Flooring

So you know how I said we were going to leave the carpets for a while. Yeah well we changed our plan. here's how it went down.


Ring ring

Me: How much to clean my carpet?

Carpet Man: How big and how dirty?

Me: 10 rooms, dirty and a million square feet. Don’t you want to see it to quote me?

Carpet Man: Nope. That’s $2.

Me: Okay Thanks! See you Tuesday.

Knock knock

G: Hello

Carpet Man: Now that I’m here I changed my mind. This is going to cost $100000

G: We only plan on keeping it for a year so just do a $2 clean! We don’t care about making it look brand new.

Carpet Man: YOU INSULT MY CRAFT. $100000 or nothing

G: Then Nothing!

Ring ring

Me: Hello

G: THE CARPET MAN TRIED TO RIP US OFF!!! WASTING MONEY! BLAH ERGH FREAKOUT! WE’RE GETTING THE SAME FLOORS WE PUT IN THE PLAYROOM
Me: Okay

Now the problem is the existing floor in the kitchen. It’s not going to match but I don’t want to replace it right now…I’m thinking I’m going to paint it!

Source

Design Sponge

Paisley Wallpaper

 

We have progress

What it looked like before we bought it: Half painted, tan, wallpaper

And now with wallpaper removed and new paint!




There's still a million things to do (check out the nasty ceiling fan, lovely forest green tile, the trim needs to be painted) but we will be able to move in soon!

Another view...

Excuse the mess in the kitchen everything is in there so we can get the carpet cleaned, cause my kitchen never looks that messy otherwise. HA HA.

Indoor/Outdoor Rugs

When we closed on the house it had 100% barf carpet everywhere except the kitchen (hardwood), a small square in the entry (hardwood) and the upstairs bathroom (vinyl). Including the bathrooms which smelled great. That's more than 2500 sq feet of carpet. We originally planned on replacing all of the downstairs flooring before we moved in but decided to put it off because there are so many start up costs when you buy your first house (a lawn mower costs what!)  Plus its spring and its 80F (26C in Canadian eh!) and we'd rather invest in a patio/bbq/patio furniture/yard right now.

So we are replacing the bathroom stank covering and the carpet in playroom (there was a leak) but the rest of the carpet will be cleaned and stay for a while. A lot of it is in decent shape for 12 year old carpet but the livingroom is pretty worn out. Plus it is a GIANT EXPANSE OF BEIGE so I would like to get a rug. The problem?

1. I'm cheap
2. It needs to be ginormous
3. I'm really cheap but G is even cheaper
4. The little people in my house like to spill stuff in the living room. We eat there sometimes. In front of the TV. Please dont report me to the mommy police.

The most affordable rugs out there are indoor/outdoor rugs. I LIKE that they aren't shaggy and squishy but I worry they might be to hard or rough. But people put sisel and jute in their house. And that stuff feels like a loofah (but looks so FRESH and CRISP and CLEAN- I think all decor blogs need those words)

Anyway I have scouted a few good deals on overstock.com All of these are monster rugs (~9x11)

$166.99



162.99




136.99



136.99

 This one is smaller (7x9) but I like it

129.99

I'm kinda loving the houndstooth (in black). William Sonoma Home had a similar one a while back. Except theirs was wool and $1650.

Getting Closer

Peruvian house war paint...

Yes that is paint on his eye. He didn't know it was there and went grocery shopping like this.

Big paint reveal coming soon!

Craig and his list

I've been browsing Craigslist a lot lately. You can find a lot of super nice stuff. Our kitchen table and couches were found there. There is also a lot of yuck.

Like this for $250. "grey cloth with white accents, and black and gold trim" The upholstery on the back looks likes those giant pads the hospital gives you after you have a baby.

Three dimensional leopard mirror. $300. Nuff said.

Or this bedroom set for $450...yeah you paid 2 G's for it....in 1986. OH SNAP!

There should be a list of rules for craigslist

1. If it was chewed, marked on, peed on, burnt, wet, stinky, stained: list it in the freebie section or take it to the dump.
2. Vintage does not means your stuff is worth a lot of money. Sometimes old crap is just old crap.
3. It doesn't matter of you paid eleventy billion dollars for your nasty couch. Don't overprice your stuff.

Ideas....

Number two thousand eight hundred and eleven on the list of things I want to do: Art for the spare room AKA Nanny's Room.

