Archive for October, 2010
House Crashing: Inspired & Inexpensive
After Jordan and Landon shared their amazingly affordable (and drop dead gorgeous) kitchen overhaul with us (here), we definitely were left wanting more. So when they offered up the opportunity to House Crash them, we said “uh… yes please.” And we figured since it’s their house they’d be the best at showing you around, so we’re passing the virtual mic over to them for the tour while we clean our house within an inch of it’s life in an effort to woo a few more potential buyers this weekend (fingers crossed). Enjoy the tour!
Welcome to our home in Columbia, South Carolina! We’re Jordan & Landon from landonjacob.com.
You’ve already seen the kitchen (here), but we’ll share that pic again, just to refresh your memory:
This is our dining room. The wine bottles come from one of our favorite wedding venues that we shoot at often! We had them hold the bottles for us (and we bought a bottle cutter on eBay).
That’s actually a DIYed mirror leaning against the wall. We bought mirrored closet doors on Craigslist for $40 for the pair and then found an old weathered pallet, took it apart, and made two mirrors (one for in here and one for the hallway).
Our dining table is an amazing thrift store find that people ooh and ahh over. It was just 10 bucks! The chairs and bench were bought at a yard sale, and the ottoman was a throw out item from a friend.
Next we have our living room:
As you can see above, Landon made two frames out of more pallets. We really love that rustic wood (its kinda all over the house). We made that ottoman which was actually inspired by Kara’s DIY ottoman that you shared!
Oh and that old wine bottle crate in the foreground works as an awesome magazine holder. We also love our little DIY end tables which we made from vintage suitcases on legs. We also like those hanging baskets from Ikea on the wall next to the sofa (it was actually an idea we stole from the ikea catalog). The doors on the wall above the bookcases are original doors from the home, so we wanted to incorporate them into the room.
Next we have our master bedroom, where we added the beadboard wainscotting ourselves and hung a bunch of inexpensive frames that I sprayed white on the wall in a group.
And here’s our master bath. Can you tell we have a think for big mirrors? We love how they open things up and make rooms feel lighter and bigger.
This is our awesome little hallway! Its my favorite space in the house! Its about the size of our other rooms! The chairs were thrifted for $40 and we recovered them. That’s also the second homemade mirror that we made with the mirrored doors from Craigslist and the weathered wood pallet. We also grabbed that lotus light fixture from Ikea.
This is our office / crafts room. We thrifted that awesome craft table for 5 bucks. We also love instruments (we love music around here since my dad was a musician, and Landon is one as well… I sing, but technically that’s not a musician). Anyway I love how the blue guitar fits so perfectly in this room and that it gets to be a piece of art on the wall.
This is the spare bedroom. We found the bed on Craigslist and I bought those awesome orange curtains for about $1.50 at Goodwill!
This is our spare bathroom that we just finished off! It was a huge mess before! It’s so very tiny, so its kinda hard to show off in pictures, but I tried! That is your sink and faucet by the way (I was inspired by your bathroom overhaul) so we ordered them and added them to an antique wash stand that we found! And of course we have another huge mirror, but it really makes this bathroom feel so much bigger!
Ok, so that’s our house. Thanks so much for sharing it! – Jordan & Landon
So who’s jealous? Our hands are officially raised. Thanks so much to Jordan and Landon for sharing their home and all of their affordable DIY ideas. We’re sufficiently inspired. What was your favorite part everyone?
Double Bag It
How do we learn around these parts? By doing. And sometimes by panicking. So when someone called us to see our house out of the blue, and wanted to drop by in an hour, we panicked. But only for five to ten minutes. Then we used the other 50 minutes to do the ahh-someone’s-coming-to-look-at-our-house shuffle. Luckily the house was already pretty clean since we knew we would be showing it sooner or later. But what about that recommended pairing down step to reduce clutter and make cabinets and closets look bigger (so you don’t seem like you’re bursting at the seams)? Here’s how that went:
- Step 1: Take two large plastic bags (ideally big black lawn & leaf bags as opposed to smaller white trash bags)
- Step 2: Designate one bag as the donate/toss bag and one bag as the store-out-of-sight bag
- Step 3: Work your way around the house (every closet, nook, cranny) and toss anything that you can stand to get rid of forever into the donate/toss bag
- Step 4: Remember if you don’t want it in this house, it’s not likely that you’ll want it in your next one
- Step 5: Also remember that the bag isn’t going to the dump or Goodwill right away, so when in doubt just shove something in
- Step 6: As you go, if you see anything that you want to keep, but won’t need around while you sell the house, drop it into the store-out-of-sight bag in the name of decluttering (which can help sell the place)
- Step 7: Try to think of the store-out-of-sight bag as one of those Pods in your driveway (it’s only a temporary drop spot, nothing permanent)
- Step 8: Pop both bags into the trunk of your car to later be sorted (into a donate and a trash pile and a keep-this-in-the-car-during-open-houses bag)
Oh and we figure that people look in cabinets and closets but it takes an odd individual to peek into your hamper (skeevy much?). So in a pinch it seems like a great place to toss those last one or two things that you didn’t get a chance to pare down or store in a smarter way. Not that we would know. Ok, we shoved some errant books and magazines in there in the final minute before the doorbell rang. Hey, whatever works.
