Family Room Reveal!

Matt and I have been working very hard for the past few weeks on our family room. We started out by getting a new couch.. that didn't fit in our basement. It's a giant sectional. But Matt and I are determined people and we made it fit. And we may have made a giant hole in the wall and chopped the couch in half to do so. But we did it. 

Here is a picture of our house before we moved in. The picture doesn't do justice on how bad the carpet was. I am pretty sure we got high off of illegal substances when we ripped out the carpet in that room. 

And here is the family room after we moved in. We painted the walls and got new carpet. Poppa K did his magic on the fire place area and laid some amazing tile. But as for decor, we were very lacking. Notice our beautiful DI couches, with no legs.

The room was just so boring. We debated over a bunch of different ideas, and we had many project fails until we finally came up with a winner!

We ended up doing some more wainscotting/board and batten. Since we had a ton left over from our kitchen it went up super quick. Whoever built this house did not know anything about sanding down dry wall seams. So we designed the board and batten to hit right at the seam so you can't see it anymore. Instead of fixing it, we just cover it up. That's how we roll. 

We framed some of Grandpa J's art work that my parents gave us for Christmas. It looks so good in the room and happened to fit perfectly in our $4 DI frame!

I made some framed hearts. Matt says they are too girly. Well too bad, because I like them.

Our coolest find was this light fixture thing. Our neighbor died (I didn't even know anyone lived in the house) and her family was having an estate sale (come to find out that she didn't actually die, she went to a nursing home. Matt got chatty with the family and got the real story, meanwhile I am spreading rumors that she died). Anyway, so we checked out the sale and there wasn't really anything cool. Then we stumbled upon this gem. There wasn't a price tag so I asked the guy if it was for sale and how much it was. He didn't know so he had to ask. Meanwhile I said very loudly " I wouldn't pay more than $10 for that thing. It's definitely not worth more than $10!" He fell into my trap and we got it for $10! We threw on some spray paint and hung that bad boy up! The best part is that it plugs into the wall, so no tricky electrical work required.

 It was another exhausting weekend, but we had so much fun making our family room feel more like a family room.

Spring Break? More like Spring Busy!

We've been bizy beavers as usual around here!  A few weeks ago, when the weather was starting to turn good, Matt came home and told me he was going to paint the shed that weekend. He was all geared up to get painting, then it snowed. But snow doesn't stop him, nothing stops him once he's put him mind to it! 

Here is the before of the shed in the corner. It also doubles as Shaiya's pent house.

 And here is the after of the shed. He even re-roofed the entire thing! Matt literally did everything while I was at work, I didn't lift a finger on this project.  I don't call him my Boy Toy for nothing!

In other news, Matt turned the big 24! We had quite the celebration! I love love love to spoil Matt. I knew I wanted to buy him a bike for his birthday, and so did he. He just kept telling me how much he wanted a bike for his birthday. But I also couldn't help my self from buying him a few other things, I think I may be addicted to buying things for Matt. 

Here he is with all his presents. Yes, I bought him a steam mop. Yes, I want him to do all the mopping. And yes, he loved it. I also got him a remote control helicopter. He was giddy with excitement about it. He broke it  2 days later. But it lasted 2 days longer than I thought it would.

His dinner request was steak. He only wanted steak. So steak it was! He couldn't stop talking about how much he loves steak. 

He also got his weight in candy, from me and from my family. He loves candy! The candy was gone in less than a week.

Last week was Matt's spring break, it wasn't really a break for him since we spent the majority of the week trying to fit a couch in our basement. But we did get away to St. George and Vegas for a few days. 

The first night we got to hang out with S&J and G-baby. 

It's weird that neither Scott or Jen have blue eyes... and Matt's eye's look just like Gracie's. So weird....

We played some killer frisbee at a park for a while.

Then we went on a sweet bike ride.

We hung out with this guy for a while in Vegas. He was a hoot!

  We got poured on while we made the 2.5 mile speed walk back to our hotel.

