Moving in and Painting Some More and Unpacking...and painting some more...

At the end of August we moved into our new house!

We got up super early and with the help of Tim's dad, brother-in-law and some great friends (Thanks to all!) we had everything in the house by 3 pm. After we'd squared away the moving van and gotten our bed set up on the floor :( we collapsed with visions of paint rollers and drop-clothes in our heads.

We were able to finish the master bedroom almost immediately within the first couple of days. We painted it a yellow that's a few shades off from the kitchen. I really like it. When the sun sets at night it goes this lovely buttercream-y colour.

Here's a picture of the semi-finished product:

We still have a few things to hang on the wall and a have to find a couple of area rugs for beside the bed. I'm not looking forward to cold floors come winter.

After the master, I figured the next most important room was the kitchen. So we tackled the kitchen next. Here's the outcome here:

The only thing that I am unhappy about, is the bookshelf. I really would like a hutch type piece that can store our bigger countertop appliances below and our more decorative items at the top.  The only problem is this thing that sticks out on the baseboards of the wall. It's probably some old heating pipes or something but it sure is a pain in the neck. We've looked at all kinds of units and all that really will seem to work is a desk-y type thing, I was looking at this one from Ikea. But that doesn't really fit my country home. So we are going to keep our eyes open and maybe, fingers crossed, we'll stumble across something at an auction or antique store. The only criteria will really be that it has four legs with no crossbars and is high enough to fit over the 'bulkhead on the floor.' I don't really care what kind of shape its in because I'll likely paint it.

The other angle in the kitchen. You can see the 'bulkhead on the floor' in behind the rolling island, that's the area I would ideally like the hutch to be, since the other wall seems a bit crowded with the freezer and bookshelf.

Next came the study and the living/dining room. The study is pretty much done except for a pile of things to sell. I think that alphabetizing our books has been probably one of my favourite house chores to do so far. There is something so satisfying about organizing them all. There were a few arguments along the way, such as where to put multiple author, oversized, collected and special interest works but we figured it out. And arguing was half the fun!

The study is probably the room we've been spending the most time in. We're really digging the coziness of it.

Tim is especially happy with the wall of bookshelves - his idea! I'm particularly pleased because it didn't cost that much. We snagged the bookshelves on sale at Home Depot for a song - the smaller ones were $25 each and the larger were $40 each. That brought the total cost of the room to $225 since we didn't change the colour and had everything else given to us at some point. I'm very proud of our frugality!

The living/dining room is the room that I'm least pleased with so far. We've debated about recovering the sofa. It's sorta nice with the paint colour, but it doesn't really match the chair that I had upholstered before moving to especially fit in this space. We're also waiting on the 'sideboard' to be finished. It's really a dresser that I'm painting for the room but it isn't finished yet. And since it's not in the room yet we can't hang any pictures. So this room is still semi-semi-done. Here's the work in progress:

That's The Witten sittin' profile perfect! Anyhow, the sideboard will be going along the wall in the right hand side of the photo (the straight back chair with the phone on it is place-holding).  I am actually really quite pleased with the way the coffee table turned out. It was an old, old table we got off of kijiji for $15. We cut the legs down and voila, a gorgeous, shabby chic coffee table! We're debating on making it smaller (tabletop-wise) but the room is pretty big and I think it can take it.

Please don't mind our mess...we still have to find homes for some of the things in the background.  But from this picture you can see the couch, which I think goes well with the blue but doesn't really go well with the upholstered chair (see below).

You can see that the chair has lots of red in it, which I like, and some pink, which is also in the couch colours, I'm just not sure they go together.  Also, you can take a bit of a closer look at the coffee table and it's total awesomeness.

One of our last rooms was the guest bedroom. If you'll recall it was a bright blue. We toned it down with a taupe-ish colour and then added green accents. I'm quite pleased with the finished product. The only part that still needs work is the hanging rack unit. We'd hoped not to need it, but in a century house with no closets, extra hanging storage was definitely necessary. (I have a lot of coats, Tim has a lot of suits.) I have an idea for covering it but that will have to wait until all else is squared away.

Here's the spare room:

One of the on-going projects was finishing the accent pieces in the bathroom. The bathroom is quite big; we have been figuring that before indoor plumbing it was likely another bedroom.We weren't painting the room but I still wanted there to be an overall feeling of it being a casually blue room. Bathroom = water = blue. So we added a shelving unit and a screen to hide The Witten's litterbox and her food (we have to feed her in the bathroom otherwise Ulli eats it all).  I had made the shelving unit out of older pine planks that Tim's dad had, and the shelving unit was made with halved cedar louvred closet doors (the other halves were used to make boot boxes for our mudroom, which will be a much later project).

Here are those accent pieces:

You'll notice that The Witten has her own window (behind the screen), so she can eat her food with a view. 

Lastly is an area I've organized for some extra work space - the landing between the bathroom and the bedroom. It's mostly just storing all my artsy/crafty stuff. All we have to be on the hunt for is a light fixture and it will be perfect:

So that's the house so far. I'll keep posting on how it's going, as I'm sure we'll continue to adjust things. But it is feeling much more Home Sweet Home.