Two New Spaces

That sounds like a HGTV show. And in a lot of ways, that's what happened over the last couple weeks here at the MegEwan residence. Bill and I have been working like an HGTV crew to put together not one, but TWO newly finished spaces in the house!

As I noted last week, I stripped the wallpaper and went to painting pretty quickly in our dining room.

A month ago, our "dining room" looked like this...

It was dirty coral and dust all over. And the wallpaper was this linear, Greek-motif that was dirty and spotted... 

Good stuff. 

But a month later and several weekends of wallpaper removal, painting, cleaning, electrical work and buying a few extras (like beautiful new curtains!), we are at this... 

Oh. My. Is that better. 

New gray paint (Behr's Grant Gray) with white chair rail (Behr's Whisper White - which is what we use for the trim throughout the house)

A newly-stained table from the McEwan Garage

Lights from Ikea (Bill rerouted the main electrical box to two separate boxes yesterday!) 

And new curtains from West Elm (ones that I was swooning over back in July)

Its amazing how little can do so much. Not that it was a little amount of work, but we basically transformed our dining room for under $400. 

Its also the only room we have that I would consider 90% done. I have a few accessories that I need to add to finish off the space, and there are a few paint touchups that need to be done, but there's very little left to do overall. Its pretty great to get to peak in there... 

But it also worked out that we got to do more than peak in there this weekend. We had family and friends over for a Halloween party (all of that coming shortly), and we had a chance to feed them all prior to the shindig. And guess what? We didn't have to all huddle around the coffee table... 

Very exciting stuff. 

But onto the next exciting thing... 

By now we all probably know about the sewage disaster downstairs in our den. Well, after installing floor number 2, we are back in action - and looking better than ever...

Its still far from being done down there (still needs quarter round, paint, I need to upholster the table, and there are a million accents, lighting and furniture choices that need to be added). However, its pretty exciting to have another space that is usable and not disgusting! 

And, to be fair, I've started playing down there a little bit, like adding some furniture jewelry to our freebie couches... 

It also means we get to have our laundry room/basement back as all of this furniture was stuffed in there while we were redoing... then redoing.... the floor. 

Its really coming along and its exciting to see our hard work paying off! 

As we get closer to the holidays, I don't think we'll be tackling any new spaces for the rest of the year (Sorry, Foyer), but we still have plenty of time to put the finishing touches on things around here like painting some trim, working on some furniture projects, and installing quarter round. 

Stay tuned for the costume parade that was our Halloween party!