Changes to our house & oh yeah... changes to the blog!

I mentioned a little while back that we're doing some renovations to our house & that one of those renovations would be built-in shelves in our living room. Well guess what?!? Okay, we don't actually have them yet... but we do have a super ugly demoed wall to look at until they get installed :)

Doesn't it figure that the girl that takes pictures of everything doesn't have a proper before photo?! Lesson learned this time around. The next project will have all the proper documentation, but until then this Christmas photo from a few years ago will have to do as the "before".

BEFORE

DURING

See... super ugly demoed wall that we get to stare at until our shelves are built & installed. When we started to remove the mantle, tiling & molding around the fireplace we noticed that everything had been installed incorrectly. The tiles were barely attached to the wall, the cement board on the hearth was barely secured. It made for an easy removal & also re-assured me that this project will help add value to our home... as we're going to install everything new correctly!

And just for fun, I included a photo below of some inspiration for this project. Ours won't look exactly like this, but some of the design details will be included (like the built in mantle...). 

INSPIRATION

So there you have it, our first "real" house project is officially in the works!

And while we're on the subject of changes, I changed my blog design/layout! It was definitely time for a change & time for something a little more streamlined & simple. For the longest time I've had such colorful & busy layouts - I've always felt like the photos I included in my blog posts clashed with my blog; hence the reason I decided to go with my current design. After a lot of searching for the perfect simple design, I purchased this one from Lynsey's Shiny Magic Etsy shop. It was affordable & very easy to install yourself. If you're looking for a new design, I highly recommend working with Lynsey!

Well, that's all I have for this Monday. Hope you all have a fantastic week!

(Inspiration Photo)