Blog Archives
First Things First
Pretty much without fail when we move into a “new” home we generally start with replacing lighting. I know that may seem strange as it would make most sense to start with paint, but for me sourcing the right lighting is one of the more difficult tasks. It would seem like it would be fairly simple as my taste runs more toward the traditional side (in general) but finding the right light at the right price just tends elude me (especially vanity lighting)!
Even before I walked into our new home in Virginia Beach I had started the search for new lighting, specifically dining room, family room and eat in kitchen lighting. I found this light at World Market.
It looks perfectly suited for a causal coastal vibe and at $200 it wasn’t going to break the bank. Plus I have plans to modify it by wrapping the metal rim in either sisal or leather lacing, basically making it look more upscale for very little money and effort! The other thing about this light I love is that it has 4 bulbs (40 watt each) which since I’m using LED lights I can use a higher wattage and add a dimmer to adjust brightness as necessary.
The other light I found that I’m totally excited about is for the family room. It’s from Ballard Designs and at $400 it’s not exactly cheap but I totally think that it is priced very nicely!
Unfortunately the light is backordered until July, but I plan on it setting the tone for the whole room. I’ve also decided that if for some strange reason we LOVE utilizing the fan/light combination that’s currently in the family room I can use this in the dining room, bedroom or the foyer I think it’s that versatile.
There were some other options I considered for the dining room, but I want to wait to get the bamboo light installed before I pull any triggers.
How cool is this one though? Very masculine I know, but I’m totally digging the feel of the leather and brass! It’s by Savoy House and it’ll cost about $600 depending on where you source it, but it’s pretty bad ass looking and my Hubby totally loved it of course!
I also saw this bad boy at Lowe’s and while I like style a lot it wouldn’t jive with our dining room furniture and that furniture is not going anywhere…
My hubby installed the beaded chandelier already and I’m thrilled with how it looks even if there’s no table there yet…
We also installed these Lutron motion sensor lighting in the two master closets, it is just so convenient (or lazy) to be able to walk into the closet and not have to turn on the light. We set them to turn off after 1 minute of no movement or we can manually turn it off ourselves, which for some reason is no problem for me to turn them off but I do want them to come on automatically… go figure! Super easy to install by the way…
Another item we just “had to install” was this Lutron remote control dimmer for the master bedroom and media room. We love being able to remotely control the lights and we were used to it as we installed two of them in our KY home in the master and the media room as well. They are super easy to install as well, but if you have little kids (or maybe just irresponsible teens) you may want to find a place to store the remote so you always can find it, but I did find out that you can buy a new remote if the old one is “misplaced”…
So I have a crap ton of lights to replace, but it may be that I get to the painting before I buy more lights… we’ll have to see as I am still living in Louisville until June 1st (last day of school) and Hubby is already living in the new home like a nomad without any permanent furniture, so I don’t have a lot to do but pack and daydream about our new spaces!
While I was at the new house for Spring Break I needed a place to set my coffee etc. down while I was watching TV (this is how Hubby is living for 8 weeks!) so I found a cool antique store with lots of goodies and found this TINY table for $20! I just love it and I plan on using it in a bathroom after the “real” furniture arrives, but it is so dang cute I smile every time I see it! I mean it’s SUPER tiny!
So I’m off to pack a few more boxes, I did a little calculation and determined that if I pack just 2 boxes a day I will be done by the time the movers come, I hope that is the case as I’m pretty much sticking to that number!
Thanks as always for stopping by…
Until next time…
PS Have you ever tried this Grapefruit Vodka? If not you might want to it’s delicious, I enjoy it mixed with La Croix Grapefruit Sparkling Water… they have other flavors too if you’re just not into grapefruit…
Good news and bad news…
Well the good news is we sold our home (officially closed and everything), the bad news is we sold our home…
The short version of this is that we listed our home for sale and after showing it 6 times the first day we received 4 very good offers! So we accepted an offer that allowed us to rent back until the end of the school year, which is June 1st, which was a huge deal so I didn’t have to try to find temporary housing for 2 months!
On the flip side my hubby has already started his new job in Virginia and he found us this house in Virginia Beach! (Man does this house need some shutters and contrasting paint or what!!)
We closed on our new home last week while I was in Virginia Beach for spring break with our youngest daughter. Now I will tell you that Hubby did all of the house hunting, we had put together a list of potential homes prior to him starting this process, but he went with the realtor and viewed them all, so he was a little nervous as to whether or not I would like our new home… which of course I do, but having said that it is pretty much is a blank canvas, lots of creamy white walls and off white carpet, but you know we’re up for the challenge!
The house was built in 2015 by the previous owners, the floor plan below shows the layout.
