I have been so excited to do this post. We closed on our house in August, but didn’t move in until the middle of December. We didn’t really start trying to knock out some work (ripping up carpet, scraping popcorn ceilings, peeling wallpaper, ALL the dry wall work, etc) until October or so. We busted out a ton of work in a pretty short amount of time (HUGE thank you to my incredible husband and all of our amazing families – Jake’s Dad may have spent more time over here than we did, HA!) We are so thankful for all of the help we got from our families. They’re the best. When we closed on our house, there was wallpaper on every single wall and carpet EVERYWHERE. Even in a bathroom. Yes, carpet in the bathroom. Gross. We have learned so much from this process. There were definitely days that sucked, I’m sure I cried a few times, but overall, we have had so much fun. But no Jake, I don’t want to do it all again right now… ; )
Here are a few pictures of our living room. We pulled up the carpet, scraped the ceiling, took down the window treatments, and painted the fireplace. We still want to hang our fan, finish the can lights, cover the white shelving on the fireplace in rough cut cedar, and hang our TV on the fireplace. Eventually, we want to get a big sectional, but we aren’t sure when that will happen. We aren’t in a hurry!
Eventually, most of this wall will be knocked down (this is still the living room). We aren’t in a rush to do that, so maybe in 3ish years or so – however long it takes us to save up!
We had already pulled up the carpet here, but here’s the before of the entryway. Just switching out the light fixtures changed this area so much.
Here’s a before and right now picture. We haven’t finished our dining room, but I think it’s the next room to be worked on. Jake did take out the windows between the dining room and sunroom. He and our friend, Zach, framed out that space for a glass sliding door. We haven’t done anything to the sunroom other than rip out the old carpet. We will eventually paint it white, but we are not in a rush to tackle that room yet.
Jake just finished ripping the mirrors, glass shelves, and top doors off of this built-in. We love the built-in and want to leave it, but we want to have floating shelves on the top half. This is in our dining room.
This is our dining room going into the kitchen. The wall to the left will eventually be knocked out to open up the two rooms a little more.
The kitchen will eventually be completely redone, but it’ll be a few years before we do that, so we wanted to update a few things in the meantime. I ended up painting these cabinets TWICE because I bought paint from a hardware store instead of a paint store. My one piece of advice – rely on people who KNOW what they’re doing. We have used Spectrum Paint ever since my kitchen paint fiasco and I cannot say enough good things about them. We can walk in the store, tell them the project we are doing, the surface we are painting on, and our desired outcome, and they give us the best options. Highly, HIGHLY recommend them. They are the best here in town. Our kitchen was kind of an off white/yellow and we painted the cabinets gray. The appliances all work great, so we won’t replace them until we completely redo the kitchen. We did get a new fridge because the old one was tiny, but we are keeping it and will put it in the garage.
This corner won’t stay like this. The wall will eventually be knocked out, but even before then, we hope to move our bar area into the dining room or sunroom. This corner works great now, but neither of us loves this set-up. And the second fridge will not stay in the kitchen. I love the new light fixture we got for this space. It made things so bright. We got most of our fixtures from Menards. They have a fantastic light gallery.
Here’s more kitchen.
We LOVE how the new fridge looks. We do think we want white cabinets when we finally redo this space, but we love the gray for right now. It’s called Chelsea Gray by Bejamin Moore.
We also used Chelsea Gray to paint the built-in at the end of our hallway, too. I love it against our floors.
Here’s the before and after of my office.
We are currently set up in our guest room since we will be starting on the bathroom in our master in March. We didn’t want to move all of our bedroom furniture multiple times, so we won’t move into the master bedroom until this summer, which is when we hope to be finished with bathrooms. It took a couple coats of paint to cover up the vines/flowers in this bedroom, but we finally made it happen. All of our paint is called White Dove. It’s also by Benjamin Moore.
Another easy change that makes a huge difference – a new faucet. Jake has replaced most of our faucets and I love them. Here’s the before and after of our kitchen faucet. I took the after when we were still painting the kitchen window, so please excuse the blue tape.
It’s so fun to look back and compare our house now to when we bought it. I love when people stop by who saw it before we started working on it. They’re always blown away by how different it looks.
Things we still need to do: hang our fan and some can lights in the living room, finish the dining room, finish the sun room, finish our gym, finish our master, knock out a few walls, redo the kitchen, redo all three bathrooms, landscaping, figure out what we want to do to the deck/patio, and paint the outside…I think that’s it…HA! We still have a ways to go, but we are not in a rush. We will tackle projects as we save up for them. Our house is finally feeling like a home and it means so much to us that we have been able to do a lot of the work together.
Happy Friday, friends!