thrifty

2011-05-31T07:19:00.000-07:00

To be honest, the majority of what we decorate our home with is either from a thrift store or garage sale. We live in a small town with a few different thrift store options.

There's nothing like those one-of-a-kind finds....something tucked on the back of the shelf...underneath some old yarn or dusty flower arrangement. It's like finding gold!

For months we searched for some nice, unique white plates. Where did we find most of them? That's right, our local thrift store!

I love how they've brightened up our kitchen!
We recently found this little dish that sits on our piano at the same thrift store....

. I love the detail along the top:

This clock was a garage sale find, stuffed underneath a table....ignored. Now it sits on our mantle. The candle holder was thrifted.

There is gold to be found in every thrift store! Most of the time it just takes a little bit of extra searching...

before and afters...

2011-05-24T15:09:00.001-07:00

I've been told to post some before and after pictures of our house. Trust me, we are SO far from being done, but it is kind of fun to see how far we've come from the first time we walked through this place.

I was seriously terrified of this house when I first walked through it...

Three layers of wallpaper on every square inch of every wall.

Stinky, nasty carpet that had obviously been lived on by lots of animals.

The bathroom was SICK! I couldn't imagine it functioning.

It was a short-sale home, and the previous owner left SO much junk everywhere...like lots of alcohol in the kitchen cabinets, bags of clothes, weird furniture, a lazy-boy chair with dead mice in it, etc.

The sunroom:

The entryway into our home. It was a porch at one point and was covered in sometime in the 70's.

Really hideous and our official construction zone through the whole renovation...

Jared built some window benches, we made some pillows and gave the entire place a coat of white paint.

It is probably the most relaxing room in the house.

The living room:

We immediately loved all of the windows, molding, and the fireplace. We could definitely see lots of potential. Jared pulled back the nasty carpet and found beautiful hardwood floors...lucky!

Living room after!

The dining area that is right next to the living room...

The SCARY bathroom. This was almost a deal breaker for me. We did love the arch above the bathtub though.

It was hard knowing what to do in such a little space, but it worked out!

Here is the bathroom after:

Jared did a great job on the tile arch...

Jared made new cabinet doors in the bathroom...

Here is the breakfast nook right off of the kitchen before:

We are far from being done in this room, but I love all of the windows and light...

Scary fireplace, but we could see potential. We also LOVE the stained glass...

And after:

The little girl's room before...dark purple trim, painted wallpaper (that we had to peel off), and glow-in-the-dark paint everywhere...

The very pink, girly after:

New carpet, paint, and wainscoting.

The kitchen is small, and was pretty scary before:

We're still working on it, but here's the after: (new cabinets, countertops, appliances, tile, paint....etc.)

See how nasty the wallpaper was before? It was definitely the most monotonous part of this whole process, it took FOREVER getting it all off.

We hated how closed off the kitchen was from the living room, so we took out part of the wall to open it up a bit. Before:

We also added a countertop that wrapped around and a hutch...After:

The master bedroom had tons of wallpaper, and this mysterious window that they had covered in mirrors.

The window led to a random little room at the front of the house that we didn't like, so Jared knocked out the window and opened up a big doorway into that front room, making it our office/sitting room/nursery, right off of the master. We love it! It adds lots of light, too.

Our laundry room was the previous owner's office, and they did laundry in the scary basement. It was the perfect little room for laundry, so Jared re-routed the plumbing up to this little room right off of the kitchen:

In the 4 1/2 years that we've been married, we've never had a washer and dryer. This could possibly be my favorite room in the house. Sometimes I just go in here, sit and stare at my beautiful machines. :)

Here is the after...(first picture is weird lighting, the walls are really yellow)

Jared built the table out of an old church door...

There's the house for now! We will have to post more pictures when the rest of it gets done.

We love our cozy little house!

Crafting up with the Joneses

thrifty

before and afters...