I know a lot of people really like open foyers, but having built our last 2 homes with high open spaces I really do prefer a nice 9 to 10 foot high ceiling and no 2 story ceilings. You also may be able to see the textured walls, not what I was anticipating at all, but for whatever reason it’s the thing to do in the Virginia Beach area. The weird thing about it is that there is texture on all the walls and ceilings except for the walls in the dining room, kitchen and all of the bathrooms…. is that because these areas are most in need of cleanable walls? Do you have a clue as to why they would do it this way?
(FYI, the house was staged by a professional staging company as the homeowners had already moved out.)
OK, so why oh why did these homeowners choose to install carpet in their dining room, ugh…. almost as bad as carpet in the bathroom but not quite…
Nice office off the foyer with french doors.
Oh the kitchen, I almost cried, not because it’s ugly but it literally looks almost identical to the kitchen we just remodeled… 😩
See what I mean…
I’m not sure I have another kitchen cabinet painting bone in my body (as this would be the 3rd) but I may…. the cabinets are very well-built quality cabinets so replacing them would probably be out of the question…
There is a great little eat-in space off of the kitchen and the whole downstairs gets a TON of indirect natural light throughout the day…
While I think this setup in the family room looks nice, having the TV mounted over the fireplace is just not our thing, I found a great inspiration photo on HOUZZ that I’m hoping we can emulate to make this focal wall work for us.
The master bedroom is spacious with a tray ceiling, but again are you seeing all of this non-color? It’s not white either, it’s more like a french vanilla and I really detest yellows… I see a ton of painting in my future…
The master bathroom is also very spacious but has its drawbacks as well… like a tub built for a 4 ft. tall person sunk into the largest tub deck EVAH, but at least it has a tub and it is super deep!
We do have very nice sized his & hers closets off of the master bath and big bonus NO WIRE SHELVING ANYWHERE in this house! Not in the pantry, laundry room or anywhere which is totally awesome to me!
The upstairs media room is a new thing for us, but there are no basements in this area so they have to put them somewhere!
A view of the back of the house…
Looking out from the deck is hugely different than our KY view… hello neighbors! This is a pretty new neighborhood so mature plantings are pretty non-existent.
KY home backyard view… hello mature landscaping!
But I’ve decided to make the best of it just crossing my figures that our neighbor’s are awesome! We also will start planting some evergreens for privacy as soon as possible, I’m sure as soon as they are big enough to actually afford us some privacy we’ll move again… UGH!!
Or maybe we will spend more of our time here…
(please ignore our hair, it was SUPER windy that day)
Being 3.6 mile from Sandbridge Beach will certainly have its benefits… now if I can only figure out how to tan without freckling or burning 😎
Thanks as always for stopping by…
Until next time!
It’s official, we’re moving!
So here we go again, moving, it’s such a pain in the rear and totally not something we were planning on doing anytime soon! If you’ve been following my blog anytime in the last 3 years you’ll know how much renovation we have completed in our current home and you may remember we just put the finishing touches on the master closet and the kitchen… both of which causes me pain to think about leaving! We have absolutely L-O-V-E-D living here in Louisville, KY, it was such a wonderful surprise for me to find out just how much we would love living here! There is so much to do, more festivals than I can ever get to in one season not to mention the Kentucky Derby, for which the celebrations go on for at least a week in advance of the actual race day. We will miss living here, but we are leaving a little something behind… our middle daughter Cassidy has transferred to the University of Louisville and will be finishing up her college education here, so we’ll be back to visit for sure!
So here are a few pictures the photographer took for the listing, most of these I haven’t shared before!
Sunroom (my favorite family space in the house)
Mudroom (super convenient with doors to both garage and front yard)
Dining Room
Master Bath
Upstairs Hall
Basement (a walk-out with 10 ft. ceilings!)
And the backyard, just part of the 1.12 acres
Our move is prompted by an unexpected job offer for my Hubby and a relocation back to the state of Virginia. We moved to Louisville almost 4 years ago from Richmond, VA, but we will be moving to the Virginia Beach area which I’m pretty excited about! So right now we’re in the process of finding just the right home, you know one that’s not too big… not too small…?! That always proves to be such a difficult task, but we are certainly trying! We’re torn between buying a new home or a fixer upper or something in between the two but I’m hoping something will come on the market soon that will make us want to put a contract down on it.
In the meantime our home was just listed on the market last Thursday and we were fortunate enough to get 3 very great offers the very next day! We accepted a contract which would allow us to rent back until the end of the school year, which will be very helpful to us. So now I am focusing on packing up rarely used items, listing stuff for sale on Craig’s List, gathering small items together for a yard sale and taking stuff to Goodwill. At least I don’t have any painting or renovating work left to do so while this work is time-consuming it’s not very difficult.
