As our home improvement projects came to a close, there were just a few things that we wanted to do to complete the look.
The new granite kitchen countertop got installed and we LOVE it! We also love the new undermounted sink and the faucet. We updated all the light fixtures throughout the downstairs because they were all an ugly brass color that didn't match any of the current stuff that we were doing.
We were looking at living room furniture back in the first part of January and had found the set we wanted. Then my brother died and everything was put on hold while I grieved and comfort ate my way through the next 2 months. Around mid March I decided that pattern of behavior could not continue or I would be gaining back the 60 lbs I lost last year! That's when the home improvements started- much to Colin's dismay! I think he preferred comfort eating Heidi to the new Heidi that filled up all his time off with multiple trips (a day) to Home Depot.
After we got the living room painted and the crown molding put up we started looking at furniture again. We ended up back at the first set that we liked back in January. It had a reclining sofa, reclining loveseat and a reclining oversized chair. I fell in love with the oversized chair and it's really what sold me on the set. I knew it would be perfect for me and the doggies. As you can see- it is! They love it too. I seriously think Skittles thinks it is HER chair! I'm so glad she lets me sit in it-sometimes.
Every time we would go shopping for new living room furniture, I would detour off to where the dining room furniture was. I have always wanted a hutch and I have been wanting a bigger dining room table for awhile, and by bigger I mean one that would seat more than 4 comfortably. Ideally, I wanted one that would seat 8. I realize we are a family of 2 people and 2 dogs, but there are times when we could use a table for 8. Sometimes the dogs have friends over. Just seeing if anyone actually reads this. :)
The problem was not finding a dining room table that I liked that would seat 8 because I found plenty of those, but finding a dining room table that would seat 8 AND fit in our dining room! I fell in love with a long oblong table that had a matching hutch. It was the style I liked and it was perfect. The bad news is, there is no way it would fit in our dining room. It was way too long. The good news is, it had an oval shaped twin that WOULD fit in the dining room and WOULD seat 8! We opted to go with 2 chairs for both ends of the table, and then 2 benches for the sides because you can fit 3 people on each bench. If we had opted to go with chairs all the way around, the most you would comfortably fit is 6.
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| New Table and Chairs/Benches |
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| 8 Places! |
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| The Hutch |
We sold our old dining room set on Craig's list. In fact, I sold a LOT of stuff in order to get this new dining room set. About 4 years ago I was into card making as a hobby and had purchased a lot of Stampin Up products. I lost interest in it about 2 years ago but I still belonged to a Stampin Up group on Facebook and noticed that people would sell their old items there. I hung onto my stuff for a couple years after I stopped stamping to see if I would want to pick it up again. After 2 years, that didn't happen so I decided it was time to start selling the stuff in my craft room. Honestly, in the beginning I wasn't even sure it would sell, or how much people would buy it for. I just figured I would put whatever money I made selling it towards getting the new dining room set and hutch. My goal was to have enough money from selling my craft stuff to get the dining room set and hutch by the end of the year. I started listing some things that I had, and it started selling-fast. The first day I made $300 in under 2 hours after listing just a few of the items and Colin joked that I should quit my job and just start selling our stuff on the internet. The quick start motivated me to get serious about selling it, and in a couple of weeks, we had all the money for the dining room set and almost enough for the hutch from the stamping stuff that I sold. In a couple more weeks, I'm sure we would have had it all, but my mom wanted to buy me the hutch (thanks mom), which made it so we could buy the dining room table and chairs/benches after just a couple weeks. 3 weeks to the day that I started selling it was the day the dining room furniture got delivered. Colin also got motivated during this time to get rid of some things and found a place online that buys old DVD's. He sold a bunch that we didn't watch anymore and were just taking up space and made a few hundred dollars from that. I will say that all this selling business takes up a lot of time. The ladies at the post office know me by name now. I was there at least every day twice a day during those first couple of weeks mailing stuff out and checking how much postage would be to certain places. It was all worth it in the end though! I still have more craft items to sell too, so I will keep at it. After all, now that the craft room isn't going to be a craft room, we'll have to remodel it into something else- most likely another spare bedroom for when company comes. I have my eye on a day bed with a trundle that would be perfect in there. After we repaint the room of course. Colin is excited already! HA!
