Mocha sectional and other stuff

Boy, oh boy! DBF sectional is here, it really fulfilled all my fears (big, bulky, etc), and to make matters worse  we got the wrong configuration delivered. See, "we" had planned for the sectional to be positioned against the wall, with the smaller section coming out a bit to the right, instead we got, small section against the wall and the longest part to the right, totally blocking the openest that I love about the room. When the delivery people left us I just froze and when DBF finally asked my opinion I threw the  biggest tantrum ever, I started to cry as if I was a 5 years old which barbie doll was just taken away, I was panicking and it was not joke.

P: why are you crying
Me: I hate it - silence - cry - sobs... I really hate it
P: silence
Me: I hate it
P: I hate it too
Me: sobs - crying - tears - tons of tears and sobs... What are we going to do now?
P: I don't know

With that, I went and sat by the kitchen to try to calm down, things were bad already so why make it worse?  As the day went by, in between having friends help install a new storm door and making phone calls to see if we could exchange it, the sectional was moved in different angles until DBF came out with the below configuration, things were starting to look better.

Cute throw right? But unfortunately it doesn't match,
back to HomeGoods I go

The new set-up makes sense, the TV will be right across the wall, in the center and that way people wont have to turn their heads to the left to look at the TV; the room is now not as cluttered as it was looking with that big thing blocking the path to the kitchen and to be realistic, I will never get away with having a more modern, smaller piece of furniture in there, DBF has the word in the family room, is his space, so I just have to adjust.

That same night I went on a trip to HomeGoods, which from now on I will just call HG, to pick up a few pillows and I found these two beauties, (sequin and Chevron), the other one I had previously ordered for another room, but now it matches perfectly in the family room, so he is staying there. I was convinced about the Chevron $7 find, the sequin one I was almost positive it was going back to the store, I only purchased it because I just loved it and it was in the clearance corner for $30.  I really thought DBF was not going to like it, and I also thought that the $30 price tag was a bit excessive for a clearance pillow; until I got home, did some research and found the same brand and style for the economic price of $200, sighs... keeper!

The next day we went to Ikea to look at some units which will be used for the build-in and then I found these other pillows, I am not too sure about them yet.

I really wish our pictures would have true colors, and will not be as burned by the light as the picture above, as "good" as the iPhone camera is, it doesn't work for the purpose. I don't have a professional camera but I do have a good quality point and shoot, which is lost somewhere inside a box in the garage, but I have asked DBF to bring his from work, so I promise best pictures from now on.

Here you can see more of the "true" colors

 Just in case you are wondering where the floor lamp came from, I went to Target looking for lamp shades to replace the one we already have, but came back home with a new lamp instead, I like the idea of the shelves, it gives me more accessorizing space.

While at Ikea we picked up the tiny glass desk, and put in a corner in the family room, since DBF is in there most times watching TV, I just set up my little working nook there. The chair was a find a few years ago, I got it at a "Props for Today" sale; is a place that rents props for movies and sitcom productions, they sell their inventory every now and then, so I thought it was cool to own a piece of furniture that was used in a TV show.




















Well, you didn't think there would not be a reuse in the room, did you? I feel in love with the "I don't know what it is" - I went to the back of the Thrift store to pick up a piece of furniture and there it was, in someone's hands, I started gravitating towards it when I hear a voice ask me, do you want it? I woke up from my dream and I asked, what? the nice gentlemen explained to me that he was just there dropping it off but he will give it to me if I wanted it, the BIG smile on my face, until the store manager realized she was about to lose a few bucks, came to me, took it from my hands and told me that if I wanted it I would have to pay for it, can you believe her nerve?? I do not like confrontations so I asked the "devil" dressed as a lady, how much she would want for it, and she just walked away. Excuse me? I yelled and her answer was, I cant tell you, when they price it it will be in the floor so wait for it if you want it. (insert eye roll in here)

 The nice gentlemen apologized and started telling me more about the piece: He got it from some friends as they were going to put it in the garbage, it was hand made some time ago, he was not sure how long ago, but he told me he was using it in his house and just bought some new furniture and since it is hand carved wood, he would rather to donate it instead of it going in the garbage, I agreed. Then I made my mother wait for me in the car while I ran to the front of the store to make sure the "lady" wouldn't just keep it, I scored it for $19.00, a lot if you consider I got a dinning table for $25, but I was not about to be defeated by that "lady" I know she priced it so I will not take it. I WON!

I am using my thrifty find as a stand for my plants, which were another great find at Lowes, holiday clearance. I just white - spray painted the planters. 

 The family room is looking better now, Tino supervised and he agrees, there is still more work to do but as it  is now, I am liking it...  and talking about Tino, do you remember I have two cats? Piscin is not interested in decoration at all, that is the reason she is never in the pictures.