Image found here (then duplicated thanks to our friend Photoshop).
Mo Mortgage, Mo Problems
One of the first steps we took when we officially dubbed ourselves “house hunters” was to find out how much house we could afford. Sure, we knew what was in our bank account and what sort of mortgage payment we could handle… but it’s not about what we think. It’s about what the banks think. So we made an appointment with our lending agent (the same guy who helped us buy & later refinance this house) so he could analyze our assets to estimate what loan amount we’ll get – which obviously will help us determine the price range of the new house that we should be hunting for.
We were cautiously optimistic about this appointment. Optimistic because in the years since our first purchase in 2006 we’ve saved more and now that we’re married we knew we could combine our assets (we were engaged in ’06 when we purchased this house, and Sherry was only four months into being self-employed as a freelance copywriter so her income was considered “unstable” and I had to qualify for the house loan all by myself). But although we assumed we had to be in a better position today than we were four and a half years ago with only one income to consider, we still weren’t doing cartwheels because we know that banks are much more conservative these days. Plus now I’m the one who has only been self-employed for a few months. So Sherry can call me unstable this time.
In preparation of our big loan meeting, we gathered old tax forms & W-2s and calculated bank account balances. Then we sat down with our lending guy. His news wasn’t great. Since I’m no longer employed by the company that contributed 75-ish percent of our income in 2009 the banks weren’t going to count that income since I was no longer with the company. Not one dime of it. Instead, they’d base their approval solely on income from our current jobs (i.e. this blog) from the 2009 tax year. Without naming numbers, let’s just say that made us look less like two people who’d been working full-time for 6 years, and more like one person who just landed their first job after graduation. Crap.
Our lending agent said that in order to get this year’s blog income considered (which isn’t a ton, but is definitely more than our ’09 earnings) we’d have to wait until our 2010 taxes officially hit the books next spring.
Cue the wop-wop sound effect.
But just as we were about to mentally put our house hunt on hold, we got some good news. Despite the income issue, our good credit and our on-time mortgage payment history with our current house could still get us approved for a loan equivalent to the value of our current house. Good, except that buying a house of the same value doesn’t necessarily get us that smidge of extra square footage that we think will come in handy in the coming years as our family grows.
Then a light bulb went off (okay, more like our agent flipped the switch). We had forgotten about all of the equity in this house that we get to leverage by selling it. In other words, since we’ve paid off half of this house (it was extremely affordable and we put a lot of money down) that means our next house can be this house-and-a-half thanks to rolling that equity (read: money) over into the new house after selling this one. Not that we’re looking to go that big or spend that much. At all. But it’s comforting to know that we won’t be stretching financially (well, we already know how much we can afford, it’s just nice to know that the bank might just agree).
So let’s just say that taking a pay cut to be your own boss along with your self employed wife isn’t the best strategy to get the bank on board with you. Lesson learned.
In the end we’re happy with the outcome of the pre-approval process since the number we’re approved for puts us right in the perfect window to find a slightly-larger version of this house (about as big as we had hoped to make our current house back when we talked about adding a small addition on the back to give us some room to grow in the future when there are more Petersiks around). And this pre-house-hunting research gives us some extra leverage with realtors and sellers (they seem to like us pre-approved folks).
Now that we have the money stuff semi figured out, it’s time to pin down what we’re looking for in the next house when it comes to style, layout, and all that good stuff. Knowing Sherry there’s going to be a list involved. The girl is list crazy.
Psst- We announced our big winner for this week’s contest at the end of Monday’s original contest post. Click here to see if it’s you.
Putting The Family In Family Room
Here’s where we explain the second half of Farah’s home makeover (click here to read our first post on the subject). Basically HomeGoods offered us some free merch for our house and we asked if we could pay it forward and transform someone else’s casa instead. Unbelievably they agreed. And we decided that we couldn’t stop at just sprucing up Farah’s mom cave after we laid eyes on her family room. So we have another before and after for all you transformation loving fiends. Here’s her cute family again, just to refresh your memory.
And here’s their family room before:
Here’s the same room after we got our mitts on it:
It was pretty much a blank slate, and we were lucky enough to be able to work with a lot of Farah’s existing things (the sectional, the recliner, the side tables, the wood frames, the coffee table, etc). So it just came down to adding some room-making accessories and bringing in a ton of kid-friendly function for Laila without cramping the grown up’s style.
