Phil had just returned from a day in Columbus, cheering on our Ohio State Buckeyes as the snow piled up around him and countless other fans who braved the weather for the sake of their sport. I, however, was cozied up at home, braving an altogether different task- painting the walls and baseboards in both our living and dining rooms with a hyper toddler afoot. It’s a difficult task, without ending up with baby foot prints tracked around our home with fresh paint. But I did it! And when Phil returned, I was still on my home makeover high, so I convinced him to tackle our ugly fireplace for a fun date night activity. What can I say? The man loves me. Now that the fireplace facade is gone, I’m feeling the momentum to finish up the plans I’ve long had for this space. Poor Phil. If he’d only known, he probably would have never known that helping me with the fireplace would get him more than just a trip to Funkytown, but also a trip to Ikea, CB2, and the antique mall.

Well, since I’m obviously excited about the changed we’ve been making in our home, I thought I’d share the progress we’ve made in our dining room, and then share my plans for the near future! Check out the before and during photos of the fireplace below, and see how it originally looked in the first photo I took of this home before we ever purchased it.

When we initially had the home inspected, we learned that one of our two fireplaces (the one in the dining room) needed a lot of expensive work done to the cap, flue, and lining. Since money is something we have very little of, unlike patience, we just ignored it until that one fateful day this winter when I just couldn’t take it any more. Our plans are to have a professional install a set of gas logs which will look nice and also put out heat in the space. There’s a gas line in place (the pipes will need replaced, though), and we can just block off the flue instead of repairing it.

The fireplace facade was easier to remove than I thought it would be, though Phil did all of the muscle work. The initial surround was bolted on from the inside, and we used a crow bar to pull it off the wall after everything was unscrewed. There are still holes where it had been bolted on, but I can live with that for now until I learn how to weld, and then I’ll make a new, minimalistic surround to cover up the holes. It looks much better now, though I can’t wait until the day when we can use gas logs and a new surround, designed by yours truly.

When we moved into the home, it was all painted in an awful sea foam green- a color I left in our bathrooms where it looks nice, but promptly covered up in the rest of the rooms. In my haste to have the dining room and living room painted while I was pregnant and escaping the fumes at my parents’ home, I made the mistake of choosing a color I really ended up hating and living with anyway for two years. You can read all about it and see these photos below in color right here.

For Christmas this year, my mother-in-law gave me these pretty yellow curtains that I had found on Amazon (right here), which so nicely replaced the makeshift sheers that have been hanging on our windows for far too long. Since the photos above were taken, I also replaced the busy kilim rug with a 7-year-old West Elm rug I had in storage, added some plants from our patio, and replaced the chairs I had been so giddy about finding last year with our old Ikea ones we’ve had since we were first married almost 7 years ago. Why did I do that? Well, because I’m selling them on Craigslist so I can put the money towards a set of dream chairs! The problem is, I just can’t decide which chairs are my dream chairs. Because I like them all. Ahhhh! 

To complete the room, I’d like to get new dining room chairs, a new light with more of a presence (we’ll move this one into the kitchen, close to the ceiling), and a new hutch (this is one I thrifted years ago as a placeholder). I’ve been really drooling over this globe chandelier at CB2, and I think that it would match the curtains I have up. I can get a little color crazy, but I’m trying to keep it simpler in the dining room. As far as a hutch goes, I’d love to get something primitive looking (like this one), and paint it a bold black, or a crisp white. I found a huge one I loved at a local antique mall last year, but it was $500, and not in my budget.

As far as chairs goes, I was so close to buying option A below, but then it occurred to me that if I get new chairs, they should be ones I’ll keep for a very long time- like maybe a lifetime- and according to the reviews, though the price is unbeatable ($113 for a pair), the quality is not. So, I thought maybe I should just spring for my forever love- the tulip chair (option C below). I could get a set of two from Amazon here for $239. Not too bad! Especially for a new set. I can’t even find used ones for that price. But if I’m being realistic, $478 for four chairs is still a lot of money for my little family. So I’m beginning to think that this wire Bertoia style chair (option B below) might be the ticket. It’s a beautiful chair that I lived with at my brother’s house for two years, and though not the most comfortable  chair in the world, they’ll last forever, and are classic pieces that I think are just beautiful. Plus, I can get 4 chairs for $389, which is really affordable for a design classic like this. I sound like I’m talking myself into making the purchase, don’t I? Maybe it’s true love after all.

