Sprucing Things Up A Little

*You may have noticed that I “spruced up” my blog header…I was tired of the old font and thought this one was fun!*

When we first moved into our house nearly 6 years ago, we were pretty motivated to make it our own.

I had a binder full of inspiration pictures that cast a vision for what we would create in our first little house.  I’m going to dig up that binder and post some of my “inspiration” pictures because our house is awfully close to those pictures that I clipped out of the magazines and it would be neat to show the comparisons.

After we painted the living room which was a HUGE undertaking due to all the window, door and closet trim, we tackled the dining room.

Living room “before”

Living room “after”

After that we painted the kitchen (which is a deep, even red not the weird patchy, bright red that the one picture has).

Kitchen “before”

Kitchen “after”

Kitchen “before”

Kitchen “after”

It took us a while (read several years) to get motivated to give the bathroom a face lift.

Bathroom “before”

Bathroom “after”

After the bathroom we took another break until I got pregnant and we converted our den into Grace’s bedroom.

Grace’s room “before”

Grace’s Room “after”

After all that, we threw in the towel and have pretty much coasted with the current state of things.

It’s been almost 6 years though!  I’m getting antsy for some changes!

Not so antsy that I’m willing to re-do any of the rooms we’ve already “done” but it’s been fun tweaking things here and there.

Moving the living room furniture around.  Switching the bedroom around and hanging a mirror that I worked a little DIY magic on.  And, most recently, painting our bedroom which has had the previous owners paint job (and a poor one at that!) since it just so happened to match our bedding.

Painting our room wasn’t a crazy transformation, just a little sprucing up.  The color we chose is pretty similar (a light, bright sage green) but it’s been pretty amazing how clean and crisp it looks now!

Andy has done a great job patching all the holes and practically re-plastering a whole section near one of the windows.  The old curtain rods came down as did the disgusting mini-blinds that we inherited with the house.

All the trim is painted and we even bought new hardware for the windows!  Andy has done an incredible job and I literally haven’t lifted a finger (which I feel kind of guilty about but also glad because he’s so much more meticulous than me and I didn’t bring down the quality of any of it by getting involved!).

We still have to move everything back in, get new window treatments and decide where to hang things so I’m not posting any pics, but trust me..it looks great.

Once the paint project started, we moved our nightstands and essentials upstairs to our guest room as a temporary solution to being displaced.

It’s just a dark, knotty-pine covered room upstairs, but it’s been kind of fun sleeping up there!

It’s like our cozy little cabin getaway :)

As much as real-life change freaks me out, changes around the house are so much fun for me!  I’ve actually looked forward to retreating upstairs after a long day and tucking into the unfamiliar guest bed.  It’s like staying at a hotel, only I know the bedding is clean ;)

Our jaunt in the cozy guest room has gotten our gears turning…

Maybe we should move our bedroom upstairs!

The guest room upstairs is much bigger than our current room and it would hold more furniture (our bed, night stands, dresser and the vanity that is currently in there).  We could turn our current room into a playroom for Grace.  The sage color will even work nicely for her room (I’m a sucker for pink and green!) when we bring another kid into the mix.

It could totally work.

Except that we are inching toward summer when the upstairs is HOT HOT HOT!  We’d need a window AC unit for sure which would force us to change the configuration of the room (right now the bed is centered in front of that window).

Plus when my family or Andy’s parents come to visit they sleep in the guest room.

Not all the kinks have been worked out, but it’s gotten our creative juices flowing again.

In any event, I think we’re finally going to tackle painting the upstairs which will be a huge improvement over the knotty pine which is dark and outdated.

Exciting stuff around the Gould castle!  Have you done any home projects lately?