House Tour ... Continued

Happy Friday!  Thanks so much to everyone that visited yesterday to check out the first part of our house tour.  We're moving on today to the living room and dining room.

From the porch you enter the double wide living room, which we love!

And yes, the living room has already been painted and we don't have great before and after photos.  But we're very happy with the new color.  It's Cozy Cottage by Behr, color matched with Behr Ultra Premium Paint.
We also already mounted the TV on the wall - Matt tells us how it's done here.

We have big plans for this large feature window above the garage.  Hint: Ikea hack ;-)

There are the pretty new curtains! From Target! We love them, and how high they are, and the view into the porch!

The Dining Room is right off the side of the living room with the big window, which Meg likes to call the Sitting Room based on what we have planned for it.  The layout is great here, we'll be entertaining alot!

Don't mind the multiple paint samples, there are more on the wall since we took this picture, We Meg can't seem to figure out what she wants.

Not sure if we'll ever actually grow up... When we first moved in we had a neon bar sign over the kegorator, no curtains of course, and a box spring that wouldn't fit up the stair on the porch.

Hope our new neighbors didn't think we were starting a frat house!

And another telltale sign that this is a bungalow, craftsman home.  The build in china cabinet.  

There is lots more to see - like the kitchen (sneak peak through the door way above!), and all the bedrooms, the one bathroom (can't be perfect,) and Meg's craft room.  Yeah, I said it. Craft Room.

House Tour...Started

So we jumped ahead alot - sharing a painting project already.   And I know I promised to show you the living room curtains, but A. that's probably boring, and B. don't you want the tour?  I mean, that's the fun part about open houses - poking around.  So let's start the blog open house, shall we?

Yes! Character and Detail! This is a bungalow, also known as a craftsman style - hence the detailed woodwork.

Since these post are going to be picture heavy, and I want to leave you hanging, we're going to stop there for now.  We'll share some of the inside soon! Stop by again tomorrow.

Not enough fun blog stuff for one post? Check out one of my "Pinterest - I did it!" posts at the Miss Meghan Elizabeth Blog.  It's for the house! Can you guess where it's going to go?

Let the painting begin

The first day we woke up in our new home was January 1, 2012; how awesome is that?!

We wasted no time and headed out to Home Depot after breakfast.

Mission One: paint living room (I know Matt gave you a sneak peak in the past post about mounting a TV on the wall!)

We love paint samples and brought home a tan and cream color to try on the walls in the living room.

Sorry about the terrible iphone photo!  I love the iphone, but indoor photos at night is a weak point.
We went with the Behr Ultra Premium Paint color matched to Behr Cozy Cottage.

These progress photos are much better! and much truer to the color.  My preferred painting method: two coats of cutting in, then two coats of rolling.  Matt jumped in for most of the rolling - I find that part the most exhausting!

And here are some completed photos!  I really need to get better at photographing inside spaces - something to work on.  This house in a 1920s bungalow style.  We love that the majority of the house has it's original dark stained woodwork and we intend to keep it that way.  While jumping around Pinterest I've found it diffucilt to find inspiration with natural wood trim - everyone paints it white.  In the living room our goal with the paint color was to keep warm undertones and just lighten the walls - alot! from what they were.  We're pretty happy so far!  Tomorrow I'll share the curtains we just got to add the airy feeling we're missing here.

First "Big" Project

As everyone knows or can guess, there are plenty of projects that come with buying a house. The trickiest part is deciding where to start. We went with the living room. We imagine that we're going to spend the most time here, so we wanted to make it look the best first. Even though there are still a couple of boxes that still need to be unpacked, we're at a pretty good spot with the room. There's always going to be more to do, but for now, the painting is done and we have a place to relax. Since Meg took care of the painting, I took care the the TV and the electronics. I've always wanted to have the TV mounted on the wall, but when you live in an apartment, that isn't very realistic. Now that we own our house, things can look the way we want. Onto the first project that involved power tools.

We were lucky enough to get an unused TV mount from Meg's dad. He never had a chance to use it and decided it would be better on a wall than in  box. (Thank you!) 

It didn't really involve much or power tools, just a drill and some ratcheting wrenches. A stud finder would have been great, but a few holes in the wall don't look too bad, the mount covers them. That's just one of the tricky parts of plaster walls, it's hard to know when you actually hit the stud. Normally you can bang on the wall and where the sound is the highest pitch, that's where the stud is. Not so much with plaster. I ended up putting a hole in the wall and searching with a hanger. Not the best option, but I was getting tired.

After I finally got the wall mount on, I was able to put the TV up and take off the base. Next came the electronics. We have more video games and systems than a married couple without kids probably should, but it keeps me entertained when Meg has to go away for work. There were wires for the cable box, four different game systems, a surround sound speaker system and I didn't even hook up the computer to the TV yet. (Great for listening to Pandora through the TV) 

A few zip ties later and we were set. I made sure the wires didn't pinch in the mount and everything works pretty well and looks great. Now if I could only hide all the electronics in that closet....

Day One

Welcome to our blog!

If you followed me from http://missmeghanelizabeth.blogspot.com/ thanks for stopping by the new blog!  If you're finding us for the first time, hi, it's nice to meet you!

We're Matt & Meg (that's easy to remember!) and our dream of being home owners just came true.  Matt's an engineer by day and an engineer by night, (also known as a super hero husband.)  Meg's a contractor by day and a crafty housewife by night.  We've been married over two and a half years and have been scrimping and saving to get to this day... 

Closing Day!

We've both always felt we were meant to be home owners.  We love DIY home projects, power tools, and the freedom of owning walls!  Since we graduated college we've bounced around several apartments waiting until we were ready for home ownership.  The past year and a half we sacrificed space to save a TON on rent to boost the house account even faster.  And here we are, on December 30, 2011 - signing our life away.

We're going to take you on our home owning adventure with us, welcome to 18 Preston.