Making the House into Our Home: Main Room

As you may or may not remember, this past December we bought a house. It's a wonderfully darling, old farmhouse on a beautiful, mature 2 acre lot. It's in our home town and right near both of our families. In short, it's just perfect for our growing little family.

But, as with most older houses, I assume, it needs much updating and personalizing. Actually, I'd like to eventually alter every room in the house, in some way or another. So it's definitely going to be our "Work in Progress" for many years to come. But we're just taking it one room at a time. And for now, we've been focusing on the 2 most important areas: the Main Room (Dining/Living) and Little Brother's Room.

We started (and I use "we" very loosely - Jared did all the hard work) first in the Main Room (Dining/Living). I think it was about a week after Christmas when we started - with the tearing down of the wall paneling! And with the exception of hardwood floors and crown molding - which will both just have to wait for now - last month our Main Room was finally finished!

I've been trying to snap a picture here and there each time we're on a new step. The following is photo documentation of just how far we've come.

I love to look through home magazines and online and such (for ideas/inspiration) and always find myself drawn to the more cottage-y feel. I like open, airy, light rooms. I love white and adore simplicity.

So I transformed much of the furniture we already had with some white paint. And Jared did an amazing job with the lightly textured walls - he pretty much completely rebuilt them with at least 3 layers of mud over all the old plaster.

Overall, I am very, very pleased with the way our room turned out. The whole look and feel of it. It's just like I pictured everything in my head :)

So, after about 5 months, we finally have a cozy dining/living room where we can just eat, relax, and be. ♥

The "Before" - this is how it looked when we moved in

Close up on the wall paneling. Awesome, huh? I'm sure you're wondering why we would have ever wanted to tear all this amazing-ness down.... :)

And there go the panels!

Hooray! They're no more!

Fixing one spot with some drywall where the plaster was just too damaged

Time to Prime!

Proof I helped. In all my pregnant, fresh-faced glory. Yep.

More priming...
(the first coat, before the mud, we had to prime after the mud, too)

Mud!

Working hard to rebuild those walls :)

Sanding....

Another coat of mud.
And Holden hanging out, watching Daddy, with his snacks :)

(Now add a few more rounds of sanding and mudding layers in there and then.....)

Furniture Transformations!





Some of the stuff I painted:

Old Church Pew......

........White and Fresh!

Rocking Chair...........

........... Reborn! :)

And then just some of the other stuff I did: 2 bookshelves,
the entertainment center, and the kitchen table

(And after some more priming and wall painting - which for some reason I didn't take any pictures of.....)

Hanging the new light.

And we have a room!

Dining Area. I love my pew :)

Rocking Chair, Couch, and Old Trunk/End table

Finally feeling like home♥