Progress

I actually have some "afters" today, Peeps! I know, I can hardly believe it myself.

Two sections of the living room are really coming along after our Ikea trek last week. We purchased two white Billy bookcases and one small white Malm dresser. The desk I have my eye on wasn't in stock, so we'll head back later on. True to Ikea form, they came together pretty quickly and easily. Seth had them all put together in one evening, and I've been decorating them over and over ever since.

Firstly, the little dresser. This baby was well worth the money. I stalked Craigslist for a couple of weeks, but couldn't find anything just the right size for this space. When I realized we couldn't get the desk last week, I opted for this instead.

If you remember, this was what was here before:

Not ideal. The new dresser fills the space better, being wider and shallower than the little cabinet (which has taken up residence in the laundry room). And it holds all the stuff so much better.

The top has plenty of room for a tray to hold keys and such, and our "family crest" made by the fabulous Marissa of Recklessly Inspired.

I found this lamp at the Goodwill Store for $5.99, shade included. I love it. It's sleek.

The bottom drawer is my favorite. It's for the kids' shoes, and it corrals them beautifully. The drawers slide easily so the kids have no trouble with it.

The middle drawer is also a lifesaver--a place for hats, gloves, and winter accessories. In the summer, I'll swap this stuff for caps, baseball gloves, helmets and knee pads...the things that always seem to be everywhere.

The top drawer is for our bags and Seth's diabetic tools. Yay, organization!

Now for the bookshelves. Here's how it was before:

Cluttered, unorganized, and the one bookshelf did not meet our small house storage needs at all. (It has also been moved to the laundry room.)

Here are the new sparkly ones. I especially love them at night.

Definitely so much better! I'm absolutely thrilled how they're coming together. There's so much room for our books and pretty things. I can't even fill them up. That's awesome.

I love these lights from Ikea. They're only $5 each, and they definitely make the space. Lighting is amazing at changing the feel of a room.

I wasn't planning to do teal here, but my sad little homemade canvases looked pretty good there for now. They may get changed out if I ever get around to being creative again.

This other wall is going to be by my desk, and I want it to be useful and remind me of things I love. For now, I've decorated it with one of my favorite Goodwill purchases ever, this wooden clock. It doesn't work yet--I have to replace the kit in the back. But it looks pretty. I also framed a map of Ireland--because we've been there and I loved the colors in the map (found here).

Some of my favorite artwork is on the other wall--our kids' framed handprints, a photo of us all young and skinny in Ireland, and one of my Recklessly Inspired prints. (Go there. Get things for thine walls. You won't regret it.)

I have room for more books!

I also wanted to mention the owl print. This came from a set of little books of art I have by some of my favorite home bloggers, Jamin and Ashley Mills of The Handmade Home.These books are ingenious. They're filled with prints that are perforated so you can remove and frame your favorites. There are three books in the series. (Find them here).

There's still a lot to be done in here, but I'm definitely encouraged by our progress!

The White House

When it comes to style, I should never say never. Because I'm here to admit to you that I am a total style waffler. I do it in fashion all the time. I'll absolutely loathe a certain style of clothing for about a year or so, and then I'll find I have it in my closet. And I'm realizing I do it in home decor as well. I'll never paint any walls pink. I'll never like leather furniture. I'll never paint a floor.

I'll never have all white walls.

Well, guess what!

Yes, I've hopped on the white trend, and after two days of painting, we have covered the ceiling and the walls with Valspar's "Du Jour". It's not a creamy white, like I'm usually drawn to. It might have a hint of a blue undertone, which I usually don't like, but it's working really well in here. It's bright and crisp and clean looking. And actually, I really love it at night with artificial light. I don't think I've ever preferred a color in artificial light before. 

The thing about white walls is they aren't the star of the show. I can't depend on my wall color to make this a wow space, and I kinda like that. I want the walls to be a blank canvas for artwork and photos and furniture pieces I love. And I think they'll do the job well. And the ceiling looks so so so so much better. Sponge Bob is gone. 

