Saturday

Changes

I'm afraid of color, therefor, I have color commitment issues.
When M and I found out our offer was accepted on the house, we went room by room picking colors and layouts.
Nothing went as planned. We were changing colors the night before tinting the paint and couldn't agree on any curtains (not that he really cared about the curtains, he just knew what he didn't want- basically everything I liked).
Our color scheme went to the wayside when we couldn't find any of the colors we originally wanted in curtains, pillows, etc., and we ended up with earth tones everywhere.

Then we got a little loco. We started over with a new color palette.


Since our family room and kitchen already were the dark and light browns, we thought it was perfect.
We decided first that our foyer and adjacent hallway color should be purple.
We picked a shade, had it mixed, and began painting.
I HATED it after one stroke of the roller.
I had a little meltdown, but M insisted that if we kept going, it would look better.
After the entire hallway was painted, I was in panic mode.
Holy Barney, it was awful.
A little purple goes a long way.


After a mini meeting of how we can save the paint and use it somewhere else, we decided that maybe if we only did the foyer it would be a lot less purple-y.
And somehow it was.




Then we turned our attention over to the living room.
It already had one wall painted due to not having any good stopping point while painting the family room accent wall.
We thought that would be the best room to have be our bright green room.
Neither of us could really pin-point the right shade between sage and lime, so we picked one we could both agree on.
It works for now.
Here you can see all three of the colors together.


The light coming in makes the colors look a lot darker than they really are. They're pretty light, yet bright.


And recognize those curtains? They were previously in our family room… we'll get to that later.

Moving back to Barney the hallway. Something had to be done soon because I could see the purple mocking me from behind the primer I put over it.

M finally let me have some gray in the house. I wish it was named "Elephant" because it seriously could not be any better of a match to the animal.
It's a perfect mix of dark and light, it's kind of brownish, but mostly gray, and my favorite (non?) color in the house.



Don't mind the wall on the right, we have lots of touch-ups to do.

I really wanted stripes in the bathroom that comes off of that hallway. I've seen it done a few times on Pinterest, and after much coercion, M approved my idea.
I marked off the lines and painted the bright white areas, then taped off, and went in with the same gray I used in the hallway.



I'm in love.



Eventually I'd like to either stain the vanity to a very dark color, or just paint it black.

Remember how I told you M and I had given up on our original color scheme?
It's back.
For my birthday I was given a Pier 1 gift card from my in-laws.
M and I took a trip to see what we could pick out for the house. What did we find?
Aqua (our original favorite color), purple, and limey/sage EVERYTHING.
Pillows, curtains, blankets, place mats, napkins, decorations, etc.
I realize how scary the colors all sound together, but look it up. It's quite appealing to the eye.
(Here, here, here, here, here)

We thought it over and decided we should throw the teal/aqua color back into the mix. I ordered the curtains and am so happy we finally found something with color that we could agree on. This picture doesn't do them justice. They're vibrant without being obnoxious - exactly what we were looking for.



And now the obligatory before/after shots:











That's what we've been working on for the last month and a half.

Up next: the dining room (maybe).

Wednesday

Windy City First Timers

Here is a non-house update on what M and I have been up to when we get a few minutes away from work and chores.
It's wordy, and not very picture-y.

Mi familia came for a visit (I'm learning Spanish!).
My daddio and step-mama came out here and pulled a trailer full of childhood memories behind them, to explore Chicago with M and me.
I mean the trailer thing literally. They packed up my old bedroom and brought it to me.

They got in late, so when we got moving in the morning we grabbed a quick bite to eat, unloaded the trailer, and worked out some weekend plans.

Eventually we wandered off to the local winery.
Everyone gets 3 free sample tastes, and 4 more is only $5.
It was soooooo...oooo tasty.
We left with 3 bottles (and 0 pictures) - a port wine, a sweet wine, and a spice wine.

When M got off work, we had a home-cooked meal. It's something I had been looking forward to for a long, long time.
Between our crazy work schedules, not being settled in one house, and non-stop work on our new place, we really haven't had time to have anything but takeout or quick, easy meals here and there.

It had been so long since I had even gone grocery shopping, when went to the store, I handed over my loyalty card, and the cashier kind of smirked and said they stopped accepting those quite a while ago. Oops.

I stocked up on all the necessities - grape leaf-making supplies, more meat, and breakfast food.
One of my Dad's favorite foods is his Mom's grape leaf recipe. She was ill the last several years of her life and wasn't able to cook. I took over, but don't make them nearly as well as she did.
She would always say, "Oh, honey, that's too much for one leaf" or "take more of the stem off the leaf".
She always knew exactly when they were done, so that the rice was never crunchy or mushy.
I try to listen to the advice she used to give me, but I still haven't mastered the art that is grape leaf making.
The rolling is time consuming, the leaves are delicate, I never have the right meat-to-leaf ratio, and frankly, I'm usually disappointed that they're not just like my Grandma's used to be.
I rarely make them for myself anymore, but I try to make them for my Dad for get-togethers.

