Loft is finished!

We weren't happy with the chairs we had in there.  I quickly stopped into an overstocks place and found these 3 memory foam gaming chairs at Costco:

They were so comfy and the perfect chill out chairs, easy to move around and hang out.  I bought all 3 and he gave me 20% off!

My son has claimed this one as his :)

I put some pillows out so people can lay on the floor too and the cute lights make it so fun!

It's just such a cozy spot!  It feels like a cool little coffee shop or something!  I think we plan to mount a tv in here but this one we snagged from our room in the meantime.  With everY room we make nice, another room pays the price!!  :)

But last night we laid on the floor and played games and we have already enjoyed this space more than we have in 2 years!  It's awesome!

We are now working on finding a sectional for our living room.  And getting our guest bedroom set up cute.  We are going through the process to be a foster/adoptive family which is what sparked all this change!  We are so excited!

Loft transformation

We are about 85% done.  We want to replace the chair with 2 recliners or a reclining love seat  so we can chill out and watch movies up here.  It's cozy and warm and I see us using this space so much!  It went completely unused for almost 2 years!

Desk area which I know I will use so much more than my downstairs formal living space.  

Will replace this out with something else

Love the curtains so much.  It has a feminine touch but I left some of the man cave elements :)

Like my proud husband's elk antlers :). Below there is a play area full of toys.  My son already loves it!  Now he can play, I can be on the computer and we can watch a movie all in the same space!

Loft style

So our loft was previously an unused "man cave"/"man office".  Well I was over it.  Remember the hammock he hung up?  #bye

We still haven't completely finished painting and I have been looking for the right curtains to lighten it back up because it does seem dark in here!  I found these beautiful Nicole miller panels at TJ maxx for $30 for a pair!  So $60 total for these gorgeous thick beautiful curtains!

They were 96" which I knew was too long but I was excited to mount the rods up high like I did downstairs.  Makes such a difference!

Old on the left.  Gray/black stripe.

Also got this big R to hang up in there, the blue matches the curtains exactly!

I'm so excited to start using this space!  We are planning a sophisticated play area (read: everything put in its place and out of sight!).  Maybe considering a homework area.  

Painting finally

Well we are finally getting around to painting our upstairs!  Thanks to a 40% off sale at Sherwin-Williams we went with 3 separate colors to get started upstairs.  

We got this color in a 5 gal bucket because we had a lot to cover.  We spent the extra for the super paint and it is worth it.  One coat and done!

This is our main color that we are using in the main areas both up and downstairs

SW Stamped Concrete

I think it's a good medium gray.  It is a statement but not super dark.

The other two colors we chose are for our son's room and our guest bedroom.  In our son's room we chose SW storm cloud

 And in our guest room SW oyster bay

We definitely lean toward a cool color palate and grayed out versions of them.  Since this stuff covers so great I'm hoping we have enough to do some accent walls downstairs to tie it all in, or bathrooms.

Stay tuned for some of the room makeovers!  Bye bye man loft :) it never gets used and is ugly anyway ;)

As far as the patio, this is where we ended up:

They put a layer of something on it but guess what, still have 3 low spots so now they are going to rip it up completely.  We are rethinking decking over it and instead doing a flagstone or something to extend it so we want it done right.  I am waiting on a response but they did warn us that tearing it up would jack up our yard pretty bad.  Husband doesn't care he just wants a legit usable patio which we do not have.

Back porch

The concrete guys came today and refinished the patio.  They laid 1/4 inch of fresh concrete over the old.  Not sure how that will work out but they are telling me it will bind.

I heard him tell his boss that it was holding water in 3 spots and if this didn't fix it they would have to rip it up.  I also asked him if he could sweep it gently with a broom instead of whatever was done the first time because it was so rough that it hurt to walk barefoot on it.  

We aren't quite sure what we are going to do as far as a deck but we have a few other things going on and won't get to it for a bit.

We are going to be painting and decorating our upstairs as well as our downstairs so stay tuned!

Patio update

This has gone much smoother than I imagined.  They came out and looked at it, and said they will talk to the concrete guy to see what can be done.

Not the typical "it is what it is and we aren't doing anything about it" answer.  I went through my entire Ryan handbook and everything in there is very vague as to what is covered.  I really think the issue here is that the water gathers right up against our foundation.  I always hated that because we had a rug there that was constantly wet and would never fully dry because of that puddle.  Our concrete is super rough and nasty which is why we want to just deck over it completely.  But knowing there is a spot that collects water is a little concerning if we are going to spend so much on a beautiful deck.  Who knows.

They are coming next week with the concrete guy to see what can be done.  I'm thinking they will either have to completely re-do it?  I don't think you can lay concrete on concrete?  But I'm curious if they will say "since you are putting a deck on it, we'll just fill it with concrete"...

I don't know.  I just want to keep water away from my foundation!