House Progress

This post is mainly for myself. We've been making progress on the house, but at times it seems so slow and it's easy to only concentrate on how much we still have left to do. So, to change the focus to all we have accomplished in the last couple of months, I thought I would do a picture update to compare with this post, shortly after we moved in.

The living room is the most complete. Here's before:


And after:


I finally found our family portrait and hung it over the mantle. I bought the pots and plants that are on the mantle and bought and hung the curtains. This room is really coming together (except for a couple of remaining boxes, as you can see in front of the fire place)!

I also got the kids' portraits framed and Eric hung them for me last night. I'm so glad I got that done instead of the portraits sitting in the box on my desk for months like they normally do. :)


There has been virtually no progress in the office. We are stuck on the paint color.


Eric and I both agreed that we wanted to have two colors in this room with the color above and below the chair rail being different. I prefer the lighter tone on the left and Eric wants something a little more dramatic, like the color on the right. I would gladly give in to Eric on this, especially since the office is mostly man territory, but we actually don't like either of these colors. In person they have a greenish tone to them, which was not what we were looking for. And, looking at the paint color cards, I'm really having a hard time finding anything better. I've never had so much trouble picking out a paint color!

We finally settled on a color for the master bedroom.


We'll go with the darker gray color which I think will nicely complement our pale blue bedding. The master bedroom has always been a rather neglected room during our entire marriage. But, this time around we're making it a priority to make it into the soothing sanctuary that it should be. I'm even planning on printing some of my nature/flower photos and using them to decorate the walls. I can't wait to see it finally come all together!

Elizabeth's room now has curtains, a nightstand and a mirror on the wall. We're getting there!


The boys' room, however, looks exactly as it did two months ago. The biggest hangup in that room is a very opinionated 7 year old. I want him to be able to have input as we decorate his room, but his ideas and my ideas are polar opposites. For example, he would like to paint the walls and ceiling black and then he wants me to paint stars and planets all over them. That's not going to happen! I think we may have talked him into putting up a chair rail, painting below it a dark gray and above it a lighter blue-gray and adding posters of the planets on the wall. Jonathan's room has definitely been the most debated room in the entire house!

The play room has been primed, but I still haven't settled on a color. Here it is, still in it's normal, messy state.


Any recommendations on a paint color for this room?

Now for Eric's pride and joy. He calls it "the farm".


We've already picked some black eyed peas and made a batch of pesto from the basil. Eric added two more beds a couple of weeks ago and hopefully we'll have squash and tomatoes from them before the cold weather hits. He also created a box (at the back near the far fence) for compost. It might sound silly, but we really enjoy composting our kitchen scraps and lawn and garden waste. Yes, I said enjoy! I think it's the engineer in me who loves the efficiency of the whole process. Nothing goes to waste and we use the compost to make our garden even more healthy and productive. I love it!

And, here's our most recent addition, completed just two days ago.


The kids are so excited to have a sandbox again! I'm not so excited about walking through the house and finding sand sticking to the bottom of my feet, but I'm glad they have such a great place to play and create.

So, that's it for now. Sorry for the long, picture laden post. But, it sure has made me feel better about all that we have been able to accomplish!