New! New! New!

I feel like our house is finally coming to life!!  For one year we lived with those awful white walls, no character, no personality, no life.  We did that because we didn't want to have to repaint after we had our one year inspection.  For those of you that are now in the process of building there are pros and cons to waiting to paint and decorate.  The pros were we only had to paint once and it gave us time to gather ideas and really think about what we wanted our house to look like before we changed it.  The cons of course are that you have to live in a colorless house for what feels like forever, and you may not catch all the little things you may want Ryan to fix at your one year inspection.  Thankfully we really didn't have too much of the latter BUT I still find little nail bumps or things I wish I had caught before and had Ryan fix instead of us but really no biggy in the grand scheme of things.

So I mentioned before my husband was working on something and boy what a difference it has made......truly has brought some much needed character to our home.

First I'll start by telling you we finally got some new couches in our living room and I LOVE them!!!  I have had my eye on this set FOREVER and finally we got it!! The couches are much bigger than our last set so I had to do some rearranging to make it all fit.  I still need to get some new end tables to match, maybe a large tree to fill the back corner, and a coffee table or new ottoman as well but one thing at a time I guess......so here are our new couches:

Its so hard to tell from these awful pictures but its a very light taupe color (almost looks a slate white) with a little bit of brown piping on the edges.  Anyways it finally fills our living room proportionately and the color is a way better match for the look I was going for.......LOVE them!!

Speaking of couches, I also got some pillows to add to our "little living room" couch....I think it ties in the accent colors a bit more and makes it look a little more inviting:

oh yah...so back to my husband's latest project.....as usual he did a fantastic job on this one!!  It really looks so nice and brings a lot of character to our plain jane home.  When planning this project we went back and forth between a couple different styles but I'm pretty pleased that we decided to just keep it simple......in addition I literally agonized over colors for months (I know its just paint :-)) but I'm so glad we ended up going with the color we did as its such a soothing, warm, compliment to the colors we already have and will have in our home......so are you ready?

Our new entry!!

 My husband put in Board and Batten and it really makes the entry so much more welcoming, inviting, and gives it so much more character.  He even put the tiny ledge shelf at the top as well.  I'm NOT a big fan of our floors with this style, but we knew that we would be changing those sometime down the road but for now I just love how it has turned out.  I also love the paint color.  For those of you that are curious, its Olympic paint color Jute.  These pictures make the paint look green which it does have a green tone to it but it really looks more of a natural brown color, very similar to our living room color but darker.....I just love it!!

So in addition to the entry, my husband also painted the mud room.

We painted it (yes I helped too!) the same color as he entry way to balance the flow through our house....again what an improvement from those white walls.  When my husband had put the first coat of paint up in the entry I slightly panicked thinking it was too dark or that I wasn't going to like it, but honestly I think that was because I have just gotten so used to those white walls that any color seems to make such a drastic difference to the appearance of our home.......all I can say is I have missed color in my life and I'm so glad its finally making a come back into our home!!

Still feels like we have so much more to do before the entry is fully completed....we were hoping to paint our entry doors black, I need to put some black and white matted and framed pictures along the long wall in the entry, next to the entry door I'm considering either a wall mounted coat hook like this one from Pottery Barn:

or some pictures I already have currently above the couch in our "little living room" that look like this:

 It would tie in the future paint color for our "little living room" plus the other colors we already have in our home.  I'm putting the mirror that was previously hanging above the entry hall console table above the little living room couch as it looks more proportionate with the couch than the current pictures do.  We also hope to do some crown molding in the entry as well and hopefully some new wood floors......ahhhhhh will look so nice when its finally done.....

So I know in past posts I mentioned I had some entry way ideas.  In the Ravenna model there is no closet near the front entry so no place for coats when guests visit.  However, the door to our basement is in our entry and most of our guests assume it is a closet......soooooo this is what I have done:

We have done this now in all three of our homes and it has worked out so nice. I have some nice decorative iron wall hooks which I put in our basement stairway wall so that when guests come I conveniently have a place to hang their coats without cluttering the entry or putting them in another room or closet in some other place in the house.  It also works great for the kids coats and school bags so they are near the door and ready to go when they catch the bus and come home from school.  Anyways its been a fantastic solution for our entry closet/coat dilemma and also keeps things neatly and nicely tucked out of sight!!

So sorry this was such a long post but there has just been so much going on that I've been pretty excited to share......we'll try to keep the projects coming (still have some in the pipeline for this summer), but let me know what you think........

Happy decorating!!