Dining Room & Foyer - Before and After

• Okay so most of the dining room and foyer pictures that were taken before are not that good. Why do you ask? Well it is rather hard to take pictures of rooms that have huge mirrors. Every angle that I would shoot from would flash back at me or I would be glaringing (is that a word) in the picture. So most of the pictures are from when the mirrors were removed, the little round spots are the glue that ruined the drywall.
  
  When you entered into our front door door the whole wall on your left was full of floor to ceiling mirrors. On your right as you peered into the dining room that whole wall was mirrors from the chair rail to the ceiling. The former owner had used the dining room as the work out room.
  
  

Well to say the least I was not huge fan of the mirror, but Dennis must have been even less of a fan because we had been in the house for a little more than a week when he jumped off the couch on a Sunday afternoon and started prying the mirrors loose. Yes, I know you are supposed to tape the mirrors up but sometimes my voice of reason isn't always heard.
















Well the huge floor to ceiling mirrors popped off pretty much without a problem, but the dining room mirrors were a horror show waiting to happen. I knew there were going to be problems when both of the mirrors popped free at the same time and Dennis wanted me to hold one of them up. Let me just tell you the mirror was stinking heavy and I had visions of the other one crashing on my head and then into a million pieces. I was wearing shorts so I was being a little girly and didn't want to cut my legs all up.


When I freaked out, which never happens, I was told to get out. I then shut the pocket door and heard the most horrific crash that has taken place in my house. Luckily Dennis was fine, but I did shed a few tears.....I have no idea what was wrong with me that day.

Well when the mirrors came down we of course were not luckily enough to just be able to paint over the spots. Of course not it never works out that way for us, so we hired a drywall re finisher since our walls are very heavily textured. We could have done this ourselves but we were under a serious time constraint because Dennis' family was coming to town for Christmas.

Thankfully everything was finished and ready for furniture and the Christmas Tree in the nick of time. I put the decorations up in under a week, had furniture delivered and my wonderful husband put together the chairs from Target. My dad even helped out and picked the table up from Pier 1 a little more than a week before Christmas. To say the least I didn't think it was going to happen, but our dining room was in almost tip-top shape in time for the rest of our families to see it at Christmas.















Here is a rundown of everything that we did to the dining room after cleaning up all of the trillion mirror shards.

• Patched the Drywall
• Painted every surface except the two built in cabinets and the ceilings
• Changed the foyer light from a pendant light to a lamp shade
• Bought all new dining room furniture
• Bought rugs for both the dining room and foyer
  

Things to still do

• Rip of the shiny tile in foyer


• I am not the biggest fan of the laminate floor in our dining room and I would love to eventually have hard wood.


• Exchange the ceiling fan in the dining room for a nice chandelier.

• Buy drapes.
  
  
  

And for those of you that like details

• Paint - Sherwin Williams - Amazing Grey


• Table - Pier One - $399.00


• Chairs - Target - On clearance $74.99 for two. Yippee and look even better in person

• Dining Room Rug - Home Depot - $76.50 - On sale


• Foyer Rug - Lowe's - $54.00


• Foyer Shade - Lowe's - $21.00


• Foyer Mirror - Antique from Egypt


• Dining Room Buffet - Craigslist - $135.0 0 - (Willett)
  
  

  

I am so happy to actually have a dining room table. I just wish that the dining room was a bit larger, but just smile that I can fit eight family/friends at our table. Yes it may be a squeeze, but I still love it and wouldn't have any other way

Hope ya'll enjoyed:)



Partying at Thrifty Decor Chick

2011 Goals

Of course I have major goals for 2011 since we just moved into our house two months ago yesterday.

Goal #1. Paint over Mother Earth and The Dragon. Seriously Mother Earth and The Dragon are haunting my dreams. Of course we inherited these. I would never have a room called lemon zest. Plus you will have to wait for the unveiling of the dragon. Believe me it is worth the wait.

Goal #2. To Blog more often. I have so many before and afters already that I just need to get up. Our friends and family keep saying that can't believe what we have done in two months.

Goal #3. I use to think I was computer savvy until this whole blog world entered my life now I want to have one of those blogs everyone checks out. Instead of drooling over all of those blogs that I love maybe I need to read up on how to create a wonderful blog. I also would like to take better pictures. Hence I need a better camera.

Goal #4. I need to work on the bathrooms in our house. We have a bathroom that has six colors and the another one that literally glows in the dark. Help it is our master bath and we don't have a door between our bedroom and bathroom. (Note to self next time while looking for houses make sure that is a priority. I didn't find that out there wasn't a door until the day after we moved in and I went to take a shower.)

