Our Home In Four Magazine

Yes, I'm alive! And things are great.. still no baby, but I have about two and a half weeks until my due date... it's coming so soon! We are so excited to meet our little guy :) The nursery is also coming along great, I can't wait to share it with you! It's 95% done.. I'm just waiting for the artwork to get back from the framers and my little bench to be upholstered. Crossing my fingers both of those are finished this week!

I wanted to share a great little magazine feature with you in a local magazine called FOUR. It's a really cool, artsy magazine but unfortunately this was their last issue :(

It was really fun having them come shoot our home and interview me though! It was very different than being featured in HGTV Magazine.. it was very laid back and the photographer shot our home as is (for the most part). I am glad she was able to capture some images of what our home looks like on a day to day basis!

 You can read the article and see the images better here!

HGTV Magazine

Last spring (wow!) HGTV Magazine came to shoot our house, and we're in the Jan/Feb 2014 issue!! Craziness, I know!

It was a really cool experience. Although I had done a photoshoot with HGTV Magazine before (as seen here), it was so different when it's your own house. They brought in a ton of props and accessories, and it was funny watching them come in and style rooms that you live in every day ;) We ironically updated our kitchen a couple months after the shoot.. oh well! (and I still need to finish a couple little things and get some after pictures!)

Since this was shot almost a year ago, our family room has actually changed a bit. Here is the space as it looks today!

BACKSPLASH!

We spent the entire weekend installing the backsplash. OMG it took forever! And it was pretty labor intensive. BUT it was really easy and it was sooooooooooo worth it. I love it!!

I guess you could say these are little "sneak peeks" since they are just Instagram pictures. I did take a ton of pictures during the process and will write a post all about it!

You can see in the pictures above our terrible, old stove. When we started this process we had planned on keeping it. But then we got the counters in and we realized it doesn't fit at all. We would have had to raise it onto blocks because it's too short, and then have moulding cut around the sides since it sticks out so far. I've been looking on Craigslist for ovens for the last 3 weeks with no luck :(

We were at Lowe's this weekend and luckily came across this floor model that was $500 less than the original price, and we decided to bite the bullet!

 We are very excited, and very ready to have this kitchen done!!! We have just a couple more things to do (like have an electrician come in and do some things) and I think we'll be finished.

Although I've really been wanting new lighting now... ha! It never ends!

Slowly Moving Along...

On Friday our granite was finally installed!! Yay! It's funny, we thought this kitchen project was going to be really quick and easy and of course that's never how things turn out with home updates!

Here are some (bad) iPhone pictures to show the progress:

Now that the granite is in, we're having issues with the stove. Our stove is ANCIENT, but we really wanted to keep it for now. Honestly, it still works great, and I like how it looks better than the cheapy ones now that they sell at Lowe's and Home Depot. Of course the ones both Matt and I like are $1,000+. We're really hoping to make the one we have now work, but I will need to have my handyman come out and see if we can. Since the counters are thicker, it needs to be heightened... so we'll see.

And, as you can see, next up is the backsplash project! I'll definitely be sharing my DIY adventures with you about that. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get to it though... ah!

So that's the latest with the kitchen, it's definitely a very slow moving (and frustrating) project! I can't wait until it's finished :)

Kitchen Update

It's funny.. we set out on updating our kitchen with the hopes that it would be a really quick & easy job, but of course that's never how things go when you renovate something in your home!

Earlier this week, our dishwasher just happened to die right in the middle of things. As much as that new expense sucked, it worked out pretty well! We were able to find a gently used stainless steel dishwasher on Craigslist and the guy selling it was a repair guy. He ended up removing our old dishwasher (and disposed of it), and delivered/installed the new one for a REALLY great price! It worked out so perfectly!

You can see our old dishwasher in this picture:

I'm going to keep it real here.... our kitchen is a DISASTER zone. Here are pictures of it this morning:

And here is our "new to us" dishwasher.. it's still sticking out because we're going to push it back in when the counters are installed. You can also note that half our counters have been pulled up.. ha!

 We are also living with our fridge pulled completely out.. it's crazy over here!

The counters are going in tomorrow (yay!!) and the floors are being installed on Saturday. After all the back and forth with the floor tile, we finally have all the tile purchased and I laid some out to get a feel for it. It's just a basic neutral, but it flows perfectly with our carpet which is what I was looking for!

I'm praying everything returns back to some sort of livable normalcy by the end of the weekend.

So here are the plans once the counters and floors are in. We are keeping our current fridge and stove for now. We can always replace those later down the road, but truth is we'd probably move before investing in those pricey appliances. 

We will be replacing the old, ugly hood range with this stainless steel one from Lowe's: 

Then comes the DIY backsplash project! I found this post from Dream Book Design to be very helpful: 

They used a product called Bondera, and we plan on doing the same. It's a bit pricey, BUT it will save us time and energy, which is well worth it. 

I'll be using this basic white subway tile from Home Depot:

I'm planning on using medium gray grout, similar to this: 

via

I'm using Oyster Gray grout on our floors, and considered using that on our backsplash as well, but then I found this picture and it looks a little light. 

Oyster Gray Grout via The Inspired Room

I'll probably go one shade darker since our counters are dark gray/almost black!

