Our Rancher: Before & After - The Living Room.

The curb appeal and entrance were certainly not the only areas of our home that needed a total overhaul.  In part two of my little "before and after" series, it's all about the living room portion of our great room.  The wall...the outdated doors...the old windows...the shag carpet...it all had to go!

If you missed the intro and part one of the series, you can catch up here and here.  Next up is our dining room "then and now"!

Rugs, Revealed.

This post has been a long time coming.  I 100% blame the procrastination on the awful pain it is to put an 8 x 10 rug under a crazy heavy king bed, with a million supports beneath it.  Hubby and I just did not feel like tackling that task.  That meant the living room and guest room rugs were in place for a long time, and the rug for our master bedroom sat, rolled up, in our living room for weeks.

Thankfully, due to a fun Super Bowl party we hosted, we were forced to cross things off our to-do list...so we put on our big girl/boy pants, and maneuvered that sucker into place.

If you are new to my blog, and my rug issues, I have made it pretty clear that I have a fear of buying rugs, especially from online retailers.  1) Rugs are usually such an investment, and 2) 99.9% of rugs I want to buy are online, and therefore I can’t see or feel them before I take the plunge.  Well one day I threw caution to the wind and went for it.  Yup, I ordered three rugs from Rugs USA...all at one time.

I didn’t know what to expect, so I was super anxious for them to arrive.  Luckily, when I unrolled each one, I was more and more pleased.  They were all prettier in person than they were online, and I couldn’t be happier with my decision to place the order.  {Plus it didn’t hurt that I got them extremely discounted at 65% off...which is the only way we could afford 3 of them!}

Now I know there are all sorts of "rules" when it comes to rug size and placement...but I'm pretty sure those rules are for people who can afford to follow them.  And we aren't those people. :-/  That means I bought a smaller 5 x 8 rug for our living room space...because really, my main concern was having a cushy rug under foot for relaxing on the couch, or in case some young kids were over and wanted to snuggle on the floor to watch a movie or to play. 

And the guest bedroom rug could probably be bigger too, but I just wanted something to give people's feet a nice place to land when they got out of bed.  Plus, it can also be swapped out for the living room rug in case we wanted a pop of color out there in the spring and summer months.  Like I said, we are working with a budget, people!

For our master bedroom, we had to go with an 8 x 10 rug because anything smaller would have looked ridiculous.  Since we bought two smaller rugs for the other spaces, we could afford to go bigger here.  I love the comfort it adds to our room.

I am so thankful our big purchase wasn't a bust!  I think they add a little something to each room.  And hopefully you'll be seeing more of them soon because I'm determined to pick up my house tour posts again!  I might even re-do the living space because it's changed so much from my original post.

Anyone else on the cusp of purchasing a rug??  Anyone else laugh in the face of rug rules??  {Please tell me I'm not the only one!!}

Taking a Risk...On Rugs.

So I did it...I finally purchased rugs online.  Am I the only one that struggles so badly with purchasing rugs?  I would love to buy one from an actual brick and mortar store.  I’d be able to see it, feel it and have a good sense if it would work in our house...but while I’m out shopping, I never find the right:  a) pattern/color, 2) size and d) price.  {Anyone catch the movie reference?!?!}

That leaves me with one option...rug shopping online.  I love “window” shopping for rugs on the Internet.  As a matter of fact, I have been stalking quite a few of them for over a year.  My sites of choice are Overstock and Rugs USA.  Their selections and prices are UH-MAZ-ING, but knowing that I’d be responsible for return charges {if necessary} to get the rug back to the store had me avoiding the "buy" button.  Eeeeek!

This fear has kept our living room rugless, and I was afraid our bedroom would suffer the same fate now.  Luckily, I put my big girl pants on last week, and I purchased, not just one, but THREE rugs for our home!  Whaaaaaaat?!?!  Yup, you heard me right...three!

First up, one for our master bedroom.  Since we needed a sizable rug (an 8’ x 10’, or something larger) to fit under our king bed, I decided to check out Flor carpet tiles first.  I figured this might be a great idea since I could create a “U” shape around the perimeter of our bed, and therefore not pay for the rug area that would be under our bed.  I measured out how many tiles we’d need and it ended up being about $270.

But thennnn, I saw this chevron ikat rug that I love on Rugs USA, and the 8’3” x 11 rug was only $10 more than that because of a 50% off coupon {WINT50}.  Woot woot!

