A Pretty Garage and Some Decor!

So I know y'all have all asked for pictures!
I snapped a few and have some saved on my phone for writing blogs in the "future".  I am trying to save some of them for the different projects we are working on, as I don't really want to show them off til we are finished!

We have a long list of "to do" things in this house, and we are slowly tackling them as we have the time.

I wanna show off our blinds. I have seen a lot of posts recently about window coverings and such.  We chose to do faux wood blinds in our house, and we bought them from Home Depot.  Seriously SUPER easy to install.  We still have a few to buy and put up in the house, but those are coming as budget allows.

If you're curious to see what we bought, check em out here.

And a few photos of what they look like!  With 18 windows in the house, it's kind of overwhelming to think about putting coverings on ALL of them.  We still need to get them for our morning room, and bedroom 2 (closest to the master bedroom).


So this is while I sit here and blog.  We are watching the Buckeye game.  Don't mind the TV stand. It's two different heights.  LOL.  I am still working up the courage to actually hang the cabinets across the top.  We had planned on doing that this weekend but have since changed plans and have other things going on.  So, it's a bit of a dark photo, but these are the blinds in the living room.

And then I got up and went into the "dining room" and snapped some up close photos of the blinds in there so y'all can see them up close with bright lights.

These were super easy to install and I love the detail with the valance across the top.  There are cords on both sides.  One to tilt and one to move the blinds up and down.  They do great at keeping the light out and look perfect in all of our windows!

The majority of our windows are 35-inches.  We have a couple that are 39 and one that is a little ole 23-inch one.

Now let's check out our garage!  One of our first house projects was painting the walls grey, which you can check out in this post if you don't know what we did or what it looks like.  Well.  Our next project was to epoxy the garage floor.  I pretty much knew from the beginning that I wanted some sparkly red floors in our garage.  And, we have some red sparkly floors now!

The epoxy process only took a couple of hours to complete.  It took 5 kits to completely cover our garage.  The kit says that it covers up to 125 square feet.  Our garage measures just over 400 square feet.  We were lucky that our neighbor across the street has also epoxy'd his garage floor, so he had some tips.  And one of those was that the kits cover closer to 100 square feet rather than the advertised 125.

We did have a hiccup at the beginning.  I started to mix the first kit together with my paint mixer, and panicked when I saw there was BLACK in the epoxy.  It's sparkly red.  Black didn't seem right.  I had used the paint mixer in some black paint prior to our epoxy adventure, so I was worried I had mixed paint with it.  So, I sent hubby to Lowe's to get a new paint mixer, and I used that first kit that I thought was "bad" on the edges of the garage floor.

Well, when he got back, the epoxy in the container I had was almost all hardened (I am guessing due to the heat and length of time I was using it, as it's only good for about 45 minutes), so we mixed our next container.  New paint mixer yielded the same black color in the epoxy as we mixed.  So, I sighed, gave a big womp womp and realized that it was probably just the epoxy and NOT black paint mixing in with the epoxy mix.

Anyways.  I'm sure y'all don't want to hear any more about our epoxy experience, and you'd rather just see the photos!  If you DO want to know more about our epoxy-ing, just ask!!  And, for those wondering, this is the kit that we used.  It was Rustoleum's Rock Solid "Cherry Bomb".

Here are a few photos!  First, the "before" photo:

All nice and power washed and ready to be epoxy'd

The exposed concrete on the top of the epoxy now drives me NUTS! I want to get some concrete paint and paint it black.  The stairs to the door we will probably stain white with leftover stain from our deck staining, which is a later project!

Details.

That last photo, the "details" one, really shows the color of what it looks like.  All of these photos are from my phone, which isn't the best, and lighting sometimes makes it look funny.  But, we LOVE LOVE LOVE it!  It's swirly and sparkly, and once it was done, we really wanted to find some roller skates and skate on it, it was so smooth!  It's fun and gives a great "personality" to our garage.  Who knew I'd love painting and dressing up a garage!

