New year, new look at home!!

Well, in keeping with one of my resolutions to blog more in 2010...I thought I would share our semi-recent paint renovation here at casa de Sellers.  We didn't change the paint color that much, but I just couldn't look at the pea green existing color of the kitchen and dining rooms any longer and was really looking for a subtle change.  We were also tired of the glass tile backsplash in the kitchen, but it was too expensive to justify changing it after only three years, so we're trying to work with it.  Eventually, we plan for it to be plain old white subway tiles so that we can change the paint and the rest of the decor as we feel like it.  David and I realized that when we bought the house and got married, we filled the house with things that we felt were supposed to go in a house and went with a more "grown up" style than that of either of our personal styles...so now, three years later neither of us like some of the things we'd picked to make our house a home (and parts of it felt like someone else's home) and we have been busy this fall/winter trying to undo them! haha

 Before below:

After below (I swear I didn't put the cat up there for either shot!!):

In the dining room:

First we got rid of the uber tall square table and bar height stools...one day I was just ready for it to be gone...the cats seemed to use it as their home base much more than we humans used it.  They would sit on it and watch the birds in the tree right outside the window, they scratched it all to pieces, it was time.

I had a vintage kitchen table with faux wood laminate top and chrome around the edges in the basement that I used in the basement (when I say used, I mean it collected the things we no longer needed upstairs!!).  I brought that up and then went to work on finding suitable chairs.

  Luckily, I had some mismatched wooden chairs in the basement, I thought that they were similar enough in style to work for our ever changing needs! .  I'll follow this post with a tutorial on how to re-cover seats, but back to the room makeovers!!   I used some fabric from my stockpile to recover the seats and looked on to making curtains for the room.

About 7 or 8 years ago,  I bought some vintage screenprinted fabric...I loved this fabric sooooo much that I've never ever used it!!  I've brought it out of it's Rubbermaid bin a million times, but when it came down to it...I just couldn't stand to cut it!  But...this day was the day....I had just enough to make two panel curtains and I thought that the pattern was an interesting contrast to the herringbone of the new seats.  I replaced all the foam padding and used a staple gun to recover the seats to match.

For the blinds, we traded out the old bamboo ones for white plantation style blinds, purchased at Kmart ($25/ea). I also had a piece of paper that was intended to be wrapping paper made by Sukie that I purchased at Rare Device in San Francisco (one of my favorite stores!!), that I hung from a vintage coat hanger for some quick artwork!  Overall, the room redo cost us less than $100 for supplies including paint (Behr's Silver Sage)!!

The kitchen redo was nothing more than paint (Behr's Sliced Cucumber), new plantation style blinds (again, Kmart), some indoor shutters over the kitchen sink purchased from Habitat Home Store for $2 and given a new paint job by David, and moving around artwork from other parts of the house.

Some of the artwork includes a gift for my birthday from Katie -- the YeeHaw Industries owl calendar, and I purchased the AshelyG and Drew bearded man from Urban on clearance for $9.99!!  There are several paint-by-numbers in the two rooms and also a print from theblackapple over the back door.

Overall, this room redo cost a little over $100 due to the custom size blinds for the two windows near the fridge, but still I love the transformation of a little paint!!