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Entry Evolution: Room by Room Summer Series Week One
Summer is in full swing around our house and I think I’m finally getting into a groove. It is a good thing too, because my friend Amy from My Life From Home is hosting a new Room By Room Summer Series that I’m super excited to be joining. Each week, bloggers will share a space in their home and talk about what they’ve done, would like to do, or tips decorating for that area. Our first week is all about the entry of the home. Check out our Farmhouse Entry Evolution!
If you are new to the blog, WELCOME!
My name is Erin and I live with my handy husband and two crazy kids in the middle of nowhere, aka, the country. We’ve been in our fixer upper for a little over a year now and it is slowly, but surely becoming our home. Let’s step inside!
{Modern Farmhouse Decor Finds For Under $100}
Last year, I posted a tour of before photos of The Country House, which included this pic below of our living room and front door entrance. BLAH! It really needed some help, so with a little paint and new flooring, we were able to give it a fresh new look.
TA-DA! Painting the trim and doors white really brightened the space up! Also, back in February my husband, Chris, redid all of the floors in our home. {Learn more about our floors here.} Adding some fun decorative and functional pieces to the space helped define it as more of a separate area from our living room.
The black console table was a piece we scored years ago on Craigslist. On top of the table are a few decor items we love. The vintage typewriter belonged to my maternal grandmother and the white milk glass piece was my paternal grandmother’s. Underneath, we placed two storage ottomans from Ikea which hold shoes and also serve as video gaming stools for the kids.
The big ol’ cable spool clock was something that I whipped up a few years ago and a piece we still love to this day. Even though it doesn’t function as a proper clock, it is always a conversation piece when people come to visit.
The boxwood wreath on our coat closet gets moved back and forth from the front door during inclement weather. I just love green wreaths and how they can dress up a space.
It may look like this space is finished (or maybe not), but we still have a few changes we would eventually like to make.
Here’s what we are thinking:
- Paint Doorbell Box.
- Replace almond outlet/switchplate/thermostat.
- Paint the wall, although we have yet to decide on a color.
With my tendencies to change things up on a whim, who knows how this space will look when it is finished! Or if it ever will be finished. *WINK*What do you think of our entry? I’ll be back next week with another room in our summer series: THE KITCHEN. Make sure to come back and check it out. In the meantime, you won’t want to miss these fun and creative entrys below!
What do you think of our entry?
I’ll be back next week with another room in our summer series: THE KITCHEN. Make sure to come back and check it out. In the meantime, you won’t want to miss these fun and creative entrys below!
Did you miss a room in the series? Click below to check out each room.
Entry | Kitchen | Living Room | Bedrooms
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More Dining Room Progress
I hope that you guys don’t mind me sharing little tidbits of our house updates as we do them. We are working with time and on a budget, but it is fun to see the differences as we go along. A lot has changed in our dining room since my last update. We really pushed to get some of the stuff on our list done (i.e. floors) to be ready to host Easter. And in the past couple of days, we’ve made even more dining room progress!
This room looks so different from when we first moved in!
This post contains affiliate links, which means that I make a small commission when you purchase a product from the link. However, there is no extra cost to you. Read my full disclosure.
Last fall we found this oak dining table for sale on Facebook for $60 and painted it white. It extends to fit 6 people and fits perfectly in our dining room. I love the spindle-y legs! Right now, it is a bit too bright of a white. At some point, I will repaint it and then distress is a bit. But that is for a later date!
We also recently bought the large rattan chairs. I knew with a white table and chairs that we would need some warmth in this room. After seeing Bre’s dining room chairs (Rooms For Rent), I knew that I wanted a similar look. I found these at Ikea.
We still love the script numbered chairs, so they are here to stay. For now. As for the old sentimental windows, I’m still not sure. I accidentally broke a pane out of the one on the left. Should I take the rest out or leave it as it for some added character? ;)
We also finally put up some drop cloth curtains. I have a few different ideas about how to deal with the length once it gets colder again and we need to use the baseboard heaters. However, I haven’t decided what we will do for sure.
Our little coffee bar seems to get moved back and forth in the room all of the time! It is back on the short wall and I added a new dry erase calendar above it to help keep us organized. Eventually, I may add some shelves here and move the calendar to another spot to create a command center.
This old table was in our last house for just a bit. It belonged to my great aunt and was perfect for holding some extra items over the holiday weekend. We are still in search of the perfect buffet for this area, but for now, this seems to work!
