Our House // Before & Afters // Downstairs Edition

Welcome to our new house!

We closed on our house the day before my birthday and started what was supposed to be a 2 week renovation project. I probably don’t need to say anything else, because if you’ve ever moved or worked through a renovation, you know that things typically don’t go the way you plan. So, our 2 week renovation turned into 3 weeks + 1 day – still not bad, but I was really hoping for that 2 week timeframe. Anyways! We did a ton of work, and by “we”, I mean not only Derrick & I, but every single person in our families came over and worked their little butts off with us. We cannot even begin to thank our parents, my siblings, and my cousins for coming over and spending many many hours, working at our house.

The results? Amazing. I absolutely LOVE our house. Derrick asked me yesterday if I was still pleased with our move and location and house and I said absolutely yes! I am thrilled beyond words! A lot of folks have been asking for house updates, so without further ado, how about a tour? I posted a similar blog when we moved into our first house, and it was one of my most popular posts – so here we go again!

Like I said, we did some pretty hefty renovations [mostly to the second floor] so, instead of making this post ridiculously long, I’ve split it into 2 parts! Today is the “less exciting” of the parts, since this is just the downstairs, but it went through a pretty amazing transformation as well!

I wanted to walk around and take photos of our house before we began decorating for Christmas, but I feel like I have to preface that with: we are in no way done! I really wanted to get pictures hung up on the walls before taking these pictures, but since that project took us about 3 years to complete at our old house: I figured I should just take the pictures of the rooms with bare walls, and update the images as we go along.

The super nice people who owned our house before left us flowers & a sweet card!

You could say we were a little excited!

SO! Here is our living room before:

The green truly wasn’t a bad color – so much better than the last living room we moved into! It still wasn’t exactly what I was envisioning though, so here we go with some paint!

This blue wall – is probably my favorite wall in the entire house. I LOVE how it turned out!!

On moving day, the living room was the “bring it in and drop it” room –

And here is our living room now!

Abby has found a favorite spot in this house – and it’s easily right here – looking out this window.

Off of the living room, we have a laundry room – this is what it looked like before:

And here it is now! It’s half laundry room, half my office. Eventually, we have plans to move the laundry room to the back of the house & add another small bathroom, converting this entire room to my office!

Oh, hey, look! A little munchkin!

From the living room then, we move into the dining room [before]:

Derrick’s Dad laid hardwood floor down for us!

And now it looks something like this:

One of my favorite features of our old house was the wood work & built-ins – it was one of my special requests in looking for a new house – I wanted a house with character! I am so thankful that this house totally meets that desire – we have a built-in & a fireplace! [before]:

After:

And I’ve learned – whatever you do: always put up the gate to the stairs, because as soon as you turn you back [and are trying to take pictures of the dining room] – this happens:

The room the has gotten the least amount of work done is our kitchen. It is functional, but eventually, we’d love to completely over-haul it. The cabinets are mismatched & strangely placed, the backsplash uneven, the counters don’t completely match, but it works! And when you see part 2 of this series, you’ll understand why we decided to dump our time, effort, and money into the upstairs. So, here’s the kitchen before:

And here it is today:

Another before:

And after:

Can’t get enough? Me either!! Here is the link to visit PART 2: THE UPSTAIRS EDITION! I can’t wait to show you the second floor!!