One of the biggest changes came from suggesting some warm artichoke green for the walls (Benjamin Moore’s Nantucket Breeze color matched to satin Behr paint). The room glows like candlelight with a soft green tint. And thanks to everything from the new table lamps to the soft texture-adding rug, the space really feels warmer and more inviting.
Farah even primed and painted the existing recliner (see how here) and we brought in a cute green bench (which used to sit unused in a corner of Laila’s room) to create an entire area that could be devoted solely to her toys and games. Because it’s always nice to work in some kid-space within a public living area. You know so they don’t feel banished (like those old formal living rooms where children weren’t allowed and the sofas were covered in plastic).
We thought hanging three white hooks with inexpensive Ikea baskets on the wall above the green bench would add even more stash space for Laila and her gear (while keeping things looking organized and simple). Plus we’re not gonna lie, it was a whole lot cheaper than buying a big cabinet or console table to fill up that wall.
And over in the kitchen, we moved the white bench (which used to live where we put the green bench) over into the kitchen near the table. See, whenever Farah entertains she pulls the table out into the room and adds the bench. This way she doesn’t have a blank wall in the family room anymore when she has guests over. And Laila now has a little zone to enjoy every day. Win-win.
And see that print above the bench? We’ll explain more about that in a bit.
But first, here’s another POV of the seating area:
And another one:
And another one:
And see that basket under the side table atop that stack of mags? It’s just one of two leftover woven Ikea baskets that we got for the wall above the green bench. We thought they would add even more function if we used each of them to corral Laila’s board books. Now adult reads and kid reads can peacefully coexist without looking like a doctor’s waiting room.
And not only did we make a little Laila zone with the green bench and those hanging baskets, we also tossed a few of her toys on a plastic (read: unbreakable) tray on the coffee table. Since kid stuff tends to inexplicably migrate around a room, I figured that embracing that fact by using some pint sized play things for the reveal would depict how the room would really look after Laila works her decorating magic. Let’s just say I was channeling my inner two year old. Plus how cute are those tiny plastic bananas? Maybe plastic fruit will be my new obsession akin only to ceramic animals.
Here’s that photo that we said we’d get back to. It’s actually a portrait that we shot of Laila in the backyard holding mini grapes.
When Farah said she was looking for a berry-related print for a frame that she already had to hang above her bench in the kitchen, she asked if we could shoot photos of her own daughter’s hands holding berries for a one-of-a-kind customized result. One DIY photoshoot with Johnny P the photog and twenty bucks later (we had it printed at a local shop downtown) we had our one of a kind print for the wall. Now Farah can enjoy something a bit more custom than anything that she’d ever find online or in a big box store.
Oh, forgive me for being captain obvious here, but here’s a cheap (and edible) centerpiece idea for you. Nothing beats a bowl full of fresh green apples:
This is just a gratuitous basket detail shot because I can’t get over those cute blue shoes that match our color scheme. I’m shallow like that.
And now for another budget breakdown:
- Paint: $100 (five whole gallons- we suggested Farah paint the ceiling & adjoined kitchen to avoid breaking up the room)
- Rug: $299 (8 x 10 from HomeGoods)
- Kitchen blinds: $60 (faux wood blinds from Home Depot to unify the kitchen windows)
- Side table lamps: $29 each (from HomeGoods)
- Blue bird: $9.99 (from HomeGoods)
- Blue finial on mantel: $12.50 (from HomeGoods)
- Pillows: $55 (brown ones from HomeGoods, rest from World Market)
- Custom Laila hand photo in kitchen: $20 (printed locally at Uptown Color)
- Decorative remote box: $15 (from HomeGoods)
- Kitchen table runner: $12 (from HomeGoods)
- Kitchen bench pillow: $20 (from HomeGoods)
- Baskets under green bench: $22 (from Target)
- Hanging toy baskets above bench & under side tables: $30 total (from Ikea)
- TOTAL: $713.49 ($296 spent by Farah thanks to HomeGoods!)
We went into this family room (and semi-kitchen) makeover with the Trading Spaces spirit- we definitely gave Farah her fair share of homework, from painting the walls to hanging the blinds and even priming and painting her recliner. So we assumed the total would come to around a thousand dollars a la Vern Yip or Genevieve Gorder from their glory days on TS. Needless to say, we were pretty darn psyched when we crunched the numbers and realized we were about $300 short of that, especially since we squeezed in some big ticket items (like a giant 8 x 10 rug, tons of paint, and matching side table lamps) as well as a slew of accessories (from pillows and a table runner to baskets and hooks, a ceramic bird, and even a large custom photograph of little Laila herself). We had so much fun with Farah and family! Thanks for letting us barge in and order you around like Doug Wilson. What about you guys at home? Do you have a corner in your family room for kid-paraphernalia? Or small plastic bananas as coffee table decor? Somebody please say yes to that.
