Little More Living Room Progress!

 If there's one thing I love more than home diy and decorating, it's summer. The sunshine, warm weather, cookouts, vacations and so on just makes me want to spend all of my time outside. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the hubs and I have done lately which is reflected in our home by the empty walls and rooms {and lack of blogging!} Oh well, we needed a break, it was like renovation overload and once we got a taste of the gorgeous weather we decided to put the house on the back burner and enjoy ourselves. I do have a few little things to share with you and we have lots of wonderful ideas planned that we will get to eventually. 

I'm really excited to show you our new couch from Gardiners Furniture picked by the hubs himself, he has a knack at finding comfy and cute couches for a steal. Our last microfiber sectional was also picked out all by himself and I just loved it, however, the poor couch had a lot of wear and tear from Tanner and Gresham and it was also just too large in our new living room. I've been searching for the perfect couch forever, looking everywhere from leather to slip covered couches but we ended up back with a microfiber couch. They really are the best, especially when you have children and/or pets, they clean up really nicely and there's no need to worry about the dogs pulling out the fabric threads with their paws.  We are trying to be really diligent about keeping the couch covered with a blanket when we're not home so it stays as nice and clean as possible! Oh, and the best part? The couch was on clearance for $399 and Gardiners let us pick the couch up to save on delivery fees!

Here's Tanner and Gresham showing off their new couch but don't worry, the blanket went back on 3.5 seconds after this was taken!

 And one more picture without the dogs by the couch but rather peeking in from the back door!

This is how the couch looks most of the time though...they have a tough life!

Did you notice the new area rug and a few wedding pictures on the walls? Yay more progress!

 

We're getting closer but we still have a list of things we'd like to add in the living room like...plantation shutters, a coffee table, a tv stand, an accent chair and a few more decorative accents!

It's crazy to go back and look at the pictures from the very beginning to now...

That's all for now, thanks for stopping by!

Before & After: The First Floor Tour!

After a couple of months we're happy to report that the renovations on the first floor are pretty much done.  We still have a powder room to finish and then the fun part of adding decorating touches throughout the house but that's it! The transformation of the first floor is amazing, it's really incredible how new flooring and a can gallons of paint can really make a huge difference!

Here's our formal dining room before:

Here's our formal dining room after:

We took down the stucco ceilings, tore up the old carpeting and replaced with new hardwood floors, painted the room and added a chandelier! I look forward to hosting future Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in this room!

Here's our living room before:

Here's our living room after:

Just like in the formal dining room we took down the stucco ceilings, tore up the old carpet and replaced with hardwood floors, painted the walls and added recess lighting! None of the furniture you see now is staying and we're going to add an area rug and wall decor, too! We currently are using half of our old sectional because I thought the entire sectional broke up the flow of the room too much!

Here's our breakfast nook before:

Here's our breakfast nook after:

Again, we did all of the same renovations throughout the first floor but we also added a blingy chandelier from Pottery Barn! The table and chairs were a gift from my parents and we have plans to finish the table and add some fun fabric to the chairs when we have time...and of course add some wall decor!

That pretty much covers the first floor except for the kitchen which I blogged about here and the powder room which I will be sharing soon! 

In the mean time I'll leave you with a few bathroom before pictures and hopefully have the after pictures in the near future!

Before & After: Our Kitchen

I'm finally back after my little blogging hiatus, I don't know where the time's gone but we've been so busy lately finishing up last minute home stuff. On Saturday HGTV filmed our very last scene and we're really looking forward to seeing our episode come together, we'll share the date as soon as we have it! Since the house was cleaned from top to bottom the night before the film crew arrived I took the opportunity to document the progress and I'm here today to share the kitchen updates! We've done a lot of work to this room and we're really happy with the outcome, have a look for yourself!

Here are a few of the before kitchen pictures:

You may have noticed the Rocco's Pizza box on top of the fridge and the Diet Coke on the counter...clearly these are the essentials when renovating your home.

After all of our blood, sweat and tears went into the renovations we now have a beautiful kitchen! We can't take all of the credit for it though, my Dad was the one who had the fun task of painting our kitchen cabinets! This is another must have when renovating a home: find a family member who's recently retired and put them to work! Just kidding, Dad and really Thank YOU, our house wouldn't look the way it does now if it wasn't for you and all of your help!

Are you ready for the after pictures?? 

I still can't believe we went from this:

To this:

Can you?!

Before & After: Our Bannister

Remember when I blogged about our beautiful staircase here? I mentioned how gorgeous the stairs were only to make our bannister look even more beat up. I was planning on giving it some TLC with tung oil until we were ready to build a new bannister but the hubs had something up his sleeve! This weekend he gave me the best birthday present ever...a brand new bannister! Saturday morning a contractor came over and built a custom bannister for us and it is soooo pretty, I think it may be favorite thing in the house! Who would have thought there'd be a day when a bannister would be the best birthday present ever? I must be getting old!

To refresh your memory here's how the stairs and bannister looked originally:

Then we had hardwood treads and risers installed giving us beautiful new stairs but leaving us with a sad looking bannister:

Here you can see some of the wear and tear the original bannister had:

But not anymore! Here's our beautiful, custom built bannister!

Did I give you enough pictures?! I'm a bit obsessed!

Before & Progress: Master Bedroom {Done For Now}

I'm back with more home updates although this isn't my typical before & after, it's more of a before & progress post! As happy as I am with how much our house is shaping up we're still not totally finished-and that's fine with me! Rome wasn't built overnight and neither was Chez Bernhardt but we're getting closer each day ! On tap for today is our master bedroom which we did the least to, we just added a fresh coat of paint and new carpeting!

Before:

Progress:

Before:

Progress:

Before:

Progress:

You may have noticed that the ceilings are still covered in {shudder} stucco which really dates this room. It was just way too much work taking down the ceilings throughout the entire house right away. After seeing how much dust removing the ceiling downstairs caused we knew we weren't going down that road again. I  researched alternative ways of removing stucco ceilings and I've decided on covering them with bead board.

Here's an example of how the ceilings are {hopefully} going to look after we cover them with bead board:

I love the texture the bead board paneling gives to the room! Best of all you don't have to scrape the stucco down and since there's little sanding involved we won't end up with a dusty mess like we did with the downstairs ceiling removal! The hubs and I are planning on starting this project sometime during the summer so stay tuned!

Oh, and check out these adorable pillows hubs gave me this weekend for my birthday!

And on the back of the pillows he had our wedding date added {please ignore the dog hair}:

Well, now you have the master bedroom progress and I look forward to sharing more updates with you once we hang things on the empty walls!

Thankfully, Tanner and Gresham give their seal of approval with the progress of this room so far!