New paint!

This happened a while ago, but my house got some new paint! The guest room and hallway/stairwell, which were in terrible shape and feature an ugly cottage cheese texture, finally got the new look they were promised.

The hallway is a little warmer and sleeker, and all of the stains are covered!

New paint coming soon!

I have the best landlords. Really. Every year they re-invest the profit into the house, through storm windows or new furnaces or patched plaster.

I'm getting new paint.
I know it's silly compared to a new furnace, but my furnace is in great shape and the walls upstairs are not. They look like they stopped coming clean several decades ago. Remember that horrible texture?

The guest room is coming along, but I would like to have a darker color on the wall. That, and I have no patience to scrub all the stains off. I'm going with Behr's "Squirrel", which looks even better on the wall.

I love how it turned out in this room from Design Sponge:

Interrogation room to cozy dining room

The downside of just starting out is that I had very little furniture. Thankfully my parents lent me the first kitchen table they ever used (and my grandparents before them), so I had someplace to eat and something to put in the dining room. The dining room had been hastily painted white some time ago, and it looked cold and sterile. Remember that light?

It was bad. Very interrogation-like.

So I stuck a basket on it (and haven't taken it off since). I'm working on a better solution. Tips on hanging paper lanterns here. 

We're looking at the freshly spackled, sanded, and primed wall. There were a lot of holes to fill in. Oh my goodness, I wish I had taken pictures. It was incredible.

Coffee table restyle

When I first moved in I was using my lego table as the main coffee table in the living room. That was great, except that my coffee cups were always fighting with AT-STs and ewoks. So I watched craigslist, looking for a quirky table to fit my quirky space. My living room is connected to the entry, stairway, and dining room. This means it's as much a hallway as a room. I've worked around this by positioning the chair on an angle, effectively closing in the seating area and leaving room behind it for walking. 

This coffee table works perfectly with my funny angles. There's enough space to walk around it, but it's within reach of each couch. And here's the cool part:

Yes, it lifts up. Perfect for lazy nights when I just want to eat dinner and watch a movie on the couch. The table had been living in someone's garage, and it wasn't in great shape. And I already have a lot of different wood shades in the house. (Several people have complained that I ruined a perfectly lovely piece of furniture, but it's just composite wood and was kinda ugly. I have no regrets.)