So wish us luck! I hope that this transition will go as smooth as possible…
Thanks as always for stopping by… until next time!
Moving To Louisville KY Part 1
Well HELLO!!! Did you miss me at ALL? Well I’ve missed hearing from you guys that’s for sure! As you may (or may not) know that our family is in the process of moving to Louisville, KY. Now I say process because my husband has been here a month, but our youngest daughter and I have only been here about 2 weeks, but we still have no furniture. We closed on our KY house last Friday and have decided to “camp out” in it until our furniture arrives. While this may not seem appealing to some of you, it is far better than being in a cramped not-so-private hotel suite. We bought a couple of air mattresses, sheets, and essentials to get us through until we can get our stuff from the Richmond house, which will be the week after labor day, but not soon enough!
This is real life people… this is our LOVELY air mattress setup in our bedroom…
but don’t feel too sorry for me because we just got our new Sleep Number bed delivered today! While it is still on the floor at least it is far more comfortable than our other mattress or our lovely air bed… even though I’m essentially trading one air mattress for another I can guarantee the Sleep Number mattress will surpass the other mattresses in every way!
On a totally different note I’d like to share the lovely view of our backyard from the deck this morning.
Don’t be fooled by the pretty picture though, what appears to be grass is really a weed grass mixture. The sprinkler system for this house had been broken for some time it seems… it had to be repaired so I could water everything, the ground and borders were very dry and everything had the general look of a yard that hadn’t been loved in a while.
Like this lovely “natural” patch, great trees in this area, the weeds are taller than me though!
Another area in the back with 5 ft. plus tall weeds. I’m going to have a landscape company cut all of this stuff down this fall… I would just be too much for me, both of these overgrown areas are about the size of a community swimming pool!
However, since I can’t do much in the house (no tools) I have been pulling and spraying weeds in the borders around the house every morning. Apparently I was going to town on some Poison Oak vines and didn’t know it until the super nice irrigation guy pointed it out to me… nice right?! It is ALL over the place… I’m utilizing some Roundup Poison Ivy killer for the rest of the stuff!
I know… I know… “leaves of 3 let it be” right?
Well I’m heading back home next week to pack and move while my Mom stays in KY and takes care of Brie, her school started last week! I’m NOT looking forward to packing, but it sure would be nice to have some real furniture in the new house.
I also have a list of things to do in the new house a MILE long and I’m a little overwhelmed about that, but I’m trying to remember my own advice and just take one room at a time… the problem is where to start?!
Hope you guys stay tuned for more posts… I’ll probably be all over the place with projects but it’ll be an adventure!
Until next time…
– Susan
Rollin’ with the Changes
We just got some great news I’d like to share with you… My SAH (Super Awesome Hubby) excepted a job offer the other day!!! For those of you who didn’t know he has been unemployed since the end of January, a long ugly story I won’t go into, but this change has turned out to be such a blessing in disguise! I have loved being able to spend more time with him, even if some of it was working on furniture, but I think he was starting to get a little antsy and with the kids out of school we never seemed to know what day it was…
ok, so I’ve shared with you this great news, but there is a little bit of a downside to all this awesomeness… we have to move 
While we are thrilled with this new and exciting opportunity, we are very sad to leave our family, friends and home. I have live in Richmond my whole life and Sam is a “transplant” from Columbia, SC but he has lived here 26 years, along time for both of us in one place. Needless to say this is a HUGE deal for us and not a decision we made easily. We have three children, one is a junior at Radford University here in VA, one is a senior in high school and the youngest is getting ready to start middle school… as you can imagine we will have some serious adjustments to do that I’m not really looking forward to! On top of that I’m worrying about all of the things that we need to do here to get the house ready to go on the market AND we need to find a new house in a good school system in another state that we know nothing about! Seriously just the tip of the iceberg here folks! Oh, by the way we’re moving to Louisville Kentucky… so if you know something about the area please pass it on to us, we need all the help we can get!
So if you are looking at buying in the Richmond, VA area I know a GREAT house with FABULOUS neighbors that is getting ready to go on the market! I will be sharing some pictures soon as I have been meaning to do a house tour but I never seem to get around to it! In the meantime check out our floor plan, the house is large and built for family as well as entertaining!
Just to let you know my posts may be a little sporadic in the upcoming weeks, but I do have some more furniture updates to share with you as well as some projects we have completed around the house that I think you’ll like!
Oh, by the way I HAVE to sell ALL of my furniture stock, I’m so sad! But if you’re interested please check out the Unfinished Pieces page, I have put “as is” prices next to everything. Let me know if you want to come take a look because whatever doesn’t sell in the next couple of weeks will be going to the auction house. I set the prices of the pieces at what I paid for them…
Wish us luck and I’ll post some updates soon!