We've got all of our stuff back in the garage, and can still fit our cars EASILY!  I want to get some pegboard for the walls to hang things, and probably one set of shelves. I found some super fun red pegboard at Home Depot, and that will probably be a fun future purchase.  I also have great aspirations to maybe one day paint a Cincinnati Reds logo on the garage wall that's next to the door!  If there's ever a "best garage" award, it'll be ours, haha!!


And now a bit more decor!  Our plans for our loft are to make it "travel" themed.  We LOVE to travel!  Our honeymoon was to Ireland, followed by a few days in New York City.  A couple of years ago we took a two week trip to London, Paris and Rome.  Last year, our trip took us out to the West Coast as we followed the Reds.  We started in Phoenix and ended in Seattle.  Saw 12 baseball games, 7 new ballparks, and made a TON of memories along the way.  No trip this year as we saved for this gorgeous house we are now living in!  Not sure what next year's trip will be.  That all depends on the Reds schedule!

So anyways.  Travel.  That's gonna be our theme in the loft.  I want to get a big giant map of the world to put on one wall in the loft, and put shelving on the opposite wall.  The shelving will display all of our goodies and such that we collect when we travel.  Shot glasses, sand from different beaches and oceans around the world..... I also want to get a little bench for the nook under the loft window.

With the loft being travel themed, I found some great stuff at Bed, Bath and Beyond that would allow me to extend that travel theme into the hall bathroom that is upstairs!  It's called the Passport Collection and is perfect in our bathroom!

Check out some photos I snapped of the travel decor in that bathroom!!  Y'all can just ignore that damn ugly vinyl on the floors.  We won't even talk about it.

These are NOT from BBB, and rather I got them off EBAY.  But aren't they PERFECT!?!?!

Shower Curtain (it's super soft!)

Towels.

The accessories are all monuments from around the world!

Even a cute rug to match.  And my floating hands in the mirror, haha!

The goal is to eventually stain these cabinets to match the maple espresso cabinets in the master bath as well as our kitchen cabinets.  We WILL paint, but we aren't going to do that til after our drywall stuff nearing a year.  We just don't want to paint "more than once", haha!  As of right now, I am thinking a shade of purple (not a pastel, but more of a darker purple.. just not too dark as I don't want the bathroom TOO dark).  Purple might bring out some colors in the vinyl too to maybe make me like it.  I also want to get some metal prints of some of the photos I took from our travels around the world to hang in here.  I'm thinking square ones, probably about 6x6 in size.  Just not sure if I want color or black and white.  Being that the decor is black and white, that's what I am leaning towards.  But maybe if I do black and white, I can do that color pop on certain parts of the photo.  Believe me, I have TONS of photos to choose from.  I tend to be pretty snap-happy on vacation.

Besides that, we bought a couple more cabinets from IKEA for our bobbleheads in the basement.  WE are S-L-O-W-L-Y getting everything unpacked in the basement, and even slower getting it organized and ready for display.

That big black blob on the right is actually a gigantic vinyl poster thing from the All Star Game when it was in Cincinnati.  We found one and bought it and will be hanging it on the wall opposite our mural.  We love it and can't wait to hang it.  And, the purpose of this photo:  another cabinet built.  Two more are still waiting to be put together.

And a "motivation" photo for some of you guys that are just getting in your houses, or even have been in your houses.  We still have boxes.  They're scattered throughout the house, but we still have boxes full of stuff.  We are just taking our time and unpacking and finding homes for stuff when we have the chance.

This is all in our dining room.  You can see some fun projects we are working on... The "living room" has bookcases that we are putting in, and that little black table has our paint supplies on it as we work on painting our interior doors :-)

And then a few more photos for you, just for fun.

We see some gorgeous sunsets and sunrises from this house.  Don't know what it is, but the colors most nights are just amazing.

And it's so nice and peaceful in our little cul-de-sac.

And our boys!  If y'all have any pointers on getting dogs to NOT chew on walls and trim, feel free to share them!  Our puppy, Crosley, is in the crate when we aren't home... and the main reason for that is because he was chewing on some trim at the stairs (which I am still trying to figure out how to fix..... sigh).
But, he also chewed some of the wall WHILE in his cage the other day.  I really do think it's stress from all the noises he hears, seeing we live in a construction zone.  He's naturally nervous and everything scares him... but any advice for chewers is appreciated!!

