Happy, happy Monday everyone! I know I didn’t post a Weekend Roundup yesterday, but that’s because I did NOTHING all weekend. I stayed home and rested. Trev wasn’t feeling great and neither was I. So we canceled all our fun plans and stayed home a slept. It was boring… but exactly what we needed before we started this hectic week!
Today, we’re starting this blog week with a post that has been requested by all of you…
I know that I’ve promised you home updates often, and haven’t give you any. I’ve TRIED to sit down and post pictures of what our home looks like but tbh, was kind of embarrassed still. It still wasn’t done and still didn’t look like how I wanted.
Then I realized something… our home isn’t going to look picture perfect. At least not yet. We’re still living out of boxes, and our house is still a disaster work in progress. But, it’s real. And it’s our season of life right now. So… today, I’m so excited to share all that we’ve been able to accomplish (while working a whole lot and out of town a lot on weekends too) and to share a list of our current and future projects to help share our vision with you!
We bought our home two months ago, and moved in just over a month ago and it’s been keeping us busy ever since. We really thought that the projects we had planned were going to be SO easy and take not a lot of time and at least our main floor would be move in ready by our move in date. BOY were we wrong.
As with any renovation project, we had quite a few surprises along the way. We found out removing wallpaper is the worst, skim coating is easy but time consuming, painting cabinets can make you cry, and learning as you go is the best way to tackle any reno project. But at the end of each day, we sit back and still can’t quite believe that this house is ours to make our own!
So grab some coffee and get your scrolling finger ready… this post is going to be a long one! Because like I said, it’s definitely overdue!
If you didn’t see our Empty-ish House Tour, click here to see what the rooms looked like when we began!
When we first moved in, our first projects were to remove the things in the home that we weren’t going to keep. For us, that was the wallpaper, carpet, paneling and mirrors. Trev was super excited about this because it was #DemoDay all day, every day the first week we started coming to the house!
The first thing we did was remove the mirrors. Our entire fireplace had mirrored shelves on each side and a large mirror across the top. The shelves removed easy peasy when you cut them, and then removed the pieces. The mirrors that were behind it were MUCH harder to remove. We tried every trick Pinterest had and nothing seemed to be working. We ended up smashing them, and removing the pieces. We were taking the carpet out anyways, so we weren’t too worried about getting glass everywhere. When we FINALLY got the mirrors off, we saw why they were so hard to remove! They were covering old paneling and stuck on with LIQUID NAILS.
We were expecting to find the wooden bookcases behind the sides and drywall above the mantel. Not paneling! Because we couldn’t remove the liquid nails, we had to get creative and add another project to our list… figure out how to cover up the paneling and liquid nails.
Our next project was to remove all the wallpaper and paneling. Which basically meant our entire main floor. Our living room, dining room, entry way, half bath, kitchen and den were all full of different types of paneling and wallpaper.
And when people say “Wallpaper is a b*tch” they aren’t freakin’ kidding.
It took us TWO WEEKS to get everything down. It also took the help of my parents. After everything was removed from our walls, we skim coated, filled holes and sanded so we had a smooth surface to start with. I’m going to be doing an entire post for you on how we found was the easiest way to wallpaper and skim coat so maybe we can save some of you the headaches that we encountered!
Then, it was finally time to paint! We used this paint sprayer from Harbor Freight and it was a life saver!! It made painting so much easier!! We LOVE Behr Paint and have always chosen it because it applies like a dream and doesn’t need a primer. We chose the color Crisp Linen for our walls, and Ultra Pure White for all our white accents (including the ceiling.)
Then, we FINALLY moved the carpet, and spent YEARS pulling staples out of the floor.
At this point, we moved into our home and had to start doing our projects around all of our crap things.