Anywho, Dad devoured some "ok" grape leaves, and the rest of us had delicious, juicy, marinated burgers.

We played one of my favorite games - Dicecapades. If you haven't played, I'm afraid you're missing out!
I hadn't laughed that hard in a while. I'm sure the bottle of wine my step-mom and I split didn't help the cause.

The next morning we got downtown bright and early.
Our first mission was to see the Skydeck at the 103rd floor of the Sears Willis Tower.






Those are my feet, with nothing but a sheet of glass keeping me from dropping 103 floors to the ants cars below.
I'll be honest, it was a little scary at first, but once my wobbly legs got it together, it seemed normal to walk around on the glass.

Next we hit up the iconic bean.
Then we took a leisurely (ok, slow for Chicagoans) stroll up Michigan Ave.
We stopped at Jake Melnick's for lunch and Hershey's Chocolate World for dessert.

I'm so glad my little tourists stepped out of farm country and let me give them a tour of the Windy City.
Here are the "scenic pictures" I promised I'd share with my gracious guests...

(ps- next time I'll take a different lens. sun + inexperience + new lens = not awesome pictures. Sorry about the people OR buildings shots :( I guess that means we'll have to do it all again)





 I think the smiles in the above picture have something to do with the previous nights Dicecapades...



Friday

Kitchen & Family Room

One thing I never thought I could get M to go for is white trim.
It took some convincing and a little Pinspiration, but he finally gave me the go-ahead.
I went to town, not leaving a trace of natural wood behind... except for the stair rails. I'm not sure what we're going to do with those yet.

We started with a blank, boring, natural slate.


If this picture doesn't scream "apartment", I don't know what does. After living in apartments for several years, the LAST thing we wanted was to feel like we were just temporarily in another rental.
Our first goal was to get color on the walls.
I wanted gray.
M wanted brown.
At the last second, we compromised on Dapper Brown, which is mostly brown, but slightly olive green.
I was devastated after the first coat. It looked like a blotchy mess. It was also VERY dark.
it made the natural wood look very orange, which is what I think actually sealed the deal for me getting white trim!


We let it dry and started on the other walls.
We went with Lighter Tan, which adds just a touch of warmth to the room.



After a full weekend of painting walls, it took nearly two weeks to paint every inch of trim on the first floor (foyer, living room, family room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen, and two hallways).
One coat of primer and two coats of paint later, I'm in love!
I hate to admit it, but M was right. Brown was the way to go for the accent wall.
So here you have it, our kitchen and family room before and after shots...







The curtains hanging in the family room are from Ikea- the last place on Earth I thought I'd find something of quality, that would fit our enormous windows, and come in a color I liked.
Not only does Ikea have tons of fabric to make your own curtains, they have unfinished curtains.
I bought these puppies at 98" in length, hung them at the height I wanted, and hemmed their unfinished edges so they just scraped the floor.
The unfinished curtains they sell actually come with Stitch Witchery. If you have ever hemmed anything, and don't know what that is, you are seriously making your life harder.




We have lots of work to do in the decorating department, but these two rooms are coming together.
Eventually we'd like to update the cabinets and countertops, refinish the wood floors and expand them throughout the carpeted rooms, replace the tile on the fireplace, figure out something to do with the stair rails, find a little eat-in-kitchen table, and purchase a nice entertainment center/DVD organizer.
We're also still looking for the right window treatments for all the naked windows.


We definitely have our work cut out for us!

Saturday

The Outside

We've been working or working on our house every waking hour for the last 4 weeks.
Our hard work (and some from the neighbors) is finally paying off!
I didn't want to post any pictures until I had some before & after shots to show how far this house has come.
OUTSIDE
Paint the shutters
Paint the front door
Paint the trim around all the windows & top part of front door.
Garden (15-20% done).
Remove ugly bushes and crabapple tree.
Plant grass in bare areas.


This is what we started with.


We stripped off the shutters, painted them with a thick, black paint for vinyl.
After they dried, we searched everywhere for fasteners to put them back up.
As our luck would have it, everywhere was sold out.
We had a naked house for 2 weeks.


While we waited for the fasteners to come in, we gave our front door a couple coats of "Positive Red".




We are so excited to finish two huge things on our "Outside" list and continue with everything inside. More updates to come!