Tag: DIY

This weekend marked our first house-iversary here.  So I thought it’d be fun to take a side by side then and now tour.  Think of this as a child celeb where are they now special E! special.  Everyone loves those, right?  If you don’t, think of this as an updated house tour.

Let’s start at the front door.  Here’s the entry on move in day:

Add a rug, small table, a few prints, and here we are today:

The living and dining rooms one year ago:

And now:

Our furniture makes a big difference.  The rocker has to go back down stairs, but my dad needs his rocker when they visit.

Other than moving furniture in, painting over the red accent wall (which might change-see the swatches?), and building an entertainment center, this room hasn’t gotten much attention.

Same goes for the dining room.  Here it is before:

And now:

Yes, that’s a folding table in there, but it’s better than nothing.  We’ve got plans that could change the flow of the room, so we’re waiting to buy/build a table to decide the size and shape.

One big change has happened in the kitchen.  Check out how it looked then:

Now, the dark wall paper is gone.  Soon, I plan to finish the walls and paint.

Of course we still want to rework the kitchen.

The dark wallpaper wrapped around to my office, too:

It’s amazing how much brighter the room is without the dark walls.

One of the rooms we’re nearly finished with is the family room.  On move in day, it was a blank canvas with a 70’s moss rock fireplace.

The previous owner added some too traditional for our liking elements, like the sconces and arches.

Here’s the room after covering the fireplace, adding a bar/wood storage, painting the walls, re-arranging furniture, and squaring the arched doors:

Clearly the ceiling isn’t finished.  We’re fixing a few small cracks.  It’s on my to do list this week.  But the room itself is nearly complete, just have to shop around for furniture we like.

Along with the arches, the previous owner updated the main bathroom:

Despite being the most recently finished room in the house, it was the first we remodeled.  More storage and a shower were necessary for our family.  And here it is now:

Light walls, a colored vanity, and coral accents make us smile.

The smallest bedroom, our guest/Handy Sammy’s room just got a make over, too.  Here it is on closing day:

Today the room is bright and sunny thanks to a larger window and happy yellow paint:

Reconfigured bookshelves allow more floor space while giving the bed a cozy nook.

Our boys share the second bedroom, which was a plain box before:

And it still kind of is:

Before we can do much else, the popcorn ceiling has to come down.  Then we can add trim and paint the walls.  Until then, we’re living with swatches on the walls.

Same story in our bedroom.  Popcorn ceilings are preventing us from working on the room.  I can’t wait to paint over the cobalt blue walls:

We have built a bed (though it’s not finished) and added art:

I guess that’s something.  Ha!

Before, our master bath was a burgundy cave:

A coat of green paint lightened things up, but we want to remodel this bath to include the claw foot tub we removed from the other bathroom.

Most of the basement is unchanged, so I’ll just share the laundry room.  Ben pulled pet stained carpet out right after signing the papers:

For now we’ve got an old rug in place:

Gotta make things work, at least until we can really tackle each room.  So there it is, our house one year ago versus our house today.  It’s nice to take a look back, because sometimes it feels like we’ve barely scratched the surface of this remodel project we call home.  But, we’ve actually got three finished (or allllmost finished) rooms with lots of changes in others.  Slowly but surely, we’re making progress.  One day, weekend, and project at a time.