Well finally after 4 months, I decided on a table for my dining room. No more card table and chairs. Yes I said it I'm 33 and my dining room table is a card table complete with folding chairs!!! No judgement thank you :)

I've always liked the higher tables (counter height) but I just couldn't decided on what I really wanted. The only thing I knew that I wanted was a table that had a removable leaf so if I had more than 4 people over I could accommodate everyone. I also didn't want a huge table that would take over my entire dining area either. So today I received an email from Overstock.com regarding a sale on dining room furniture. Dare I say it was a sign!!! I looked through the sale and found the table on the and it was exactly what I wanted and needed!! So I purchased it.

Right now I have 2 bar stools placed at my kitchen bar (see picture to the left)... so these will serve as the extra seating and I don't need to store them when they aren't being used. Bonus

I didn't order the chairs that are pictured with the table, I just didn't like them. So I'm going to hold off on them until I find the right bar stools. I'd like to find chairs with some sort of fabric and I know I wont have a problem finding something that I like. If I don't find the right fabric it's an easy fix... it's called new fabric and my mother!!! The Queen of Reupholstering !!! I'm so excited and can't wait for the final product!!! Stay tuned

Art Work on a Budget

I know it's been a while since my last post, there's been a lot of things going on but I'm back :)

After painting the living room I realized the walls were extremely bare and needed some framed art work. Not sure exactly what I wanted I headed for the information highway aka the Internet for some inspiration. With ideas in mind I headed to Michael's to find scarp book paper and frames. Listen... after purchasing a condo and a brand new hot water heater I was not in a financial place to go to an art gallery (not really sure if I had the money that I would go to an art gallery) Anyways.... I knew that I wouldn't really know what I wanted until I saw it. So while in Michael's I hit the Martha Stewart Collect and find this great little book of 5X7 scarp book paper Perfect. Then I hit the frame section and found these long black frames with spots for three 5X7 pics. SOLD for under $40!!! Top that fancy art galleries!!

So home I went with my purchases ready to create and hang my cheap but pretty sweet artwork.

Here's one of the two frames and the Martha Stewart Scrapbook paper. Michael's always has sales on their frames so over course I got the frames even cheaper. The original price was around $30 and I had a 40% off coupon.

Here is the final project picture... looks pretty good if I do say so. What do you think?

Staircase Gets Painted!!!!!!!!

Each day when I leave work I go home thinking tonight's the night I'm just going to rest and not work on the condo.... well it's a nice thought

Once I get home and sit down on the couch and begin looking around, I get this strange urge to paint, decorate or rearrange. So basically every night this week I've painted the walls around my staircase and laundry room until I ran out of wall space to paint. I started off with the smallest wall on the top half of the stairs, then the next night I moved onto the largest wall on the staircase and so on and so forth. It's a great feeling to look around the living room, dining room and kitchen and see that every single wall has a fresh coat of paint on it. It's also nice to no longer see big holes in the walls or dents every where. I swear the old tenants ran every single piece of furniture they had into the walls when they were moving out.

Paint -it's such a sweet reward...

Office/Spare Bedroom

Little by little I'm trying to show you each room as it gets completed. The office/guest room was the first room to get painted. The day I closed my dad got to work on painting, while mom and I began unpacking the rest of the condo. This was also the first room where we used the Behr Primer paint and also where we realized how much we loved this paint and how much time it saved. The previous tenant's daughter loved the color purple and when I say purple I mean purple, deep dark purple.

See below... it's hard to see the actual color but you can tell by how dark the picture is that the walls were extremely dark!!!

So after only one coat of paint my office/spare bedroom was complete. Well, actually it was almost complete, there was a lot of purple on the ceiling and base boards. So my wonderful father painted the ceiling, window ledge and base boards ultra white. Thanks Dad for all of your hard work... The room looks great!!! I still haven't found the exact chair that I want for the desk. (Desk lower left with the red lamp shade)

I really really like the look of the floating shelves!!! So on one of my many trips to Home Depot I picked up two floating shelves thinking I would use them in my living room and ended up hanging them in my office. I know that my dad painted this entire room... but I hung the shelves by myself, in case you were wondering. I am extremely handy and love to build and put things together.

So here's a closer look at the floating shelves....

Living Room Updates

If you looked at the living room pictures that I posted earlier this week, you probably didn't see much. Sorry the pictures were too dark to see anything, so last night I took a few more pictures of the newly painted living room.

Hope you like the color, cuz I do!!!!

Well... since I'm showing you the newly painted living room I might as well move into the living room and turn the camera around to show you pics of the not so newly painted kitchen.

I woke up a few Saturdays ago and just decided that the kitchen needed a slightly different color, other than the standard contractor white paint. I was looking for a very light tan/beige and I got exactly what I was looking for. If I hadn't told you that I painted the kitchen you just might not have known. It's so close to the original color that it's hard to tell in certain light.

See for yourself below....

Living Room Gets Painted

When it came time to paint the spare bedroom/office I knew right away that I wanted to use the Forever Denim by Behr. But, when the time came to pick out the color for the living / dining room, I just could not decide. The picture on the left only shows 3 out of the 6 paint colors I had to choose from.

