House Tour : Two years Later

We closed on this house on March 30, 2015 and spent about a month painting it. So it's been about two years now that we've lived here.

Guys, I LOVE this house. I love it. Every time I get home, I am kind of in awe as to how perfect it is. It's so full of light - I love all the windows and doors. I love how it's exactly the right mix of open concept and separate rooms. From any room on the first floor, you can look through to see every other room - yet they're all separate spaces.  While every room and space is distinct, they all flow together beautifully. I love how the first floor is a big loop and the kids can run laps from the kitchen through the dining room through the sitting room through the entry through the family room and back to the kitchen. They burn so much energy doing that every single day. And the neighborhood is amazing, with great neighbors.

Obviously there are things I don't love - the mix of flooring on the first floor, that dang tile in the family room, the several windows or window frames that are broken (SIGH) (BUT THEY'RE GETTING FIXED! GOODBYE MONEY!). And it's still very bare in places. Now that the painting is done, we HAVE to start finishing the decor - curtains and wall hangings and real (versus temporary Craigslist) furniture. Why does all that cost so much money??

Even without most of the rooms being done, decor-wise, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at all we've done over the last two years.

Here's a video (pictures will follow the videos, so if videos aren't your thing, skip down) that I took in December 2014 - months before we'd even put an offer in on it. I took it to show my mom, who wasn't able to get into town to see it. The video is absolutely terrible quality. Like TERRIBLE. It's shaky and misses an entire floor (the basement) and doesn't really give that great of an overview, but it's all I have, and it kind of gives an idea of the layout.

Look for appearances by toddling, just-turned-one Emmeline (as well as Chris, Carys, my mother-in-law, and our realtor)!

Holy heck was that a lot of oak. Having finished painting most of the trim before we even moved in - so never getting used to it - I kind of forgot about how the entire house was reddish orange. I'm kind of proud of us for seeing past the orange and imagining what a little bit LOT of paint could do.  Here's the updated video house tour. Remember this isn't one of those curated, picture-perfect blogs that makes you wonder how anyone lives like that. We DO have two small kids who leave swathes of destruction in their midst. I haven't cleaned the baseboards...ever. This is real life. So excuse the sippy cups floating around (we go through like a dozen a day, I swear) and the dust.
As you can see, we've done a ton on that first floor, and not so much on the second floor. On the first floor, every room but the kitchen has been painted (although we did get the window and door trim done in there), and we replaced the dining room floor. On the second floor, we haven't touched a single thing in our bedroom, in our bathroom, or in the playroom, but we've painted the walls in both girls' bedrooms and completed a few updates in the shared bathroom. 
Here are some pictures to look at the differences and updates room-by-room. 

EXTERIOR

Before

One Month Later

Current

I'm not going to detail all the changes for every room, but since we've only done two things that are visible from the exterior and they're both subtle...the front door is white (instead of wood) and the small decorative plum tree right in the middle of the house has been cut down (it had to go because it was planted too close to the foundation). 

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ENTRYWAY

Before

One Month Later

Current

Removed the glass from the chandelier and gave it cute bulbs. Eventually it will be replaced completely.

Before - One Month Later - Current

 

LAUNDRY ROOM/BATHROOM

Before - One Month Later - Current

FAMILY ROOM 

Before

One Month Later

Current

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Before

One Month Later

Current

That tile floor HAS GOT TO GO. It is the bane of my existence in this house. If I get NOTHING else done in the next year, I would be happy as long as that floor was gone. The rug goes a long way to help disguise it, but that room really needs the depth of color and warmth that the engineered wood floors will bring in. We also desperately need something over the couch - but that wall is HUGE (like 21' long) so finding a large-scale art piece to fill it has been hard. I might DIY something. Whatever I do, it will bring in a lot of color. 

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 SUNROOM

Before

One Month Later

Current

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KITCHEN

Before

One Month Later

Current

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Before

One Month Later

Current

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Before

One Month Later

Current

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DINING ROOM

Before

One Month Later

Current

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SITTING ROOM

Before

One Month Later

Current

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UPSTAIRS HALL

Before - One Month Later - Current

CARYS'S ROOM

Before

One Month Later

Six months later
I had this room cleaned 10 minutes before I took this picture, I swear.

BATHROOM

Before - One Month Later

Current
Eventually the wave tile and blue floor tile will go, and we'll repaint the bright blue upper walls and paint or replace the cabinet vanity. 

EMMELINE'S ROOM

Before

One Month Later

Six Months Later

PLAYROOM

Before

One Month Later

Current (going the other direction)

Again, I swear this was clean before I went to take the picture.

BACKYARD

Before

One Month Later

Current

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I think the only that that is different is that I pulled all the plants from in front of the deck (I'm thinking about using that space as a veggie garden next year) and we got the willow trim (at the top of the picture) trimmed.

MASTER BEDROOM

Before

Six months later

(AKA We've done nothing. We're going to paint and replace the fan, to start with. Someday.)

