One month later: Living and Dining Room

As I mentioned on Thursday, it’s been a month since we bought our house. Things are finally starting to return to normal after the holidays, and the house is finally starting to feel like a home.

Did I just say that? Gag. I apologize. The lack of promised snow is turning me cheesy.

Anywhoo, I know I said I was going to post house pictures this weekend, but I spent approximately 85% of it painting and organizing my craft room. The other 15% was spent eating and drinking adult beverages. Oh, and I guess I slept for a good 25% of the time too. And went to the grocery store. . . Let’s just not bother with the math. That’s why I have a journalism degree :)

I may not be able to count to 100, but I can use a paint roller with the best of ‘em. In 3, 6, 8,  far more hours than it should have taken me, I transformed a messy and dull spare room. . .

into an empty and dull spare room!

Just kidding. The formerly dull spare room is now my bright and bold craft studio!

The pictures don’t really show the true wall color. It’s definitely a turquoise. The color is a Martha Stewart shade and I’m going to accent it with bright red. I the shade is so 2010, but I’m not brave enough to paint an entire room hot pink just yet.

Now I’m working on taming the beast that is craft disorganization.

I’m slowly putting the room back together and figuring out how to store/display everything, however,  if you follow me on twitter you may have seen a sneak peek of my progress.

But back to the rest of the house. Like I said it’s been a month. We still have boxes to unpack, but the majority of our belongings have found a (temporary at least) resting place.

I love our house, but can’t help feeling that all of our hand-me-down furniture makes it look more like a college apartment than the home of two young professionals.

I can’t wait to compare these pictures to a year from now when hopefully the whole house will be filled with new (at least to us, I’m all about vintage) furniture and accessories that we carefully selected to match our style instead of our pocketbook. It’s not that money isn’t an issue, it’s just that we got the majority of our current furniture for free or next to nothing, so I’m actually looking forward to buying our own couches, etc.

Regardless, this is what the living room looks like now:

The one major improvement we’ve already made is purchasing a new entertainment center and  ladder bookcases.

I’ve been eyeing those bookcases ever since visiting Randy and Tamara when they lived in Boston. Our record player and record collection  fit perfectly on the bottom shelves and there is still tons of room for more books! If I hadn’t already gone off on several tangents so far this post, I would lament about why no one buys books anymore, but I won’t so consider yourself spared.

We also bought a coat rack at the same furniture store we purchased the book shelves from. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a sturdy, solid wood coat rack these days? It’s getting a fresh coast of paint soon so stay tuned for that.

And yes, we do have a nerf basketball goal in our living room. How else could I take pictures like this? His feet are entirely off of the ground FYI.

The dining room is pretty basic right now. Same old ugly, overly matchy matchy table and chairs painted by my 19 year-old-self. New housewarming plant from my co-workers in the corner.

Have I mentioned how awesome the chalkboard is that the previous owners left? I’m telling you, this house was made for me.

*Please ignore how the depressing message on said chalkboard. I took this picture earlier last week, before our heartbreaking loss.

I’ll post the rest of the house later this week. I’m off early to hunker down in hopes of more snow (or at least enough to have a snow day from work). Wish for lots of white flakes in Fayetteville for me!