Ideas for a Dining Room

I am so excited that we are actually going to have a dining room! Our current house is so small and the floorplan is so closed in that we hesitate to have guests over to entertain. My goal this year is to host Thanksgiving at our house, and to do that, I've been looking at ways to make our house welcoming and yet make it our own at the same time.

 

They have added chair rail to separate the top and bottom halves of the wall. The top wall they color washed and the bottom half they used a stencil and rollers to apply two different colors of paint to make the room pop.

The top part is really cool too because they added in painted wall frames to access and decorative wall art that you have.

 

Go here to get instructions on how to stencil on wall art:

http://www.lowes.com/creative-ideas/paint-stain-and-wallpaper/moroccan-pattern-stenciled-wainscot/project

 

If you want to learn how to color wash and add in the painted wall frames, you can find directions here:

http://www.lowes.com/creative-ideas/paint-stain-and-wallpaper/color-wash-walls/project

 

I also love this idea of adding the decorative painted ceiling to accent a chandelier.

 

You can find the instructions on how to do this here:

http://www.lowes.com/creative-ideas/paint-stain-and-wallpaper/decorative-painted-ceiling/project

 

I find the stenciled wall mirror adorable and it would look amazing over a little credenza. Add some do it yourself floral arrangements with a nice dining room table and maybe a wooden wine rack and you will have a very warm area to entertain.

I am not the type of person to choose bold colors as pictured here..mostly because I am not the type of person to choose pink, but on the other side, I don't want to choose colors that are too dark. Our plan is to refinish a wood table and chairs for the dining room and we are thinking with going on a darker stain. I'm thinking that I want to go with shades of blue and green but I think that I am also going to have to play with color scenarios in my head.

To help me with this task, I have tried using both behr and valspar color simulators where you can actually upload pictures of the room you want to paint. I have found that Valspar is easier to use for me. All you have to do is sign up with an email address and you are on your way!

 

http://www.valsparpaint.com/en/explore-colors/painter/index.html?screen=painterScreen

Wall Mounted Hall Tree

One of the first impressions when people walk into your house are in the foyer. Whether its large and spacious or whether it's tiny and cramped, you want it to welcome guests into your home.
The foyer in our new house is small but enclosed which will be great in the winter because we can keep cold air out. At our current house, our foyer is much smaller with a coat closet and then you are right in the living room with no door to keep out that cold air.
I've been finding all of these great ideas on Lowe's Creative Ideas website, and I wanted to share with you one that I really want to implement when we move in.

They installed a wall mounted hall tree and mirror with a little shelf. They painted the wall around the mirror and added vertical pine trim as the border also painted the same color. They used bright and colorful wallpaper as an accent wall. Now, I might not go as bright and bold as these colors, but they actually have some very cool looking wallpaper designs.

Go here to get all of the instructions on how to create your own Wall mounted hall tree:
http://www.lowes.com/creative-ideas/organize-store-and-move/wall-mounted-hall-tree-and-mirror/project

Touching up a Dreary Fireplace

      Spring is supposed to be here, but in our area, we are teased with bouts of wonderful weather which turn quickly into winter flurries again. As much as I would say that this is a surprise, nothing surprises me living in Rochester,NY.
      With landscaping on my mind, I can not motivate myself to spend any time or money into our current house since we will be moving in the upcoming weeks. Joshua and I have taken countless trips to home improvement stores gazing at tile, lumber, crown moulding, paint etc and planning out in our heads what we would like to do with our new home once we are able to actually call it ours. But we all know that ideas always change over time, especially when you are on a budget. Just look at all of the programs on hgtv. One show that we have been keeping our eyes on is the Property Brothers. If you have not seen it, it basically is a show of two brothers, one a real estate agent, and the other is a carpenter (twins) who show a couple the house of their dreams that is move in ready then reveal to them the actual cost which is always way over their budget. They go around showing them houses, bring it down to two that the family thinks they can work with, and almost always they are complete dumps. The one brother does these amazing designs with the two final houses, and the couple chooses the one they want. If you have not yet seen the show, I urge you to at least watch one episode. You can get some amazing ideas on how to flip a space in a house, and they give some great DIY tips.
     So the one thing that I would like to do that I have never done before is try my hand at doing some tile work. Since Joshua gets to put his subway tile in the kitchen, I told him that I claim the fireplace. If you have been keeping up with my journal, you know that the fireplace is nothing special.

As you can see, it is pretty standard brick and has the same flooring that is in the foyer, which is shown below:

Kind of just meh if you ask me. So I have spent some time trying to coordinate tile which isn't too expensive, but should give the area a little flare.

As a border on the flooring, I think I am going to go with this universal deco tile from home depot which is 3x13 and runs about $11.57 for each section.

