For those of you who read yesterday’s update, or follow along on instagram and Facebook, you know that we spent the majority of our summer setting into our new digs! And now, we’re ready to show it off to you guys!
But don’t get me wrong, it’s still a major work in progress! We’ve only updated a few things here and there, and got rid of a few nuisances 
But, we’re chugging a long! But we figured that since we have had the house warming party to show our close friends and family, you guys were next! Sadly, without the barbeque and macaroni and cheese this time… bummer, I know.
So, without further ado, here’s the new home sweet home! Along with some before and afters, of course!
There she is! A brick two-story built in 1994!
Yes, the planter from our first home made it to the new house! What we’ve done here so far:
- power wash the walkway stairs and porch
- replace the exterior lights (there are also two more, one on each side of the garage door)
- replace part of the soffit on the porch ceiling
- hang our grand old flag!
- countless afternoons and evenings weeding the front garden beds
We’re pretty happy with everything we’ve accomplished out front, maybe next year we’ll get around to fixing up those garden beds even more!
Levi is always eager to meet new neighbors! Thanks Collardoos for his fabulous new tie!
We were pretty much sold on this house because of these hardwood floors that run throughout the first floor. I am in love with how the look and the warmth they bring to the space! Levi, however, hasn’t quite adapted to hardwood floor living and slides around like a crazy pooch! Lots of rugs in our future!
To the left when you walk in is the living room… but we’ll get back to that!
Right when you walk in, there’s a little half bath. It’s little, but it’s cute in our opinion. Having a half bath on the main floor was a must-have when we were looking for houses! We haven’t done anything to this room, besides putting in a rug and adding a few of our things. Eventually it will be painted and have a little more personality…
Continuing, you then walk into our kitchen, which is super cute! (Note: all the bunting was made with the super awesome Silhoutte Cameo- aka, my new favorite crafting tool!) We did downsize on kitchen space compared to the last house, but this is still a perfectly functional kitchen for us! A huge selling point to us was the LARGE french door refridgerator, the five burner gas stove (having a gas stove was also on our must-have list), and the microwave with the nacho setting. It has a NACHO setting people, I feel like I have arrived!
We have big plans for this kitchen!
- Replace the butcher block with a quartz countertop (zero maintenance, I’m a fan!)
- New kitchen sink- mostly because this one is dinky and I get water everywhere!
- Remove the soffit. We haven’t looked yet, but we’re pretty sure only electrical is in there, and we can move that pretty easily!
- New cabinets! We’re definitely good with our functional cabinets for now, down the road it would be nice to get some new shiny white cabinets like our old house had…
Really, the only thing that’s changed in the kitchen is the paint color…
We took the above photo at our inspection, the day after we came back from the Czech Republic. It’s the same muddy brown color that’s still in the half bath. Needless to say, in our opinion we like color better now!
Off the kitchen is our eat-in area, with a bay window and new lighting fixture from West Elm (no longer carried). I might have proclaimed my love to it the night Josh hooked it up… We usually end up working from here most nights, and is usually where various tools, mail, and other random objects tend to accumulate. But, we love it!
We love how open the back of the house is. Once it was painted, it made everything feel light and airy! Although, the pictures just don’t do it justice…. cloudy days!
Which leads us to the family room. AKA my favorite place to take naps when Levi isn’t barking at the neighbor kids on their bikes! Ha!
It gets a lot of great light in the morning and afternoon… pretty much all day long, so it’s always nice and cheery in here! As for furniture, we got the new couch and loveseat at a steal of a price from Comfy Couch Co. and the tv stand is from Home Goods. We looked for a few weeks before finding this one, to which we both had to have. It’s got a greyish finish to it and has lots of space for me to store books (I’m always looking for places to put books, especially cookbooks, anyone else have that problem?)
Oh, and the rug. Love, love, love it. But it sheds more than the dog, and Levi doesn’t shed! It’s a wool rug from Target that I pretty much begged Josh for because it matched the runner in the hallway and we got it at crazy sale price. No shame, I admit it. But, geeze louise! I vacuum at least every other day, if not every day, and it’s still everywhere! I know it’ll get better as time goes on, but wow. Wool rugs. Lots of work.
