Lookie here...

Hey Kim-check out what I saw in the Ikea catalog tonite! Not sure if you'd looked here or not yet...
It's only $89 too!



Scrolling through I found this one too...I know you're looking for a lighter color but I like this for ME-lol. Love it... $99.
~Amanda

~Our home~

It hit me the other day that maybe we should have kicked the blog off with intros to the exteriors of our homes! *smacking myself in the forehead* Oh well, we're not that far into it...

Here is our home as of last week. Just you wait til you see the before pictures-yuck!
There is still tons to do around here.....new mailbox, house numbers, landscaping, driveway tear-out, garage siding, back patio/deck, finish tuckpointing and foundation painted, rebuilding of the side patio, privacy fence....and that's just the exterior. I'm sure I could find more projects if I tried-lol.



It's hard to see in this photo since our Magnolia tree is in the way-but our daughter, Chloe's window bays out nicely up on the left filling her room with sunlight. There is also a nice big triple window in the attic up there....which hopefully one day become a master suite?? :)

Here it is before we got to it...March 2005. This isn't the best picture but it's all I could find right now. At least you can see the old nasty siding and how there was no front porch...

We actually bought it in 2004 and had to work on it for a year before moving in just to get the inside liveable. It was a foreclosure and not lived in for quite some time. We're talking dead birds all over the floors people! I still have no clue what we were thinking tackling this w/ a 3 year old...Luckily we had family help in the beginning...

Ugh, I can still remember the smell of those bushes. They smelled like cat pee. Nasty. So thankful we yanked those out...

So...it's certainly not complete yet BUT I think we've made HUGE strides in changing this house for the better! I don't think of it too often but sitting here looking at photos really makes it sink in how much we've done :)

Attic stash!

Does anyone have an area of the house that old stuff accumulates and you have forgotten about it for...ohh...let's say 5 years?


I feel like I just went shopping in my attic! lol.





I was up there yesterday trying to do a little bit of organising here and there and started gathering interesting antiques/junk I've had shoved in and behind boxes...I've got a little pile started and know there's a ton more. And oh! Picture frames galore!


We moved in 4 years ago but remodeling started a year before that. Most of this was stashed up there at the time and hasn't been looked at since. I am envisioning all sorts of things I want to do....we're just needing some more horizontal surfaces to place things...What a goofy problem to have, I know.



I even found an awesome antique trunk that was forgotten about and filled with Trav's ugly old sweaters from the 80's/90's (say it together now: EWWW!) The sweaters are officially in a Goodwill pile and that gorgeous trunk is already in our living room acting as an end table. I'm not in love with it there right now-probably since I'm not loving the room in general...I'm thinking of pulling a Canice Olson and doing a room swap-eeep!!!!

~Amanda

A very bare dining room

Here's a peek at our (empty) dining room.....

We haven't found anything that we love for this room and I honestly don't think we'll use it very often. So I decided to try Craigslist for some old furniture that we could re-purpose.

It took a while, as I can't seem to find anything on our local CL. I sent Mike & my brother (with his truck) to look at a table and hutch and here's what they came back with.......

(there's a leaf as well)

(Oh, here's the drawer)

I was quite surprised to see these lovely stars. They were definately not in the picture I saw online.

Mike assured me that we could fill them and you'd never know they were there.

Here's what they look like now......

Now that the boring part is done, I get to decorate and make it look pretty. :)

I really want chairs like these...........

~Kim

Crossing my fingers and toes!

Well, Travis wasn't exactly excited about my dislike over the floors he had just completed. I WILL say-I never once asked him to redo them. He offered. I think underneath his, um...displeasure with me-he didn't like them either...

Today is day 2 of sanding once again. It feels like that movie groundhog day around here. (haven't I been here before?) There is a step he skipped (renting a screener) and is hopeful that that is the missing link and by using it they'll blend better. *ihopeihopeihope* A neighbor told me "my husband wouldn't redo them-I'd have to throw a rug down" so I should be happy that he's doing this. I just pray it's not for nothing.

I decided that the stairs will be dark. Darker than the floor. They're a different wood and look yellow with the stain so they will get a completely different stain this time around. I was going to try and stain a dark emblem of some sort in the middle of the floor to tie it all in but decided to just use a rug to ground the room.

I'll be posting pictures soon!!

~Amanda

I had the back-door blues...