My headache, AKA sectional is comfortable and there are pictures to prove it, I am happy about the way is coming out, after all  is the family room, where most of our time at home is going to be spent, it should be about comfort more than looks, don't you agree? 

Next we need to work in a unit for the TV, the fireplace and accessorizing the room too, but that would be a total new post. 

Until next time,

Sobe

... More Family room

So it was a really short weekend, little things that you think will take an hour, then become your entire day. The last post was about how little details are really important, this post is not any different; after DBF finished installing all the molding, it was time to finish the job, that means caulk and paint.

Below is our family room the day we first saw the house, no molding, sage green walls and white ceiling, fireplace with a gold trim, a sample of a mantel, and a window with no paint on it, just natural wood (you can't see the window in this picture).

 

 Now there is white molding complementing our energizing butter yellow. The real difference between I never installed molding/ I don't know what I am doing/ no idea what is going to look like, and here is to our professional installed looking molding is called caulk, you can really see the difference in the picture below, still not painted but it looks much better than the "before caulk" picture.

 And then, there is the fireplace, I love the fact that we have a fireplace, but lord, I didn't like the way it looked before. I have a love hate relationship with gold in decorations, some times it looks great, some other times it looks, well, cheap.

Dear fireplace, I like you but with some TLC you can be much better

Since the doors were usable, and as I later will discover almost new, I took them off to clean before applying some spray paint love, and as I got to work I realized the very "normal" people that used to own the house forgot to take the plastic cover off the metal, which means, burnt plastic and a lot more work for me, see:

plastic covering the brass

Why will they do that?

 

Pretty, right? New fireplace doors for just $7.99

When I got tired of trying the almost impossible, or maybe possible but not worth it, I just put the two doors in the dishwasher, gave them a good sanding and then used less than a can of Rust-Oleum high heat spray paint for $7.99. Here is what we have now :-) 

Next for the fire place will be a lovely mantel, can't wait! 

And last but no least, the window, oh the window; remember the cracks, tiny little nail holes and unfinished wood? well, that is no more.

I really love these girls now

And that is all we got to do during the weekend, no that we could have done anymore, there is no furniture yet, but part of it have been ordered and the rest will be purchased soon. We are also adding some molding to the window by the fireplace; for some mysterious reason, DBF understood that I did not want molding there, can you imagine me saying something like that?

Now, lets see:

Before:

 Now:

I am going to miss my sofa; a HUGE comfortable/bulky looking sectional with recliners have been ordered. Any guesses who's decision that was?

 Stay tuned for more family room love.

Sobe

The Family Room part II - Little details matter

Happy Friday!

Back with more family room post. I have been working all week so little by little, we are getting there.

We have this huge beautiful window with a nice view to our backyard. It is unfinished which means we scored a brand new Andersen window with the house, but as it is unfinished it needed some work before it could be painted.

It had a bunch of little nail holes...

And a few, huge gaps...

Some wood filler, spatula and sanding block did the trick.

I love to live within 5 minutes of Home Depot and another 5 minutes to Lowes, but when I discovered remembered the misfortunes, it was actually too late to run there, thus I had to wait until the next day, which brings on the next question: Why aren't hardware stores open 24 hours? I should start a petition asking Lowes to keep their store open 24 hours ;-P
















I also took off the vent covers before painting, and while they were off, I noticed how dirty they were, so they took a deep in soapy water only to discover that they were also kind of yellowish, I ran to the garage and grabbed the "best ever DIY tools ever" - spray paint and primer - and now they look brand new.

... and finally, yesterday night, DBF headed over to Lowes to pick up new molding, there was some molding in the room, OK, maybe like 1/8 of the room had molding and we were just going to buy the same, but it was too plain and blah! so we upgraded to something "fancier"

   

 We have great friends, always willing to help, here is friend Sal (or his hands) with the Miter saw... And that is when I realized it was almost 12 and time to go to bed, and happily for them :-) the boys were let on their own.

 It was great to wake up and see all the molding totally done, but I was already running late and had no time to snap a picture for the blog. Tonight I should be able to finish painting the windows / doors frames and the molding, then there will come the next post, hopefully before the weekend's end.

Until next time,

Sobe

Our family room... I can finally post something up, and it is long!

A little bit over a week ago I posted an instagram picture, where I announced that I was going to post about the family room the next day. I have been asked where the new post is and believe me, is not that I did not want to post about it, the entire family room situation just got out my hands.

The instagram picture

I have a regular 9-5 job but my commute to work is about 5 hours a day, that makes it 14 hour days (70 hours a week) that leaves with just a couple hours before I go to bed but I try to do as much as possible when I get home, I thought the house will be painted in the past weekend and then over the week I would have time to work in details, boy was I wrong!