The walls will eventually have something on them. Art. Photos. I don’t quiet know yet, so they’re just blank for now…. Oh! And wall color- its Stingray by Benjamin Moore that we had leftover from painting our last house. We think it works well in this house as well. Bonus!
Off the kitchen is the dining room… folks, we must be adults now because we actually have a formal dining room… weird, right? But there’s this little hallway that leads to it, that I have turned into my “command center”
Just a little nook, that I keep things like mail, notes, tickets, reminders in so that it doesn’t pile up on the kitchen table and island and drive me crazy! It’s little for now, I think I’ll add a weekly calendar or menu too, just haven’t gotten around to it. The art is a $5.00 Home Goods, the wire shelf, also Home Goods. The cork board was a surprise find a Meijer. But anyway, the dining room!
This table! It belonged to my great grandmother. And I love it. It fits the room perfectly! It seats 8 people, and could get cozy with 10. And I love it. I did end up recovering the chairs (hope it looks alright Grandma Ginny!) with a tablecloth from Target…It worked out alright, I think the pattern goes well with the style of the chairs…
The curtains are from West Elm, they used to hang in the living room at our old house, and this was just the perfect space for them here. The light fixture actually used to hang above the kitchen table in the other room, but we switched it when we bought the drum fixture.
This room also used to be about 50 times darker- we had two ginormous pine trees right in front of that window and it used to block all the light coming in on that side of the house! You’ll see when we go outside!
Remember that living room out front? Well that’s what the dining room connects to!
We got a lot of questions about this room and whether or not we bought it just because the windows are perfect Levi height. Nope. Didn’t even realize it until we moved in. And the woodwork is scratched up as proof that we didn’t realize we needed to protect it from little puppy paws…
Thanks for the free cut file, Lauren! It worked out perfectly for our party!
It’s a great room to just relax in. Many books have been read this summer on that couch.
Upstairs!
We referred to this room for the longest time as the spare room, because up until the end of August it had no furniture in it. That’s obviously changed now as you can see. We set up my childhood bed (the princess bed if you were to ask anyone in my family…) for overnight guests we were having for the housewarming party. It will probably be painted, one day…
The room is the same color as the hallway and first floor, Stingray! We went through and painted this room and all the trim work, and the doors, and replaced all the hardware with new brushed nickel. Eventually we’d like to upgrade the doors to the five panel ones, but budget wise, painting the hollow core doors white achieved the look we were going for, for right now!
The dresser and mirror were a yard sale find for $30. A fresh coat of paint, Benjamin Moore’s Deep Caviar, and some new hardware spruced this old gal up! I’m loving the paint color. Sometimes it’s a plum, sometimes it’s a deep dark grey… I love it!
This room was the other room where light was blocked by the two pine trees planted 6 feet away from the foundation. It was worth taking them down, we get so much more light in this room now!
One of the rooms we haven’t changed is the guestroom. It still has the original paint color on the walls and the same wood grain trim around the room. But its a big room that gets a lot of natural light and has ample closet space for anyone who comes to stay with us!
As you can see, it’s the same sort of set up as our last house had. Once we get to painting the trim and picking a relaxing wall color, I’m sure it’ll lighten up even more!
The third bedroom has become my office. I do everything here. And I love the paint color that I chose for in here. It’s called Metropolis, I can’t remember who makes it, but depending on the time of day and the light, it looks anywhere from mint green to light grey and light blue. It is my favorite color.
As you can see, I started right away settling in! We painted the trim in here as well as the closet door (who’s hardware we also replaced). Still working on getting a functioning desk- we might have to build one to suit my needs, but for now, the table works just fine!
Continuing down the hallway is our guest bath. It’s the same set up as our last guest bath, and I coincidentally picked the same color, Proper Grey by Sherwin Williams for the color. I didn’t even realize I had done it! We also added a curved shower bar, brushed nickel towel holder, and a new brushed nickel light fixture. Eventually, we’d like to replace the linoleum floor, replace the cabinet & countertop, and maybe re-glaze the tub and tile to bright white.
