October Updates - Freezing February Dining Room Re-do

At the end of January, on a shopping trip to Charlotte with my mom and sister, we stopped off at Interior Resolutions of Richburg, where I found the perfect fabric for my dining room drapes and chairs.  I was dreaming of a red dining room to coordinate with the fabric I already had for the living room since the rooms are side by side.  My sister laid her hands on the PERFECT stripe with all the same colors – red, navy, green and gold.  The fabric store has a sewing shop attached and it was a miracle that there was just enough fabric left on the bolt to make 6 extra-long panels, with just inches to spare. 

This began the dining room renovations.  I brought a swatch of the fabric home and decided on Sherwin Williams Antique Red for the wall color.  We used dark gray primer under the red, and even with that, the red took FOUR coats to cover evenly.  (If you’re going RED on any surface, especially plaster, I wish you mountains of patience!)  Luckily, we had 3 more days of snow in February, so I filled my time trapped in the house painting, painting, and painting.   A big thanks to my dad who dared to drive in the snow and came over to help me with a few coats! 

Here’s the dining room before we purchased the house. (Unfortunately this is the only true "before" image I took of this room)...  100% Beige everything and NO light fixture:

Here's some in-between shots of after we had moved in and began working

And here’s some shots of the dining room today:

Since moving in, we’ve bought a beautiful chandelier from The LiteHouse, received Buffet Lamps and a beautiful antique mirror for Christmas and Birthday gifts from my parents, re-covered the dining room chair seats, added beautiful curtain rods (a fun adventure in drilling/hanging things with plaster walls), hung the striped window treatments, repaired plaster, primed/painted walls trim and French doors, and finally re-arranged the furniture after receiving the piano from my parents house. 

Here's a before & after of the dining room chairs... I love re-covering the chair bottoms because it is an easy, inexpensive and quick change that can make a big difference in a room!

Finally, here's the big transformation before & after style.  I have already loved entertaining in our new dining room for our dinner club (we hosted the same weekend I finished painting & hanging curtains), parties, Bible study and a baby shower!

One more dream before I’m ready to call this room complete is art to hang over the piano, suggestions welcome!

October Updates - Kitchen

October is the month where I begin to realize that we are drawing closer to the end of another year.  Recently, I’ve taken a big break from blogging about our life and also from reading blogs in general, but I know I’m going to be sad when I look back at my blog for 2014 and realize that I didn’t document ALL the things we did and accomplished in the past year.  So this month I’m going to try and catch up on updating about the things that have happened to us in 2014.  Most of it has to do with our house renovations, so there will be lots of before &; after photos!

So let’s start back at the beginning!

In January 2014, I finished up our Phase I Kitchen Re-do.  It is crazy to think I was able to stand it for 3 months, but when you’re a one-woman workforce (who also works full-time), progress sometimes goes much slower than you think.  So, let’s take a look back at how the kitchen & butler’s pantry looked when we first viewed the house:

The huge kitchen and glass-fronted cabinets are what made me fall in love with this house.  I knew on first glance that it was going to take some convincing to get Ryan to agree to buying this fixer-upper, but I had big dreams for this kitchen from the start.  We have had SO many compliments about how spacious it is, and I'm already loving the ability to actually have company in the kitchen with me while I'm cooking or cleaning.  (Our old house definitely had a one-butt kitchen -- as in, only one butt could fit in it at a time!)

And here is the kitchen today:

Changes include: No more wallpaper!! Repaired plaster new paint in Sherwin Williams Stucco, all newly painted white trim, cabinets painted in SW Big Chill (upper) and SW Grays Harbor (lowers), new cabinet & drawer pulls from House of Antique Hardware, new appliances from Sears, new table from Nadeau and chairs from Amazon, new light fixture from The LiteHouse, and new blinds to block the lovely view of the laundry porch. 

Here's a Top & Bottom Before & After for the full effect of how much has changed!

More dreams in Kitchen Phase II Re-do include:

-          New Countertops, Sink, Faucet & Garbage Disposal

-          Tiled Backsplash

-          Replace the Flourescent Light Fixture

-          Rug for Sink/Stove Area

Also in January, we had our first snow of 2014.  We had several bitterly cold days, which are so rare in South Carolina and experienced our first ever frozen & busted pipe.  Luckily it was outside in our laundry porch and not inside the house.  The plumber was able to get over in record time and make a quick repair.  We’ve now added extra insulation to the exposed pipes on the porch!   I’ve heard that they’re calling for another cold winter, so hopefully we get by without any more damage this coming year!