Even though the weather wasn't the best, we still had a lot of fun!

 I'll be finishing up our family room this weekend (hopefully)  and Matt has huge plans for the backyard (I'm hoping none of them involve me helping out). We'll post pics once we're all done!

A built-in bench? Nah, just a regular bench!

Matt has this amazing ability to build things exactly how I pictured it in my head. I will just explain some crazy idea to him and he'll buy all the necessary items and cut and measure it exactly. He's basically a genius. Any way, this project was no exception to Matt's geniusness. I wanted a built in bench for our table. It was going to be so cool, a huge bench built into the wall. But Matt didn't like the idea of scooting to get out of the bench every time you have to get up. So we just decided to build a free standing bench. 

Here's the boy toy doing all the work while I take pictures. 

While working on the bench we had a creeper watching us. She likes to just sit and peek in the window while we work. And she usually has a real big creeper look on her face.

 Typical Matt pose. 

 Here's the bench before the stain and paint. 

 Here's the bench after all the stain and paint!

   And here's the bench with the table. 

It's not as cool as a built in bench (maybe in my next house), but it's still pretty amazing! Matt did such a good job! 

Sneak Peek

 Here is a sneak peek of what we are working on this weekend! I'm excited and pumped and exhausted just thinking about it. Good thing I have a boy toy, aka Matt, to do all the work while I do the fun stuff, like staining!

Dumb Dumb

Isn't she adorable?? This is our pup Shaiya, pronounced Shy-a. Matt picked out the name and the spelling. Anyway, lately whenever we get home and she notices we are home and haven't given her attention, she will start barking. Matt gets annoyed at her, so he'll say things like " Shut up Dumb Dumb" or when it's raining outside and she is just sitting out getting wet he'll say " Go in your house Dumb Dumb". Every time it makes me laugh super hard. I don't know why, maybe it's because Matt sounds like he is 5 years old when he says it.


She loves peanut butter....

Wainscoting

Since we moved in we've done a lot of work to our house! One of the projects that I was most excited about was the wainscoting in the kitchen. Last summer Matt and I went to the Parade of Homes and saw tons of cool wainscoting/board and batten. I've also seen it done a few times on blogs, and wanted to do it myself! Here is the before picture of our house before we bought it. Super ugly and super gross. 

Here is our during picture of the wainscoting. My amazing husband worked so hard on it while I was at work, and all I had to do when I got home was paint. He also likes to pose in pictures acting like he is hurt. His acting skills are phenomenal, I hope you didn't believe that he was actually hurt!

Here is the after picture of the wainscoting.

 I love how it brightens up the whole kitchen. I love it! We did the wainscoting a few months ago, so the pictures are a little out dated with our tiny old table.  But I'm too lazy to go take a new picture with our table, you'll just have to imagine it. 

Farm House Table... Kirk Style.

I don't like to brag, but Matt and I are pretty much awesome at recreating other people's ideas and acting like  it was our idea.  I will stalk blogs and pinterest for weeks looking for the perfect project for us. Then I will tell Matt my crazy idea, and he figures out how to make it possible. I like to think that I am crafty and handy, but really I am just cheap and I hate paying for things that I think I can make.

My latest and greatest obsession was a farm house table. I originally saw the farm house table on one of my favorite blogs. Ever since then I couldn't get it out of my mind, I wanted that farm house table and I wanted it now.  It looked so easy to make, so I assumed I could do it! And for Christmas Matt gave me a coupon book stating that he will help me with any crazy projects I can come up with. That put me over the edge to start the project immediately! My parents had give us an old table a few months back that I knew would be perfect for the project.

The table definitely needed some love. It's previous owner, Eric, did some real damage to it. Don't mind the horrible quality of pictures. I was sanding, so there is dust in the air. Here is the before...

The during picture...

Here is the after.

 We tried not to match the stain to the floor, but it ended up matching it almost identically. 

The table turned out even better than I had imagined it! I love it!!