August 23, 2010

Sunroom: Mini Project

I am SO excited about the change that I made yesterday to the sun room.  I should start by saying that this weekend Chris was gone, Sarah & I had 2 photo shoots and 1 client meeting, and I was invited to a girls sleepover on Friday.  Sarah and I restyled a couple places of her apartment and apparently when I woke up on Sunday Tink and I were feeling ambitious...so we got to work!

One of the things I've always loved about our house is our sun room.  One thing I've always hated about our sun room is the floor - GROSS!  The flooring was a dark green carpet.  The previous owners had 2 dogs, which I believe they kept in the sun room as there were multiple urine bleach stains on the carpet & by the door the carpet was ripped where the dogs had tried to get out of the room.  YUM, right?  We'd been saying  that we wanted to replace the flooring, but it always falls to the bottom of the list.  I had been begging Chris to just let us rip up the carpet and paint the floor underneath, but he really didn't want to do it out of fear that it would look worse than the carpet. 

Needless to say he was gone and I was motivated.  Here are some photos of the carpet and why it needed to be gone:
  Nice, right?  See why it needed to come up?  Here's what I found under the green carpet:
Brown 70's carpet!  And then under that:
Sub floor.  I pulled the carpet up all around the edges and the wood looked decent to me, so the furniture came out of the room and carpet came up.
Yes, that is all of the sunroom furniture out on our tiny back deck and the green carpet balled up and jammed in the stairway (it was heavy!).  But when all the carpet was up this is what I was left with:
The black spots on the floor weren't actually spots at all, they were little tiny dusty bits left over from years of dirt in the carpet and erosion from the rubber backing on the brown carpet.  It was really messy and hard to get up.  Here's a picture of the paint on the floor:
This is obviously mid-paint as you can see places where I touched up.  At this point I was actually wondering if Chris was right and it was going to look like crap, but I let it dry and put everything back in there and this is what it look like now:
I do think overall it looks WAY better than the carpet did, at least now I don't have to try and artistically hide the floor in all of my sun room photos!  This project cost me $0 and maybe 3.5 hours worth of work.  I don't plan on leaving the floor like this forever, it is for sure a temporary fix, but even Chris says that it is way better than the carpet.  I know this has been a long post but I'm going to end with one last photo that is a close up so you can see what the painted wood really looks like.

August 19, 2010

Live like no one else...

I saw this post the other day over at Thrifty Decor Chick and have been wanting to share it for a while.  Those of you that know me personally know that about a year ago Chris and I decided to follow the Dave Ramsey debt snowball (thanks to our friends Sarah & Jon).  We don't have credit card or card debt (thankfully) but we did/do have STUDENT LOANS...a lot of them.  We haven't paid them all off, but we are WELL on our way (and SO excited for the day that they are GONE). 

I really loved this post because I think that most people, in some form or fashion, can relate to the feelings she described being stuck in debt.  So do yourself a favor and check it out.  If you have any debt at all I'd encourage you to check out Dave & the debt snowball - it's SO worth it!

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Also while you're looking at her post look at some of her oher posts too - she's pretty neat!

August 15, 2010

Just a quick note....

I started a new job June 1st and it has certainly hampered by blogging!  Seems as if I have several things I'd like to do a blog about, but there just isn't enough time in the day! 

As you all know I operate a side business with my good friend Sarah.  Our company, Creative Event Studio, recently launced a blog section on our site - make sure and add it to your Google Reader or favorite tab.  We certainly will be updating it more frequently than I tend to update this blog. 

I am still going to be posting on here with my personal partying adventures, photography practice, home decor inspiration, and all the things that tickle my fancy - but you should still check out our CES blog!