Get busy living or get busy dining

  I realized I haven't posted any pictures of the house since we've gotten settled in and started decorating. I am very pleased with the progress so far, and feel like the bulk of the major projects are done. Now it's just tying up the odds and ends, and of course the long term projects that will be done when funds allow. The first room that we completed is also a room that we use the least; go figure. When we were house hunting our dream house had to have 2 living rooms. The family room would be used for the television and decorated more contemporary, with the furniture we already had. The formal living room would be the room I would have fun with and decorate more period appropriately plus use it to show off my vintage finds.

 

 Here's the formal living room photo from the real estate listing

  Since our family has a rather sizable record collection we also wanted the formal living room to house the records and for entertaining during our frequent "record parties".  We've had a few get-togethers so far, but of course everyone ends up in the family room, kitchen, or patio and the formal living room gets neglected. This will all change next weekend, however, when we have our official housewarming party! It's a 1950's sock-hop theme and we're going to have a DJ booth set up and dance floor ready for all our friends to break out their twist and mash-potato skills.

 The dining room photo from the real estate listing

   While a formal living room wasn't on my 'must have' list, it was a bonus. Since we moved in only a few weeks before Thanksgiving and my mother-in-law would be visiting the house for the first time, it certainly came in handy. The dining room still has a wallpaper mural in fantastic shape (with the exception of some paint splatter around the edges from the previous owner's clumsy painting skills), which I love a little more each day.

 This photo is again from the real estate listing. I've discovered I'm not very good at taking "before" photos, I always dive into a project and don't ever think about taking photos until I'm half way into it!

  The living room and dining room were originally painted seafoam blue, which not only included the walls but also the baseboards, door and window trim, as well as the banisters. While the color wasn't horrible, it had seen better days so we had our painting work cut out for us. The pinch pleat curtains were in rough shape with small holes, stains, and massive amounts of spider webs. After bringing them to the dry cleaners and being told they would cost $50 each to clean, I hit up the nearby JC Penney and found nearly the exact same curtains on clearance for half the cost of cleaning the old ones . (Now if only someone can help me figure out how traverse rods work! I've somehow gotten them to look okay, although they don't always open or close all the way.) So without further ado I present to you our new and improved living room...

 

  You may recognize the lamps from one of my previous posts; I'm so happy with them in their new homes. I originally wanted a vintage couch for this room but after scouring craigslist and local shops for several weeks without luck, I opted for the Corona sofa from Macy's instead. I really wanted the green couch but since I had already painted the walls green I wasn't so sure. Then I had a brilliant thought: grasscloth! My parents have grasscloth in the home I grew up in and I always liked it, so I knew I had to have it in my house too. The art above the record player was done by my very talented friend Trish at Tigerbee Arts. (She also has an Etsy shop.)

  We still have some work to do in this room; as you may of noticed for a "record room" there are very few records. That's because the area under the starburst clock will be the future home of our ultra spiffy record cabinet, which also happens to cost a pretty penny so it's one of those 'down the line' projects. I'd also like to build a smaller version to house 45's that will go between the windows.

  As for the dining room, I totally lucked out. Several days after we had an accepted contract on our house a china cabinet came into a local vintage shop that I had to have. Then only a week before Thanksgiving my persistent Craigslist stalking paid off with a Burke Tulip table and chair set! I have been drooling over tulip tables for years.. I still can't believe I own one.

 

My Mother-in-law bought me a large Tickled Pink china set for a housewarming gift, how great is that?

 

   I completely love how these rooms turned out. The best part is I've already had several friends tell me that it reminds them of their grandparents house. I take that as a compliment; it puts a smile on my face to know I'm doing something right!

Our New Floors

Wow, I am totally feeling guilty for not posting a new blog in over a month, but I have been so busy! On top of renovating our house I'm also a part time student and have a full time job, so my blog is the first thing that gets neglected. In fact I shouldn't even be blogging now as I have a history test I should be studying for, but I thought I'd take a minute to update ya'll with the latest progress.

Let me just say when we bought this house we knew it was a fixer upper, but being first time home buyers and completely clueless on home improvement we had no clue how much time and effort it took to fix up a house! A month into it and we've only gotten half the stuff done we anticipated, but the hard work is paying off and the house is starting to turn into 'home'. We were scheduled to move in this past week but with the delay on our flooring install and spending every spare moment working on the house, we never found time to pack! We luckily got our lease extended a few weeks on our apartment so we have a bit longer to clean and pack before we move.