Our next project was to redo our ENTIRE main floor. We ended up choosing LifeProof Luxury Vinyl Flooring from Home Depot and guys… we couldn’t be happier with it! It costs more than most vinyl floors but for us it was worth it. I’m literally the clumisest person EVER and spill everything I try to carry. This floor is waterproof, scratch proof and easy to install. It also comes in GORGEOUS colors. I can’t say enough good things about it! You can find it here! We chose the color Woodacres Oak. It’s the perfect brown that isn’t TOO warm. I was super conscious about choosing a color that would be too yellow under-toned and I fell in love with this one the second I saw it.
While the boys worked on the floor, my mom worked on painting the kitchen cabinets. She learned A LOT while doing them, and guys… they turned out SO BEAUTIFUL! I’m so thankful she did them. She’s a perfectionist and they are freakin’ flawless. I’ll also be doing an entire post on painting your cabinets so that yours can turn out just as beautiful as ours did!
With all our main projects completed, we were able to start our next round. Replacing the vanity in the half bath, and replacing the light fixtures. (We’ve only replaced two so far! We are still searching for just the right ones. We are needing to replace the half bath light, the flush mount light in our kitchen, the ceiling fan in the den.) Don’t worry… I’ll link the lights below when I show you our current progress pictures because they are both gorgeous lights and I know you’re going to want them!
We also started to work on redoing our fireplace. We painted all the dark wood white, and gave the brick new life by limewashing it. We’re also giving the tile around the fireplace an upgrade too! We’re just waiting for a certain Prime box to arrive on our doorstep. Once our fireplace is completed, you can expect an entire post on how we completely changed the look of our fireplace for under $100!!!
Now, we’re down to just a few more projects that we’re hoping to complete before September! Which we should be able to, especially since my parents are coming down in two weekends to give us an extra hand! Our finishing projects are…
- Paint Touch Ups
- Building Shelves into the existing Built Ins
- Building 2 Floating Shelves for our Kitchen
- Wrapping the Poles and Staining
- Adding Transition Strips to the floor
- Painting and Hanging all Moulding
- Finishing the Pony Wall (Trev redid it and it looks AMAZING! Just needs paint and a top now!)
- And finally… DECORATING!!!
I’m SO freakin’ excited to get all our decor back up and put out some new pieces I’ve bought over the summer with our house in mind! I think it will FINALLY start to feel more like home when everything is complete and we see our things start going up on the walls and shelves!
You’ll see our vision starting to come to life on our main floor! We haven’t touched our upstairs yet (besides removing the carpet). Here’s a list of our upcoming projects that we’re planning to start this Fall, after the main floor is complete!
- Refinish Wood Floors
- Paint
- Removing ALL Purple Paneling
- Replace All Lights
- Unpack (HAHA)
Alright… now that you’ve been throughly updated, it’s time to share some progress pictures! I spent Sunday morning cleaning the entire house so that it wouldn’t look like a tornado hit it. LOL
You’ve already seen our entryway update in this post, but I’lll share the photo again!
Since this picture was taken, we’ve added a runner rug that you can find here! Our light was also an Amazon find, that you can grab here! (The light bulb is this one that we picked up at Home Depot.) Our frames and pictures are the same ones that we had hanging in our apartment! You can find out more about them here.
Next up is our living room! We still have our old furniture in it, but have our eye on the new furniture we want to buy! (We’re crossing our fingers for a good deal this Labor Day!) We’ve got a new light that we got a great deal on here, and our new TV stand that I am completely obsessed with! (We’ve moved the sound bar and Alexa to the shelf below the TV since this photo was taken!)
complete this space!
Next is our dining room! This space was really hard to take a photo of because the light was shining directly into the window when I was trying to snap away!
Would you believe our new light is from the kid’s section at Target?! Isn’t it so perfect?! And it’s really, really affordable. I LOVE our dining room table. We got it at Macy’s! (It’s on a super sale right now! You can also choose to get it with a bench instead of two chairs.) The only bad thing was the wood matched our floor a little bit TOO perfectly, so I found this indoor/outdoor rug at Wayfair to help offset the colors. I really love how it looks! (This rug is on a closeout sale right now since the season is ending! I highly recommend picking it up ASAP because you won’t find a rug this big, this good of quality for this good of a price!)
