New Year, New Couches

On the Wednesday before Christmas, I went to Target to go shopping on my lunch break. My phone rang and it was a number I did not recognize, but I remembered the folks over at North Carolina Furniture and Mattress were going to call mid-way through our couch wait to give us a status update. I answered and they let me know the couches were in early! And they could deliver tonight, if we were available! Uh, twist my arm, whydontyou. When they arrived, we hovered over the delivery guys like nobody’s business. We were SO excited and a little bit nervous to see everything since the sample couch we sat on was a turquoise patterned couch and we almost had forgotten what we ordered. Wee!

There are still some more changes to come in this room including reupholstering the red chair in the corner and getting a new chair where the rocking chair is. We’d also like to get a new rug and some curtains. 🙂 No matter what, I am so happy it no longer looks like this:

Or this:

It feels great to have “almost finished” a room just prior to the New Year-at least to the point where we are comfortable snuggling up to watch a movie! Happy 2015, ya’ll! Thanks for following along in 2014 ❤

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Couch Potatoes

If you don’t follow me on instagram, you probably think we have passed the blogging responsibilities down to Tucker, who unfortunately cannot type, or completely given up on this little old house of ours, OR that we are being lazy couch potatoes. If you do follow me on instagram, you’ve seen this:

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You guyssss..I know I haven't posted to the blog in awhile but…we almost have a completed living room!!!! #8monthsin #thisistheprojectthatneverends

A post shared by Alison | Coastal VA REALTOR (@alimcphomes) on Nov 22, 2014 at 1:31pm PST

Truth is, our living room is 97% done. We have to do the trim around the beams and a few paint touch ups, but I’ve been holding out on all update photos because..we bought a sofa and a loveseat! And it will be 6 to 8 weeks until we have them. And we’ve been working on and blogging about this project since March so I feel like I can drag it out longer. But we are so close to having real-life adult furniture! YAY!

For local people, we went to North Carolina Furniture and Mattress and it was glorious. The brands they work with have great reputations for quality, the sales people are polite and don’t hound you like the other bigger stores do, and everything is custom ordered based on your specifications. We first went in on Black Friday (in the evening-I’m not THAT crazy) wanting to walk around and see what they had. They had a sweet sale going on that ended on Sunday, but we hadn’t seen what we were looking for ANYWHERE and weren’t ready to commit to anything. We sat our butts in every couch they had (because literally all of them are beautiful and comfortable) and once we left, we had two major contenders in our search! We got there about 40 minutes before closing time, so we told Susan (their in-house designer) that we would likely be back on Saturday to look a bit more. She told us to measure our room so that she could put together a floor plan with our two sofa contenders and talk about traffic flow, rug sizes that would work in the room, etc. We went in on Saturday afternoon, sat in our two contenders again, discussed the floor plans Susan drew up, and took home about five fabric samples. On Sunday afternoon, we went in and ordered them! I can’t speak highly enough about our experience. They made it so easy and fun and we can’t wait to see our gorgeous sofa and love seat in person soon!

Since I know it is killing you not knowing what we got, we ordered the Flexsteel Westside Sofa and Loveseat in a Charcoal Gray color that has a beautiful texture that unfortunately my monitor doesn’t pick up. We chose the Florentine leg color and even got to choose fabrics for pillows (the stripes and floral below)! Simple & Classic 🙂

photo from http://www.Flexsteel.com

photo from http://www.Flexsteel.com

photo from http://www.Flexsteel.com

photo from http://www.Flexsteel.com

Now we are hard at work finishing up our sunroom floor, windows, and trim so that dust is no longer flying once the couches get here. 🙂 Oh, and I seem to have started the downstairs bathroom, too. More on that soon!

Moving on.

Some of you may have seen my instagram shot of the interesting wall boards hidden behind our lovely wood paneling in the sunroom.

I guess I neglected to mention on here that we are about to embark on another huge project: our “sunroom” and our living room.

Here is the living room before we moved in (listing photo-not our furniture):

And then the photo we took during the inspection (yes, that is dust on the floor):

Since moving in, we have taken out all of the shelving on the walls due to mildew issues. We think the books held lots and lots of moisture when the house wasn’t occupied. Yuck. It was gross, ya’ll.

Through the window ‘cut outs’ behind the couch is the “sunroom.” I put it into quotations like that because…well, our house doesn’t get much direct sunlight. Even though this room may have the most windows, it is only sunny for a few hours every day. I guess maybe in the future I will call it whatever we USE it for..

To be honest, we have no idea how we will use this room. It is basically a glorified hallway from the living room to our laundry room/mudroom/garage. The wall with the window cut outs is a load bearing wall and the floors and ceilings are different heights, otherwise, we would just rip out the wall and make the living room huge. In this room, we are going to:
-Take out and replace all trim (including window sills and window trim).

-Remove all wood paneling and replace with drywall.

-Remove ceiling tiles and replace with drywall.

-Remove and replace flooring (it is currently faux brick tiles).

-Move / Install new wiring to move light switches and install more lighting. This room currently only has one small light fixture-we’d like to have at least two or maybe three to provide enough light.

-Insulate all windows, walls, and ceiling.

-Widen the door and window cut outs from living room (if possible).

-Prime and paint all walls, ceiling, door, trim, windows.

-Prime and paint baseboard heater covers.

-Figure out furniture/use of the room, then decorate.

As far as the living room goes, we have one major inspiration photo that makes both of us really super excited:

Photo by KSF Architects. See more farmhouse living room designs

Granted, that house has way more windows and higher ceilings and a different layout..but..holy yes, I want our room to have the FEELING of that room.

So, how will we get there, you ask? We will:
-Remove all paneling on walls and ceiling.
-Move / install new electrical wiring to center our light fixtures/fans between beams (they are currently NOT centered and it drives us crazy!) and possibly move light switches.
-Insulate all walls and ceilings.
-Drywall all walls and ceiling (We will probably have to have a layer of drywall to have a “fire barrier” for our spray in foam insulation in the ceiling..more on that later).
-Whitewash/Distress Panels for ceiling and install.
-Replace, prime and paint trim around windows.
-Prime and paint walls, trim, window panes and sills.
-Replace all outlet and light switch covers.
-Widen door and window cut outs into sunroom.
-Install extra flooring (which the previous owners left for us in the attic!) where the door was widened.
-Sand and refinish flooring to match newly installed floor where door was widened.
-Paint baseboard heater covers white.
-Buy window treatments and you know…decorate. Haha!

We are currently on the removing wood paneling step, so…we have a ways to go! Wish us luck!