough space in the existing closets.

Here’s what the closet looked like before we spruced it up:

Ready for a fresh new paint job

Uneven painting done by our contractor

Step 1: Paint the closet. Although the picture above looks like a perfectly white closet, it was quite uneven and drove me nuts. Even if we filled up the closet with clothes, I would still know that the uneven paint job was hiding behind it. So, when CJ was on a business trip a few weeks ago, I painted it a standard white shade and voila! It was ready for shelves.

So fresh, so clean

Step 3: Setting up the closet. We borrowed a handy dandy stud finder from my dad and started by finding where we could screw in the brackets. After that it was super easy: screw in the brackets, set the shelf on top, throw in the adjustable clothing rod and BAM. We had a working closet.

So functional