Love and Food in the Big D

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Blog Crazy Days

I can’t believe how BLOG crazy I’ve gotten lately. I like to blame it on Chad for being gone...giving me ample time to peruse the internet while he’s at work. I don’t know. But for whatever reason, I’m starting to really enjoy blog reading! Due to my addiction…and all the insanely AWESOME DIY decorating blogs I’ve come across lately, I’ve caught the renovating bug AGAIN. I was always a lover of DIY projects and what not…but after about 8 months of constantly working on the house trying my best to NORMAL-ize the colors when I first bought it over two years ago, I suddenly had no desire to even THINK about doing anything else…let alone MORE Do It Yourself projects. All I cared about was saving enough money to HIRE someone to tackle the rest for me! Thankfully…albeit, two years later, I came to my senses and realized I could do a lot of the remaining things on my spare time and on a tight, masterful budget! Who knew?!

With that said, the last few weeks or so have been spent in an ever-evolving house…with ever-evolving house projects surrounding me. I start one task and realize how cool the next task would be. It started with FINALLY getting our perfectly HIDEOUS salmon pink, silver and black kitchen cabinets to a decent color… .  Those poor things have certainly been put through the ringer these last two years!  From testing out colors over the existing, to sanding the crap out of a portion of them to see how that would work...to then just giving up and calling it a day when we couldn't come to a consensus.  What a mess!  Finally, I took charge and decided on a color that I think really looks great, while still keeping some of the house's character.  After the kitchen cabinets were pretty much settled on...(minus some final touch ups here and there)….I then painted the fire place mantle, the fireplace surround (which I haven't decided if I like), put up artwork, changed out light fixtures in our guest bathroom, repurposed bi-fold doors into a partition screen…and.....wheww…I’m exhausted just thinking of all the possibilities left in the house to conquer. I’m happy with the progress so far…. and it’s certainly has kept me busy while Chad’s cooking up a storm at work, I just hope I don’t burn out again. :)

And just in case you needed a little refresher on how the house came when purchased.... (feel free to make yourself gag now to get it over with)

The living room. 
Pink walls, dark blue curtains, white fireplace with shiny gold fireplace surround. 

Living looking into the kitchen. 
Notice the awesome black diamond wood blocks on the cabinets in the background. 

Oh yes folks...it's true.  Salmon Pink, Black and Silver. 
Makes you teary eyed I'm sure.  :)

But just when you thought you couldn't beat it.  BAM! 
BLUE damask wallpaper with BLUE cabinets AND a BLUE toilet seat cover...
topped with shiny gold cabinet pulls.  WTF?! 
Where the hell do you even FIND blue toilet seats?!

Oh yeah and faux suede wall paper as an accent.  LOL! 
It's a good thing I have a great imagination to see what this houses' potential was! 
Can't beat a great deal.  :)

Guest bathroom upstairs sportin' the BLACK flower wallpaper! 
Thankfully the toilet seat and faucet fixture was easy to replace and the black cabinets weren't so bad. 

The view from upstairs down to the living area. 
Here we are again with the blue and pink...this time, in a lovely magenta tone.  (bleh!)

The guest bedroom upstairs. 
These people must have been on crack, there really is no other way to explain it. 

And because I'm sure that's all you can bear...I'll leave you with those...not showing you (YET) the LIME green master bedroom/master bath & HUNTER GREEN office/den.  I do plan on taking some recent "After Photos" cause god knows it looks a BAZILLION times better than this...but it'll have to wait, and you'll have to suffer with only these pictures to scare away the critters at night.  ;)