Here's a few things we have been working on..
The first is our guest bathroom. This is the one with the amazing snowflake wall paper I posted about last time (which I have yet to do anything with). I love the green tile, but the flooring left much to be desired. When we bought the house it had shag carpeting... umm yeah, carpet in the bathroom is NEVER a good idea! I ripped up the carpet and there was linoleum underneath; this interesting tan color with gold streaks running through it.

I'm not really a fan of brown in bathrooms either; it's not as bad as carpet, but the whole thing still gives me the heebee jeebees. I chose the white and black hexagon tile and decided to lay it myself. After watching a few youtube videos I thought it wouldn't be so hard. Uhhh... let's just say I am definitely not going in the tile laying business anytime soon! It only took me two and a half days, but I finally got it laid and grouted, and have the back pain to prove it. Here's a picture before I did the grout, it's not perfect, but for my first time I think I did a decent job. I'm hoping the bathmat will hide the majority of my mistakes.

We also decided to sand down the wall that had the burlap wallpaper and paint it as an accent wall since we couldn't remove the wallpaper adhesive. I wanted it to be a vibrant 70's orange, but instead it turned out more like a pumpkin. Oh well, we will probably repaint it down the line, but with it being Halloween I think I can deal with it for the time being. We also got our new VCT floors! We decided we couldn't salvage the original tile since too much of it was cracked or broke when we took up the carpet tack strips. I love the new floors so much better anyways! Doesn't it look amazing? I was inspired by the floors featured on the Wedgwood Tulsa blog, but decided to go with green instead since it would match our kitchen counters better than turquoise. Check them out below... also note my amazing shadow hulk arms!

Last but not least, today we got our wood floors installed! We still have to sand and stain them, but the wood is there and it looks amazing thus far. I won't even go into the ordeal we had tearing up the carpet, pulling up the tile underneath and then removing the floorboards. I'll just say wearing painters suits, gloves, googles and face masks in the dead of summer in Texas is not a fun time. But those days are over and now we get to reap the rewards with our amazing new floors!

You also get to catch a glimpse of our new paint colors, we chose a light green for the formal living room and a yellow for the dining. I wanted to keep the original garden mural in the dining room although I wasn't completely in love with it at first. But once I cleaned it up and painted the walls it made a world of difference. Now it fits right in place and I couldn't imagine our dining room without it.

Well that's the latest in my world. Hopefully it won't be as long before my next post, but between moving in next week and a trip to NYC to see "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" on Broadway for my birthday in 2 weeks, I'm afraid I can't make any promises!

Our New House!

  Wow, what an amazing day today has been. Yes, today was our closing date which means we are now homeowners! I still can't believe it, I just keep repeating "We bought a house" out loud to anyone who will listen, and yes that includes our two dogs. We signed all the papers this morning and went out for a nice lunch at the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate while we waited for our funding to go through so we could get the keys. After lunch we stopped by Lowe's to get a head start on buying supplies for the house. We're tearing up the carpet ourselves because we want it gone ASAP since it's most likely a health hazard to be breathing in whatever creatures have been living in it for the past 30 or 40 years. We bought suits, gloves, goggles and breathing masks in preparation of getting seriously down and dirty in our new house. I also chose Lowe's because Retro Renovation recently featured a story on their retro inspired lighting and I had to check it out for myself. I did say I was lighting obsessed in my last post, did I not? I particularly had my eye on this baby for our foyer:

   I think it will look great in our new house, so I went ahead and picked it up. It is now anxiously awaiting to be installed in our entryway. While we were at Lowe's we got the call that we could come and get our keys!

  We picked up our dogs so they could enjoy our new backyard then headed to the house. We initially planned just to drop in for a bit to take some measurements and to take a closer look around so we could start brainstorming our plans. But "brainstorming" quickly turned into taking down wall paper and pulling up the carpet. There were several things in the house we wanted to get rid of right away, the first and foremost being the dingy shag carpeting which I'm guessing is left over from the 70's. The second was this strange wall paper in our family room that looks like it was made of burlap and has a matching upholstered cornice board with lighting behind it. Funky idea but just not what we are looking for in our home, luckily it was only on one wall.

  We were curious what was hiding behind the burlap so we starting picking at it and it came off pretty easily. The only problem was the adhesive they used to attach it to the wall left a film over the wood paneling. I have no idea how we will be able to get it off without damaging the wood, so if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them. I already was thinking this wall would look great painted as an accent wall to break up the darkness of the wood paneling, so we can always paint over it if the wood can't be salvaged, but I would like to try to restore the wood first.