Goal #5. Shiny tile in the foyer is never a good thing, it needs to be gone.

Goal #6. I want to finish my craft room and actually do crafts. What a novel idea.

Goal #7. Is one that I will do no matter what...I will go to at least two of my baby sister's track meets. She is a sophomore at the University of Alabama and it is the only time I whole heartily root for Alabama. Other than that I am an Auburn fan, please please win the national championship.

Goal #8. To have actual patio furniture. We have a great patio, but no furniture. I am so looking forward to the warm summer nights outside with the my husband, friends and dogs. Maybe even an big crawfish boil sometime in March (my mouth is watering already).

I am sure that I will have more goals that will come to mind but I don't won't to overwhelm myself. I think that posting more than once a week may put me over the edge.

I also have remember that this is what we started with in our family room and now it looks totally different and that will be what my next post is all about. So I know that I can do anything given time and patience. Yep two things that I lack.

We Sold, Bought and Moved

Well when I first started this blog my life was in a totally different place. It is amazing how much it has changed in just a few months.

Last Wednesday Dennis and I sold our first home and purchased our next one. The month of October was a complete whirlwind, with a trip to New Jersey thrown in.

I will have to go over the selling process of our house in more depth later because it was crazy. The second group to come through our house came for a viewing on Wednesday, September 29th. They made an offer that Friday. After much haggling back and forth we came to a price agreement and signed the offer the next Wednesday. We had an offer before theirs and with all of the issues we had with that potential buyer I never really believed that our home would sell. The inspection was set for October 7th at which point our Realtor Carol told us we needed to start looking at houses again.

After we had our first offer Dennis and I went on a mad dash around town and fell in love with a large Victorian, but it was at the top of our price range and the $700 power bill was crazy. It was also going into foreclosure and we would still be waiting to see if we could purchase it and what repairs it would need.

I marked the Victorian off the list, though I think Dennis still secretly wishes it would have worked out. Carol set us up to look at four more house bringing the grand total of house we looked at to 15. One house was in foreclosure, one was currently occupied and in my parent's neighborhood, one was in a well established neighborhood, but the owner's had been transferred, and the last was brand spanking new.

We fell in love with the house in the well established neighborhood. Granted it needs some tweaking to become the home we want it to be. We have told everyone that has come to visit remember paint is very inexpensive. We at least know who the neighbors are and the backyard is fantastic.

We made an offer Monday, October 11th and hopped on a plane the 14th to head to a wedding in Princeton NJ. We found out we got the house on Friday, while we were with most of Dennis' family. Three weeks later we had closed on both houses and moved completely in. It happened so fast. There was a point where I just wanted it to stop and enjoy our house for little while longer.

I cried several times while moving out of the old house. This was where Dennis and I started our relationship. It was where he and Shea proposed to me. It was where we woke up the morning of our wedding and where we came back to as a married couple. We had put so much work into it and yes tears and sweat.

The photos attached are from the day that we cleaned the house. It makes me a little sad to look at them.

There were so many wonderful memories in that home and I hope the new owner appreciate and love it as much as we did.

When Selling a House.......

Patience is a virtue. This is not a virtue that I possess. The house has been on the market now for 22 days and has had a grand total of one showing. Now I will say that the last couple of weekends have been very rainy, but still......

We put so much hard work into the house to get it ready to put it on the market, I was hoping that we would at least have a little more traffic than this. Dennis has really started looking for a new house. This is very strange because I have basically toned downed my search to a crawl. I just don't see the house selling before the end of the year. Heck at this point in time I am not sure if we will have anyone else look at it.

I guess it is just a little depressing. At least we are lucky and we don't HAVE to sell the house we just WANT to sell the house. I can't imagine the people who are in the predicament where they HAVE to sell it and they are going through this. I think that I would go crazy.

Well at least it is Wednesday, but unfortunately my baby sister leaves to go back to Alabama Sunday. I don't get to see her as much as I would like since she is on the track team. They normally have practices on the weekends and she can't make it home. I probably will see her in October and again at Thanksgiving. I am going shopping this weekend. YAY!!!! Hopefully I will have some good finds.

Crazy Weekend!!

The Yard Sale was a huge success, but we may have a stalker!!!

Our yard sale was wonderful. I ended up selling a load of items and raising a grand total of $285.75, while Miranda made $199.75. We were very excited about the amount that we made, plus how much stuff we got rid of. The yard sale ran pretty smoothly, but I am still having a hard time believing that someone showed up at 5:30. Ugh!!!!

