Before and After: Dining Room

Today I thought I'd show you our dining room; looking back through the blog "files" it looks like I totally left you hanging at this post, when I ordered new chairs. Sorry about that. Apparently I need an editorial calendar. 

Anyway, there are not too may "in progress" photos of this room, it was actually the first room in the house I deemed "done." Mike about fainted when I told him I was thinking it was "pretty much done" - he says he's never heard me associate the term "done" with one thing in our house. Point taken. I very quickly switched it back to the label "in progress" just so I could switch things up in there and not feel guilty. Anyway, here's the move-in photo (seller's furniture). Yick. 

Pretty quickly after we moved in, we painted the room white and when we found a good deal at a local furniture store, we snatched up a table and chairs and the room sat like this for quite a while. 

Eventually, as I learned more about  myself and my design style, I figured out that 1) Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine, I'll admit it, I'm fickle with the house, and 2) I don't really like matchy-matchy stuff in our house - and our table and chairs were MATCHY-MATCHY, so Mike kindly let me sell them off on Criagslist and order new ones. We also added in a new, more modern light fixture (sorry it blinds you in the pic below), took down the sconces, added curtains on the right and a gallery wall on the left. Oh, and I brought down the cowhide rug from our bedroom last fall to warm up the floor and I'm thinking it's going to stay for the long haul. Here's how it turned out: 

Gallery Wall:

View from the kitchen:

That's it! Next up, the guest room!

Before and After: Living Room

It's been a while since I've given you a tour of Oakland Avenue - I was looking back through our last update and I totally forgot our house ever looked like that! So today, I'm giving you a quick tour of our living room, over the next few weeks, I'll take you through the rest of the house. 

Let's start with a reminder of the before (sellers furniture)

More before (It's a little depressing, isn't it?)

In progress...a lot of people told me not to paint, but I am SO glad we did. I think it makes the house actually look like two 20 year-olds live there. 

A little more progress...

The after! I would still like to say...this is "in progress" as well, it screams a little too much BLUE AND GREEN for me right now so I'm planning on switching up the throw pillows at some point, but this gives you a pretty good idea of what our place would look like if you came over today...

 

Don't worry, don't worry, the orange chair moved downstairs as it is a prime "TV watching" chair. Totally changed the feel of the room, didn't it? 

Anyway, it's difficult to get a good angle on our current chairs, so here they get their own individual shots..

The view from the couch - those coat hooks are the best thing we've ever added to this house. (Besides the oven - boiling water has never been so fun!) When Mike installed the coat hooks I told him it needed to be able to hold approximately 32 twelve pound purses for all my friends. I have to be honest, I have yet to be able to test that theory (I'm working on getting more friends)  but we have had about eight purses and 30 coats on there (seriously, I counted) and it held up famously. Nice job Mikey. 

And one of my favorite things - our porch is now pretty enough that I LOVE having our curtains open - sorry the pic is a bit dark, but you get the idea:

So that's it! Things are always changing in here so it'll probably look a bit different tomorrow, but where's the fun in keeping everything the same? 

(Mike would say the fun is in his wallet.)

And to that I say: Bah.