The House Is As Ready As It Can Be

We're having a birthday party tonight for my dear hubby and for the last 6 weeks we've been in a frenzy to get the house to a place where we feel it's presentable for the party. I thought my MIL was coming to surprise Brent but at the last minute she got sick and couldn't fly, it was such a bummer because it would have been a great birthday surprise for him. Because of her visit, I worked extra hard to get the guest room done too...all under the guise of the party because he didn't know she was coming.

I haven't posted in a while because it seems that every free moment was spent doing something to the house, and when I wasn't working at my job or on the house, I was too tired to think about blogging. But this morning I feel good because the house looks so great. It's time to share.

KITCHEN

LIVING ROOM

We're going to add an etagere in the corner - it's a bit empty right now.

ENTRYWAY

It was hard to find a piece of furniture that fit here - after buying and returning a piece, we ended up using this piece that we already had.

 GUEST BEDROOM

Of course a gun cabinet doesn't fit in this room, but where else would we put it?

 OFFICE

HALL BATHROOM

 

Tonight there will be chafing dishes on the kitchen counters, wash pans loaded with ice, beer, & wine, the playlist I worked on tirelessly will be playing, and 30 people mingling around and hopefully having a GREAT time. I'll post pics after. Should be a great birthday party!

Till later ~

Reba

Furniture Wrong Righted

Gallery Furniture now has one more sofa table and one less media/TV cabinet. We returned the terribly over-sized sofa table that we bought for the entry and used the credit against a new sitting place for our TV.

We're now happy campers - camped in front of the TV!

We were temporarily using an old sofa table for our TV but it had an open bottom and that meant we had to look at all the cords and wires. I couldn't be more pleased that they are now hidden.

See our before and after:

BEFORE - Super ugly!

AFTER - beautiful! Oh, don't look at that table in the entryway - That's the old TV table, it's not going to stay there.

You can probably tell I took one pic in the daytime and the other at night, during the Super Bowl no less. Sorry if the quality isn't the best.

We still need to find a table for the entryway that's only 12" deep - they are really hard to find. Brittany and I went to a really nice (and pricey) store and they had several but I wasn't looking to spend $1400-$1700 for an entryway table. Any suggestions?

Here's a sneak peak at my next project, a Craigslist find for $10. More later, I'm not done yet.

Till later ~

Reba

Using CraigsList

Yesterday I read a very good blog post by Miss Mustard Seed with tips for using CraigsList to find great furniture for your home. I use CraigsList and love it. Just a couple of weeks ago I found a leather recliner to complete the seating in my living room - the same chair that I saw for $1000-$1200 new, I purchased for $300 and it's in almost perfect shape.

In Miss Mustard Seed's post she mentioned safety. If I were writing a post about CraigsList, my No. 1 tip would be the one about safety. My daughter started shopping CraigsList when she was in college in a small town in central Texas, when she moved to Houston and continued to shop, it scared me. The big city is no place to test fate as you may fail. So, take heed, be safe and if your gut tells you that something's not right, then drive right on by. And always take someone with you.

Aside from the great tips from Miss Mustard Seed, I want to give you the BEST CraigsList gift EVER. It's called CraigsEasy. Basically, you go to the website, get the EASY button (really the button is labeled EASY in my favorites), and then after making a search on CraigsList, you click the EASY button. That takes you to a page that shows you all the pictures on the listings of your search. You can scroll through all the listings very quickly by looking at just the pictures.

Now instead of the page looking like this and having to click the link to see the pictures:

It looks like this with listing after listing showing listing title and pics only, no text:

The listing title is a link back to the listing with the text. So if you're interested you can click into the listing then click your back button to go back to CraigsEasy. It's the best invention ever for CraigsList, it saves me a ton of time when I'm shopping.

Last tip I want to mention, if you live in a big city and you're looking for furniture, you may find that a lot of businesses advertise under the furniture category. And they dominate the space, you start seeing the same ads over, and over, and over again. I was really starting to get irritated because it wasted so much of my time, but recently I noticed that CraigsList added a "by-owner" or "by-dealer" option. Don't forget to use it, it's made a huge difference in the time I spend looking for what I need. I only use the "by-owner" option. There are still a few stubborn dealers who post under the owner option but for the most part, it's clean. Just click "Furniture", then up by the field where you type your search term you will see  - furniture: by-owner | by-dealer - click on the "by-owner" link and it will filter only ads by owners - no more dealers - YAY. This is a great new feature - thanks CraigsList!

I hope my tips, together with Miss Mustard Seed's tips, help you navigate CraigsList and find some fabulous deals to decorate your home!

Till later ~

Reba

Hallway Finished - FINALLY!

Well, we finally finished the hallway. I say we...all I did was snap the whip! Oh, and I sanded the inside of the linen pantry but Brent and Zack did all the work and it's beautiful. The bright white oil based paint against the linen colored walls and wood floors is gorgeous. Much better than before.

Here are some of the before pics:

After Zack added  trim to the doorways.

After the wood floor was laid.

During painting.

And here are the after pics:

 

BEFORE

AFTER

The french door leads to our office, a room I LOVE and I think the french door is a big part of why I love the room so much. In the before pic just above we didn't even have trim around the doors or baseboards. Wow, what a difference! Honestly, hallways are a lot of work and this one had SEVEN doors, a linen pantry, and an attic ladder, no wonder it took four weeks to finish. The bid we got to sub it out was $1000 including paint, now that it's done, I think that would have been a DEAL.

Till later ~

Reba