LOFT-y Goals!

So, OOPSIE!
It's been over three months since I've updated the blog with all of our home happenings!  And boy, are there lots!

We are coming up on our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of being homeowners!  I seriously can't believe how quickly a year goes by!  And, we've been busy!  Naturally right now, we have Reds baseball happening so that pretty much consumes our time. But, we try to keep busy with house projects and such.  And, we have several going on right now, and more that are finished.

And one of those finished projects is the loft!

We ADORE our loft.  We love the gigantic space we have up there!  The plan has always been to make that into a "travel" themed area, as we LOVE LOVE LOVE to travel and have quite a few mementos from our travels so far.

A few blog posts ago, A Pop Of Color, I showed off some of the painting that we had done in the house.  That was the morning room, the "mud room", the foyer wall, the loft wall, and the basement {red}.

Here's a refresher of what the loft wall DID look like:

And now for the travel theme!

All of my internet/Pinterest browsing landed me on this super amazing and GIGANTIC world map {click it}!  The measurements were perfect for this super huge wall.  I asked for it for Christmas, and Santa thought I deserved it!

I'll tell you this:  I'll never ever ever do wallpaper again, hahaha! That's what this was.  4 HUGE panels of wallpaper.  I love the finished product, but nope. No more wallpaper.

Our wall is like 14-something feet long, and 8 feet high.

I never measured the HEIGHT of the wall and assumed it was larger than that.

The map measures 12 feet long and 98 inches (or 8.2 feet) high.  OOPSIE!

I also didn't take the baseboards into account.

So, when we put this gigantic world map up, we had to trim several inches to make it fit the wall.  It's by no means perfect, but hey.  I love it.

Check out some of the photos!

An idea of how big the panels were.  There were 4 total! 

All put together!  Tape holding some spots up just so it could dry.

All finished! Looking at the finished product from our bedroom door.

Finished product!  Looking from the loft windows towards the map/wall

Looking straight on (standing at the opposite wall)

It's amazing, right?!?

So my thought with this space:  I want some kind of display shelves to go up against this map to display all of our mementos and such (monument statues, shot glasses, books, etc).  I got SUPER lucky that IKEA had just what I wanted, and they put it on sale! Stack that with a coupon they had for $25 off of a purchase of $150 or more, and we struck gold!!

I wanted the Kallax shelves to go in front of the map.  I knew I'd need 2 of these based on measurements.  This is the one I wanted: IKEA Kallax Shelf

But, on one of our last trips to IKEA, we both agreed that we loved this particular shelf, also a Kallax, just a bit different:  http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60294622/

We have one of these in the kitchen area that holds cook books, some kitchen stuff (crock pot, misc. plates and wine) as well as a few other odds and ends.  So when we saw that they made this one in white, we knew this was the shelf we'd want in the loft!

So they were on sale for $20 off each! And we had the coupon for $25 off!  We got two of these for just a little over the price of one regular one :-)

And here's what it looks like up against the map!

Sorry for the weird angle!  It's hard to get the WHOLE wall in a photo!

And here's some photos of the decorations we have so far.  We THOUGHT we had tons, which we really do, but we just need to go on more trips and get more goodies!!!

And no blog post is complete without a Crosley appearance!  Cody doesn't like being in front of the camera.  And while I was building the shelves, Crosley was "helping" {along with his hedgehog, haha}.

So, that wall is finished for now!  My daddy is sending up some of his furniture in the next month or so that will go on the opposite wall of this.  We also have some stuff to hang up, and walls to paint in the rest of the loft.  We are going with a lighter gray for the rest of this area, as well as the house.

But seriously. I just LOVE LOVE LOVE how this space has turned out!  Our full bath at the top of the stairs is also travel themed.  We'll be painting that room soon as well, so I will be able to show that off!

I'll be posting more later! We have a few other completed projects that I can't wait to show off! I know most of y'all follow me on Facebook or Instagram, so this is nothing new.... but I had to document it!

209 Days In.....

Is that even right?!!? Time is flying and I can't believe we are 209 days (about 7 months) in!!!

And on top of that-- HELLO everyone! I know, like others, I promised to keep the blog up- but let's face it:  Life happens.  I have a huge list of house projects and this is how it goes: start a project, love it and get it like, half way done, and then move on to something else.
Yep, the projects are those kind of projects.

Things like painting the interior doors black-- there are like, 18 doors in the house. That is taking quite a while.

Painting.  That most definitely hasn't started yet but we are trying to pick out colors.

Furniture.  It's a heck of a task to go from a 1300 square foot apartment to a 2600+ square foot home, and trying to fill it with furniture.

We need more furniture. Lots more furniture. Lots of empty space right now, but we are getting there.

And then just having the time to do these projects.  We do lots. We love to stay busy, and a lot of the time our house projects kinda get put on the back burner to go have fun.

But-- I thought I'd update a bit of what we DO have done..... The majority of the interior doors have been painted black. What a huge difference it makes! Such a nice pop of color from the boring ole white and off white walls.

We switched out our shower head in the master bathroom for a fancy-schmancy one that does all sorts of fun stuff (it was on my Christmas list and we got it for Christmas!).

We have our awesome entertainment set up put up from IKEA that we bought before we even finished building the house.  It needs some slight adjustments and I don't wanna do those adjustments til we paint. But, it's massive, and amazing and looks great against the wall between the 2 windows!