Next up, the master suite. Which, I call a suite because you could fit our old master in here, twice. It’s big. Not to mention that vaulted ceiling! One of my wish-list items, I don’t think it was on Josh’s. And boy, do I have plans for that ceiling!
As you can tell, we haven’t done much in here. Really the only thing we’ve done is install a new ceiling fan where the original one once was. And it made a huge difference! The trim and room itself still need painting. But we still have to decide on that… maybe we’ll get around to it before the end of the year. As always, we’ll keep you updated
Leading to the walk in closet and bathroom is this little hallway with a vanity, that I promptly claimed. It’s been pretty handy since our bathroom has only one sink (we’re used to it, the old house only had one sink, too). To the left is the closet and to the right is the bathroom.
Nothing fancy, just keeps all of my stuff out of the way
The closet however, is a million times better than the one at the last house. For starters, we can both be in the closet at the same time! And, I have two rows to hang my clothes on. TWO! Levi’s cage is temporarily in the closet due to guests, but he normally sleeps downstairs. Gigantic closet for us! Not to mention, the closet has vaulted ceilings. WHO DOES THAT? I realize I’m type yelling, but seriously. Who has vaulted ceilings in their closet? Consider me officially a fan.
The bathroom is pretty much untouched as well. We did change the shower head- it used to have one of those bendy extended shower heads, but if you moved it, it would spray water all up the wall and onto the ceiling. No bueno. So we replaced it with a $15 water saver from Home Depot. Exciting I know.
There’s a whole lot of potential for a total bath overhaul, and it makes me giddy with excitement. But I won’t go into that here. That is a whole series in itself!
Now, wait, there’s more! This house has a finished basement!! Score, right?
To the left, is Josh’s office. Complete with built in cabinets and filing drawers. Needless to say, this was a perfect fit for us. One of the major selling points for us was this office for Josh because it meant there would be four usable bedrooms upstairs!
There’s also a media room, which will eventually be turned into Josh’s man cave with big comfy chairs and couches. For right now, we’ve only used it as a place to work out, guests (who can sleep on the fold out futton or air mattress), and for some old school video games!
We haven’t done anything down here, except change all the light bulbs to LED dimmers and clean the carpet. It’s a nice cozy space as it is really.
To the right is the laundry, utility, and crawl space. We tried to spruce the laundry area up a bit for me, and it definitely helps to keep it from feeling like a dungeon.
We then have utilities and storage. All fun to look at!
The crawl space at the end is actually pretty nice. It’s been capped (some folks that we’ve talked to say theirs is all gravel and not fun to deal with), and has carpeting put down making things easy to move around. It’s a bit messy right now- we’re still in the process of unpacking those last boxes on photos- but I hope to get it organized at some point this winter as the cabin fever sets in!
Last but not least, is the backyard!
We’ve put in quite a bit of sweat back here already, and it’s still got a ways to go! 
Let take a look at some before pictures…
See those huge trees? Yeah. They’re gone. And so is the hot tub and surround…
The deck was painted with Behr’s DeckOver. After using it at our last house, we were fans and used it here to great success!
It’s a lot more open in the back now, we have space for three different seating areas and a fire pit (in the garage…) and the fenced in yard for Levi is also a plus; he loves to chase the squirrels around the back yard! We’ve had to modify it a bit, where he would squeeze through, but it does the job! Eventually, we’d like to replace it with a low maintenece, man-made product. But we’re still a while away from doing that!
But what I love most are those two apple trees in the back there. We thought that they were just crab apple trees, but it turns out that they are full blown apples. Full of red and green apples at the moment, and every once in a while a little hummingbird shows up and enjoys the apples too.
And that’s about it! This summer was certainly a busy and at times, trying, summer. But looking back on it all now, I wouldn’t change it for the world. We’re in a great neighborhood with a house that we adore and most of all, we’re together and have no trips, business trips, or anything else to prepare for.
Just us, in this house. With the dog. And I love it.
