Home Updates

Hello! I have a few house updates to share with you today.

So….as I’ve mentioned before, our house is an ongoing process. We’ve lived here six years (which I can’t believe) and continue to chip away at projects. Some projects have been major and others have been minor, but I do (usually) appreciate that we’ve taken our time to make decisions while living in our home.

Here are a few things we’ve accomplished lately…

Living Room:

Starting with the smallest update…I purchased some new pillows from TJ Maxx.

I actually got these pillows back in mid-September. I’m all about neutral pillows on the couch…

…especially this time of the year when I add in seasonal pillows.

Another new recent purchase was a pair of ottomans for our two living room chairs. We purchased two of these high back swivel chairs about a year and a half ago. At the time, we’d discussed getting ottomans, but just didn’t want to spend the extra money at the time.

After a while, we did decide it would be nice to have somewhere to prop our feet! Well, when I went back to the store (again, it’s been a year and a half), the same gray (“concrete” color) fabric of the chair was no longer an option. So, I brought home a few samples and settled on these two options and put a poll on Instagram…

While, the poll didn’t help much…actually, it made me feel like I couldn’t go wrong with either choice…🙂…I went with:

The striped option! It took almost two months for both ottomans to come in, but I’m so pleased with them.

And…here’s the other one:

Kitchen:

Moving on to the kitchen…

I’ve previously shared that I picked up these bar stools at the At Home store. This wasn’t necessarily on our list, but our previous ones had lasted over five years, were on the smaller side, and I wanted taller, sturdier ones.

These have been working perfectly for us so far.

Now…moving on to the more substantial updates.

It has been my dream to have a gas cook top. I watch cooking shows, I make dinner most nights, and I thoroughly enjoy cooking. Getting a gas cook top has been at the top of the wish list for quite some time, but we’ve always focused on other areas…and, to be honest, we didn’t know who to call for a gas line hookup. 😂

Anyway, we found a very affordable and reliable plumber (we’ve had issues with our previous plumber) who said a gas line hook up would be no problem.

Right before my surgery, we went to Home Depot and chose our cook top. While there, we decided to go ahead and switch out our microwave to one in the same “gallery” as the new gas cook top. I do hate to get rid of a working appliance, but the microwave wasn’t that expensive, and it definitely completes the look for this part of the kitchen.

Our handy man neighbor installed the microwave after the plumbers left. Travis sent me this pic once everything was installed.

I can’t get over how much more efficient the gas range is…and it looks beautiful! I’ve enjoyed cooking on it over the past week.

**I didn’t take a “before” picture of our old range and microwave, but you can see the white appliances in the picture above with the two new stools. I took that pic about a month ago.

Lastly, we purchased a new sink and faucet for the kitchen.

Besides a gas stove top, a farm house sink has always been a dream of mine. That being said, the apron style sink would mean needing different cabinets, and that kind of project obviously doesn’t make sense since we are pleased with our cabinet situation.

So, we went with this single basin drop in kitchen sink. I always assumed we’d get a white sink after having a standard stainless steel double bowl sink. But…Travis found this one on build.com.

The sink and faucet decisions were being made after my surgery, so Travis ventured out on his own to a local store, Ferguson Bath, Kitchen, and Lighting Gallery, to look at the color options for the sink. He sent me pics of the concrete gray and metallic gray colors. We decided on metallic gray because I liked that it was darker and would be a good contrast with our light gray cabinets.

Travis picked out the faucet on his own. He knows my style by now! haha…and he even made sure to choose a “spot resistant” faucet which was a genius move!

Like the gas stove top, I love this sink so much. I’m glad we waited, looked around, and made a decision that was perfect for the space when the time was right.

And…

Well, you know how it goes…We made all of these decisions, and then…our washer went kaput.

Pretty new front loading washer and dryer appliances came with our house when we bought it in 2014. The owner before us used them pretty minimally, so we kept them when we moved in. That being said, the front loading washer has been nothing but trouble. So, when it started giving us issues…again…we decided it was time to get something more efficient and reliable than try to get the front loader fixed again.

I was still out of commission, so I told Travis I trusted him with whatever he picked out. I also made it easier on him because I said to only look at top loader washers! 😂

This washer arrived last week as well, and, again, I can’t get over how efficient it is to use. I was able to do three loads of laundry in the amount of time it would have taken me to do one with the old washer.

While we are certainly crossing off items on our house “to do” list, we always just try to prioritize, save money, and complete as we can. Technically, the dishwasher is the only appliance that doesn’t match the kitchen, but we’ll live with it for now.

The hall bathroom is the only other room that hasn’t had a face lift. I’m not sure when we’ll get to it, but we will some day.

We have other future projects in mind that are smaller, but I continue to be pleased with all of the updates and all that we’ve accomplished so far. Our house definitely feels more like home with each decision we make.

I hope you are having a great week. See you tomorrow for Friday Favorites!