Word To Your Motha Cave
Move over man cave, this post is all about a mom cave. When HomeGoods contacted us to offer us a gift card to create a mom cave in our house, we asked if we could pay it forward instead. And they were game. Oh and then we asked what the heck a mom cave was.
It’s actually a little haven for any mom in her own home. The mom’s answer to the man cave if you will. It can just be a small corner of a bedroom with a chair for relaxing and reading or an entire room devoted to crafting, pedicuring, or anything else that your little mom heart desires. So I set out to find a deserving momma in need of a figurative cave to recharge her mom batteries. And Farah (mom to adorable two-year-old Laila) of eMommie seemed like the perfect pick. Here she is now with little Laila and her hubby Luke.
So we popped over to her house to see what we were working with. She showed us into this rarely used office that she had always been meaning to transform into a quiet room for reading, meditating, relaxing, and just calming the heck down after a long day of working and moming.
You can see from the paint swatches on the wall in the photo above that Farah was planning to bring in a serene blue color for those walls. But when it came to actually picking the color she was experiencing a bit of paint paralysis. So we whipped ‘em out (our paint decks, that is) and helped her choose a color (Catalina Blue by Benjamin Moore color matched to satin Behr paint). Then we dropped the H-bomb (aka: told her we had some HomeGoods swag that we could add on their dime). That was fun. I can’t imagine what it’s like to tell someone they won a million dollars or a house on HGTV since it was so darn exciting to announce that we had some free furnishings and accessories for her future mom cave.
After we all simmered down (we were as excited as she was) we left her with some homework a la Trading Spaces. We assigned her and her hubby Luke with the job of picking up our pre-selected paint color and going to work on those white walls. And we ran to HomeGoods and a few other stores to shop for her mom cave makeover in the meantime. Here’s John holding the lamp and the print that we knew would be perfect for Farah’s room.
And here’s her mom cave after the big makeover:
The wall color definitely set the stage for relaxing and escaping the daily grind. And thankfully Farah had a few basic items already on hand that we could work with. Like the two Ikea tables in front of the window, a pair of white Ikea curtains from another room, the white armoire that she had tucked behind the doors to this very room (why were they hiding such a great piece?) and a few accessories like the picture frames, the blue vase on top of the armoire, the blue pillow on the chair, the blanket rack, and the brown branches. And once we moved those things around and worked out a new layout, it was obvious that all we needed were a few things to polish the room off.
Like a new chair for the corner, some larger hanging lanterns (in an easy-on-the-eyes grouping of three), a nice textured and cozy rug, a sculptural table lamp, some inexpensive art, and a small basket for next to the chair (to corral books and magazines).
Farah’s favorite thing of the entire makeover is the chair, which actually has a cool greeny-yellow Ikat fabric on it. We love how it works with the lamp shade and some of the coloring in the lotus art to bring a nice warm glow to the cool blue space. Oh and it’s comfy. Clara and I tested it out extensively (ok, so I fed her in it mid-makeover… a girl’s gotta eat!).
And you know we’re cheap right? Well, we are. So when we needed a few finishing touches we decided to flex our cheapskate muscles and hunt down some serious deals for Farah (since she agreed to foot the rest of the makeover beyond the HomeGoods donation and gave us a budget to work with- so official, right?). Anyway, when we happened upon these $15-for-all-three paper lanterns from World Market…
… and a $15 clearance rug at Target (yes, a fifteen dollar 4 x 6 Thomas O’ Brien rug!) we snatched them up faster than you can say minemineminemine (that’s a Finding Nemo reference FYI).
Here’s the full budget breakdown:
- Paint: $20 (Benjamin Moore Catalina Blue color matched to Behr)
- Chair: $120 (from HomeGoods)
- Lamp: $50 (from HomeGoods)
- Lotus art: $25 (from HomeGoods)
- Rug: $15 (on clearance from Target)
- Paper lanterns: $15 (from World Market)
- Magazine basket: $16 (from Target)
- Total: $276 (just $81 spent by Farah thanks to HomeGoods!)
Not bad right? Especially because most chairs can run you $300 or more, and we also managed to squeeze in paint, art, a rug, a lamp, and a few accessories for under $280 (and Farah only had to break out four twenties). But the makeover fun isn’t over. We’re greedy little buggers. So when we laid eyes on Farah’s potential-riddled living room we knew we could do a little somethin-somethin in there too. So we did. That post in a minute (there are too many pictures to merge it with this one).
In the meantime what kind of inadvertent mom caves do you guys have going on at home? I admit that anywhere I’m nursing around the house becomes my temporary mom cave because I get to zone out and focus on Clara for a few moments every 2.5 hours or so. Gotta love that baby for the self-imposed breaks that she gives me.