Inside of the boarder, I plan on using 12x12 Montagna Lugano tile which is very simple and ties into the colors of the border chosen. ($9.99 each, also from home depot).

 

On the mantle covering the bricks, I plan on using Emperador blend bamboo 12x12 mesh tile. ($14.74 each, you guessed it! Home depot!). These are nice because they actually have a little bit of texture and kind of pop out of you. I think that a lot of people use too much conformity and everything is so straight and boring. Because it is kind of part of the fixtures in new builds, I think we have gotten too used to it and we need to delve out of our comfort zones a bit to make our house unique.

 

As for the front foyer tile, I am not quite sure what I would like to use in their yet. Perhaps that tile that looks like wood floors? The one mistake we made in our current house was put in gorgeous black marble tile. Number one, it gets dirty really easily. Two, it's always covered with a mat in the winter time to keep people from falling flat on their face right as they walk in the door and you never really see it....Lastly, it was really expensive.

 

So, you may be saying to yourself at this point, ok great, I have never tiled before and would love to get some instructions on doing so. Me too! I will be doing some research, and then when we move into the house, I will produce a list of supplies needed with measurements, how much everything costs, and the time that the project will take to complete! For now, stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

 

Inspection Day

We had our inspection at 9am this morning per seller's request which went rather well. A few small issues that we are going to ask them to fix, but nothing of major concern. Since we were there for a few hours, I got a lot of time that I could take pictures. There is an open house going on this afternoon for a few hours and silly me forgot to take some pictures of the kitchen and the front of the house so I will get a chance then to add them onto this post. There are a lot of pictures and probably a lot of rambling from my end. Any suggestions as to what we could do with each room would be greatly appreciated as well. Our goal is to make it a house we will enjoy living in but able to sell the house 10 years down the line without it sitting on the market for a prolonged period of time and turn out a profit.
The first set of pictures I have are of the backyard. The ground is very rocky, needs to be flattened, tilled, and we need to replant grass seed. The previous owner has layed out some nice stone around areas that I will be definately adding in gardens. There is a very large tree in the back that will provide a lot of shade, so my plan is to stick with vegetation that does not need a lot of sun to grow.

 

 As you can see in the above picture, the yard is fully fenced with bushes growing along side of them. Our plan is to remove those fences and replace them with a much nicer looking fence and to do so, all of those large bushes are going to have to come out.

 

There is a very cute little patio in the back with solar lights. An added plus is that this house has a radon mitigation system installed which is what that device is coming out of the side of the house.

 

Ok guys... this is the most awesome feature of the house. When you walk down the stairs to the basement and turn to the right, Bam! Spacious spa in the basement...and by that, I am being very sarcastic. This dingy beat up shower stall was something that looks like it was installed in the 50's. Apparently, the husband must have had a really dirty job that the wife sent him down to take a shower before stepping foot in the house. Way to go her, awful but easily fixed problem for us. We can easily finish off the basement, get rid of the stall, add a second bathroom. I mean, why not? The hookups are already there and we will be adding more value and appeal to the home as long as we do it right.

As you can see, the basement has a very open floor plan, is actually very dry. We need to add a dehumidifier and we can put in drywall and section off the mechanical room which is in that back corner, add a little laundry room where we can install shelving units to house laundry supplies.

 

I am not a big fan of the bathroom. It's like I am walking into my grandmothers house. Not that she didn't have good taste but these tile floors are just awful. An added bonus?Thewhite tile extends up the walls and there are built in soap bar holders by the pedestal sink.

The previous owner also decided to make the bathroom look like a sauna with outdated lights. As nice as that wood is...I'm not really a fan of it. I'm thinking the ceiling can stay, but not much else.

 

 

Next up we have the first bedroom which is on the back of the house. I'm not sure what I think of this stone wall yet...

 

And then we just have a second bedroom with a cedar closet that has access to the plumbing in the bathroom shower.

 

 

The foyer has very outdated tile which can easily be replaced.

 

The foyer actually has a door which separates it from the living area which helps keep cold air out in the winter.

 

The house has glass doorknobs throughout which I find is a really classic touch.

Of course there is the living room with the picture windows on either side of the fireplace and that door leads out to a very small side porch that leads out to the yard. (Sorry about the lighting, I took these pics with the camera on my phone so they are not of the greatest quality.)

 

The fireplace has the same tile that is in the foyer. It can easily be retiled. Also not sure about the brick around the fireplace. Should we tile over that or do you think it looks ok the way that it is?

 

I am super excited that we will actually have a dining room where we can entertain now!!

 

 

I think the archway in the door from the dining room leading out to the living room is a great touch, but I'm not sure whether we might want to extend the archway to open it up a little bit more.

 

These are the very steep stairs leading up to the master bedroom. We are definately going to need to do something about them...

 

 

This is the landing when you get up the stairs..

