New floors!

Well, got through cleaning quicker than I thought, so I decided to go ahead and post this. When we moved into this house 3 years ago, we immediately ripped up old carpet and installed some laminate flooring. Now we loved our laminate floors, but at the time they were cheap and we liked the color, so that's what we got. Fast forward 3 years, 2 dogs, and a pain in the butt to keep clean later and we were ready for a change. I wanted something easier to clean, wouldn't get scratched up as bad by the dogs, and show every single paw print when they get wet. Now no matter what people tell you, laminate flooring (and even hardwood floors) are not scratch resistant, cleaners create a buildup over time, and when wet they will start buckling. We found a product that is vinyl plank flooring (made by Allure at Home Depot), and it is water resistant, holds up to scratching, comes with a 25 year warranty, and is super easy to install.....it literally took Buddy 3 days to do our living room, hall, and dining room. This stuff will go over existing floors, needs no extra padding, has rubber bottoms and sticks to each other. They have many colors (some are special order only, and they also offer tile), we went with Country Pine. I never in a million years would have pictured me as having light colored floors in my house, but I have to admit that Buddy was right about this color. I remembered seeing vinyl plank floating around on Pinterest and had actually looked at it....I am amazed how many people are now doing this throughout their homes for durability etc, it makes perfect sense. For what you could spend on some hardwoods and laminate, you can get this product for as much, and loads cheaper in some aspects. Bonus is if we ever tire of it, or when we sell our house the new owners don't like it, it can be removed easily and our dark laminate floors will be underneath. If you're thinking of doing floors, or redoing them, go check it out! I want to redo our kitchen and laundry room now with the tile version. Here is the living room before with laminate floors:

And here's the vinyl plank in Country Pine:

The hall before:

And with vinyl plank:

Dining room before:

And with vinyl plank:

I absolutely love these floors. They're soft, quiet, easy to clean and I love the color! I'm excited to have some family and some of our best friends over tomorrow night for our Christmas Eve party. Hope that y'all have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Update: Laundry room & hall

Well, we decided that the ugly gold/yellow color in our laundry room was drabby and made the room look dirty ALL of the time. So we repainted. The color is a blend of different ones to create a custom one that is very pretty. Here is the horrible color in question:

And here's the after:

We moved our small bookcase over to the other wall that holds our shoes, and moved this old dresser from the hall into here to "dress" it up a bit:

Then we moved my HUGE bookcase from this wall into the hall, and moved our "shoe shelves" over here and hung up one of my moms paintings:

Here is the hall before:

And the hall once we moved the bookcase. This thing was not easy to maneuver from the laundry room to here. But, it was worth it:

That's it! We're ready for our Christmas Eve party with our families and awesome friends!!

A few updates

Nothing new in the house as of yet, still have to finish up the second guest room and install/paint interior doors. But, with everything going on I completely forgot to show new things in the kitchen and dining room. For the longest time I wanted an island in the kitchen to help store my baking goods, and to give me a nice prep area for cooking instead of putting nasty raw meat on my pretty countertops :) Also, we got a one of a kind accent table for our dining room from High Point Furniture here in Jasper. Then we painted an old shelving unit antique white and then distressed it (this thing is huge, and my family has had it since I was little, and probably before then). Here's my island with butcher top counter and granite cutting board. Also new art on the wall and new rug:

Here's the new accent table in our dining room:

Here's the painted/distressed shelving unit in the dining room:

Up close look of the distressing:

That's it for now. Next blog will have the other guest room and then we'll be able to cut, install and paint all of our new interior doors.

Guest Room

Well, the guest room is finally finished. The first thing we did in here was have sheetrock installed over the old, ugly acoustical tile ceilings. Then we painted the paneling a color called Jogging Path by Sherwin Williams, added new door/window trim, baseboards and crown moulding, and painted those. Now, onto before/after pics. Here is the room after we moved in and before we got new carpet:

Here is the sheetrock hung up:

And here is the finished product! Sorry, some of these pics have to have the flash cause it's dark outside:

By the tv, where my (Nikki) gaming magic happens:

The bed,(which belonged to my parents) & our new bedding:

Our doggie "shrine" (according to Buddy) with pics I took of our babies. Middle pic says "Nobody can fully understand the meaning of love, unless he's owned a dog".:

Over by our "office" with some of my mom's art that was redone in grays, black and white by Buddy:

And our new fan, cause here in the South, you need one in every room!

That's it! Next up is the other guest room which right now is our home gym (and hopefully nursery). We've got to install door trim, baseboards, crown, and hang curtains....then it too will be done!

New Dining Room and Hall Paint! (I know....AGAIN!!)

Well, yet again those who know me know I love change. However, I wasn't the ONLY one in this house who was tired of the Brandywine color, lol. We decided on a color called Pavestone by Sherwin Williams, of course....it's a neutral color without being beige or khaki which I just can't do, lol. I just love color, and lots of it which is obvious if you look in our home. It's more of a grayish tone, but you can see hints of a slight tan in it which is why we chose it cause we can both live with this color. It's actually probably my favorite color in the house, and yes that includes the living room. Here is what our dining room and hall color looked like the first time we painted: Here is the second time we painted it Brandywine: And here is the hall in Pavestone: And here's the dining room in Pavestone: That big wood unit we have (which is older than dirt), is going to be painted Heirloom White and distressed when it's not cold and rainy out. Until next time....

Updated: Front of house DONE!!!

Well, the columns have been painted and have been done for a while. I've just been procrastinating on getting pics. We need to re-caulk (is that a word?) where the wood was nailed together and add another coat of white paint. So, without further ado here is a reminder of what our house looked like when we moved in: And, here it is now after new columns, and landscaping: And, here is our back patio....which we now love and have used every night since we got the canopy: Now we just have to finish the inside. We've decided to hold off on painting the other two bedrooms because we wanted to figure out what to do with the ceilings first. We have old, ugly acoustical tiles in there (yuck!) and I would rather have a smooth ceiling like we did in the other rooms with tiled ceilings, our budget just didn't have room for the guest rooms at the time. So, we've gotten in touch with someone who is coming out to do that hopefully soon, we've just got to buy sheetrock, tape and mud. Then we will be able to paint, add new door/window trim and crown moulding....then paint and install our new interior doors. Almost been three years here, so I'm ready to have it done!

Front yard and house makeover

This weekend, which also happens to be our anniversary, we decided to redo the landscaping in our front yard. After I came up with a design, we set out to buy edging, rubber mulch (won't blow away and doesn't need replacing every year), plants, weed blocker and soil... then we set off to work. Buddy did most of the hard work on Friday, which included mowing, and removing existing old, ugly plants. I have to admit, this undertaking was a bigger pain in the butt than we anticipated. I now understand why landscapers charge so much to do their job....it's hard, backaching work. The hardest part to me, was digging the trench for our edging to go down into....we found that a hatchet did really well for this, lol. Now that it's over, we can feel (and see) our property value going up! All that's left on the front of the house, is to paint our porch and the brick on the columns the same color as our foundation, which is Sherwin Williams Anonymous and to paint the wood on top white (just primered right now). We decided to leave our house white, cause after washing the siding, it looks so much better. Here is a refresher as to what our house looked like when we moved in: And here's the new landscaping. Keep in mind the plants are going to get bigger over the years: Here's the left side of the house: The center bed: And the far right: That's it! Looks so much better than what we had. Think the next blog will be once we finish painting the porch and columns!