The burlap wallpaper is gone!

   While Mike tackled ripping up the carpet in this room I started in one of the bedrooms. Much to our surprise there are VCT floors under the carpet! Unfortunately they used glue to secure the carpet pads directly onto the floor, so I'm not sure if we will be able to remove the glue without destroying the tile. I was expecting concrete underneath and was very happy to see the tile hiding below. I hope we can salvage the tile since it will definitely be a lot cheaper than the wood flooring we had been planning on installing.

The larger of the 2 guest bedrooms, this one will be Mike's office

   My favorite part of the day (which could also potentially turn into the most devastating in the long run if we can't find a way to save it) was my discovery in our guest bathroom. It appears the whole house was renovated in the 70's which is a whole lot better than it being renovated post 1980 but still not the 60's charm that I love. The wallpaper in the bathroom had to go, so I picked a corner to start pulling it off. What I found is probably the single most amazing wallpaper I have ever seen. And it is in MY house!

The 70's paper that was in the bathroom when we bought it

What I found underneath, there was a 2nd layer of pink flowered paper

 

 

Then under it all was this 60's diamond and snowflake paper, isn't it just jaw dropping? Why someone in their right mind would ever, ever, ever consider covering this up?! I haven't mentioned it yet, but I love snowflakes.. Mike actually bought me a snowflake necklace for Valentine's Day this year and I was just saying the other day how I would like to get a snowflake tattoo. Spending my entire life living in the south has left me with an affinity for snow that I realize I probably would not have if I lived somewhere that receives regular snowfall. The paper is pink, blue and green which ties it in with the mint green tile. I am crazy for this wall paper! Problem is there has been wallpaper sitting on top of it for the past 40+ years which left glue residue all over it. I will do anything I can to save this paper and it may very well be the reason I was put on this earth. What can you do to get glue off the front of wallpaper without completely destroying it in the process?

   Seriously folks, this is what my dreams are made of. I've been dreaming of owning my own home for the past 5 years and the day I finally do I was rewarded with hidden gems left and right. Yes, we have a few glue problems, but I can not wait to get in there tomorrow and be one step closer to us moving in.

It Begins...

   After nearly a year of house hunting it is finally happening! We are buying a house! I never imagined it would take this long to find the house of our dreams and then actually come to an agreement with the sellers. We've had several close calls over the past 6 months but for some reason it always fell through. In fact it looked like it was going to fall through with this house as well. We were down to the wire; a few hours before the end of our option period, trying to haggle over a few thousand dollars for repair work. Right as we were writing up a higher offer we got a call that the sellers finally came around to negotiating, and then and there it finally fell into place. Mike called me while I was at work; on one of the busiest shopping days of the year nonetheless, and excitedly told me "We're buying a house!!" Of course I started jumping up and down ecstatically in a store full of people.
   We had high hopes for this one. Not only is it in the neighborhood that we love (and had put offers on 2 other houses just blocks away), it is also only 2 houses away from our friends who were delighted at the possibility of us moving to their 'hood. I spotted the listing for the house only hours after it hit the market and as fate had it we were meeting with our agent to see it just a few hours later. Finally the opportunity we had been searching for: not only were we the first people to see the house, it was also priced low because it needed "updating". At last there was a seller who was oblivious to the charm and popularity of mid century homes and priced it cheap to sell fast!

    I've been a huge fan of mid century blogs for a few years now. It all started when I found Retro Renovation and since then I have been obsessed with the idea of buying and restoring a mid century home back to it's glory days. We've lived in an apartment for the past 4 years since moving to Austin and therefore I've been able to collect very little due to space constraints. Our closets are already bursting at the seams without me coming home with loads of vintage goodies! I've still been able to pick up a few great mid century pieces, my favorite being our bedroom set I found on Craigslist. 2 dressers, a highboy and 2 nightstands: black with tapered legs and what I think is a white melamine top. It needs some touch up paint; which hasn't happened due to a lack of a work space, but it's definitely on the 'to-do' list once we get in the house.

   Now that I have a house of my own I've decided to stop just reading and start writing a chronicle of my own adventures in home ownership! I have become a complete shopaholic over the past several weeks in anticipation of decorating the house. Our closing date isn't until September 21 and I am so anxious to get in there I am compensating by buying everything I can get my greedy retro loving little hands on. Next time I'll post all about my new goodies...