It has been one year this week since we moved into our first house. Not only were there ups and downs in the house searching process (a cinder block house, a haunted one, and even one with the world's first microwave), but in home owning as well:

  • We moved into the house hoping to take nice warm bath, but discovered that our lovely white tub was actually spray painted (remember this?) and bubbled when hot water hit it. After many, many, many hours of scraping the tub (thanks mom!!), we can now enjoy a relaxing bath.
  • We found ourselves shop vac-ing up buckets of water from our basement drain, only to find out that we had a collapsed sewer line. We chose the short-term solution for now and are holding off as long as we can to fix it due to the $10,000 price tag to replace it.
  • We also survived our first winter in a house without insulation by wearing layers upon layers of socks, slippers, hoodies and robes, but still found ourselves freezing! Seriously. It was a constant 55 degrees in our great room - if we were lucky!
So, what did we do for our house after it has done so much for us?? We bought him a new coat (in the form of insulation in the attic), and a face lift (in the form of many, many gallons of paint throughout the house). This month's project was the great room. We have been dying to get this makeover underway, but we could not settle on what we wanted. Finally, with my parents coming to town for a few days, I took the reins and made a plan. We wanted something that was classic and we could easily update with the new "in" accent colors to keep it fresh.

The Before: It was a BLANK slate. The only color in the room was the fireplace and matching carpet, and while we don't yet have the funds for new carpet, we could do something about the fireplace and walls.

Note: Previous owner's furniture

The AFTER: A tan color on the walls, rich chocolate brown drapes (thermal backed to keep the cold out), and a drastically different fireplace (I'm still not sure about the color, but it's growing on me) really warmed up the room. A $3 garage sale mirror and $5 can of brown paint from the mistint section at Lowes = a lovely addition to set apart the two spaces.


We also moved in our bookcase from our old office (now nursery) and transformed it into a dining room-ish display on the top, with our "junk drawer" in the bottom. I shopped around my house for things to display, and while I admit that it's not all that stunning, it is a heckuvalot better than the junk that used to be stored in the open shelving. Plus, I can still keep all of my odds-ands-ends hidden in the bottom half thanks to Chris' brilliant idea of lining the see-through glass doors. I shopped around my house again and found some wrapping paper that looked modern and still enabled us to see the etched detail in the glass. It may have been a free makeover, but it made a big impact nonetheless!


The BEFORE: Again, it was a super plain and boring space and even though the room was cold in the winter, we could at least try to warm it up with color and fabric.


The AFTER: Some Craigslist furniture, more drapes, and no more ugly blinds on the French door took the space from bland to cozy. We're still looking for the perfect art to hang on either side of the window, and a new end table, but it is definitely an improvement.



Besides all of the great aesthetic changes, my dad also donated his talent by ripping down all of the trim to insulate behind the wood work as well as properly rehung the doors. In addition, we stuffed some old blankets up the fireplace to stop any airflow there. We now have less cold air coming in and less warm air escaping. While the robe and slippers were comfy, our new great room is cozy even without all of the layers.