When I came home 2 weeks ago with ONE gallon of Valspar primer + paint "Like Butter" the first thing DBF told me was, we are going to need one extra gallon, my answer was, of course no, use used 1/2 gallon in the dinning room and I think since we are doing the ceiling the same color we should use about one can, so no, we will no need another can. Little did I knew I was totally wrong, again.  

Above is the dining room the first day we ever walked into the house, I never got over the fact that it has an slanted ceiling, of course I would have loved if it was a cathedral ceiling, but slanted? there is no symmetry. The picture below, makes the shape of the room so much worst,. I have no idea what the box is, it sits right under the stairs to the second floor, yet, it has nothing to do with it, is one of the great mysteries in the house that I can not wait to decipher.

 Here I was sampling the color to see how it will look through different times of the day, by the lights, against the lights, etc.
The reason I choose yellow for the room is because is a color full of energy and since we will be spending most of our time in here it seemed like the way to go.




To the side is what I call, a spackle mess, our guess is that there was a french door where there is now windows and the former owners didn't finished the job, there are little holes and spackle all over the place; my guess is also that they had a very deep love for nails, push pins, safety pins and anything that can go on a wall, as I started to fix the mess I realized more spackle was needed to conceal all the miniature holes int he walls, there must have been about 100 of them, I think they used to just hang all  papers with a push pin.  A reveal of our yellow ceiling,  yes, I mentioned before how I really don't like the slanted ceiling so having some knowledge of color and shapes, it was discussed and decided that to make it look more even to just go with one color in the entire room was a savvy choice.

More and more tiny holes all over the places, can you see?? 

 This is when fate came in to prove me wrong, at about 1 am on that Saturday night and we ran out of paint after just doing the ceiling and that one little corner. All embarrassed to admit I was wrong, "because I have helped or painted every single place I have lived in since I was a little girl" I called DFB which was at work, his answer, "I told you so", don't we all love to hear that? Ha.

Frustration settled in, I made drinks for my mom and my cousin which were helping me, (cousin painted the entire ceiling) and we all agreed that one more can should be enough, right?








Within the next few days, DBF stopped by Lowes to pick up another can of paint, got on to work, came to bed in the middle of the night to tell me: Honey, we ran out of paint! so I was WRONG again. The next morning when I was getting ready to work, I ran downstairs thinking that I must have had a bad dream,  and "surprise" an empty can and a mess all over the place, how can this be possible, how?? 2 gallons of paint and the walls were not even entirely covered. He must not know how to paint? I cant be wrong that many times. Anyway, that same day, he headed to the hardware store, grabbed a third gallon of our now-hated "Like butter" and to attack the walls again. That night I was so anxious waiting for him to come over to tell me how gorgeous our walls looked that I couldn't even sleep, I was about to get up to get ready when he came to the room to announce, I am finished but I don't like the way the walls look, once again, I went downstairs, observed the walls and decided that after the paint cures I should be all fine.

After 2 days, the paint is supposed to have cured already. I don't know if you can see how bad the walls were after 2-3 coats,  it looked  dirty, grayish , a nightmare!

Yesterday I got up bright and early and told DBF that I was going to apply another coat to the walls, he just looked at me and told me: "You will need to get to Lowes again", I swear I almost passed out: 

Me: in disbelieve, why, the rollers are no good anymore?

Him: no, we need paint.

Hahaha, should this mean I was wrong 4 times? I had no other solution than to get in my car and drive to pick up our 4th and last? can of paint. While in the store, no one was around the paint department and the store manager came to help, his first reaction when I told him I want just a gallon was surprise, he then asked me if I have already applied tow coats of primer and that I will need two to three coats of that paint,  (doing the math, that is 5 coats). I asked him why primer since the paint has the primer on it so he said it is in the instructions because of the type of color it is, I almost wanted to kill scream at the guy that mixes the paints, this was our 4th gallon and I was just learning about this warning that comes up in the screen when you are about to mix the paint. UGH! 

 

 The god news is that we are finished painting the walls, and I am in love, I like the color so much, is so vibrant, exactly what I was expecting, exactly like what I envisioned when I said I wanted yellow, I want a butter yellow, and I was able to find a color called just like that - Like Butter. The slanted ceiling is still there, but since is the same color it doesn't bother me that much.

Tino totally approves the color, that has been his spot  once we moved the sofa and started painting, I wonder if he understand what is happening or if he is just thinking that we humans are crazy.

The bad news is that the family room is not finished, not even close to be finished,  we still have to deal with the windows frame, to apply and paint molding, to find furniture, to do "build ins" and to frame the fireplace.

I have already started with the fireplace, took the doors off because I despise the gold trim around the doors,  they are going to get my spray paint treatment. I also removed the "mantel" they had before which to my understanding it shouldn't even have been called a mantel.

And finally, below are two drawings of what I have envisioned the family room will eventually be, like with the rest of the house, the drawings where made to entertain me and calm me down during the almost 8 months we waited to close in the house.

Until next time,

Sobe