Next will be decor. We're heading to Ikea next week to get some bookshelves and a desk, and I'm stalking Craigslist and thrift stores to fulfill my vision. The white curtains kinda look underwhelming now, so I'm noodling some ideas to fix that. I keep getting notions about where to put color. I'm definitely taking my time and letting my ideas evolve as the room comes together. You can't rush a space. 

Dusty Dusterson

The chaos has begun.

My husband's in this photo somewhere. We spent the morning covering furniture, taping up tarps and moving things around. He was able to work on the giant patching/sanding job (which our children have named Sponge Bob). It's MUCH smoother than it was when I photographed it here:

It's still not perfectly flat, but we've deemed it "good enough for government work". It will get a coat of primer and the flatest flat paint I can find.

So, nothing beautiful has happened yet, but things are in motion now. I picked up a paint sample today and slapped some up in various places. It's a color I've been leaning toward that I really want to be certain I like. Because it will be going everywhere. And it's honestly a little out of my comfort zone. When the living room was naked today, I looked fondly on my "Roman Column" walls and was tempted to stay with the putty gray. I really do like it. BUT, this is an opportunity to try something different. And after seeing the samples here and there, I think I'm convinced.

I think.

The Trouble Spots

True to The Practice House tradition, I'm going to show you the ugly befores and promise you pretty afters at some point.

Maybe I'll actually follow through on that this time!

I've spent a lot of time evaluating the problem areas in our living room and how I can better use the space. There is a lot of wasted space in here and areas where junk just piles up.

First problem: The entry
(FYI, I don't know why I watermarked these awful photos. I don't think they're in any danger of being stolen.)

This is what you first see when you enter our house. Well, this is what it's like on an average day. If I'm expecting company, I clean it up a bit. But this is the naked truth. We don't have a coat closet or mud room of any sort, so shoes and coats and gloves and bags just pile up, especially in the winter. I also usually just stack mail on that table until the pile falls over. That method is obviously not working so well. What I'd like to do here is set up a more narrow bookcase that can house baskets for each person to put one or two pairs of shoes and gloves and hats and such. I also want some lower hooks for the kids to hang their own coats on and a place to keep keys and sunglasses. Seth's work bags will still be a problem, so I'm still brainstorming that. And the mail shall move to a new location.

Problem Two: Behind the couch. 

This area is just not pulling its weight. It ends up being a desolate hallway where stuff collects. There has to be a better solution.

My first plans for here involve two taller bookcases from Ikea to fill in the wall space better. When storage space is limited, ya gotta go vertical. The lower shelves will be used for storage boxes and books, the higher ones for art and photos. I also want to incorporate better lighting. On the other side, where that chest is, I'm dreaming of a desk space. My desk area upstairs is always overtaken with school and child things, so it's really not mine. I'd like a place to edit photos, pay bills and organize mail. I'm probably most excited about this area.

Problem Three: The tv wall

Hey, look! More junk on the table top! Just keepin' it real, folks. My planned projects here include finally finishing the top of that dresser and replacing the fancy hardware with something more streamlined and adding an extra seating area. Also, better lighting and some artwork on the walls. 

However, before any of these fun projects can begin, the boring stuff has to be done. We have to deal with the ceiling we patched an embarrassing amount of years ago and also the areas in the wall where the plaster is chipping away (and being helped along by a toddler).

Then it will be paint on the walls and ceiling, replacing all the baseboards and painting all the trim. THEN, the pretty stuff can happen. And eventually, we'd also like to replace the drafty front window and the old front door. Those aren't phase one projects though.

So, that's the plan. I'm antsy to start. And finish. I just need my husband to be home a day or two and work on the un-fun stuff and then I can get rolling!

It's About Time

My plans for the house in 2014 are probably my most ambitious yet.

