The Little Gray House

Well hellooooooooo there!  It’s been awhile…too long.  I have to admit, I’ve enjoyed the “down time” that having a shop on vacation and a quiet blog provides.  Only kidding.  We moved.  There has been zero down time.  Who am I kidding?!  If you’re looking for a “How to Move with Toddlers” post, I don’t know if you’ll ever find it.  But, if you did, it would be one sentence long and that sentence would read – “Don’t move with toddlers ever, ever, ever, ever.”  If you really have to, well God bless ya heart.  You cray.

But let’s move on since the thoughts of moving still sting just a tad.  I’m sitting here in our unpacked rental (tour coming soon!), pretending like we’re settled in, and it’s all great, grand, and wonderful.  No really, it is.  It’s not so bad having half of your belongings boxed up in one mountainous pile in what could be your dining room.  I’ve really been wanting to live more simply and with less stuff and being forced to do it via a temporary rental is just what I needed, what we needed.  Maybe half of that stuff will just be donated when we realize we didn’t need it later down the road…and maybe not since most of it is home decor stuff and we all know how I feel about that kind of stuff.  ;)

Anyway, I popped in today to talk about *dun dun dun* the house that got away.  It’s not even worth tippity-typing out the novel that it would be to tell you all about the gray house and the saga that went along with it so I’ll try the nutshell route and we’ll see how it goes.

S O L

D!!! 

So this happened – our realtor came over three Saturdays ago to take pictures for our house’s listing and afterwards, we just decided on somewhat of a whim, that we were just going to up and list our house.  We had no intention of listing yet, just getting the pictures taken so that we could list within the next week or two but then we just decided to go for it even though we still had some unfinished projects we had to get done…two of them being painting the kitchen ceiling and the siding on the new chimney.  The listing went live late Tuesday afternoon and on Friday morning, we were under contract!!!  I feel like I could and want to add a few exclamation points to that because they all mean so much; there are so many feels in each one.  I feel so, so sosososososo grateful that I only had to have the house 1000% immaculate for two point five days.  But I also feel a tiny bit sad because those 2.5 days of our house being squeaky clean were amazing…I love me a clean house.  I also feel so grateful that our house sold so quickly and for the price we wanted.  But, now I feel nervous.  We still have not found another house and have less than a month until we close on ours.  We had our hearts set on one house and had an accepted offer but that just fell through because of a contingency on the seller’s part.  Please say a prayer for us and our house hunt!  We’re feeling a little hopeless and rushed and the two don’t a fun combo make. 

So folks, let’s bid adieu to the house that bulked up the largest part of this here blog, shall we?  Here’s a picture I took last week: 

And here’s a picture taken right before she became ours:

There are a lot more befores and afters on our house tour page (some of which need to be updated…hehe :/  )  if you want to see the whole shebang.  And even now, we took a lot of things off the walls before we listed it so going to market even changed it a bit.  Our little cottage will always have a piece of our hearts as it was the first home all of our babies came home too…I think that’s the most sappy thing about it.  But, we’re excited to move on to another little fixer upper to grow into.  :)

With house-hunting and packing, the blog will probably be silent for the next month but I’ll try to check in on Instagram more often to post updates!  Thanks in advance for the prayers! 

Stay tuned!  :)

Bold(er) & Beautiful(Ler)

Calm down, calm down.  I know beautifuller ain’t a word.  Well, unless you ask Anna because she definitely tossed the term of endearment at Elsa without a fuss being raised so…

Switching gears and stories…

Once upon a time, I bought some secondhand furniture, like I often do.  I nabbed a pair of end tables and matching coffee table off a secondhand resale sight for $30 for all.  I added some fun to the coffee table and sold it and the end tables have been living here ever since – one out on the screened-in porch and one on the front porch.  You can see one in the upper corner of this shot post-stenciling the porch floor:

Rewind a couple of years to a Goodwill trip whence I stumbled upon this set of four bamboo chairs for $40 and grabbed them as quick as I could:

DIY Grommeted Curtains

Hallelujah!  I got to do something “fun” whilst getting ready for this sell-our-house thing!  I’m tired of painting the kitchen ceiling, touching up loads and loads of trim paint, cautioning the kids against touching anything (“Do NOT drag your toys along the walls pleeeeease!!!”), washing siding and trim, etc…

I got to make curtains!

If you’ve been a long-time reader, you might remember that once upon a time, I scored a long curtain rod at Dirt Cheap and flanked our living room’s french doors with some long curtains to make the room feel more “homey”, as I put it.  I started out with some sheers and then later made some tan and white, geometric-printed curtains that I loved for a long time.  Well, I wanted a change in pattern so I sold those and found some plain white, thick fabric remnants that I thought would be a perfect medium to do knock-off these curtains from West Elm with…but then I decided that I wanted the curtains to be more subtle and blend into the walls a little more so I just kept them white.  There’s still a chance they’ll look like those West Elm curtains someday but right now, I am loving them as-is.  Phew.  That all sounded like a mind-making disaster, didn’t it?  If you’re looking for someone to pick a design and stick with it, don’t look here.  The winds of change blow quite frequently in this casa. 

The parts I love the most though, are the grommets at the top.  I’ve always used rings to hang curtains because it was the easiest to just sew a big rectangle and hang it up.  But then a good friend of mine put grommets at the top of her living room curtains and told me how easy it was and I just had to.  I mean, look at how they fall!  I toyed with them a little before I took pictures but really, for the most part, the grommets create those big folds that go from top to bottom and they hold them there.

I bought these grommets at Walmart.  They’re the exact same grommets sold at the fabric stores I looked at, only without the coupon mark-up (I’m convinced stores that always have running coupons mark their items up…these are $12.99 at JoAnn Fabrics.)  You can also find them for a little bit more on Amazon.   

So, let me tell you my grommet story.  It’s so easy.  You’ve gotta make some grommeted curtains.

A Grand Entrance

We haven’t been doing much house hunting lately (yep, we’re moving soon-ish, in case you missed it) because we’re still spending every free minute finishing up some big projects at our current house. But there has been a little bit making this post possible.  This next house I’m about to show you, we didn’t really even physically see at all.  It was on our list of houses-to-see but was already under contract when we found it so we were just keeping an eye on it in case that contract fell through.
I loved it based on what I saw on the inside in pictures – good-sized bedrooms, a big kitchen, a big entry way, a double car garage, and ugly as heck.  Every single room had wallpaper.  The fixtures and cabinets were all dated and the curb appeal was non-existent.  But, unless a home inspection proved otherwise, it looked like any updates that needed to be made were just cosmetic and therefore, DIYable and fairly inexpensive.

Its only downfall was the small backyard.  It was on a corner lot and the so the attached garage extended into one corner of the backyard leaving a small corner of grass (maybe a 15’ x 15’ space in) the back far corner.  I was almost willing to overlook that though just because I loved the house so much.