Tag: family room

Home Improvement

Everybody at our house getting tipsy

Jessica Smith

One of my coworkers was asking me the other day how our house was coming along and I told him it was wonderful. Our house is almost all painted, things are mostly put away and our family room renovation is pretty much finished, minus our bar.

So then he asked a logical question: Are you guys big party people since you a getting a bar?

I laughed and answered: No, not at all.

I explained to him that when we took out the fourth bedroom, we also removed a huge closet. It created the perfect space for a bar. So even though we aren’t the biggest party people on the planet, it seemed like the best use of the space. That was my logic anyway.

We bought pendant lights for the bar yesterday, knowing that the bar was scheduled to be delivered in the afternoon. Home Depot has a cool feature online where you can order and pay for your items online, then go pick them up in the store a few hours later after a sales associate gathers your items together. It’s a great way to know if something is in stock before trek over there. That’s what we decided to do, so we ordered our two lights online and the hubby went to pick them up.

We chose these pretty lights:

They aren’t gray like the picture shows, but a pretty clear glass with little bubbles in it. They were pretty inexpensive as far as lighting goes, coming in at about $70 per light. A big thank you to my mom and my godmother who gave use Home Depot gift cards as house-warming/Easter gifts. They were super handy in purchasing these lights!

Anyway, Brian got home from Home Depot and immediately got to installing the lights.

Of course as soon as he starts the bar arrived. To save money, we ordered a bar we had to assemble ourselves. So after hanging up the lights, the hubby spent a good part of the day assembling the bar while I laid on the couch (I’ve been feeling like crapola this week, so I offered words of encouragement and occasionally was an extra set of hands.)

Isn’t it charming!? I think it fits perfect where the old closet used to be. It’s way cooler, too. (As soon as it was finished I had to play “Tipsy” by J-Kwon.)

Naturally, we had to go to the liquor store to stock our new bar, followed by a trip to Costco to buy a mini fridge. We bought 8 bottles of wine and lots of beer for the fridge. Then we picked up a mini fridge that fits perfectly in the cutout behind the bar.

You can also see all of our glassware fits behind the bar, which gave us an entire shelf back in our storage room Sweet.

Now we just need a set of bar stools and our family room is done done done!

And just for grins, here’s a picture of Remmy in the refrigerator box.

 

Home Improvement

An almost finished room

Jessica Smith

Our family room renovation is finally drawing to a close. I say “finally” with a tinge of sadness because I really enjoyed redoing a part of our home. In fact, I can’t wait to begin a new home renovation (the hubby and our wallets can totally wait, though)! I have my sights set on the bathroom on the same level as our family room. It is by far the most dated part of our home and would be relatively inexpensive to redo since it is so teeny. Plus, it should probably look just as sweet as the family room it services. But, that will have to wait for a little while.

Anyway, without further delay, here are some of the final touches to our family room:

1. Our finished wine rack: The hubby DID NOT want me to paint the wine rack. He also doesn’t want me to paint his TV shelf. Clearly, he lost the battle of the wine rack. (The jury is still out on his TV stand). I didn’t mind the color of the wine rack before it was painted, but Glen used MDF to construct the wine rack. MDF doesn’t look like a final product should, so I had to paint it. I went with white instead of the blue/green of the walls, and I’m very happy I did. I like that the rack pops out and says, “COME LOOK AT ALL THE WINE I’M SO GRACIOUSLY STORING FOR YOU UNTIL YOU WANT TO DRINK IT!” It was a pain in the butt to paint (of course it needed two coats of paint, too), but it was definitely worth it. When we get our bar, you won’t be able to see the shelf full of liquor at the bottom and part of the second wine rack. It’s going to look totally baller 🙂

2. Our TV stand actually has a TV on it: The TV shelf looks a lot less massive when it actually has a television sitting on it. I’ll be honest and say that I hate that we didn’t plan for cabinet doors. Brian did that purposefully because he likes looking at all of his electrical equipment, but I think it looks a little tacky. Maybe someday we can add doors to the front. Either way, the cabinet looks pretty darn perfect in our room. Now we just need a bigger television! We actually joined Costco this past weekend and might be getting a sweet 60″ TV from them. Excitinggggg.

3. Our mantel is painted: I know I’ve already gone on and on about how much I love our fireplace… well, with our mantel painted white I love it even more. It looks fantastic.

4. We have a couch (and a rug, and decorative pillows, and curtains… OMG): Check out our super sweet new couch. We picked it out from Gardiner’s and we’re really happy with how it looks in the room. We were a little worried that it might not be big enough, but it fits in the room perfectly. It’s great because it’s made from  micro suede, so it’s pretty much dog proof. It also has a queen-sized pull-out bed, which will be great when we have guests over!

We also picked up an area rug (on clearance at Bed Bath and Beyond for $50!!), throw pillows with birds on them (I adore birds), and neutral curtains.

We still need an end table and either a coffee table or an ottoman, but our room is looking pretty fly.

Add our bar in front of the wine rack and no one is ever gonna leave. Muahahaha.

I should add a picture of the room coming down from the stairs… maybe later.

The room still needs a few things, like photos on the walls and such, but we can actually use it as our family room. I can’t even believe how far it came. From a cramped little family room covered in paneling and a long and skinny fourth bedroom to a gorgeous, large family room… it suits us perfectly.

Home Improvement

Everything is coming together

Jessica Smith

This weekend was huge for the hubby and I getting things done around the house. The hubby mowed our lawn for the first time… until our mower broke. Then he borrowed our neighbors to finish up the front yard. We bought a new mower on Saturday. Our new mower has a Honda motor. How fancy! All in all, the yard took a little more than an hour to mow, which isn’t too bad for a half acre +.

What else did we do this weekend? Why, more painting, of course!

We were painting maniacs this weekend. My biggest accomplishment was getting our kitchen painted. I had never planned on painting our kitchen, but with the electrical work we had done it became a must. So, from boring beige to sanctuary green the walls went, and now our kitchen looks so much nicer!

This was definitely the trickiest room I’ve ever had to paint. I went all out and painted all the way down behind my oven and the entire nook surrounding my fridge. I had to paint so many nooks and crannies, but the worst by far were the spaces above our cabinets. My back still hurts just thinking about painting up there!

It’s not often that it pays to be short, but being 5’5″ worked in my favor when it came to painting above our cabinets. I still had to scrunch to one side to paint up there, but there was no way the hubby could have done it at his ginormous height of 6’2″. I even had to free hand some parts of the ceiling because I couldn’t physically get into the little spaces to tape. All of my hard work paid off because it looks amazing. Now that it is a beautiful, rich color, I can’t imagine not having my kitchen painted. Bye-bye, boring beige. Hello, beautiful green!

The hubby’s big accomplishment of the weekend was getting our family room painted. Saturday morning I repainted the ceiling one last time, then we started to tackle the walls. He finished up yesterday afternoon and now our room is finally starting to look like a room again! How exciting.
I made a fun discovery in our family room while we were painting. Turns out our stairs have a beautiful bit of molding to them that I’d never seen before. I painted the bottom half the same color as the family room, so now the molding pops. Look how charming they are (don’t pay too much attention to the dirt… the actual molding desperately needs to be painted white).
As if that wasn’t enough painting for one weekend, the hubby and I also tackled the bottom half of our dining room. I know this picture is far from fantastic, but you get the idea.
Now all we have left to paint is one teeny, tiny bathroom and the main room and hallway of the house! The end is definitely in sight. And that means I can start figuring out how I want to decorate! FINALLYYYYY!