After figuring out our bedroom situation, I moved my focus to our living room.  I measured things out, and figured that I could get away with a 5’ x 8’ rug for now because of how our couch is shaped.  I found two rugs that I love...one ikat and one herringbone, and couldn’t decide between the two.  Either could go in the living room or in our guest bedroom.  Since they were also 50% off {WINT50}, I added both to my cart and figured I'd swap them back and forth depending on what look we wanted to go for.  WIN-WIN!

Getting 50% off on my purchase allowed me to get 3 rugs for the price of one...it was almost a no-brainer!

And then wouldn’t you know it...the next morning I got an email from Rugs USA telling me that they were having a 65% off sale {NY2013, expires 1/7/13}.  Come on!  I just placed my order not even 24 hours before that!!

I immediately called customer service to see if they would grant me the 65% off discount, and they said sure!  Although there was a catch.  {Isn’t there always a catch?}  The prices of all the rugs I bought had gone up...so the discount would be taken from the new, higher price.  I did some quick math with the rep and realized that even though the prices went up, I'd still be saving an additional $110!  Yes, please!!  All three rugs for $450...not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

Now...let’s just say a few small prayers, and keep our fingers crossed, that we like all the rugs when they arrive!!  #idontwanttopaytoreturnanyofthem #ahhhhhhhhhhh

The Start of a House Tour.

I’m a very bad blogger.  I’m awful at posting regularly and I feel terrible about it.  I even managed to let my very first blogiversary pass by without positing!!  Boooooo me.  So since I’m almost a month late on that major milestone, I decided I’d try and make it up to all of you by finally starting a proper house tour of our casa.  I’ve shown some rooms here and there, and you’ve probably seen all the spaces while I was posting about projects and what not {because let's be serious...our house isn't that big}, but I just won’t be satisfied until I can add a “House Tour” tab to my blog. ;)

Plus, I really like taking a step back and seeing how far our little ranch has come in a year.  Sometimes you can get caught up in how much more you want to do, and easily forget how far you’ve already come.

Here’s a quick refresher on how things went down for us.  We closed on our home in August 2011, the day before Hurricane Irene hit.  We took out a rehab loan to purchase our house so we could buy and renovate the main floor.  We started working on painting and cleaning up the exterior in August and the interior demo began the last couple days of September 2011.  That is also when I started this lil' blog.  Our renovations took a couple months {although it felt like years}, and we were finally able to move into our home on Christmas Eve 2011.

I figure I’ll start our home's tour in the “great” room of our house.  This space used to have a defined entry/hallway, living/dining room combo and kitchen.  We quickly changed that closed-off space to make it more "us".  So without further delay, here are entirely too many pictures of one area in our home.

View from the front door...

View into the living room...

View from the corner of the living room...

View into the living room towards the front of the house...

View from the fireplace towards the front door...

View from the living room toward the basement stairs... 

View towards the front door...

View twoards the bedrooms and bathrooms...

View into the dining room...

View from the old kitchen entrance...

View from dining room corner toward the front door...

View from fireplace towards kitchen entrance...

View into kitchen from hallway entrance...

View from kitchen, towards the dining room...

View from dining room entrance to hall entrance...

View from hallway towards the kitchen/dining/living rooms...

So what do you say...do my bagillion pictures of the same-space-from-every-angle-possible make up for my sporadic posting schedule?!?!  I'm praying the answer to that is yes, and in return I will give you a totally non-creepy Internet hug and hopefully post more house tour pictures before Thanksgiving rolls around. ;)  Kidding!!  {Sort of.}

Show and Tell

I went on a successful little jaunt to Home Goods last week.  {Is anyone surprised?!?!}  I was looking for lamps, but somehow managed to come home with a couple uh-mazing pillows and throws.

I mean, how could I resist these things?  They were practically begging to come home with me!



Chevron throw...YES PLEASEEEEEEEE! 

Squishy, ruffle-ly pillow...yup!

Big aqua pillow {with fabric that I tried to purchase months ago, but couldn't because it was discontinued}...of course!

Fun, grellow lumbar pillow...why not?

Softest throw ever {not kidding}...heck yea!

I also might have purchased a new mirror to go above our mantle because it's wider than the one we had up there and I thought it would look better.  The jury is still out on that one. ;)