Furniture stuff: Another Christmas gift we received was an awesome entryway bench and hutch from Home Depot. It was a bit of a headache dealing with it, but it's AMAZING and fits in the space perfectly.  Loooooong story short: I loved the bench, showed it to the in-laws and they got it for us or Christmas.  My Father-In-Law noticed on some of the reviews that the hutch didn't fit the bench perfectly.  Shame on me for not paying closer attention to that.  And sure enough- when we got the hutch in and assembled it, it didn't fit perfectly on the bench.  I did some research and actually got in touch with the manufacturer and they shipped us an updated hutch that is perfect for the bench!!!! YAY!

Front room (on the floor plans it's technically designated the "living room"):  We got some Billy Bookcases from IKEA and filled up the entire wall with book cases.  I'll eventually try my hand at adding some molding to them to make them look "built in".. but I love all the space for all of our media goodies!

And naturally, we are having our "new home" woes-- specifically a couple of cracks in our foundation :-(
Yeah. You read that right. Cracks.  In our foundation.  We first noticed a leak in one of the unfinished parts of our basement. It dried quickly, but we had some pretty wet weather there for a while and the leak came back. We surveyed the outside of our house and found 2 cracks in the foundation (we have a pretty high elevation and have a good part of our basement exposed to the elements still-- which includes our amazing walk out basement).
So here we go with something I've become a pro at:  filling out the online service request.  The first one I filled out got NO response, so I filled a second one out about a week later.  A foundation company called me the next day.  I gave them an earful as they wanted to schedule a time during the WEEK to come out and take a look at the crack.  Luckily this worked, as well as the fact that they also have weekend hours (woohoo!). So we had someone come out on a Saturday.

The guy (well, more like a kid) that came out told us that the crack was from the pressure of the support beam running across the top of the basement, as was fairly common.  He did some nifty filler thing to help stop the leak.  We asked about the SECOND crack on the foundation. It is smaller in size than the crack that caused the leak, but he walked it to "measure" the distance and believes that crack is the same type of thing as the one he repaired.  This one is a bit more tricky as it's in a finished part of our basement.  He checked the support beam area and said that he didn't see any signs of leaks or anything, and even mentioned that Ryan Homes puts in baseboards that turn a yellow color if there's water behind them.  So, he did nothing with the crack.  I think when it gets closer to our 1 year, or when we have a few days off, I am going to get them to come out and assess that one again. I don't want to be dealing with it when it's our problem and not something that they should have fixed anyways!

So how about some photos! I have tons and will do my best to put descriptions on them, haha!!

This about the extent of the snow we got this year so far.  Just a little dusting to freak out the puppy, haha!

Fancy new shower head <3

Before painting the doors upstairs (this would be the master bedroom, hall closet and guest room)

After painting!  (this would be the master bedroom, hall closet and guest room)

More before shots 

After shots

Before  (this would be the master bedroom, hall closet and guest room)

After (this would be the master bedroom, hall closet and guest room)

Our new hutch and bench in the entryway off of the garage (mudroom)

Our new hutch and bench in the entryway off of the garage (mudroom)

This is in the front room of the house (family room)... Billy Bookcases from IKEA

Another view of our bookcases in the front room of the house

random photos:  Sitting on the couch looking towards the kitchen

random photos:  Standing in the entryway (mudroom) door looking towards the family room

random photos: Standing in the kitchen looking into the morning room

random photos: Standing in the morning room looking towards the front of the house 

random photos: another view from the couch into the kitchen/morning room {we will one day have a dining room table in there}

random photos:  Crosley <3

random photos: our IKEA entertainment stand-- we still need to put the middle piece on its legs and then adjust the height on the cabinets to the right. But this won't be done til we paint. I'm not taking these things up and down a bajillion times.

random photos: Standing in the hallway by the stairs looking towards the family room.

random photos: The "dining room" according to the floor plan. For us, it's the bunny room {yes. you read that right. We have 2 bunnies}, and random boxes yet to be put somewhere/unpacked

random photos:  Front entryway

random photos:  Messy floors and Crosley doing the dishes.

And, the foundation crack:

Wet basement floor.

Worse wet basement floor.

This is the *second* crack. This one isn't fixed. It coincides with a finished part of the basement and the foundation kid didn't do anything to this one-- just checked to make sure it wasn't leaking.

THIS one is the culprit of our leaks.

The other side of the crack. Awesome, huh?

All filled and fixed and no longer leaking.

But it's kinda hideous.

So I most definitely plan on having someone come out and address the second crack before its all said and done. It's just finding time with the great time slots that Ryan Homes and their contractors offer.

We have TONS of other projects going on/waiting to work on. We stained our deck before it got cold, but it really needs one more coat.

We have lots of stuff built in the basement for our "man cave/Reds room" but don't have it all organized yet.

The loft:  We are going to make this a "travel themed" area.  We LOVE LOVE LOVE to travel and have so many awesome trinkets and memorabilia and things from our travels to display.  Well, another Christmas gift that was on our {my} list... A giant wall mural that is a map of the world.  It will nearly cover the entire wall in the loft on one side.  We haven't put it up yet because we need to paint {since it won't cover the ENTIRE wall}.  I found it on Wayfair:  Check It Out Here.

We love our home and have so many great memories already that have been made and can't wait for more.

And, to end the post: a super adorable photo of our sweet boys from yesterday, in our 65 degree weather in February.