Category: Detail Stuff

Not the old lady perfume.

Ours.

I am notorious for failing to take before pictures, this being no exception. Here is a rough idea of the way the house looked before I painted the door:

Don’t even ask about the exercise equipment on the front porch.

Seriously, I wonder where that thing went.

Pinterest I had the idea to paint the front door a teal/tiffany color. I grabbed a sample color from Lowe’s, which set me back less than $3, and went to painting.

It looks SO much better, doesn’t it?

Tiffanyyyyyyy!

Ignore the open “storm” door (it’s only called that because it looks like it’s been through a hurricane, not because it does anything a storm door is supposed to). We got a new, nice one, but it’s not up yet and it was hard to see the color with the current one shut.

Viola! I love it! The wreath was picked up at a junk sale for $1, and the letter is from one of the craft stores. And yes, we need to pressure wash the house, we totally know that. It’s already on the very long list of Stuff We Really Need to Do, Talk About Doing Often, But Never Get Around To.

Hey y’all, I’m back from sabbatical, though the site is a bit different. Hopefully you’ll understand soon. In the meantime, this will be a home improvement blog only, like it started out.

Anyway, as soon as I redid the living room for the eleventy-billionth time, I was so sad at how blank that wall looked:

Before 🙁

This was one of the more annoying projects, which is essentially why it’s taken me four months to tackle it (I bought it when I bought the darn couches!). What you don’t know before buying them is that they don’t give you the hardware to attach them to the wall. Lovely. Time to play a resounding round of “What will hold this up?”

I use toggle bolts like other people use duck tape. I toggle bolt everything because my stud finder only beeps near Hubbin.

I googled it online and I urge you not to do that unless you are in the mood for horror stories. I think they’ve improved their template for the wall, though, because people complained about the screw locations and these were covered in them. So that’s good.

Wow, I just realized it’s the birthday of the blog; and what a year it’s been, y’all.

Google Analytics tells me that 3,006 unique people have visited since I set up the analytics page. Wow. That is…insane.

I started this blog because I like to write, and people tell me I’m good at it. Plus, I was doing things around the house that I NEVER thought I could do. Look, 18 months ago, my house looked completely different! I had NO desire to do anything either; it didn’t even occur to me, actually, as sad as that sounds. And then? Then I found Pinterest.

I had totally underestimated myself. Aside from a couple of things, there have been very few things that I have made an effort to do and not been able to accomplish, and this goes across all facets of life. I’ve been successful at stuff if I was really determined, even the really hard stuff. The picture that started it all?

Ok, this is all I’ve got today. I am exhausted. I ran around the house for 45 minutes today.

No, I actually ran AROUND the house today for 45 minutes. Charlotte was making laps.

So that list of things to do? I have done two of them.

• Attach legs to Expedits (likely Besta)
• Hang the big floating shelves we bought AFTER I bought all the supplies to make some myself
• Print engineer prints of pictures from our hometowns to hang above the floating shelves and frame
• Change or stain those awful legs on the sofas
• Re-center the pictures over the television, which is centered in front of the coffee table
• Get a normal looking fan. I hate white fans. And get a fancy thing that goes around it on the ceiling.
• Find a lightbulb that goes in the lamp that Hubbin bought that’s currently sitting on top of the Expedit.
• Get more/better throw pillows

The legs on the couch make all the difference. Hubbin says he doesn’t like them but admits that my decoration is better than his so he chose not to fight that war. Here they are, they are beautiful:

My living room has had more posts about it than any other room in the house, and it’s STILL not done.  Having said that, I told y’all about the epic IKEA trip and there needs to be an update because even though the room is STILL not done, if I waited for it to be done, there would be nothing to blog about.

To recap, here is the transformation of the living room:

This is roughly what it looked like from 2007-2010. Emphasis on the rough.

This is roughly what it looked like from 2010-2012. Less emphasis on the rough, but wow. Ugly. This was what it looked like when I decided to make it over.

This is my first makeover. I have fond memories because I love the trim and I was SO proud of those pelmet boxes, but that color is so ugly I could die.

Side note, Hubbin was pissed that he had to miss the game just to move while I took pictures.