MASTER BATH

Before

Current

Nothing done here either. Lots of plans. Definitely want to frame out the mirror and lose the carpet. I hate carpeted bathrooms (but not as much as tiled family rooms!). 

BASEMENT

Before

Current

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Before

Current
At some point, this will be less of a "storage/drop-off" area and have a second television and comfy pull-out couch to act as a kid's media area that doubles as a guest room.

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Before

Current

Again, we've done nothing to the basement. The walls were painted by the previous owners while it was still on the market, but after the pics had been taken. Thank you, previous homeowners!  We need more shelves and I need to finish sorting the clothes out. I actually need to just donate or sell all of them since we're 95% done having kids but I can't bring myself to do it yet. 

We have come SO INCREDIBLY far - there are even changes you can't even see in the pics, like two of the toilets have been replaced (or maybe you really ARE that observant?) and we took the remotes out of fans and replaced a bazillion light bulbs with LED ones and stuff like that. But there is 

still.

so.

much.

to.

do.

Sigh. Like I said above, my number one goal is the family room flooring. We added a rug and that helped a ton, but getting the dark engineered wood from the dining room will really be a huge change in that room.  Then the rest of the flooring can stay for a little while while I turn my attention to other things. Chandeliers. Light fixtures. Painting the trim in the upstairs bedrooms. Painting OUR bedroom. Painting our bathroom. Replacing the rest of the door handles. But our list of things "to do" is getting smaller and smaller, and our crossed-out list amazes even me (I did like a crap ton of it by myself and have the sore back to prove it...but I still can't believe it!). Slowly but surely, we're getting there. 

(someday I'll finish this post)

Those Damn Curtains

So if you remember from my OH SO INTERESTING AND SCINTILLATING curtain post, I was - am - trying to decide what curtains to get for the sitting room. We have no furniture there, and no plans to get furniture any time soon (sigh. but. but. but. it's actually been kind of nice having an empty room to use for whatever we need it, and we often end up plopping down on the floor to work on projects like painting pumpkins for Halloween, and using it for the Christmas tree and extra seating for Thanksgiving, so...while I want furniture in there, it's not all bad). On the one hand, picking curtains should be easy, because there is nothing to match...but on the other hand, since giant curtain panels are so expensive, I need to think of what the future furniture and rug MIGHT look like and try to match the imagined pieces. Also, the lack of furniture kind of demands that the curtains be show-stoppers.

On the last post (and in the Facebook comments) the gray and the orange curtains were the winners by far, with about equal votes going to each.  Since the gray and the orange were my top picks also, YOU GUYS BASICALLY DIDN'T HELP. If the internet could just come together for a consensus, that would be super helpful. (Say what? People agreeing on the internet? Never.)

To hopefully help me decide, I went ahead and ordered one of each of the panels, to see what I thought of them in person. And, of course, what YOU thought of them in person. Virtually in person.

Note: In these pics, nearly everything in the middle section except for the buffet is temporary (hi, Christmas deer!), so don't worry about "matching" the curtains to that section.

Also note: THESE ARE TOO DANG SHORT. I KNOW. UGH. I measured like three times but still came up short. These are 108" panels, so I'll order the 120" and hem them next time.

And in slightly different lighting (and minus the Xmas decor)...

And a few with the orange panel closer to the shelves...

So, what do you think? Orange or gray? Or back to the drawing board to look at some of the original other options?

Other, small, middling updates:

Carys got a big-girl bed! She was in her crib-turned-toddler-bed until last week. I KNOW. She was way too big for it. We had a bed coming to us, but needed a truck to go get it. It all came together Thanksgiving weekend and we brought it home. She loves it. I am planning on painting or staining it (it's raw wood) but probably not until this summer. I did put a rail on it because the kid does dance moves in her sleep.

We got curtains in the dining room! I just went SUPER cheap, plain white in here. We're talking like $16 for all four panels cheap. I didn't want to do anything big or expensive in here until we know what we're doing with the sitting room - since the rooms open to each other, they need to coordinate. I need to steam them to get the wrinkles out, but until I do that, here they are in their wrinkled glory. I hung them with the curtain clips versus sliding them onto to the rod - the clips give them a little bit of a modern touch (and I think they hang better).

Lastly, I also took the cream/orange frosted glass shades off of the sitting room lights and replaced them with Edison bulbs. I LOVE IT. I still would like to get some sort of new light fixture here, but taking those early 90's shades off made a world of difference.  I am going to either paint or wrap that white base to hide it, but need to figure out what will hold up to the heat (maybe that Rustoleum high-heat paint that I used for the fireplace?). 

As a reminder, here's what they looked like before:

If you scroll back up to the dining room curtain post, you can see I also removed the matching orange/cream frosted glass shade from that pendant light. And then when I was trying to look for a replacement at Home Depot, I dropped it and it shattered everywhere and I was completely mortified and we didn't find anything to replace it, so....WHOOPS. That's pretty much my life, though, so....