Our Home

The Beginning

Matt and I moved into our new home in October but it took a lot of manual labor to get to that point. We had been working on the house since July. Before the previous owners removed all of their belongings, we took a series of "before" shots. 

Dining room with prior owners table, chairs and china cabinet. The rug was also theirs.

Living room. To the right is the entry "hall" and front door and behind the fireplace is the dining room.

Living room facing toward the backyard and bedrooms. (Thank you to my father-in-law, Chuck, for removing light fixtures in preparation of the dry-wall guys coming in!)

Bedroom one (aka. the office) 

Bedroom two (aka. the guest room/Callie and Tessa's room)

Hall bath

Master bedroom

Master bedroom angle #2

Master bathroom (You can kind of see the rough texture on the walls here.  The bedrooms had a different texture and so did the hall bath.)

 So that was the before. The paint looked a little tired and faded, everything needed a really good cleaning, texture in the back of the house varied depending upon the age of the renovation, and crown molding was only up in the kitchen and living room.

The Middle

After we cleaned out all of the furniture, laid down protective paper on the floor, removed all of the switch plates and light fixtures, and covered the kitchen cabinets and plantation shutters with plastic sheeting, we had professional dry wallers come in to retexture all of the walls to the "old world" finish. They did a great job with the whole house and would have finished quickly but we had a cold week or two in July, which meant the texture took forever to dry. We actually had to run the heater for a while in order to get it dry enough to put on a second coat! But it finally dried and then we got to work. 

Just another day of work.

With my students on summer vacation, I was free and spent most of my days over at our house, prepping, priming, and painting ALL of the ceilings and walls. Picking paint colors was TOUGH…. We went through the 300+ paint colors in the Kelly Moore paint deck before Matt talked to a co-worker who said they just found paint colors at….

They have only 30 colors but their colors are the right shade for everything. Who needs 150 shades of white? We bought a few cans of sample paint (which were cheaper than the "sample paint" from Kelly Moore) and started testing it out on our walls! We ended up going with similar colors to what had been on the walls previously but in a little bit more lively tones. And we are SO happy with the final product. 

I was tasked with painting the fireplace. I learned that this is something that I do not want to re-do any time soon.

After painting one coat of paint on all of the walls and ceilings, we put up new casing around all of the doors, and base and crown molding in the bedrooms. When I say "we" I really mean my dad, Dana. He did all of the measuring, cutting, adjusting and finally nailing of all of the base board, casing and crown. The hall was no easy task with all of the tight corners and casing that needed to get ripped down in order to fit! It looks beautiful, thanks to him:)

After we helped my dad put all of the trim up, Matt caulked, spackled, and sanded the crown, base and casings to perfection. 

Crown in the hall bathroom. The little pieces of blue tape were there to help mark where the studs were. I went through ahead of my dad and marked them to make his job a little easier when it came time to nail it all in.

After all of the wood trim was in, we had to paint one more coat on the crown, casing and base and then do our final coat on all of the walls and ceilings. This is bedroom 2 completely done!

The master! You may also notice that there is not a big wooden box in the wall (previously for an old tube TV). That is because my dad pulled it out before the drywallers came in, they patched the hole and now we have a complete cabinet on the wall by the bathroom instead of a TV niche and half a cabinet behind it! 

The kitchen and dining room. Almost there! The island was our tool storage spot for quite a while and then we finally were able to remove the red protective paper when we finished up the garage and were able to put the tools in their rightful place. 

Our kitchen table was ready for delivery before the house was quite ready for it, so we kept this beautiful black packing sheet over it until the dust, paint and tools were an issue. 

My mother-in-law, Liz, helped us out in so many ways. One of which was pulling out the carpet from the master closet. The only place where there was carpet in the entire house! We put down cedar instead and now it smells so nice every time we open it up.

The garage with Matt's car in it and our dryer (also wrapped in red paper to keep the dust, grime and dings at bay until it was installed.)

The End
Once the dust had settled (or been swept, vacuumed and wiped away) we were ready to move in! Moving took a few steps and when we finally did have a free Saturday with help, Matt had to be out of town for work! So, I was the "boss" (and totally felt like it too) as I pointed to boxes and stated to which room they needed to go. 

We made a few trips with some of our smaller furniture pieces before the actual move. 

The living room! Moving day was quite busy as our couch and rug were also being delivered that same day. It worked out really well though to have our living room furnished too.

The dining room complete with buffet and hutch.

Angle toward the kitchen area. 

The office! My dad helped us build this beautiful desk at his shop. Matt designed it, my dad tweaked the design a little and then we built it in one Saturday. I love being able to sit across from Matt while we work on various projects. 

Bedroom 2 (or the girls room) This trundle bed was one that I made with my dad back when I was 14. It is a trundle and so we have two beds perfect for two little girls to sleep in when they come visit. When we were showing them our new house via FaceTime, Callie claimed this room as hers:)

The hall bathroom. Decked out thanks to Grandma Pete!

Master bathroom.

Master bedroom. Our furniture fit so well in here and we just had to add a fuzzy wool rug to go under the bed to make it nice and comfy.

Our garage! Although I wasn't sure at first, we can fit both of our cars in the garage. We got very organized one Saturday and put together the shelves and peg board hooks and organized our plastic bins. 

Laundry space. This is one area that we actually had to put quite a lot of thought and effort into. The dryer was previously on the garage floor (where my car and the shelves were) and there was a sink on the platform next to the washer. We removed the sink and moved the dryer up onto the platform with the washer. We also replaced the 70's vinyl flooring and used some extra base board to cover the edge of the metal tray that the washer and dryer sit in. We also had to extend the platform in front of the step by a good 5 inches so that it was even all the way across and would not be a tripping hazard to clumsy me:)

Well, there you have it. I have finally collected all of the pictures from the last several months to show the progress on our home. We are so very happy with what we have done and we love everything about our new place!