No, not probably. Definitely.

My goal is to be able to call most of the house done. We have lived here over a decade, and I have never felt a room was done. There's always something lacking. There's always a project that has been pushed off because of budget or time or simple laziness. For years I've settled for good enough because making it awesome seemed impossible.

Usually, I tell myself that the motivation is to get it sale-ready. My dream for selling this house is speed, but I'm extremely rational and know that, in this market and this location, we're probably looking at a fair amount of time with a "for sale" sign in the yard. My goal is to get it as ready as possible, to fancy up this ol' lady to the best of our budget and ability and make her desirable.

But also, more and more, I've wanted to feel like rooms were done because, quite frankly, it's time.

Now, there is a part of me that believes a home is never finished. It's job is to evolve and rise to whatever challenge we ask of it, like three kids and homeschooling. But at the same time, a room can be done in the sense that there are no major projects hanging over our heads, or if there are, it doesn't feel that way when I look at it.

So, lofty goals, yes. But I'm determined, and we're *this close* to being out of debt, so our cash flow might be a little better this year. Time is still a tricky issue, since Seth still works two jobs, but hopefully we can make it work.

We'll be starting with the living room as soon as the Christmas decorations come down. We're starting there because a) it's easy--mostly just patching and painting and b) it will segue into the kitchen, which we're hoping to do when the weather warms up. The big jobs in the living room will be sanding down a repair in the ceiling (that has been proudly ugly for years), and if that doesn't work, we're going to have to cover it with something like beadboard. I'm really, really hoping that sanding alone will be good enough. I don't care as much about perfection as I do not visually horrifying. There's also some patching on the walls to be done. Our walls and ceilings aren't drywall, but rather plaster, so that makes it a little trickier. Then, once those jobs are done, paint and decor.

The hardest part in planning has been narrowing down my style. If you look through my Pinterest boards, you'd think I have style ADD. There is far more that I like than I don't like when it comes to home decor, but I want the house to flow and make sense, so I'm trying to make my decisions based on the big picture. I don't like anything too modern, but I think I'm leaving my country/cottagey phase into more transitional territory. So, I have to figure out how to like something, but be ok with not including it in my own home.

Here's my list of what I know I gravitate toward:

1. Lines and angles more than curves.
2. Geometric patterns and stripes more than florals and paisleys.
3. Deep colors, like navy, mustard, kelly green, turquoise--set against a contrast of crisp white.

And above all, I need it to work. I need to take advantage of every square inch without it feeling cluttered or overwhelming.

PS: Sorry for the lack of pictures. All in good time, my friend.

Christmas 2013 (so far)

I've been decking the halls. I still feel like there's more to do. I just want to drench my house in Christmas awesomeness. But I'm also a slow moving vehicle. I've been decorating for about three weeks now.

So here's a sampling of the Christmas atmosphere around here. The general theme this year is gold, but I've also included some mercury glass and silver. These photos are all in a jumble, but since I'm a blogger who makes nary a dime on her blog, I don't feel the pressure to organize them coherently.

Got these cardboard letters at Hobby Lobby and spray painted them gold. 

I think the owl is from Marshall's a few years ago. The sparkly cones (which Seth thinks are weird) are from Meijer.

Snow! Hopefully, it will be a white Christmas.

I made the garland from scrapbook paper I had on hand.

I think the tree needs garland of some sort. But it's too late now. Next year.

The tree skirt is one of my favorite parts. It's two faux sheep skins from Ikea. The kids love that it looks like fluffy snow.

I made the chalkboard from a scrap piece of shelving I had laying around. I have to redo it. I should have sanded and primed first and the chalkboard paint scratched off in a few places. (Spoiler alert: I probably won't redo it.)

I have more to show you, like the kids' trees and how everything looks at night. In fact, the week of the 16th is going to be "Christmas week". I have lots of projects and crafts planned for the kids. I'll try and remember to share some of them with you guys.