Next is our kitchen! I’m SO IN LOVE with our cabinets! Like I mentioned, I’ll be doing an entire post on them for you. But this is the kit we used to transform them! (I picked the color Tate Green and it’s so stinkin’ pretty.) We still need to purchase a new microwave and a new flush ceiling light!
And this picture leads us to the the den! You can see the transformations on our fireplace starting to take place!! I can’t wait to get the last few things we are waiting on to really transform it and get the shelves in! We ended up putting plywood over the paneling/liquid nails to get a nice, flat surface to paint. You can see on the left side that we had a small gap around the edges. We were in the middle of caulking when I took these photos! There isn’t a gap anymore thanks to a tube of white caulk 🙂
Now onto our almost completed half bath!!! We will eventually get a white toilet (it looks white in this photo, but it’s actually darkish cream color), and white blinds but these are good for now! We picked up this mirror from Kirklands, this vanity and this faucet from Home Depot (you can’t beat this price!!), this Amazon Basics toilet paper holder, this trash can and this rug! (It’s a little bigger than we expected but oh well, it’s too pretty to return!) We also picked up three frames in the same sale at Michael’s to hang on the wall with prints of our new favorite place… Nantucket! This room is the closest one we have to being finished I think! (It just needs new moulding, painted trim around the door a towel holder and a new light!)
Upstairs is still pretty much a disaster! We haven’t changed anything except the paint color on our bedroom walls! (It’s also Crisp Linen!) SO you’ll get pictures of that once we actually start doing work on our upper level!
And since I’m link happy today… here are FOUR cleaning products we couldn’t have lived without during this renovation!
Moving is a VERY smelly process… especially when you are doing renovating. You know how people smell like their house? Well, when you move into someone else’s house it still smells like them, and tbh, it’s hard to get rid of their smell and make it your own. (Good or bad!) Tearing out the carpet really helps to eliminate most odors, but these natural air purifying bags from Breathe Green at the bomb.com. Seriously. We bought a four pack from Amazon and have them hidden around our house. They are SO GOOD. Buy them. Hide them. Remove stinky smells from your home without harsh chemicals or perfumed smells. They are incredible!
We also love anything from the brand E-Cloth!! This dusting glove makes my life SO EASY!
And these glass cleaning clothes are actual magic! All you do is spray water on the glass and wipe and it is SO FREAKIN’ SPARKLY. I don’t know how they work, but I do know that I couldn’t believe my eyes the second I tried it.
I also just bought this pack of their cleaning clothes to try out on the rest of the surfaces in our homes! If I can clean without chemicals, I’m all there! Except for my bathroom… give me all the Clorox and Lysol. I want those germs out of here. (I’ll let you know what I think of these after I try them out! I have high hopes thanks to their other products!!)
However, when I want my house to smell good, I turn to this Smartly All Purpose Cleaner from Target. It smells just like the Capri Blue Volacano candle from Anthro… no joke!
This week, we are going to start picking away at our list of current projects… however I’m not sure how much we’ll get done! Trev’s teams are back in season, it’s one of the busiest weeks of my life at work, and next week, we are babysitting our sweet little niece and nephew. So I’m guessing we won’t get a ton done. BUT, I’ll be sure to update you when we see some more progress this time. Even when it’s not picture perfect 🙂
You’ve probably completely finished that cup of coffee by now because this post was LONG. I’ll be back tomorrow with my official post on which island off the cape is the best island. (There can only be one winner.)
Have a fantastic Monday my loves! I hope your week starts off right!
Xx.
Savannah
Savannah Said It 
2 thoughts on “House Update + Our Finished Projects and Ongoing Ones!”