• Framed poster above fireplace: Art.com
• Crewel art right of curtain: vintage
• Beach Painting right of curtain: Encore Editions
• Bird drawing left of curtain: vintage

So that’s all for now, folks! I’m working on making some plants stands in the near future to spruce things up even more, and you better believe I’ll be back to share all of my progress as time goes on!

Hey guys! I hope you all had very special Christmas celebrations. If you’ve got some vacation time on your hands, like I do, you might want to try these fun projects for your home! I shared how to make a leaning ladder and a fluffy faux fur footstool at A Beautiful Mess recently, and I think they’re the perfect indoor projects to do during these cabin fever months. Phil and I got some new power tools for Christmas, so I’m super eager to put them to use! Click the links below to view the project posts:

• Make Your Own Leaning Blanket Ladder
• Make Your Own Faux Fur Footstool

I don’t know how it started. Somehow I got sucked in, and the next thing I knew, it was one in the morning. And I was glued to my computer screen looking at real estate websites, seriously considering what it would take to sell our house and buy a new one across town. This was only last week, but after a lot of soul searching, I’ve come to my senses. I think. You see, during that whirlwind romance with one special mid century modern home five miles away, I discovered a few things about how the culture around me has affected the way I view life. Maybe you feel the same.

The home I was admiring from in front of my computer was something we could easily afford, and it could use just the right amount of work, but not too much to intimidate someone like me. It had a sunken living room- something I’d always dreamed of, and have become increasingly obsessed with since Don and Megan Draper’s apartment in season five of Mad Men. I was literally laying awake thinking about how I would arrange the furniture, and what kind of flooring we would instal. After two days of this, I realized I had sunken back into my old habit. It was a bad habit that I thought I had outgrown when I learned I had cancer last year.

Facing your immortality after a cancer diagnosis can be a really great thing. You start analyzing your life, focusing in on things that are really important, and cutting out a lot of the stuff that just takes up extra space. I got real with myself and considered how much energy and hopes I tend to put into planning for my future. A future which isn’t even guaranteed to me. I spent many of my thoughts planning on what I would buy next, how we would decorate our living room when we had the money, how I would style my hair when it finally grew out, what clothes I would enjoy wearing when I lost weight, and how fun life would be when we started having children. So much of my life was wrapped up in planning for things, that I failed to fully enjoy the things that were happening right then.

Last week when I found myself unrealistically planning another house move- what could have been the fifth move in six years, I realized I was settling into my old ways of thinking. I had stopped enjoying our house, because I wanted to start planning out a new one. I was ready for the next project, a new challenge, and certainly a bit of an upgrade. Have I become addicted to redecorating and home planning? Has reading too many design blogs made me unhappy with the little home that we already have? Good golly, I think these are real issues that weren’t exactly deleted with my cancer-self-discoveries.

These days, with the influx of design blogs, accessibility to so much inspiration on Pinterest and elsewhere, it’s become increasingly normal to lead a discontented lifestyle. I’m not willing to give up on Pinterest or blogs altogether, but what kind of habits can I get into that will help me deal with my urges to upgrade and renovate? I don’t have the money for that kind of lifestyle, and it’s certainly not a healthy state to live in, emotionally speaking. For one, I’ve decided to stay off of real estate websites until we’re actually planning on making a move and the money’s in the bank. I don’t even want to be tempted, as fun as it is to see what’s out there. And something else I’d like to do is to enjoy time in my home, without looking around and thinking about what I want to change. It will take a lot of mental control to stop those thoughts from clouding my mind, but I think the effort will be worth it in the end.

So we’ll be in our house for a few more years at least. And I’m going to work on loving what we have, and admiring beautiful homes in magazines without allowing them to make mine feel inadequate. We don’t live in a magazine, and that’s okay. Our home is where life happens, and that’s why it’s special.