Finally, I moved my tea towel kitchen measurements “art” to the wall by the kitchen. I like how the piece adds a little contrast to this space.
This room is really coming along, but we still have several projects we would like to accomplish in here, including:
- Replace outlets/switchplates/thermostat
- Do a faux shiplap wall treatment
- Touch up the table
- Add a buffet
- Paint the walls
- Put up shelving
- Finish trim painting
However, since the main area is looking pretty good, we aren’t in any hurry. We still have several other rooms that need some lovin’ first, in addition to outside projects (the chicken coop/run, replacing the roof, planting trees/grass, and cleaning up our garage.) We hope you will continue to follow along!
SOURCES
floors | rug | table (second hand) | script numbered chairs | rattan chairs | pillows | vase (Home Goods) | eucalyptus stems | chandelier | fiddle leaf fig tree | curtains | dry erase calendar | coffee bar
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New Laminate Wood Flooring
If you follow me over on Instagram, then you’ve probably already heard that while I was away the other weekend, my hubby installed new laminate wood flooring in our house. I was so excited to come home and see what he had done!
This post contains affiliate links. Click here to read my full disclosure.
You may be wondering why we decided to redo the floors in the entire house. Especially, since I talked about trying to save money doing “Chapter 1” upgrades here at The Country House. You may also be puzzled if you remember that we added in peel and stick flooring in our daughter’s Tween Bedroom Makeover a few months ago.
It basically comes down to a couple of reasons.
1. The light beige carpet in our main living area was getting destroyed thanks to our sweet pup, Harper, and muddy shoes. (It wasn’t in perfect condition to start with.) As of right now, we only use our front door to go in and out of the house. Since this winter’s weather has been so crazy, certain areas outside are super muddy. I can only imagine it will get muddier this spring!
We knew that we didn’t want our carpet to always look dirty and figured non-carpeted floors would be easier keep clean.
2. Initially, we planned on installing peel and stick planks only in certain rooms and leaving the cream carpets alone. Once we knew we wanted new floors for the whole house, we started to question if we loved the flooring in our daughter’s room. It is not bad by any means. However, the color is a bit darker than we really wanted in a hallway and bathroom with no natural light.
So, after some deliberation…
We decided to go with the same flooring we had installed in The City House. (TrafficMASTER Lakeshore Pecan Laminate from The Home Depot.) We really loved the look of the wide planks and the color was just the neutral we wanted. Plus, it is one of the most inexpensive options they have, which made us feel a little bit better about replacing those peel and stick planks.
Right now, about half of the house is finished and it has already made a huge difference. We do have a couple of area rugs to add some coziness in the rooms, as well as absorb some noise.
My Roomba has also saved a lot of time sweeping, so we are mostly just giving things a quick mop if they get muddy.
We really love the new floors and so do our fur babies. This is the newest addition to our little growing farm. His name is Tim Tom and he is a Holland Lop bunny. (We are thinking we would like to give him a new name, but have yet to figure out what that might be.)
What do you think of these new floors?
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Dining Room Progress
As promised earlier this week on Instagram, I’m back to share our dining room progress with you. This room is definitely looking a lot better than when we first moved in. However, there are still quite a few things that we would like to do in this room before we would consider it finished. Let’s check it out.
Here’s what our dining room looked like on move in day, before we filled it up with furniture.
We’ve since installed a simple chandelier and added faux wood blinds (like the ones we put in our daughter’s room) on the windows. I’m not a huge fan of blinds, but they help provide a some shade during the bright parts of the day. I would really love some long drapey curtains. Unfortunately, those are not an option as of yet, but I’m brainstorming ideas on how I can make them work around our electric baseboard heaters
I also decided to draw some lines on the wall to mimic the shiplap-look. I’m a bit of a commitment-a-phobe when it comes to major home changes, so when I saw that my blogging friend, Lauren from Bless’er House, had done something similar, I thought I would give this a try. I know that some people are so over shiplap, but we still think it is pretty awesome. Plus, this wall treatment was FREE!
Our coffee bar was moved over to the longer wall underneath our stenciled wreath display I made for the holidays.
This space is slowly coming together, but there are still some projects and things to be done, like:
- Add shiplap to the wall
- Figure out some sort of new wall decor to replace the seasonal wreath display
- Paint the trim and walls
- Add curtains
- Finish making over a table that I found for a steal on Craigslist
- Build (or buy) a buffet
- Change out the flooring
What do you think of the current state of our dining room? We are pretty happy with where things are right now, but are looking forward to more changes!