Sprucing It Up

When we originally looked at the house, we realized that it needed a lot of love. It was built in 1963 and when you walked through the house it felt as though you had stepped back in time. 

There were a lot of redeeming qualities about the house, though. 

One thing we really loved is that in the basement it is bright. If you have ever been to a house in Utah the basement rooms normally feel, a little cave like. Our house has a basement...but the interesting thing about it is...none of the windows are below the ground. That means that not only is there no window wells (something very normal here), but the basement is bright. Yeah!

The "First Family Room" as it is called (because we have two family rooms downstairs), was a beauty.

The ceilings were not only popcorn (pretty sure they were asbestos) but intermingled with the popcorn ceiling, was bits of gold sparkle.

What I want to know is....when they were building houses in the 60's, was one guy's job just to add sparkle to ceilings? Did he carry around a glitter bag? Did he secretly refer to himself as the "ceiling bedazzler"?

Anywhoo....

Since I may have lost you at the bedazzler, I will break it down fast.

Blake and our friend Bryan scraped the popcorn ceilings, Blake changed out the light fixtures (with some from the other family room), painted the ceilings, I removed the mirror above the fireplace, took down the curtains, and we had the carpets cleaned.

Then we set up a tentative placement of furniture.

It stayed like this for a little while but I just wasn't...feeling it?!

So I decided to sell our rug, paint the walls, move the chair out, and our other couch in, and I painted the book case.

Let me tell you about the book case for a minute.

It is built in. The back section of the bookcase is the wall. I had thought about removing the bookcase since I felt like it made the room feel lopsided. When I was looking at it I realized that they had carpeted up to the bookcase, but not below it, so removing the bookcase would mean that we would be left with a missing patch of carpet. Since we don't plan on replacing the carpet right away removing the bookcase also wasn't an option.

So I decided that a nice coat of white paint was in order. Maybe it was the fact that there was an outline of grime from the old books?

Perhaps it was the fact that someone had painted part of the bookcase at one point but didn't remove the books? Whatever the reason...

I started with painting the walls first. 

Which made the bookshelf stick out even more.

But now that the whole room has been painted it is quite nice.

It feels more like our house.

This room is probably used the most, 

and it contains some of my favorite things.

There are little treasures around our house that I pick up here and there. Vintage things carry so much personality, and I love that they are original. 

I got this chair from an estate sale for $2. (Funny thing is they make a reproduction of this that you can find here. I think I will stick with mine.)

My assortment of blue glass canning jars. They are filled with marbles and vintage pool balls. Also, further down the shelves are old powder metal music boxes.

Behind the couch...

Do you see those little doors? They go to a secret passageway.

More on that later.

Our Family room feels just like it sounds. Like a family lives here. Because...well...we do. Day in and day out.

Before:

After:

Still on the list:

make pillows for couch

replace carpet (one day) 

hang pictures on wall with TV

hang light in corner

change curtains?

paint fireplace, or maybe just clean it

remove old gas heater

The Laundry Room

When we bought the house the laundry room looked like this.

It is big and has a lot of room...so it has that going for it.

It also had:

Really dirty walls, mold spots on one wall, two layers of peel and stick tiles, a shelf that was too high to reach (and what may give you some kind of disease if you touch it), and lovely curtains.

It wasn't horrible but it wasn't great either. I definitely didn't like doing laundry in there because it just didn't feel like the the clothes were going to get clean.

Dirty by association?

We moved in the furniture that we wanted in there. My desk, our washer and dryer, the stand up freezer stayed and we added the fridge from the upstairs.

The laundry room evolved into the "drop all" for our house.

The desk normally held tools, there were buckets on the floor,

...lots of random things everywhere.

Our air conditioner decided to stop working and one day we came home to a puddle of water in our laundry room. 

So I pulled up some of the peel and stick tiles to make sure that there was no water left beneath them.

I think the tiles on the bottom were original to the house and the ones on top were probably added in the 80's. Either way...there was a lot of crap left on them. No amount of scrubbing was going to clean them.

Ripping up a floor is quite liberating.

But then I was posed with the problem of what to do when the tiles were all removed.

I needed a game plan.

I gave Blake two options:

1. I could paint the floor in a checkerboard pattern--the same as upstairs--and light grey walls, or

2. I could paint it like this pinterest picture.

Would you believe me if I said that Blake picked the pinterest one?

Because....he did.

I picked up some paint samples at Home Depot and lived with them for a day or two before I settled on a color.

Then I started to tear up the floor. 

It occurred to me pretty quickly that we were going to have to do this in zones. Moving both the washer and dryer out, plus the fridge and the stand up freezer was not an option.

I striped the walls, 

primed the floors 

and then applied the floor paint.

Always making sure to leave a path...

When the floor was dry, I moved back the fridge and freezer and started on the other side of the room.

Since I was priming the floors anyways the doors got a coat of primer and two coats of white paint.

We got some cabinets for free off of KSL (Utah's craigslist), and Blake hung them for me.

Although I realize that pink stripes aren't everyone's bag...they make me happy.

Since I am the one doing laundry here...I am the one that has to like them.

The cabinets are still going to get a coat of white paint too.

My friend April bought this vintage circus tray for me...I think I am going to hang it on the wall above the desk, but for now, I look at it lovingly on my window sill.

Now the laundry room isn't a room I dread going into.

I present:

Drab to Fab.

(I might be overreaching a bit...but who doesn't like a little theatrics every now and again?!)

And...if nothing else...I know now that we are not going to contract the Ebola Virus from our laundry room.

Still on the list:

paint cabinets

replace light switches

add bar beneath cupboards for hanging clothes

buy utility sink

replace doors in front of furnace