Office Reveal! And our new floors.

Okay... It's time for me to reveal our floors. Even though you've already seen a sneak peek. This also completes our first floor of our home. Not one room down here has been left untouched. And I am SO SO SO HAPPY with how it has turned out.

Let's begin, shall we?

As always, I like to remind you of what we started out with. Because the difference really is amazing. (In my humble opinion ;) )

View from the front door

There used to be an awkward cutout on that wall on the left. I got this huge mirror at IKEA and just covered the hole until we can get a drywaller in here to patch it in.

Entry

View from the dining room.  I love how seamless it all flows now with the wood floors. We used to have slate, carpet, AND travertine and it was just too cut up for me.  Now we only have wood and travertine.

I don't remember if I've shown you this wall with my DIY pipe shelving.

I finally added the little legs to my tv stand.  I will do a full tutorial on that project now that it's finished.

One more view of the living room

I tried to replicate the picture I took when we walked through. This is from the landing going up the stairs.

And my view from upstairs to show you the full layout.

A tiny detail that makes a BIG difference: I replaced our blah white railings with pretty natural wood ones and iron hardware.

And finally.... The office!!

Remember I ripped out the built in shelves in order to install the hardwood (and because they were poorly built and not my style)  I really love the idea of shelving but wanted to be able to add/move shelves if I decide to rearrange the office. So I went with adjustable track shelving with natural wood shelves and I LOVE it.  I spent all day yesterday decorating them and spray painting a bunch of my old decorations so they would be more "manly" for Tom.  Since he puts up with my hot pink rug in the living room without so much as a word about it, he deserves a more masculine room in the house.  

Here are some shelf details.  My shelves are common boards 9 inches deep and cut various lengths then stained special walnut.  The brackets are screwed into studs so these are super strong and sturdy.

These candlesticks used to be brass and I painted them Oil Rubbed Bronze.  I bought this canvas in a 2 pack at Walmart and just painted some abstract art on it.  Took about 5 minutes.  The brass ox was thrifted and spray painted

Skull from Ross, DIY string art, tiny globe I spray painted black

Pot from IKEA, with snake grass (super hard to kill FYI)

Thrifted globe, Plant from IKEA, more DIY artwork

Bought this mirror at the DI for $10 and spray painted it white.

This globe was ripped and falling apart at home goods so I got it for super cheap. I patched it up, painted it black and drew the countries back on with a gold paint pen.  DIY agate watercolor, books and rock thrifted.

I found this giant gold jack from Hobby Lobby. It was in the clearance section but one of the balls was broken off so they gave it to me for 1/2 off clearance.  I glued the ball back on and no one would even know! Blue vase is thrifted

Another IKEA plant this one is aloe.  Gold skull from Z Gallery.

I drew these 2 black and white sketches in high school art class.  They were on torn scrap paper but once they were framed they actually look pretty good!

Fake IKEA plant on top of thrifted books

My Mother-in-law gave me this globe and these vases are also thrifted

This giant art is IKEA.  On the left, I just painted a frame with chalkboard paint (because we accidentally broke the glass right after we bought it) and on the right they were doing a street art gallery and Tom picked this one out.  Not my style but it's the only thing in the house he's picked so I was nice and let him get it ;) you can give me my wife of the year award later.

This dresser I bought off KSL for like $15 and painted it white.  I've always wanted a campaign dresser!  And the lamp was thrifted (cuz what in my house ISN'T thrifted??)

And that's the end of today's post!

I accidentally hung the curtains too high so I'm just going to sew some black fabric to the ends so they'll touch the floor, and eventually I would LOVE a cowhide in here.  But I need to save up for that one :)

Thanks for reading!!

xoxo Bre

House Update

You guys!! I feel so bad. I've seriously dropped the ball with my blog lately.  I have been working like a mad woman lately (NEW FLOORS... HALLELUJAH) and my blog has fallen to the side so that I can keep up with my other life duties. So I'm just going to dump a bunch of pics of my most recent projects... no fun reveals yet sorry.

Remember what my old fireplace looked like? 

I covered it with cement. Goodbye slate!

Such an improvement

Got crafty and made some agate art. It was so fun!

Looks perfect on my entry table.

I have been slowly framing out every window in my house because none of them were. The kitchen window was an issue because the cabinets would have interfered with the trim. I would have had to cut the trim around the cabinets and ain't nobody got time for that.

So I bought some really thin trim, measured it out, and nailed it up.

Then I painted inside the trim and now you can't really even tell what's going on. It just looks finished finally.

Here's a pic at night so you can actually see what I'm talking about.

And then I bought a thin piece of balsa board and stained it and nailed it up like a valance.

And then I converted my can into a pendant light.  I still need to figure out a shade for that one...

It took me several weeks but I finally ordered our laminate flooring which meant the bookshelves had to go so I could put the laminate all the way to the wall.

And then I ripped out baseboards, all my carpet....

And took out all the slate in the entry. And let me tell you. If I never have to demo tile again in my life, it will be too soon.

For real. I had a demo hammer and it still took like 3 days of back breaking work.

Letting the floors acclimate to our house.

The hardest part of laying these floors was making the cuts.  Click in laminate is seriously a dream to install. 

It's like doing a giant puzzle. 

And here it is complete! Oh, I also painted my front door black one day.

And I've been replacing all of my baseboards and moldings with clean craftsman style moldings. 

I will go more into detail about the whole flooring process later. I just figured I owe you guys this much ;)

And here's the office. It looks so much bigger without those dang bookshelves!! Now I just need to decide what to do with this wall. I'm thinking adjustable shelving... just need to figure it out.

And that brings us to the end of my photo dump!  I told you I've been busy. Also, our office was torn apart for several weeks and I just plugged my computer in for the first time yesterday so that was the main reason I haven't blogged.

Thanks for following along!

xoxo Bre