Wednesday, June 30, 2010

More Photos of the Shabby Chic Coastal Bedroom

I've been borrowing my oldest daughter's new Nikon SLR camera for the past few weeks & have been taking a lot of photos of the house. We just gave it to her for a High School Graduation a few weeks ago, but hey, she borrows my car, I borrow her camera. Fair deal! 
One of my pet peeves is MLS photos that are, let's just say, not up to par. So me being the control freak detail oriented person that I am, uploaded a whole slew of them to a Picasa account that the realtor could use and showed them to you in my Home tour
Back to my youngest daughter's room... The Teddy Bear was a gift from her boyfriend... awwww
We will be starting on some free standing bookcases next month(better late than never). They will be a little bit narrower than this current  one and taller than the curtain rods. In the meantime, I moved the bookcase from next to the bed to beside the window. A small chair will go beside the bed, if I ever find one.

Here's where the bookcase was before. The placement was just a little odd, don't you think? This photo was taken with my 10 megapixel HP digital point & shoot. Can you tell the difference from the other photos? Click on the photos & you can definitely see the difference. I might have to find a way to get a camera like my daughter's. Can you say credit card points? 



Thought you'd like to see what my youngest daughter's room looked like before we painted it grey. I found this photo today while cleaning up and scanned it with my new hp scanner/printer/copier!




I also wanted to remind everyone to go over to vote for Debbie so she can get her own tv show! I am sure all of you know her from her blog debbiedoos loves living in the Carolinas! If you don't, you should! She is one of the nicest ladies in blogland and is a cheerleader by nature! Go to her website and  you can link up to Oprah's website and then vote for her!!!
You can also link directly to the Oprah site HERE
Remember, you can vote as many times as you want!
Hope you all have a great day!!!
Pam

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Home Tour

As promised, here is my home tour! Our house is ready to go and a sign in the front yard will be a reality in a couple of days. We've lived here ten years now and have lot's of happy memories. I'm warning you now, there are a lot of photos, so grab a cup of coffee or a cold drink and stay awhile!



This is a nice place to sit in the evening as the sun is going down behind the big oak tree across the street.



Come on in..........
The Foyer......

The Living Room, or the Piano Room, as we call it, is to the left of the Foyer (the piano is on the inside wall that your can't see)

The Dining Room is to the left of the Foyer, but this view is from the hallway door.

The view of the Family Room from the Kitchen.....Ugh...I wish I could find a decent ready made slipcover that fit my large comfy sofa. I never did like the slipcover I bought, but the sofa underneath is a champagne colored damask and would be very dirty if we hadn't covered it.
I'd buy a new sofa, but I would rather wait until we move to buy one.
Update: I bought a new sofa! I'm in the process of redecorating this room.
The Family Room from upstairs.........

The hallway off the foyer looking toward the Laundry Room.....The Powder Room is the first door on the right.

Here's the tiniest Powder Room on the planet! Ok, that's not a good selling point!




The Kitchen ... with brand new beautiful granite countertops and tumbled marble backsplash...





The deck off of the Breakfast Room....

The view of the backyard from the deck

2nd Floor: Guest Room ... I found a new white matelasse cover for the bed that replaced a floral comforter.





Ahhh, the Bonus Room ... You haven't seen this room, except for the closet we  Mr. F installed a few months back.
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Not very exciting, I know. This is where we are in the evenings during the school year.

Mr. Fanatic's office is in the nook in bonus room.



Now on to the Basement or Garden Level: Basement Family Room with Cultured Stone Fireplace & gas logs. The stone was a steal at $860 installed! It was finished a few days before last Christmas.

This is a great place for the teenagers to hang out & for sleepovers (the sofa is a sofabed)
We finished the basement (mostly) ourselves. We had some friends help with the sheetrock, hired the stone guys for the fireplace and granite top and hired an electrician. Mr F. Did the framing, plumbing, painting, trim, tile, etc.

Basement Full Bath. Mr. Fanatic did all of the tile work in here a several years ago. I love the way this bathroom turned out.
Here's some of the unfinished part of the basement. There are also 2 more storage rooms on the other side that are about 15 x 20. The basement is 2,000 square feet! That is larger than our last house! When the girl's were little and before the basement family room was finished they would ride their bikes and scooters down here in the winter. Even on the coldest days it only gets to the mid to high 50's.
We open this up when we have teenage parties.
The Garden Patio off of the Basement Family Room....This is my favorite spot to sit.

The view from the bench. The playhouse is from my childhood. We brought it all the way from California to North Carolina.

The garden path coming up from the creek ... I wish it stayed looking this perfect!

And, finally, the Patio in the Woods ... Mr. F installed this when the girls were much younger. There was a huge pile of sand (used in the installation) that the girls would come out & play with while their dad was working.
 
And there, you have it ... the whole house tour! I hope you enjoyed it!!!

Pam


Update:

Our house is no longer on the market and we might stay another couple of years until our youngest goes off to college. If we could find a house we liked with our new criteria, we would re-list the house in a heartbeat.
In the meantime, we are in the process of repainting pretty much the whole house!
I will post a new house tour after we paint the family room/kitchen/hallways.
You can see the update for our Dining Room HERE
and the bookcases in my Youngest Daughter's Room HERE


Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Granite Countertops Are Finished!!!

Our granite countertops are finally finished!  Even the corbels on the back of the bar are painted and installed! Yay!!! I can't tell you how good it feels to be finished with this project.


The view from the family room.


Carolina Stone Marble and Granite installed the granite. They gave us a great price and did a wonderful job installing it. We had them install granite in our basement bathroom a few years ago, as well. Mr. Fanatic installed the under cabinet lighting and the backsplash, but if we had it to all over again, we probably would have had them install the backsplash because it would have been finished a lot quicker! Oh, well, you live and learn! Mr. F did a wonderful job, though and saved us some cash!


I bought the corbels from Hardware Resources. You can Google them and find several places online that sell these at a discount. One of the secrets to paying less for corbels is to get a paint grade wood such as birch instead of maple.



A closer look at the backsplash installed on a diagonal with bronze accent tiles.


I am loving my new large single stainless steel sink! Carolina Stone gave me a great price on the sink. Lowe's price wasn't anywhere close.

Oh, so pretty!


I will be sharing the steps on installing the granite and backspash on another day.
I hope everyone is keeping cool and had a wonderful weekend. We went to see Toy Story 3 in 3D and loved it! I teared up a couple of times and especially at the end..... I am such a softy!

Pam