And that's where we are currently at with the kitchen! Hopefully everything will go well and we'll be ready to tackle the backsplash on Monday! :)

New York Market & A Kitchen Update

Hello! I'm sorry for the radio silence.. Erin (from Isabella) and I went to New York this past weekend for market and found some really great things and inspiration for the store.

This picture is of a light filled room in the store Ochre. I LOVED this store, and I especially loved this room!

Another store we both love is Calypso Home. We were inspired by this white and metallic bed we saw there!

We LOVED Tulu Textiles and created a bed with some of their pieces.. I can't wait to put it all together!

We also found a ton of great pillows for the shop in great fall colors.

In other news, we hit a little hiccup with our kitchen.. I posted about it on Instagram last week. The tile I had ordered came in looking COMPLETELY different!

I had to do a side by side comparison.. the tile on the left is a picture I took of the sample, and the tile on the right is what came in. It had a ton of strange bluish specs in it ?

 So, we have been living with this while we tried to figure out what to do....

To move things along, I decided to go with my other tile choice.. a basic neutral from Home Depot. It's pictured below (on the left). The tile on the right in the picture below was what we had ordered and came in pretty different.

I know there's not much to get excited about with basic neutral budget friendly ceramic.. but I promised I would share the process with you :) So that's where we're at right now! If everything goes as planned, we'll get the tile in on Friday and then the countertops are coming in next week!!

A New (More Muted) Color Palette

I'm currently working on switching some things up in our family room. Which is sort of insane, because I feel like I just recently "finished" the family room!! Here it is currently:

I've also had this artwork and table skirt in a corner of our family room for a while:

Ironically, a client of mine has a similar color palette of blue and magenta/mulberry purple. She has been wanting a piece of art for her space, and I've also been craving a bit of a change and something a little more neutral.

So it worked out perfectly that she is purchasing my watercolor and I'm replacing it with a very similar watercolor (from the same artist) in a more neutral color palette. I also got a new table skirt!

The colors in the above picture aren't too accurate, the new piece looks more like this:

I love it!! It still has some beautiful, rich colors.. but a lot more muted.

I came across this image from Pinterest recently and it reminded me of the new color palette I was striving for:

Luckily, our green ottoman still works with this new palette. I have my sights set on new pillows, though.

I'm looking to bring out that bit of purple in the painting.. sort of what I have now but more muted. I love this fabric from Thibaut:

I'm going to the New York market this weekend and I am going to see if there are any good pillow options :) If not, I may go with the Thibaut!

I'll keep you guys updated!

Finally... updating our kitchen!

I'm excited to share with you that we are FINALLY updating our kitchen! Currently, we have pretty terrible linoleum floors and laminate counter tops.

Here is the "before":

We're sticking to a very tight budget. I originally dreamed of having wood floors in our kitchen, but this isn't our forever house so I decided tile will do. We chose a very neutral tile.. sorry I don't have a picture of it but it's starting to go in Wednesday!! So I'll definitely share pictures then.

As for the counters, Home Depot was recently having a 10% sale on countertops, and I priced them out compared to many other options here in Charlotte, and theirs was the lowest.

We are going with "Steel Grey":

It's a very basic, almost black. Simple and classic.

And I may be crazy, but I am going to DIY our subway tile backsplash!!

backsplash inspiration

I'll definitely be sharing the progress with you guys! I'm very excited :)

Family Room Additions

I've recently changed some things around in our family room and finally took some pictures!

I think the last picture I shared was this one last fall (in the midst of working on my gallery wall):

I had needed some lamps forever (years!) but it took me so long to choose some. But then Furbish came to the rescue!! These lamps are neutral, but bring in a coolness factor that, and I knew they would be perfect:

Glass Jar Lamp with Batik Shade from Furbish

And here are the new pics!

You'll also notice that I switched out the bottom cushions of our sofa.  Here's the story behind that.... after I had purchased our Crate & Barrel Lounge sofa, reviews saying the fabric pills started popping up on the site. Then ours started pilling pretty badly :( I lived with it for a while, but honestly I've always liked the look of a two-tone sofa, so I contacted Crate & Barrel to see if they'd be open to sending us new covers in a different fabric. Their customer service was great, and they sent us new covers (AND cushions!) for no cost.

And the finishing touch was the new lumbar pillow I had made out of some fabric I had on hand.

This room is pretty much finished (for now). I can't share the entire space with you yet, I have to wait for our magazine feature with HGTV Magazine to come out (ah!)

Our Patio Makeover

Our updated patio was posted on The Home Depot Apron blog yesterday! I'm excited to share it with you :)

If you remember, the befores were very sad and icky:

Our back patio was pretty "rustic" to begin with.. we pressure washed the brick but even after that it had a old, weathered look to it. BUT I didn't mind at all.. because these were my favorite patio styles anyway:

I didn't have the time nor the budget for climbing roses and a pergola.. but we did add four 4x4 wooden posts to support the string lights that I had my heart set on. I also added groups of potted plants like in the inspiration image above.

Here are the after shots!

 

You can check out the rest of the images and get product details HERE on the Home Depot Apron Blog! :)