our AGAVE home

We’ve got a lot going on these days. Here’s a little backstory…

Four and a half years ago I met Mike. To make a long story short, we fell in love, months later he moved into my home at the time, and we soon ran out of room in our merged home. We weren’t looking for a different home, but one day I while reading one of my favorite local blogs (modernaustin.com) I happened upon what we now lovingly call our Brady Bunch House. On a whim we made an appointment to view it, fell in love with it in person, and made an offer. While we started renovations on our Brady Bunch House, we put my modern pad on the market. However, the timing was poor and it didn’t sell as quickly as we needed it to, so we found a tenant and became landlords. Fast forward to the present day – our current tenant is moving out and we’ve decided to put it on the market. We need to spruce it up a bit and make it sale ready so we’ve hired a landscaper to tidy up the front and back lawn (I’ll be posting before and after pics of that) and we’re also staging it. Ourselves. We are crazy. But, we can’t really afford to pay a stager on top of an extra mortgage payment until it sells, so this is our only option. We’re bringing over a load of furniture from our Brady Bunch house for staging, and we’re finding a few items on Craigslist to fill in the gaps. I’ll be posting before and after pics of the staging too, so stay tuned. This week, the tenants move out and next week we move everything in and stage, and get it on the market.

You can see my very first blog post, which was all about the AGAVE house, here. In case you aren’t familar with AGAVE, where the house is located, it’s a neighborhood in East Austin full of architect designed modern homes. It’s pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. I LOVED my house, I just needed a bit more space since I’m a furniture hoarder 🙂 Here are a few pics of the house when I lived there a few years ago.

Yep I put in a pool at the Agave house. It’s probably the thing I miss the very most, especially May thru September!

I had custom Ann Sacks glace tile installed on the bar front. I love that tile.

So, with this new development our downstairs remodel has been put off for a bit (and at the same time we’re thinking of making some layout/usage changes with the remodel – namely moving my office downstairs to the den). More on that to come…

And if you’re in Austin and looking to buy an awesome modern home, email me if you want details!

vintage sign letters are up finally!

Well, it took us FOREVER! I first mentioned this project WAY back in August here…I have seen vintage letters used for decor and it was something I’ve really been wanting to try. So, we decided to spell our last name “Banks” with vintage letters. I found all of the letters on Etsy (search for ‘letter B’ for example). The letters all sat on our kitchen counter for a long time as I debated where to hang them and what to do with the pink “A”. We nixed the idea of hanging them above our front door because we were worried with a little door slamming that one may fall down on someone’s head. So, we decided we needed something in our staircase. With the “A” I decided to flip it around and spray it canary yellow. I love how it turned out, it’s bold while all of the other letters are a little more neutral. I still want to do something more interesting with our stairwell area, but this is a good start I think!

BEFORE

AFTER

happy new year! (and happy new sectional)

First of all, wanted to wish everyone who drops by our little home remodeling blog  a Happy New Year! We have a big long list of fun and not so fun things that we want to do to our abode this year, so stay tuned! We plan to finish a lot of little odds and ends on our punch list, as well as really begin making the downstairs areas of our house what we want them to be.

In the meantime, I wanted to post some photos of our sectional, which arrived just in time for Christmas and our hosting my family at our house. It really got broken in – my brother and his wife brought an air mattress to sleep on but ended sleeping on the sectional instead, and loved it! And fell asleep on it while lounging during the day as we were cooking, so I’d say it was a hit!

So, a few things about it:

• It is the Build a Sofa Oliver 2 piece sectional. It is HUGE. It pretty much takes up our entire living room (which is not very large to begin with). But, I am ok with that since this room is primarily for lounging/hanging out. It’s where we spend 95% of our time upstairs as a family. If you’re curious to know the exact dimensions, it is 96″ long on the shorter side (the side that is against the wall) and 122″ long on the longer side.
• We got medium density cushions and we think they are perfect. Looking forward to breaking them in a bit but I think the firm would have just been too dense for our liking. We like to lounge…
• We chose the light black stain option for the feet.
• We selected 2 long bench seats with tufting for the base cushions. Love the streamlined look.
• We also chose to have arms on both ends – we wanted it to be like 2 sofas put together, not just a sofa and a chaise…
• The fabric is avalon pewter, and it is one of the base (grade A) fabrics. We love it, it looks luxurious and expensive (to us)!

And now for some pics! Here is an overall shot of the room”

closer in

linus and moo ALWAYS find a way to get into my pics. yet when i want them to pose for me, they won’t do it. go figure.

below: box from Homegoods, coffee table from Four Hands Home

below: the fabric is a little more of a neutral gray which was hard to capture in the mixed lighting of our living room

rug: Angela Adams

below: peacock and turquoise and white pillows from Homegoods (last year), round pillows from Hobby Lobby, yellow lamp from Homegoods (also last year), side table from CB2

below: our display nook

below: frame from Homegoods, whale diffuser from Jonathan Adler for HSN line

below: handmade wall art made from leftover plywood painted yellow and leftover walnut scraps from our kitchen remodel, displayed on shelf is a piece by Misha Blaise