Cody, sitting at the top of the stairs (closed door is the laundry door)

Crosley practicing his mug shots a couple nights ago.  He has a great smile.

So, just a few pictures for now!  Our projects continue as we have the time, and I think once baseball season is over we will have lots of projects done!  We are slowly getting our interior doors painted (which I LOVE the pop of color), and our next big project is going to be staining the deck!

We also have our first *official* house guests scheduled to come up!  My sister in law was up right when we moved in, but that was to help unpack and organize so I don't consider that a guest since she was working, haha!  But, my mom and stepdad will be coming from Florida, and at that same time, my sister and her family (4 kiddos and hubby and dog) will be coming from North Carolina!  They'll be traveling from NC to ALASKA and are stopping to see us along the way!  So, we will have a house full and can't wait to utilize this big ole house with everyone in it!!!

Lot 98-- The Site of Our Future Home

That cute little highlighted lot on the development map? That's OUR lot. Lot number 98.

We went back and forth with whether or not we wanted to pay a lot premium or just stick with a lot that had no extra costs.

Well.  When it was all said and done, we went with one that did have a premium.  Not because we just love to spend money, but because we decided that a walk out lot was perfect for us. 

In our neighborhood, if you have a home with a walk out, you are required to have a deck.

A deck was definitely something we wanted.  And when Jason and I discussed everything, the walk out was great for us.  We have 2 shelties {that are going to live forever, and don't you DARE tell me otherwise} and we just think that it'll be great in the winter time to be able to just open a back door and let them go outside to play or do their business and they won't have to go up or down a set of icy stairs.  Believe it or not, these dogs used to be Florida boys and had NO idea how to even get up a set of stairs.  They're pros now though.  But, safety first, right?

Our Boys <3

Plus, we like just having that outside access if needed via the walk out.

And, the square footage of the basement can be counted in our total for the house with a walk out.

And let's face it:  I'm a Florida girl.  Y'all have NO idea how excited I was the first time I went into a basement.  I have such great plans for our basement and hope it's going to be a fabulous area.

We also like lot 98 because it's on a cul-de-sac.  I know I mentioned this before, but it's nice knowing that we will have that dead end, and eventually just another cul-de-sac on the other side of the road.  No main drag of road for people to go flying down.  And a nice little bit of privacy with being on a cul-de-sac.

OH!!!

And, let's chat about the VIEW we will have.

Jason standing at the front of the lot, checking it all out

I learned rather quickly that all of Cincinnati is covered in hills.  Our area is no exception.

Well, with those hills come gorgeous views.  

From our morning room and back deck, you'll be able to see rolling hills for miles.

In the fall, think about those fall leaves changing colors.

And in the winter, pretty snow all over the hills and naked trees.

And don't worry about the spring and summer.  That's baseball season and we live at Great American Ballpark during that time of year.

I asked about measurements on the lot, for anyone curious (I know I was).  Our lot is just shy of a quarter of an acre. Front width is 96.15'.  Rear width is 55.64'.  And Front to Rear is 115.16'.

Here's a few more photos of our lot!

We were the lucky ones that got to put our "SOLD" sticker on the lot sign the day we signed papers. The little guy on the bottom is Baby Jay Bruce.  You can follow all of his adventures {he goes EVERYWHERE with us} by searching the hashtag #adventuresofbabyjaybruce.  My selfie stick would have been ideal here.  Didn't even think about it. 

And here's a photo of OUR lot!   That house you see in the back with the wrap on it is nearly finished now.  The one on the very left of the photo has framing and wrap on it now too! They seem to go up so quick!

And finally, the day we went out to the model home to make our selections for siding, counters, cabinets, stone, etc...... it had snowed earlier in the day.  It was really the first snow we have had all season.  I felt it was only appropriate to snap a photo of our lot's first snow <3

I most definitely did NOT get out of the car for this photo though! It was super cold, winds were really strong, and just nope.  Car snap shots will have to do ;-)

January 10th

Can't wait til we have our address!! It's going to be exciting hear that little bit of information.  But, for now, our cute little Lot 98 is absolutely perfect and ready for our home!