We're not any closer to a solution for a floor yet...Trav wanted to immediately re-sand and get to work on it but I talked him into living with it all week and thinking on it-then work on it next weekend. I'd rather not just jump into it without figuring it all out first.

So instead I got Mr. Antsy Pants to hang a some things on the walls finally. Funny how much of a difference a room feels once you get something hung up!!

We also started chipping off old veneer from an antique desk to re-do for Chloe's room-that project may take a little while so more on that later...





I finally got Travis to carry the old ice cream table OUT of the kitchen and replace with an antique bench we've had for awhile. I still remember when we found the bench-before kids- when would actually go places for long weekends-lol. We had gone to Hermann Missouri during Octoberfest and stayed in a bed and breakfast and toured wineries. It was such a neat town with awesome antique stores. Lugging this sucker home in our Blazer was fun lemme tell ya-it's a lot longer than it looks.



Our plan all along was to make a bench with storage underneath along the front of the kitchen windows but there has just been so many other things to do to make the house "live-able"...this will work great for the time being and sure beats looking at that table and pile of shoes! :)

Why???

I wish my first offical home post was a positive one! But alas, it is not. We have been doing an extensive foyer remodel strung out over the past few months. For some reason the stain (same as the living room that the foyer butts up to) turned out completely different! It makes me sick to look at. We were *this close* to being DONE and here we go again...It's so upsetting. :(



Here's a sneak peek without giving away the rest of the room just yet...
I'm so bummed...*sniff*

My turn

Hi, I'm Kim. I live in Northeast Ohio. I've been married to my husband, Mike, for 7 years (together for 18 yrs). We share our home with our new puppy, Roxi.

Our first home was a real fixer upper. We basically replaced everything we could get our hands on. However, after being there for 5 1/2 years, we knew we wanted something that worked better for us. (i.e. a bathroom that we could both fit in at the same time). We decided to have a house built and we've been here since November 2007.

We still have a lot of decorating to do but I find that my taste is often larger than my bank account. Luckily, I've been inspired by many blogs in which "homes" are made without spending a ton of money. My goal is to make our house comfortable and beautiful without breaking the bank. I'm excited to share these things along the way, and hopefullly get some feedback and ideas as well.

We hope you'll enjoy our blog and please leave us comments and/or send us an email with any questions or suggestions.

And yes, one of these days Amanda and I will meet "in real life". It's about time we do that!

Introductions~

Yea! Here we are! I’m so excited that we’re finally on our way with starting our new project! We each have had our own personal blogs for awhile now and have recently decided a collaboration was in order to get us moving on some house projects we’ve been sitting on. Both Kim and I are avid readers of many of the inspiring home blogs out there and have shared them with you on our sidebar. I hope someone can find something fun over there!

My name is Amanda and I live with my husband and 3 children in Central Illinois. I am a hairstylist of 17 years (on an extended leave from that since our 2 year old came along but see a few loyal clients from time to time). I have also been a lampworker for the past 6 years but have devoted most of my time to it these last 2 years that I haven’t been doing hair. My other blog is mainly devoted to jewelry design, lampworking and bits and pieces about the kids. The link to it is in my profile if anyone wants to take a peek.

I am lucky enough to married to a guy who can do anything. Anything-I swear! The only thing we’ve had to hire out in this monster of a house was the roof. I told Travis we didn’t have enough life insurance and with it being 3 stories and steeeeeep…no way! He happily agreed-lol. Our home was built in 1904 I believe and had fallen under some funky “remuddeling” (as he calls it) jobs throughout the years. We tend to be the sort who believe in “if you’re going to do it then do it right” which means taking things back to the period of the home…which also means it takes alot longer than normal...We’ve lived here since 2005 and am only now starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. With major remodeling going on most of the time, decorating has been shoved to the wayside… The main room that even has anything hung on the walls is our daughter, Chloe’s room.

About the two of us: Kim and I met online a little over 6 years ago in a child loss forum. We were both grieving the loss of our babies and somehow the two of us clicked. It was wonderful to have someone to lean on in the hardest time of my life and she continues to be there daily for me (and me for her I hope!) through all of our ups and downs. Can you believe we have never actually met? 6 years…all on the computer and by phone. Maybe one of these days…???

Our goal here is to motivate and inspire each other through our home projects and hopefully make a few friends along the way. Leave us a comment to let us know you came by!

Coming soon