Sunroom Makeover!

Hello lovelies!

I hope you're all enjoying this beautiful fall weather as much as I am! As I mentioned in my fall decorating post, decorating for the season is one of my favorite things about it, not to mention the food. I also love going to the North Carolina State Fair, which I've only missed a handful of times in my life. Even when I lived in Texas for law school I would fly back every October for it. Hubby and I plan on going tomorrow night, since Mondays are supposed to be one of the least crowded days (although the Scotty McCreery show at the Fair might change that). If you live in NC and are thinking of going, the State Fair's newly redone website with all of the info you'll need is here. Oh, and here are our newly carved pumpkins - I bet you can guess which belongs to which of us.

Fall fun aside, hubby and I found ourselves in the midst of an unexpected room makeover project last week. On Monday night we had an epiphany: our sunroom is probably the nicest room in our house (not to mention the only one that gets much of any sunlight with E/W facing windows) and we never ever EVER set foot in there... life ever. Why not? Because we used the giant room for our not so giant kitchen table, which we never eat at. I love the table - its a gorgeous hand me down from my mother in law and one of the prettiest things we own - but we just don't eat at the kitchen table much (which is bad, I know). We eat at our bar, on the couch (which we always resolve to stop doing but never do), sometimes on our front or back porch when the weather is nice and at our new
dining room table that hubby built when we have company, but somehow never end up at the kitchen table... possibly because it was so out of the way in the sunroom.

Our kitchen has a spot for a kitchen table, but we'd been using that as a sitting area, with two wingback chairs and a TV mounted on the wall (which was kinda cool because we could watch TV while we cooked). So on a random Monday night, we decided to move the kitchen table to the builder-designated kitchen table spot. To our surprise, it fit perfectly and looked great. We moved the cream wingback chairs that were there to our dining room as end chairs and we seriously couldn't have planned it any better. They matched our side chairs perfectly (which are also cream linen) and I had always wanted wingback end/head chairs. Then, magically and out of nowhere, we had a giant, semi-circle shaped sunroom completely empty, a blank canvas, and ready to be converted into whatever we wanted.  Here are the before pictures of the sitting area with wingback chairs and sunroom with kitchen table.

BEFORE:

 

Since our house has no playroom and we're probably going to have kids sometime in the next few years, we wanted the space to be kid friendly (which to us, baby rookies, meant no sharp edges, fabrics that can be easily cleaned and are dark in color, patterned flooring to easily hide any future baby vomit stains). We also wanted the room to be really comfortable. The biggest and most seemingly unattainable goal of the room was to find furniture that accented the room's unique architectural shape: preferably a round couch.

To our surprise, we found a round (!!) leather sectional (we LOVE sectionals and always have) for sale on the cheap on craigslist! We then bought a coordinating blue, brown and gold damask rug from Garden Ridge, one of my favorite stores. I bought a lamp, but I think I'm going to exchange it. I'm also working on cream colored floor length curtains to replace the navy damask valences (which I love and hate to get rid of) because the room needs more warmth/softness I think. Last but not least, my handy hubby got a new HDMI cable and ran wiring for the TV from the kitchen sub-flooring to that room and moved our mounted TV from the kitchen into the sunroom. We still also need a TV stand, but the room is great! We're really enjoying having another comfy living space and I think it will be perfect for kids when the time comes. :) Here are the photos of the (almost) finished product! I can't believe that only 5 days and a small amount of $ later, we have a cozy new living space!

AFTER:

Last but certainly not least, our first born Gus turned 8 last week before we rearranged the furniture. Everyone please wish Gus the pug a happy 8th year! <3

Thanks for reading my ramblings barbies - xox!

Updates from around the BDH!

Hello Barbie dolls!

Now that all of our summer travel, volunteering and work madness is behind us, hubby and I have finally had some spare time to pour some love into the BDH. We've bought a few things, painted, tweaked and crafted. Here are some of the photos from our updates. I'm also adding them to the home tour page.

I've added vintage Barbie art and four hooks on one of the walls in my clothing closet to display my current favorite outfits. The art was REALLY expensive if you were going to buy it piece by piece, so I instead ordered a vintage Barbie art calendar for $10 and just trimmed down the pictures from 12x12 to 8x11!

We bought this cute black and white trellis rug for the sitting area in the kitchen.

We added this iron scroll to our oven hood. It was slightly too tall, so of course hubby took it into the garage and was able to neatly make it smaller. He amazes me!

Our two night stands in the master bedroom are done as far as décor goes. This is his. Mine is identical but with a photo of him from our wedding. <3

A photo of our master taken from the couch in our master sitting room:

A new pink rug and rearranged furniture in the formal living room:

Here's another sneak peak at our new 11 ft dining room table that hubby made with his bare hands last week out of laurel poplar wood. Post on the table and full reveal coming soon!

We made this 4 ft wide canvas art for above our guest bedroom for under $10! I bought some fabric on clearance then had hubby build a cheap wooden frame (it took under 15 minutes) and just staple gunned the fabric to the frame, and voila! We now have art that takes up a large chunk of that wall and also is perfectly on theme with the pink and gray room.

More photos of our downstairs guest bedroom.

Over the summer we've completely revamped the previously tan and empty library. We painted it dark brown, added curtains sewn by my mom and bought this oversized upholstered chair from Overstock.com. We also added the stately gold frames to the walls. We also ordered and installed the 2 inch wooden blinds for all three windows. They were pricey, but definitely add to the room's dark, old world library effect.

That's all for now in terms of updates barbies! Check back soon for a guest post by Ross on how he built our new, 11 ft Restoration Hardware inspired dining room table from scratch in a week for under $200!

xox barbies!