Well, you've been patient long enough. Come on inside! When you step inside the double red doors...
...you'll find yourself standing right in front of the stairwell.
To your immediate right is the dining room.
I am more than pleased with how the dining room turned out. The striped rug completely fills up the room, which I love. I was nervous it would be too small for the table, but that's not the case at all.
Speaking of the table, it's made of some awesome textured wood. I love the top of it. Kinda wish it lived in my house.
Even though the light fixture is not what I originally had in mind, I like the way it turned out. It looks nice over the table.
The items on the back wall (with horizontal paneling) should looke pretty familiar to you. The lamp is one that we scored early on, that's the red buffet that I made over, and of course, the mirror that I recently painted. I'm glad I went with the grey for the mirror, and I liked that we turned it to be vertical instead of horizontal since the ceilings are so tall.
Those tall skinny birds were a TJ Maxx find.
Over in the corner hangs Beth's chocolate cake painting. Mmmmm...
This last shot of the dining room was taken standing at the door to the screened-in porch. The door beside the hutch is a closet, and over to the very far left you can see that just past the stairs is the living room.
Speaking of the living room, let's head that way.
From this view, we're back at the front door like we've just entered the house. You can see the living room and kitchen are all one big room.
Let's focus on just the living room for a minute.
Let's see...the tv armoir came from a second-hand store in Florida. Besides building the black box to raise the tv, we also added a few things to the bottom shelves so it wouldn't be so empty.
I wrote a post about some bargain deals that we got when a local furniture store was going out of business. That's where the couches, coffee table, and side table came from.
We added a couple Target throw pillows to the big couch.
Standing in the living room, if you turn back towards the front door, this is your view.
The red chest is another bargain deal we got at the furniture closeout sale. It came in a box and sat in the garage for so long that we completely forgot what it looked like. I could've sworn it was smaller, but luckily, it seemed made for that space. The lamp was purchased with all the others a while back, and the bird painting was done by Beth.
The painting in the corner, back behind the love seat, was purchased from a local artist back home. We thought that corner needed a little color and that the flowers cheered it up.
I almost forgot to mention that the curtains hanging in this room (and the dining room, too) are the ones that I painstakingly put all the grommets on. Glad they turned out well!
During the whole process of purchasing things to furnish this house, I would say we only had two real splurges: this red leather chair and the rug. The red chair came from Macy's and reclines. It's so comfortable! (The floor lamp came from the same place as all the others.)
The rug is like a cloud under your bare toes. I could walk around on it all day. Or just lay down and take a nap...I'm better at that. It came from Capel Rugs. I really expected it to shed all over the place, but it didn't at all! I'm gonna watch it for a few months to see how it holds up and if it does well, I may be taking out a small loan to purchase a rug like this for every room in my house.
Beside the big couch is an end table. We actually purchased two of these but just couldn't make the other one fit. I'd say only having one piece of furniture that didn't work out was pretty good! We kept this plain and simple with just a lamp and another bird since we know it will be used a lot by visitors for remotes, drinks, cell phones, etc.
Just behind the end table and couch is what our architect called a "game niche." We really didn't know what to expect for it. I thought it would be a cutout that went all the way up to the ceiling and you could put a piece of furniture there. As it turns out, it's really just a couple shelves to store games on.
We did have a few games that we put in the big basket on the bottom shelf. Mom also cleaned out her book collection and donated a few romance novels. What's a beach vacation without those, amiright?
We also stuck a few buoys there (they match the ones on the dining table) and added this oh-so-cute beach bike on the bottom. It came from Hobby Lobby - 50% off, of course.
And I'm sure you noticed the Sunrise and Sunset birds hanging over the shelves.
Before we make our way to the kitchen, let's make a quick pit stop. As you can see in the picture below, just past the game niche but before you're technically in the kitchen is a door. That's the half bath.
Ok, actually, before we make it to the half bath, can we stop and look at the in-need-of-a-mopping floor for a minute? I voted for a darker finish and was outnumbered...and I'm so glad I was! This is pine wood with a coffee stain and I love the way it turned out! Oh, and maybe you noticed in the picture above that there's no shoe mould. The builder didn't automatically put it down but we requested that they put it down. When Doc and I left Tuesday morning, the builder hadn't even arrived yet, but my dad texted me just a few hours into our drive and said it was already done. Check that off the list! I think it makes it look a lot more finished.
Ok, ok, now we can peek into the half bath!
It's a small bathroom nestled under the stairs and has horizontal wood paneled walls. We didn't realize it wouldn't have a mirror when we arrived so we had to go shopping for one.
The cute little nautical weights hanging to the left were found at Hobby Lobby. I thought they were kinda fun.
On the back wall we hung two little sailboats.
The only other thing in this bathroom is this picture of footprints on the beach. This is actually a picture that I took on our honeymoon. Doc and I were they only people on the beach one morning and I loved the look of our married footsteps. (Awww...) So we brought a little bit of St. Lucia to our beach house in Florida.
Ready to head to the kitchen? Here we go!
The bar is looooong and I love it. We have 5 barstools at it right now but it could easily fit 6.
I also really like how the black granite on the white cabinets looks.
And the pendants hanging down are perfect. I love the industrial feel that they add to the room.
Let's hop over to the window over the sink. It's got another pendant hanging in front of it and we added a faux roman shade to the window.
Long time readers will remember that before we started this whole house building process, we actually put an offer on an existing house. That was a rollercoaster in itself...one day it was ours, the next it wasn't, and on and on. Well, one of those days when we thought it was ours, my mom and I jumped the gun and bought this fabric for the kitchen. The walls were painted red and we thought this would make the cutest little cafe curtain with the red walls.
Have you ever heard that having a rooster in your kitchen brings luck? That must've been what I was thinking about when I saw those funky little roosters. We could use some luck! We bought a coordinating red and white polka dot fabric to use as trim and were more than pleased with our purchase.
That same afternoon, while browsing through Marshall's, we stumbled upon this guy.
A red and white polka dot rooster! It's like it was a sign or something! We couldn't leave the store without it.
But, as the story goes, we didn't get that house with the red kitchen. We still liked the fabric, though, and since we already had it, decided we'd go ahead and use it in this kitchen too. Of course, that kitchen had much bigger windows than our kitchen, so if anyone needs a rooster throw pillow or something, we've got quite a bit of extra fabric we could get rid of.
Keeping with the rooster theme, we added this little fella to our collection.
We even added roosters to the walls.
We found this plate at a consignment shop and thought it'd fit in great too.
My dad says that we've gone and "country-fied" our beach house with all the 'chickens.' I don't think so; I think they're fun and funky! What do you think? Too many?
The rest of the kitchen is just your typical ol' kitchen stuff - stove, oven, microwave, ice maker, sink, and fridge.
Here's the view from the kitchen into the living room. Hi Mom! Hi Doc! Don't mind me...just taking a gajillion pictures of the house...
And this is the view to the other side of the kitchen. The door on the right is to the half bath and over to the left you can kinda see into the bedroom at the back of the house.
And with that, I think we've come to a good stopping point for this part of the tour. We'll check out the bedrooms next!
