The After Pictures - I Need Your Feedback!!!

OK, so the rooms are not completely put back together but, they are about 90% done. The trim and thresholds are not done yet but, neither is all the flooring so we will be doing that when all the flooring is laid. Please, feel free to leave me comments and/or suggestions for a diferent furniture arrangement or ideas for some new accessories. I am always up for new ideas.

This is a picture of the formal living room taken from the office door. The front door is to the right and the dining room is to the left. The curio cabinet is supposed to be in the corner but, the extra flooring planks are stacked in the corner. I deas for an area rug???

This is the living room taken from the kitchen. Again, the curio is usually in the corner.

This is the dining room taken from the living room. The kitchen is to the left and is divided by a penninsula and upper bank of cabinets. We recently replaced our brass chandelier with this beautiful Tiffany style fixture. We love the colors. Please disregard the boxes on the table and all my homeschool stuff stack on the sideboard. What colors would you paint in these 2 rooms (really one big room) keeping in mind that we love the wood moldings?

Here is a view of where we stopped for now. I am standing in between the 2 rooms facing the kitchen and past that, the family room. Please pretend the cluttered countertops are nice and clear and clean. The floor will continue through the kitchen and into the family room (where the kids are). I love how well the floor matches the cabinets. I can't wait for all of it to be done.

This is taken from the same spot. The kitchen is to the right and the office door is to the left. I need to do sometthing different interms of pictures here. I know that one of the pictures is crooked. The lamp is the one I aquired at the Nester's Swap Meet a few months back. I just bought a Better Homes and Garden shade for it at WalMart. I like it but, not with the wall behind it. Any suggestions???


I am linking this post to DIY Day at A Soft Place To Land.

Finally Finished . . . Well . . . Almost!

I have been so busy with getting back into the full swing of homeschooling, and moving rooms around, and sorting through old stuff, and doing outside work on the house, and . . . and . . . and . . .

I feel like life needs to slow down a little bit. Anyway, I finally finished a project that was bothering me. I just couldn't figure out what to do with my huge, pain-in-the-neck living room windows. Here is what I posted when Nester had her Mistreatment Par-Tay:

I had asked for help and many of you had some really great ideas. A couple of days later, I tried this:

I took down the panel from the middle window and added panels to the 2 end windows. I had all 3 toile panels up but it just didn't look right. So, I took them all down. I liked the way the bottom of the windows looked but even after I removed all of the upper panels, it still looked unfinished. I figured I would take a break and come back to it later. Maybe if I distracted myself with a different project, the answer would come to me . . . and it did!

We went to a birthday party for the daughter of dear friends. When I walked in to the kitchen I noticed that she had taken her blinds down but the room was still cool even thought the sun was setting into the windows. She told me they had bought this film for the windows at Lowe's that blocks out 99% of the UV rays and 80% of the heat that comes from the sunlight that shines in the windows. It looked so good! I couldn't even tell that there was anything on the windows and they had done it themselves. It is about $32 and I would only need one package so I have decided to leave the top of the windows naked and get some of that film. I will leave the blackout fabric in the windows until the summer is really over as it has helped with our cooling expenses. Thanks Kevin and Heather!!!

So, I returned from the party with renewed inspiration. I only had to put the finishing touches on the bottom half of the window. I dragged my mother and my sister with me to Hancock Fabrics and we were there for like 2 hours. Everything I LOVED was $24.99 a yard and I knew I needed 6 or 7 yards for this idea I had in my crazy head. There was NO WAY I was spending $150-$175 on those windows. I could have gone and had custom drapes made for that!!! After a little while, the lady in the decorator fabric department decides that she was going to help me. I guess I was getting on her nerves. I kept taking all the rolls of fabric and draping them over each other and walking across the room to see if I liked it. She was clearly getting annoyed. So I showed her the fabric that I had used to make my panels for the bottom of the window and explained my idea to her. She leaves and comes right back with a steely blue chintz for $4.89 a yard. It goes perfectly with the blue stripes in the panels. I think she was just happy to be rid of us. She recognized me the other day when I was in there to buy some fabric for a valance for Jeremy's room. She looked a little nervous. Anyway, here is what I've done:

I purchased some curtain tieback pegs on clearance at Target and 2 yards of brown satin ribbon. That paired with 2 safety pins and 2 tea cup hooks and I had successfully achieved my vision for this window. I successfully covered the awkward break between the windows. SO HAPPY!!! I also took the 2 side panels from the upper windows and covered the pillows on the 2 chairs. I love them!!! The only thing I still want to do is to add the trim in the following picture to the 2 hanging edges of the valance. Here are my fabrics all together with the trim:

I will have to take a new picture when I get the window film put up. Let me know what you think.

Mistreatment Partay with The Nester

I have been so inspired by what the Nester has done in her home that I have decided to "mistreat" some of my windows as well. I will even show you one disaster in the making (which of course I am stuck on). Maybe you can help me.



So here is my first mistreatment. It is a valance that I made for the kitchen window. I had a bag of fabric scraps and a box of OLD ribbon that I got from a lady at church. The fabrics is the skirt portion of a little girl's jumper and I glued the ribbons onto it and used coordinating plastic clothespins to hang it on an existing rod. I hung it at the ceiling and it mostly covers the wall. Please disregard how the wall paper is hung upside down on this section of the wall. It was like that when we bought it. The cost for this project was: $0

The next room I did was my formal dining room. I used some old homemade curtain panels and hung them at the top of the window so they would reach the floor. Then I hung a rod just below the crown molding and hung my nifty mistreated window topper to cover the wall and the top of the lower curtains. I really love this fabric and I had just enough to make it look like a custom cornice board. The velvet covered buttons make it look even more tailored and formal. In the first picture you can see the lampshades on the chandelier that I mistreated with some dangly, beaded trim. Even my husband liked it and he seldom gets excited about decorating. The scallops are not as crooked as they appear in these photos. The cost for this project was: $8

The next room I did was my bedroom. We have 2 windows on either side of the bed but since my bed was not made, I only took a picture of one of the windows. They are both dressed the same. I already had the sheers in there. The mossy green panels were a pair that I had gotten at Walmart at least 3 years ago on clearance. I cut each panel in half and glues the cut edge so the fabric wouldn't unravel and made dumby panels. It has almost a burlap weave but it is soft and smaller weave so it made a mess when I cut it. The toile and gingham were remnants from Hobby Lobby. I hung everything just under the crown molding on rods I already had. The cost for this project was: $6 (for 2 windows) Does anyone have any ideas for the lampshades?





The next room is a work in progress and I really need everyone's help. I started in the formal living room by pairing existing cream colored panels with the striped panels that I made using my glue gun. I have blackout fabric in the top windows because we live in the south and these windows face west. The sun bakes this room in the summer so I cut blackout fabric to fit these windows and velcroed them to the window frame. In the fall and winter, I can take them down and at Christmastime, I take everything down out of this window so the world can see my tree! Anyways, I am having a hard time dressing the top of the window to cover the blackout fabric. I also purchased some wonderful blue fabric on Saturday at Hancock's 50% off sale and some trim. There is a picture of all of it together. Any ideas for me?









I have some other projects and fabrics to play with after I finish the formal living room monster window. Take a look at my clearance finds:




I am thinking about mistreating a round table and a sideboard with these.

I am going to do a cornice or something in the family room with this.

I love everyone's pictures and ideas that I've seen so far. Thanks in advance for the help.