Check out what Cassity over at remodelholic did



Scrabble Art

 Nanny (my mom) loves scrabble. Now I just need to enter buttloads of giveaways so I can win a Silhouette.

Floors

Well it was a long day but we have floors in the playroom! Excuse the poor quality picture it was taken at 10pm with no flash.

Now we just need to install new baseboards, paint the chair rail and crown molding and its decorating time! Here's a reminder of what it looked like after we closed and then after we pulled off the wallpaper and ripped out the carpet:

No updates

I love the inspiration I get from other blogs. The tutorials. The before and afters. Sometimes people do things that you didn't even know were possible like this:

Addicted to decorating painted her brass shower and fixtures! I DIDN'T KNOW YOU COULD DO THAT!!!!

Also. must. have. chandelier. in. bathroom.

I'm loving fancy designer wallpapers but I like my wall covering cheap and easy (is it juvenile that when I typed that I was thinking "like your mom!") Wallpaper is a major commitment. I am STILL peeling wallpaper from our house (forest green with gold griffins, I don't remember that ever being in style) and at $90-150/roll its not budget friendly.

Then I discovered wall stencils. I know what you're thinking.



http://www.stencilease.com

although I don't know why they would want me tocredit them for that fugliness

But baby times are a changin. Check out the gorgeousness you can do now!

http://www.cuttingedgestencils.com/

I'm going to use this flower in the girls room...stay tuned for more details!

Progress is being made

We have paint on walls!!!! Whoo hoo playroom in progress!

Things like this aren't helping. It's masking tape left from when the previous homeowner abandoned the house mid-painting. And either they used super glue brand or two years in an un-air conditioned house has caused a chemical reaction creating the strongest tape ever. It took me 15 minutes to pick off that small ball. 

Playroom Plans

See this pile of ugliness? It’s being transformed into a playroom. A playroom with DOORS that I can SHUT. So hopefully when people pop-in I can just shut the playroom doors instead of apologizing for the fact that my living room looks like Santa’s bag exploded (His bag of TOYS. Pervert.)

The girls bedroom is going to be pink Pink PINK so I’m going multi-colour in the playroom. My inspiration is their existing toys/furniture.  We are painting the walls white on top and bamboo leaf by Behr on the bottom (G has informed me that the green is ugly and the white took too many coats). Here’s my inspiration board using items we already own.

Furniture and rug from Ikea. Play kitchen from kidkraft . Illustrations by Katie Moon. Paint by Behr.

Now I need some crap accessories to tie it all together. I have been collecting yard sale frames to paint bright pink. Some are going to frame the fabu Katie Moon prints. And some are going to be converted into fabric covered bulletin boards like this one from Bloggin with Bobbi

Curtains? I'm like this bargain beauties from Walmart.

Ikea has some cute curtains too. They also have some fun fabrics. Maybe its time to dust off my sewing machine and make some curtains!



If I go the DIY route there are a bajillion great fabrics I could use. Look at these fun ones I found on etsy.

 

Family Fabrics



Fancy Pants

Fancy Pants

So many choices!



Trends Part 1

While exploring the blogosphere for inspiration I found that there are quite a few trends out there that I was not aware of. Are they overdone? Maybe. But I’m not a designer and I don’t give a rats bum if they are overdone, a lot of them are pretty! I see so many things that I want to do in my own home. And isn’t that what the whole blog community about? Copying Being inspired by other people?  

Chevron Pattern. Based on the Chevron logo. I kinda love it.

 Honey Pie Designs

Dwelling by Devore

 

Ikat. Which literally means to bind. A super old way of making fabric. It has the ugly-but-somehow-pretty appeal for me.

 LA Design Concepts

 Material Recovery

Typography. Putting letters and numbers everywhere.

Apartment Therapy

HGTV 

Colour

After living in beige/taupe/tan/cream apartments for ten years I imagined that when we brought a house I would paint it in a rainbow of colours. Apple greens, deep purples, crisp blues. But the house we bought has an open floor plan downstairs.

Or we could just leave it half painted and with gorgeous wallpaper

2000sqft of apple green? Barf. I'll do colour in the bedrooms/bathrooms. Plus after collecting tons of inspiration pics online I realized that what I really loved for the main living areas was grey. Grey is the new beige.

The three shades I picked are silver screen (for most of the walls)

Pewter Mug (for the kitchen)

Milestone which is more blueish/purpleish grey (for accent walls)

And here they are on the wall. Yeah its dark and there is a sun spot so not a true representation. But it looks fabu right?