I think I hold the record for sample paints, I should ask the employees at Home Depot that work at the paint counter since I know them by their first names. Seriously I know their names. The last time I checked I had 10 different tiny containers of Behr Paint samples. All Primer paint I might add. If I haven't said it before... let me say it again it's the best paint ever. Thanks go out to Stephanie & Chris for turning me onto the primer paint. I'll never use anything else again, 1 coat and you're done. You might have to touch up a few spots, but it's better than painting the same wall multiple times!!!

After choosing Oat Straw for the living / dining area it was time to start painting. Luckily Stephanie was on hand to help me tape and paint. I'll let you in on a little secret of mine.. it always helps to gossip while working on DIY projects - It makes the time go by so much faster :)

The entryway into my house has vaulted ceilings and I don't have the proper equipment to be able to tape & paint this area as of right now, so I decided that I would buy the painting tape that's used to make the sharp crisp lines. It works!! It really works!!! See pic on the left.

So here's the final product... I hope you like it :) It's hard to see so I will take some more pics tonight so that you can see the color and the awesome job Stephanie and I did. Thanks Steph!!!

Couch Finally Arrived!!!!! 3 1/2 Weeks Late

After months and months of waiting my couch finally arrived!!! No more sitting on chairs or laying on the floor :)

I ordered the couch on May 18th with an expected deliver date of 6 to 8 weeks. Ummmm more like 10 (almost 10 1/2 weeks) and I finally received the "Hello this is Art Van. We will be delivering your couch on Sunday, between the hours of 12:00 and 3:00 pm" call. When I heard the truck pull up, I got so excited I ran down the stairs to greet the delivery men at the door.

Well... after 5 long agonizing minutes later one of the delivery guys walks up to my front door with 2 pillows in his hands. This confused me because "hello" where was my couch and why were there only 2 pillows in his hand when I ordered 4? So I opened the door expecting to hear "Houston we have a problem" but to my relief he asked me to show him where I wanted the couch to go. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

So after I showed him the location he went back to his truck to get his co-worker to help him lift my couch up and over my staircase. Below is the first half of my stair case, they had to lift the couch up and over the wall on the right side.

So now I have more than one place to sit in my living area so I can finally have people over not have them sit on the floor or at the bar on the bar stools.

Please excuse the top picture, I was still trying to decided what color to paint the living room and those two round tables are a temporary fix.

Spare Bedroom Painted

This was the first room that I painted in the condo, thanks to my Dad!!!! He started painting the day I closed!!!

I don't know what it was, but for some reason this color (Behr Primer Paint - Forever Denim) just stood out in my mind. I felt that the spare bedroom/office was the best place for this color.

As you can see... I have blue accent pieces such as my Sky Dive Certificate and the blue strips in the ironing board (normally that is not out on display in this room).

I just purchased a smallish black desk, Thank You Target, for this room. I'd like to place it where the iron board currently is and move the bookshelve to the opposite wall (not shown). I'm trying to decide on the perfect chair for the desk. I don't want an actual desk chair, I'd like to have something that could be decorative and functional at the same time.

I'm still working on the actual setup of this room. Once I've completed it I will post a couple pictures of the end result.

Painted Kitchen

Last Friday I was home watching TV when I got the sudden urge to go pick out paint colors. I had a few colors for a couple of different rooms in mind, but wanted to make sure they looked good before buying a couple gallons of paint. So I headed up to the paint counter at Home Depot and bought 3 sample colors, all Behr Primer Paint.

• Above is a picture of the kitchen with the "Sandstone Cove" paint. I took a picture of the pantry door because the actual color is so very light, that without seeing it against a white door you might not know that I spent most of my Saturday taping and painting my kitchen, bar area and wall next to the bar.

So... what do you think?

Closing!!!

I received a call from my Realtor this afternoon... closing is set for two weeks from today!!!! June 23 @ 2:30 pm. I can't believe I will be a home owner two weeks from today. It's crazy :)

Going shopping with mom on Saturday hopefully we will find some stuff to decorate the condo with.

My couch should be delivered between 2 to 4 weeks. I've ordered the couch shown up above, but with different pillow covers. I'm holding off on purchasing a dining room table and chairs until after I move in. I've purchased two tall bar stools so at least for now I can sit at the bar until I find the right dining set. I'd like to find a small narrow desk for the spare bedroom so that way I can have an office/guest room. Still need to find something for the guest bedroom that can sleep two people, but doesn't make it look like a full on bedroom.

I've got plenty of time to get everything done since I'll be living there for years and year and did I mention years?

I decided to create a blog to keep my family and friends up to date on the progress of my new adventure... Home Owner

I am in the process of purchasing a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo. The condo is currently occupied by renters, so they had to be given at least 30 days notice to vacate. This worked out well for me because it gives me an opportunity to go through all of my stuff and purchase other things that I will need. I have a feeling that June 30th will be here sooner than I expect. June 30th is my closing day aka the day I officially become a home owner!!!!