Decorating: Shifting Priorities

I keep thinking almost every day that it's been yet another day (weeks at this point) since I've written a post. To be honest though, not much has changed in the house since the last update. The majority of the changes have actually happened in the backyard which I'll be sure to post soon. We've added fun plants and lots of herbs, and have a table and chairs that we've already enjoyed a few times. We're starting to pick back up where we left off in terms of furnishing the house. Our priorities have shifted a bit, sort of.

The living room is our main priority now since we find ourselves spending the most amount of time upstairs in that room even though our basement is outfitted with our new couch and TV. But the living room is just so convenient, and we're still looking for the perfect TV stand for the basement in order to really tie everything together. But back to the main priority... we're looking for a new coffee table and end table set. Not necessarily a matching set, but some sort of combination. Right now we have a glass coffee table which is very pretty, it just doesn't suit the needs of the room. But it's working for us for the time being, so we're thankful for that. We're really into the natural, distressed wood sort of look, or anything that's more casual and shabby-chic, cottage-esque feel, if you will. We found a set on Craigslist that's only 2 years old from Pottery Barn, that's antique white/distressed wood so we're crossing our fingers that we get it.

When we moved we said we wouldn't buy any furniture from Craigslist for our house, but certain things like this we're okay with because we know it's good quality and it's really exactly what we're looking for. And sometimes you come across some great deals on really amazing furniture. We'll see though - they had the ad up and it didn't say a retail price or what price they're looking for; they just said to make an offer. I feel like we're bidding on a house, not knowing what other people have bid. I find that a bit strange but oh well.

Besides the coffee table and end tables, we're really looking to complete the room with a rug, a reading nook complete with an accent chair and cute side table with a basket for blankets and a book. We have a great floor lamp already in that corner, so we just really need to complete the look. But wow, finding a rug has probably been the most difficult part. We stopped looking for awhile but now we're really picking up steam, it's just been so hard to decide if we want a solid color, bordered rug or patterned. We were leaning away from patterned and more towards a bordered because a patterned 8x10 might get a little too crazy in terms of matching other accent pieces with it. But a bordered one might be too boring. And I'm not sure if a solid color will do what we want it to. However, after starting to look at rugs again online, we've been looking at everything!

I think our biggest problem is knowing HOW to decorate, what goes with what, and what is acceptable to actually put together. We're learning, and we'll get a good theme going on sometime soon!

As for painting, because a lot of people have asked us when we're going to paint - that won't be happening for awhile. We've already noticed a fair amount of nail pops all around the house, to be expected as the foundation settles, and even though we haven't seen cracking yet, that's expected too at some point in the next 10 months. Since our first floor is so open, we're going to wait the full year until we paint because we don't want to have to patch it ourselves (when the builder fixes the cracks or nail pops, they will only paint over the with the standard color, not the one we paint it with ourselves). We decided though that we might start with the upstairs bedrooms as practice if we decide the downstairs is something we could indeed tackle ourselves.

Basically how this whole new house thing works with our builder, is that we have a 60 day warranty check, and then a one year check. At the 60 day they'll do things like fix doors that might be off (our powder room door is a tad off in terms of how it closes. It's a bit higher off the ground on one side than it is the other. They might hammer in the nail pops and fix some hardwood flooring that starts to separate (again, to be expected). They said they know the areas that are most prone to it throughout the house depending on where the floor joists are. All of the crack repairs aren't done until the one year mark though because they will continue to happen. It's so interesting to go through this process and see how much a house shifts over the course of just a couple of months so far. Yeah, it's annoying to see the studs through the wall and the nail pops throughout the house, but it's just the way it goes. It's what we signed up for!

(Edit: We didn't end up getting the coffee table and end tables that we really liked :/ We definitely didn't offer enough money, but oh well. We'll find something even better!)