My favorite room.

The living room is the only room in our house that is close to being finished. All my favorite items have been crammed into the room, leaving all the other spaces with a random mix of hand me downs and old college furniture. There are still a few more changes that I want to do before I call Cottage Living, but I think the room looks good at 90% complete.

P.S. Thank you Jen for the camera loan! I am already putting it to good use.

The starting point

I thought I would have made some progress on the master closet since mid-December, but with the holidays things have gone slower than expected. Hopefully, this weekend I will start on the shelving unit. This is a photo the starting point for the closet taken the week I moved it. It looks just about the same today except filled with clothes. The plan was to replace the sliding doors with solid wood doors that open out, but to do both closets the cost got a little high. Painting the exiting doors white will be perfect.

Dream Closet

Until this past weekend we have left the master bedroom almost untouched. With every other room in the house in the midst of some form of change, we wanted the bedroom to remain a place of calm. Only problem with that is the pink carpeting, floral curtains and brown hollow core doors. But the worst part of the room is the closet. It is cramped with single hanging rods and the sliding doors limit access the middle portion. This image is taped to the doors as my vision of what I want the closet to look like. I know my clothes will never look this good, but the picture idealizes the perfect hanging and folding proportions. I just need to find away to move the master bedroom closet up on the to do list.

We have clean clothes

The new washer and dryer have arrived and after one minor item of confusion, they work! We have done no updates to the ½ bath other than replacing the green curtains with temporary paper ones and putting up shelving for the laundry necessities. We are waiting for the energy to put in the black and white linoleum flooring, install a new pedestal sink and paint the walls. I think the new washer and dryer are enough change to tide us over for awhile.

Another one bites the dust

After 36 years and countless loads of laundry, our avocado green 1970’s washer has finally died. Ok, I am sure we can call the service company that came highly recommend from the previous owner and have it fixed. But, we are ready to get rid of the 70’s and go with something a little bit more modern, or at least white. The customer service guy at the appliance store said we should sell the pair on EBay. I guess some women sold her entire harvest gold kitchen set for $2,000, but I am not so sure.
(Our wash and dryer share the 1/2 bath, which will explain the toilet paper in the photo.)

Our Front Door

The inspiration for our front door came directly from the first issue of Blueprint. The door color is baby fern from Benjamin Moore and the vinyl numbers are from the vendor recommended in Blueprint. Overall, I think the front door feels very European. This has been my favorite change to the house so far.

A great place to start

We are already one year into the renovation of our 1970's Ranch, but the one year anniversary is a good place to start tracking our work and learning experience. Plus, we have not accomplished too much so hopefully the blog can spur us to keep going.