home updates {living room shelves}

I love all the character of our house, but one thing the house didn't have a lot of was built-ins.  I love me some old house built-ins... and maybe there used to be some that got removed during renovations over the years, who knows.

So I was really wanting some shelving in our living room.  I looked at lots of pictures of different types of shelving that Caleb & I could do ourselves for a quick-fix that still looked nice.  One major trend that I did like was the pipe shelving units like this one...

via

But honestly that option seemed really permanent, time consuming to construct, and more expensive.  Then I remembered the post from House Tweaking where she talked about her new living room shelves and I decided to go more of the metal track route...

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I didn't get a great "before" picture because I didn't get my camera out until we started working on it. So here is my best before... {with one of the metal tracks already up}

The metal tracks comes in a gray metal, black, & white.  It took me a while to decide between gray and black, but I went with black because I have other black hardware in the room.

Installation of these are super easy and self-explanatory.

The stain I went with is the one on the far left, a Minwax brand - color is Ipswich Pine.  The boards we used are a stain-grade pine boards.  We have yet to secure the boards to the brackets, but we will do that... someday.  I like how they turned out!

Of course Rifle Paper Co. makes its cameo in my post...

 

This is a very easy shelving unit to DIY in one afternoon...we even did another one in my master bathroom!  But now is not the time to show pics of my bathroom. :)

 

home updates {paint & fireplace facelift}

We have been in our house for about 3 1/2 months now and I really thought I'd be better at updating the blog with improvements we have made... but that hasn't been the case!  For whatever reason I have not been motivated about updating the blog at all, but now I'm ready! :)

The bulk of what we have changed is wall color.  So far we have painted the dining room, living room, entry way, & stairway (which includes the upstairs hallway).  It has dramatically changed the look of the house, considering all the rainbow colors that filled those rooms before.

The living room/entry way/stairway/upstairs hallway is all the same color.  It's a shade of white with a hint of gray/beige {greige, if you will}. Here is a quick look into the entry way before & after with an Istagram pic I posted...

The color is Sherwin Williams Oyster White.  Its a very nice light neutral that isn't too warm or too cool in my opinion.


Here is a quick glance at the new dining room color... first the horrible candy apple green before pic

And now....

 This color is from one of my favorite home decor stores, Nell Hills.  The owner of that store has her own line of paint and each room of her amazing store is painted of her colors.  I loved getting to see the wall color up in a nice bright room... it kept me from feeling like I needed to paint a million samples on my own wall.  The color is called Abby Steps; it's a dark gray/blueish color.  This picture was taken in bright daylight so this is the lightest it ever looks.  It's darker at night, almost like a charcoal color. I went ahead bought the paint right from Nell Hills because the price of the gallon there was no different than from anywhere else.  Plus, I didn't want to have to go through color matching and whatnot. 

I also decided I didn't like the surround tile on the living room fireplace - it was brown up next to dark stained wood of the mantle.  I really wanted to lighten it up and keep it a very simple and classic color scheme.  The original tile layout had a darker brown tile border on the tiles flush with the floor, I decided to keep that detail by using two colors.

Since this was very old tile, there were definitely some flaws in the tile - which I knew would probably stand out more when I painted.  But with a hundred year old house, that's just what ya get.


And now...

I had to prime the tile first with a primer that a guy at SW recommended.  The white color is a mix {yes, because I'm complicated} of SW Oyster White {the wall color} and SW Roman Column.  I started my first coat with just the Roman Column color, but it was a little too white-white for me.  So I mixed in a little of the Oyster White wall color to make it a bit creamier.

The blackish stripe at the bottom is SW Sealskin.

Here the very beginning pic to now...

That's it for now! More to come... hopefully sooner rather than later!
Happy Valentine's Day!