The In Between

We have been eating, breathing and sleeping house projects.  Every night we fall into bed absolutely exhausted and are asleep within minutes.  But in between hammering, painting, thrifting and tiling, there have been a few personal hours of doing stuff.  Such as:

Seattle Mariners Vs. Boston RedSox

I'm not a baseball fan...but my sales team won suite tickets to the game...and we needed to get out of the house!

Also, I've been wearing my Invisalign for about 2 weeks now--only 714 more days to go! 

I'm still getting used to them...

Downtown Tacoma held its second annual block party!

 This is why Tacoma is so awesome!  Live music and hula hoops!  Yeah!

Last week I had a really bad day.  Andy and I agreed that we'd start looking for a dog at the end of September, but he knows how badly I want one, so I came downstairs to find this.

I squealed with delight and we were off to the Humane Society.  Unfortunately, we've yet to find the right dog.  I'm looking for a mutt of a terrier breed (they don't shed very much) around 20-30 pounds in case you know of any! 

Well...that's about it...we've definitely spent more time doing house stuff...as you can see.

What's been taking up your time lately?

Estate Sales and More Finds!

I love a great deal.  Andy and I have had a lot of luck thrifting and finding awesome furniture pieces at estate sales.  Here are a few of our recent finds mixed with a few other items we've thrifted:

Bedroom Dresser:

If you look at the drawer on the very bottom, you can see the color we spray painted the dresser.

We spent $120 on the dresser and mirror (a bit more than I wanted to spend, but we desperately needed a dresser, plus its made of real wood.)

We wanted to match the base of the bed that Andy built last year--the bed is made of kitchen cabinets we found at the local Restore.

Some of my favorite finds were from an Estate sale we went to last week.  I was looking for a chair that would look good against our freshly painted grey walls.  Here is what I found:

I love this vintage silver velvet chair we got for $85.  I paired it up with the mirror I found at a thrift store for $20, and just love this little corner of our living room.

 At that same estate sale we also picked up this cute little chair for $10.

 And check out this baby!  It's a vintage Singer sewing machine stand we picked up for $25.

 We didn't realize until we got home that it had the sewing machine still inside!

I Googled the same model once we got home and see them selling on Ebay and Esty from $200-$900! I want to keep it though and use it as a side table in our dining room.

A few weeks ago I got this little vintage vanity at a yard sale for only $5! 

This desk was free at the same estate sale where I got the above mentioned items. 

Another $5 find at a yard sale.  A vintage lazy boy recliner. 

So those are my very latest finds!  I look forward to showing you how they are used throughout the house!  Have you been to an estate sale?  What's your best find?

Shades of Grey

I was super hesitant to paint any of the rooms in our house which were a light neutral color.  Bold colors scare me a bit (if they are wall colors) and if I could have it my way I'd have all my rooms painted white.  Andy however, likes color.  Our compromise was grey.  Our bedroom, living room and dining room were all painted different shades of grey (which is just about as close to white on the color spectrum, so I was happy). Here are the before pics: (ignore the furniture and placement as we just needed a place for everything). 

 This is our friend Jordan in the dining room--him and his wife helped us paint, and we were so thankful for their help!

 It's hard to tell in the pictures, but the living room is a much darker grey than the dining room. 

When we put all the furniture back against the wall I wasn't sure if I liked the grey in the living room--I felt it was too dark and had a little too much blue in the color.  Then I realized the blue in our throw pillows just clashed too much with the walls.  So I scoured Etsy for some new pillow covers.  I really  need to learn to sew because pillows and covers are pricey!  But I bought them anyway because they were so dang cute and were exactly the colors I was looking for to go with my new grey walls. 

Via {here}

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And if you missed it, here is a link to my grey bedroom. 

What are the colors of your walls?

Thrifting--My Dining Room Chairs

Thanks for all comments on yesterday's post about our DIY dining room table.  We found chairs for the table about a month ago at a garage sale for $60.  When we saw them we both looked at each other hoping the other would love them.  I don't know too many guys who would love gold and pink velvet chairs as much as me, but alas, he did and we took them home to gussy em' up.  

 The frames of the chairs were a scratched up gold/brown color which we wanted to change.

 So we bought some spray paint from Home Depot called "Rubbed Bronze."

 We did this project at our old apartment--we wanted to have this project done before we moved into our house. 

We've found our favorite furniture pieces while thrifting, which is why I need to invest in a steam vac.  All I could do was air out the cushions.  (If anyone wants to get us a house warming gift, we'd love a steam vac!). 

And the photo with the chairs and table:

Building Our Dining Room Table

 My very favorite piece of furniture is the dining room table that Andy built.  It was his first time building a table and it turned out absolutely awesome.  First, we picked out the wood from home depot. 

 

Then we researched how to make new wood look old via Young House Love.  It was fun to beat the crap out of wood.  Don't I look tough throwing that crow bar? 

 I wanted a really dark brown stain on the table...we tested a couple varieties to make sure we chose the right one. 

 Andy sanded down the table after we beat it up.

Once we decided on the stain color, we started.  Make sure to read the instructions if you've never stained before!  The key is to do light layers, let dry and re-stain. 

After a few layers of staining, Andy shellacked the top.  Voila!  A gorgeous table--here are a few views below.  I'll post about the chairs we found at a garage sale in a later post. 

This view shows you the entrance into the living area.  I tried to include the chandelier we bought and our favorite wedding pic up on the wall.  We painted the walls a shade of grey...another upcoming post will show you that project.  We absolutely love how the table turned out--Andy's actually starting to build 2 more because he's gotten some requests from friends! 

Have you built any of your furniture?  What's your favorite piece?

Bathroom Drama

When the plumber came in to assess the situation, here's what he had to do:

He had to slice open the wall to check things out.  It turns out we were going to have to knock down that entire front shower wall.  He also had to make two big gaping holes in my kitchen...which are still wide open (I'll get to that later...here's a pic of one of the holes.)

It was so frustrating to look at this bathroom after we had just moved in to a "turn key" property.  The plumber spent the entire day at our house, but unfortunately, the plumber wasn't a contractor, so Andy had to figure out how to rebuild the wall he had just knocked down.  

Fortunately, Andy figured it out and we now have a fully functioning bathroom once again!

Here again is the before photo:

And now the after photos:

You're probably thinking it's weird to have a window and blinds in your actual shower.  Us too.  Eventually, we're going to remove the window, and install a one in the wall above.  But in the mean time (I can't handle any more walls getting demolished) so we're waiting for a window guy to come at the end of next week to install a frosted window because there are neighbors that can definitely see through the current one!

 See my white cabinets!?

This mirror is directly opposite of the other mirror.  The slab that comes out is ugly; eventually I'll tile the slab, but for now, my bathroom will stay as is!  Oh, and for those of you who were curious, we got the previous owner to pay for the plumbing bill.  We documented all his "plumbers" crappy work and he agreed to foot the bill.  In the end, the crappy plumbing turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  It would've eventually needed to be replaced, so in hindsight we're thankful for the debacle!