 

The one side of the master bedroom has a walk in closet and my favorite part is the gas stove.

 

 

This is the other side of the master bedroom that we are considering adding a master bath. My husband hates tubs, but I would love to put in one of those new clawfoot soaking tubs. I can imagine myself relaxing, listening to some Jazz music on a record player, and drinking a nice glass of wine after a really long day at work.

 

Last but not least, the kitchen. Outdated appliances will be replaced over time, but I do like the tiffany style lights and the fact that we do have a working dishwasher!

 

 

So that's pretty much it. The next few weeks will consist of packing and planning out project ideas while we impatiently wait for both our current house and our new house to close. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Third Time is a Charm

This week has been one of the most stressful weeks I have had in a long time. With time running short and slim pickings in the area we most desire to live in, we finally were able to make an offer on a house, recieved a counter offer that was actually reasonable, and we accepted!!!
One of the conditions was that we had to have the inspection this weekend, since the owner is going out of the country this week. Our buyers agent worked her magic and was able to get one for tomorrow morning at 9am. We plan on bringing our tape measure and take lots of pictures so we can start planning on projects that we want to accomplish and the order that they will be done. There are still a few hurdles that we have other then the pending inspection. The first being that there is an open house scheduled in the afternoon that they have to have because the realtor already paid for advertisement. The second one being that if someone comes through that likes the house and makes an offer with no contingency, they can bump us out of our contract which would be pretty depressing. But if all goes well, this will be our new home before or on June 15!!

As you can all probably tell, this is a cape cod, which is the style we have now but it is much larger, has more character, and you can actually stand up in the large master bedroom upstairs without hitting your head. The house has only one bathroom on the first floor which needs to be gutted so thoughts are to definately add a second bathroom, possibly in the upstairs master bedroom to add appeal and resale value to the home. There are 2 fireplaces in the house, a wood burning fireplace in the living room and a gas burning one in the master bedroom. The kitchen is cute and workable and my favorite part is that there is an actual dining room that we can entertain in!!!A plus for this house?? Central air. It was not on our list of things that we need, but it is definately a plus for us. There is a brand new fridge, older dishwasher and older stove but no washer or dryer, so that is something that we will have to invest in. Luckily, there is a laundromat very close by.
I plan on taking more pictures tomorrow while we are having the inspection and then my plan is to break down ideas of what we can do for each room. Then we will work our magic and transform this house into our dream home. Oh, and I can't wait to show you the spacious spa that is awaiting us in the basment!

Walking Away

A question many buyers may ask themselves when they are going back and forth with counteroffers with the seller is, "When is it time to just walk away?" There are many emotions flying around at this time...anxiety, anger, sadness, etc. and it may be hard to focus and make the decision that is right for you.

 You've spent countless hours going over the numbers of what you can afford, the payments you can make, choosing the perfect neighborhood to raise a family, a house with much potential that you have imagined yourself living there and have gone over all of the changes you have made in your head. You put an offer in on the house and have spent the whole weekend going back and forth with them over percentage of concessions, appliances, going over the list price to try to get the seller to cover closing costs. My husband and I were just getting so fed up with them that we decided we didn't love the house that much and we were not willing to drain our savings for it. It was just not worth it. And the silly thing for them is that they lost the deal because they would not include the refrigerator. I'm sorry, we can not afford a refrigerator and to cover closing costs so I hope you were happy with that decision because we are certainly happy with ours.
So now we are moving onto our fallback. With our house already sold and a projected closing date for June 15, we have no time to waste. This house is a few blocks away from the other house. Quiet neighborhood, same school district, close to the zoo, parks, and a quick easy access to the highway so that I can get to work. The house is 1600 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, huge kitchen, appliances included, a lot of storage, almost fully fenced in backyard with a lot of potential for gardens, deck/porch and maybe a hot tub.

The house is a perfect size for entertaining, but lacks a large driveway like the last house had. Granted the house does have a garage, but you can only park one car in the driveway. We may need to consider expanding the driveway in the future. The basement is a little scary..old checkerboard tile with wood paneling, and will definately need to be updated. The appliances are a little dated, but those can be saved for and replaced over time. We won't need to rush out and spend 3 grand on appliances right away. We can wait for a good sale and get a decent price at that time. The hubby thinks that the cabinets in the kitchen are a little dated, I think they are charming. The kitchen is large enough to install an island if we wanted with a built in range and an overhead decorative modernized range hood.

This house has been on the market for 8 months. The seller and realtor know that the house is priced a litte high at 127,900. The seller is living in another house and is currently paying 2 mortgages. She is paying for heat, water, electricity. The realtor wants it off his docket. We are going in at 122,000 with 6% concessions and to include the broken AC unit that is not listed on the mls. If we do this, when we have the inspection, we can get it fixed. I think that it is a good place to start, and I am hoping that we will hear something today.