Last night Dennis and I were in the office and noticed that the answering machine was flashing with a message, it was someone from the yard sale. We are being stalked. Just kidding she had a question about the deep fryer that she purchased that was Miranda's. I guess I need to call her back.

Also at the yard sale we had someone interested in the house. Miranda really talked her up but of course we never expected that she would ever come back. Well......she was our official first showing yesterday. I haven't heard anything, but I am just glad we that we had our first showing.

Another crazy thing happened early Monday morning. There is a house in our neighborhood that has the exact same layout as ours. Well on the way to work Monday morning Dennis noticed a For Sale sign in its front yard. He called me three times during the day to see if it was on the MLS yet and for how much. We just knew it would be nicer and cheaper. Well.....it hit the MLS and it is $3,600 more and there are things that are better than ours but things that are much worse. We are keeping our fingers crossed that it is a good sign for our house.

Hope everyone has a great week.

Days on Market - 6
Showings - 1 - (Even if nothing comes of this it is such a good feeling that someone came to look at our home.)


By the way the picture is of Dennis and I on vacation and it was taken by Miranda. (I so wish I was still there now.)

Wow!! Lots of Changes!

It is amazing how much my life has changed in the last two months!!

Where have I been??? Well I have some exciting news, Dennis and I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and buy a new house. We are being a little smart about this and have put our house on the market before we officially decide what our next move is going to be.

We basically know the area we want to be in, but we aren't real sure if it is a new house, old house, or what. We maybe living in an apartment before we actually make a finally decision, but that isn't that bad.

We did lots of painting around our house and de-cluttering to put the house on the market and in fact we are having a Yard Sale tomorrow to hopefully sale some of our stuff. We did get those new windows and instead of a concrete driveway we got a new asphalt driveway. We also had lots of fun landscaping our yard. When I say we, I mean me. I did most of the heavy lifting, but I did have some help from my niece and nephew one day so they could earn extra money for their trip to Disney World.

Our vacation was absolutely wonderful. We went to Cape San Blas and had a blast. It was great weather, good times with good friends.

Well wish us luck on this new endeavor and on the Yard Sale and have a great weekend.

House on the Market - 3 days
Showings - 0 (That is so sad)

May's List

Wow!! I can't believe how long it has been since I wrote on the blog. Well Dennis decided not go to New York so he is in Mobile this weekend. We are a month closer to our vacation, but this giant oil spill could ruin so many things. More on that later this week after I hopefully get signed up to volunteer to clean up.

I've decided to make May the month of not spending any money...well there are a few exceptions.

1. I need a new swimsuit for vacation, but I will not spend more than $40.

2. Wolfie needs to go to the vet.

3. I will be having at least one girls night.

4. I won't give up my monthly facials. (This is my way to relax.)

We will not go out to eat together, but we are allowed if we go out with friends. I am doing an inventory now of our pantry and will get a menu started for the next month. I plan on going to the grocery store for one major purchase tomorrow and a smaller one two weeks from now. There is a farmer's market on the way home from work so I will stop once a week to get produce if we need it. We will see how it goes.

Dennis and I have also set up several goals for redoing the outside of our house.

1. New windows.

2. A new concrete driveway

3. Vinyl siding - We are torn between this because Dennis wants to see how much brick might cost. I am afraid that this may be way to much.

4. Back yard - Our back yard is so overgrown that Dennis and I just don't even want to think about it but we know it is something that needs to be done. We just don't want to do it.

The inside of our house goals aren't huge, but don't include my/our dreams.

1. Hardwood floors in the den, dining area, and hallway. We have pretty much decided that we are going to keep carpet in the bedrooms because I want very expensive hardwood floors.

2. New furniture - We need new sofas badly, but I haven't quite found one that I love and I have slip covers for our sofa and a plan. I will let you know how that goes.

We are also saving money for a new fence, a new roof, and a new A/C system. Our roof is is the same age as our house so we know we are going to need a new one soon. Our fence is awful and Shea and Wolfie have literally busted through it before:(

My dreams for the house is to put an addition to our bedroom to extend our bedroom and bathroom. In our bedroom I would like to have a craft room/office and huge bathroom and walk in closet. I can always dream. I think though that we may buy a new house before we ever do that.

Well I will be getting our last window quote on Monday so hopefully by next month's list I will have something marked off.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and please pray for us on the Gulf Coast as we deal with this crisis. Good Luck Alexis at your track meet at Ole' Miss hopefully the rain will hold off.