Welcome Home Wednesday

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. I have plenty to blog about, but just haven't taken the time to do it. Hopefully I can get back in the groove soon. 

Today I wanted to share some updates we've made this week in our house. 

My dad worked hours and hours re-doing our downstairs family room and it looks amazing!!!! I can't tell you how excited I am to have it pretty well finished (aside from decorating). He did an amazing job and we really can't thank him enough for his hard work!

Here is a before and after picture of the wall with the fireplace on it. I'll take a few other pictures once it's actually decorated, but for now, it's come such a long way and I couldn't wait to share the transformation.

We still need to add handles to the cabinet doors and of course fill those built ins with more pretty things, but otherwise it's finished. 

Some of you may wonder why we only did a cabinet on one side and not the other. When I first saw this room, I thought built-ins on either side would be so cool and a cabinet at the bottom of each side would be a great place to store all of our dvd's and them not be seen. But once my dad got to measuring and planning, he realized a cabinet on the right side would come out in front of that window and that would look silly and just wouldn't work. I still really wanted a cabinet though, so he said lets just do one and leave the other side all shelves. I was a little skeptical about how that would look, but now I think it looks just fine and I'm happy to have at least one cabinet as opposed to none at all.

The mantle is made out of cedar and stained dark walnut like our floors. I love it and am happy I pushed for the exposed beam look. We went back and forth on whether to do a white mantle or exposed beam look and I am really glad we went for the exposed beam. 

We also got my picture gallery wall hung over the couch in the upstairs living room. I've been putting this little project off for months because I just wasn't sure how to tackle it. Our walls are plaster and I haven't had much luck with the 3M hooks. I knew drilling multiple holes into this wall would be really hard because it's basically like concrete. Then I found the 3M velcro-like strips and decided to give them a try. They hold so much better and so far I've been really happy with them. So I decided to give them a try on this wall. I already had frames from our old house that I wanted to use, along with a few things I picked up here and there. I decided since our living room didn't have much color in it yet, that I'd spray paint the black picture frames some fun colors that matched the dining room plates and table runner. I tackled that little project on Saturday and then Monday while I was off work, my dad helped me hang them all up and I absolutely love the way it turned out!

The frames are all just from wal-mart and spray-painted teal, coral and navy. The "Love" sign, arrow and "&" sign are all from Hobby Lobby, the "S" is from Michaels and the "All because two people fell in love" sign is from etsy, found here. I still want to get some new, matching toss pillows, change out the lamp shades and eventually get new living room furniture altogether. We also want to sand down the tables and stain the tops the dark walnut that is on our floors and paint the bottom portions white, but I'm super happy with the way this little gallery wall turned out and it makes me happy every time I walk into this room!

So those are two pretty awesome updates we've done recently that I really love and wanted to share.