Spring has Sprung!

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic! I can't believe we are already in April. The Mr. and I have been busy getting even more settled in to prepare for our house warming party in just a few weeks! Knowing this, I have been starting finishing a lot of projects. We will have pictures soon! In the mean time I added a few more things to the blog including the sites I use for inspiration as well as the Link Within function that links my posts together depending on topic. :)

First Furniture Revamp

Here at the Hakes' Estate we were pretty busy over the weekend! I had some huge goals for what I wanted to get accomplished and even with my sister Allyson and my hubby Jared's help, we are still a long way off!

Here is the current state of our not so finished project!

Before

We just painted the base as well, it just needs distressed.

Before

This is just waiting on the back to be painted and screwed on. It is already distressed.

Before

These are all sanded and have their first coat of paint. I am almost done reupholstering them! 

Dreaming of Curtains

My curtain search began with a catalog from Restoration Hardware. They had creamy linen curtains that I fell in love with! The price was totally just barely out of my tiny little budget at $419 a PANEL. Yikes.

Being me, I thought I could replicate these beauties for a fraction of the cost! I found a very similar fabric at JoAnn's for about $25 a yard. Knowing I would need about 5 and a half yards, It was still totally out of my price range.

So I bought a bolt of basic off white muslin for $23 and decided it would have to do. I hung it up with my drapery hooks and it looked like I had hung a sheet over my window. SO not going to work. I decided to take the next few days to decide how I would customize that cheap-o fabric and make it work for me.

Curtain Customization Brainstorming List:

Dye them with tea or other dye.

Paint them with acrylic paint.

Stamp them.

Stencil them.

MEANWHILE

On my lunch breaks at work I frequently visit the TJ Maxx connected to my building. This is where I hit the mother load.

Pretty blues, greens, turquoises, browns, and whites!

No they were not linen and no they were not even really curtains but, the colors and the PRICE were beautiful and went perfectly with the design of my living room and kitchen! 

So, I swiped up my table cloths and also picked up the matching place mats and napkins totalling just under $50!

They turned out perfectly!

Sorry so dark! I need to edit first!

This is how I did the burlap tie backs:

I cut a piece of fabric ( I used left over burlap from my wedding) about 2.5 times wider than I would gather the curtains and about 3 times wider than I wanted the tie back to be.

Fold in thirds.

I don't sew unless I have to, so I pinned the burlap in place.

Wrap the fabric around the curtains and pin in place, making sure the clasp is on the outside. Then, hook the safety pin on a tea cup hook, and you are good to go!

How I made valances for my kitchen using place mats:

Measure how wide the curtain rod is and mark on the back of the mat using a pencil.

Using a seam ripper, remove the stitches where you will slide the curtain rod through.

Feed the curtain rod through the center of the place mat.

And hang! I am trying to decide if I want it to be the pattern all the way across or if I want to use burlap in the center to tie it into the living room. Hmm. Time will tell!

A little paint goes a long way.

As soon as I finished the cleaning phase of making my house a home, I immediately addressed the horrible choice in paint colors the former owners had. In most of the house we had a really blah shade of a greyish beige. It really made everything look a little dark and dreary. 

I decided to go with a creamy chocolate accent wall (Martha Stewart Living Snail Shell).

In this picture you can really see how boring of a color it was!

Then for the rest of the walls, including the kitchen, I chose a warm vanilla color (Glidden's Tawny Birch) to liven things up.

sorry this is so dark!

This was before we received our appliances.

The change was immediate! It looked like we had added new lighting to the whole area.

The next step was the office. The blinding LEMON YELLOW gave a yellow hue to the entire second floor of  our house! 

I chose a neutral khaki color (Behr's  Plateau) to bring a calming sensation to our workspace.

Now all I need to do is hang up some pictures and do some staging! Things are really starting to come along!

First Things First

The people who lived in this house before us obviously had no sense of cleanliness! The sinks, toilets and tubs were disgusting! Please beware the images below may be disturbing.

Left side DIRTY! Right side CLEAN!!!

Rest assured I have cleaned everything! It is shiny and spotless! It took a ton of elbow grease and a lot of time but it was SO worth it! :)

Our First Home!

After months and months of looking at over 60 houses we finally found the one! It didn't take long at all for them to accept and and we were moved in within one month of putting in an offer! We knew this was the property for us as soon as we walked in but, that didn't mean it didn't have some work that needed done. We moved into our house on Friday February 4th 2011! Here are a few pictures of our new house from the flyer. I could have sworn I took some before we moved in but, I can't find them! 

This blog is about my adventures in designing and decorating things for the new Hakes' Estate! Being other peoples blog stalker I will also post things that inspire me, hoping they will do the same for you.