Anyway, I wanted to show you room by room our new house. All of these pictures will be from the before stage. Please be aware you may suddenly feel like you have entered a time warp and have been transported back to the 1970's :) Do not worry, it's just an illusion brought on by lots of outdated design, which we are working hard to remedy.
And I am sorry for the yellow tint to all the photos. I do not know what it is about the house but all the 70's design just spills over into the photos and they all come out yellow. I decided not to try and change that because it is what it is. Good to know though that as we change out lighting and update things, there is a lot less yellow and brown showing up in the photos we are now taking :)
Some updates that the entire house have or will soon receive include: All popcorn ceilings scraped off, ceilings broqued and painted, all new receptacles replaced throughout house along with light switches/boxes. All door knobs, hinges, skid plates painted. All hardware on cabinets either replaced or refaced :)
The Kitchen
First up - Just a couple shots to remind you what the kitchen looked like. I wont' post all the pix here since I have already put several on a separate kitchen post. But as you can see...alot of popcorn ceilings, alot of brown, alot of weird lighting. This area gets a complete overhaul and we gutted everything. This is the biggest expense of the remodel and will have the most work done, but also expecting some pretty fantastic results from it.
Everything you see in that kitchen above there ....it's gone. And I mean everything. The floor -gone; cabinets - gone; appliances - gone; lighting - gone; popcorn ceiling- gone; walls (yes even the walls) - gone!
The Laundry
I am dreaming of the day this is my laundry room!! It is so big and is full of cabinets and shelving that I am itching to fill up. Our plans for this room include ripping up the floor, painting all the cabinets and getting rid of all that tacky hardware, tearing out the lower line of cabinets you can see in the photo below on the right along with the sink that is there , removing the toilet (yes it was weird), painting the walls and trim, new lighting and reflooring with some lovely tile that I am so excited about!!
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| See that toilet at the far end? it was just a little to close for comfort to our eating area which was just around the corner from it. So it had to go. |
The Den (i.e. Family Room)
This is where we expect we will spend most of our family time. So, it has to be really cozy and since it is open to the kitchen eating area also have a smooth transition into that room. Here's what we did/are doing for this room:
Paint beams and shelves
New lighting
Clean the brick around the fireplace and glaze it
Here (below) is the opposite side of the den (before) :
Rip out random odd closet
Re-route return air
Say goodbye to yellow counter and cabinets: Buh Bye
Widen pass through window into kitchen
Hallway
The house has a long hallway running off the den back to the four bedrooms on the main level of the house. This was an area in pretty decent shape, and did not require as much work.
Changes:
Remove terrifying doorbell
Paint walls and beams and trim
Remove random spot lights down the hall
Install new thermostat
To the left of the hallway you step into the foyer which is where the front door entrance leads to. I love this area. It is very inviting and the french doors are one of my favorite pieces that add charecter to the house.
Paint light
Paint Walls and trim
New Door: Someday (this one is really old and starting to have some cracks in it.)
The dining/living formal room:
This is an odd area of the house and we briefly considered knocking out walls to incorporate this into the den and kitchen but ended up not due to structure reasons (i.e. thats a support wall). I doubt this room is used much, but will be really nice to have an extra area for guests to eat and visit when we have company.
Remove Chandalier:
Replace light
Paint
Enlarge return air
Tile dining area of room: Someday
Laney's Room
The first bedroom you come to down the hall is Laney's. It already looks so different than this photo.
Reface chandalier and move to room
Paint walls, trim, closet
Take out weird flourescent light
Replace with light from Laney's room
Cut down closet doors: someday
Paint walls and trim
Common Bath
This hall bathroom is the one the kids will be using and guests. We decided we could live with the linoleum flooring for awhile as well as most of this room.
The things we wanted to do on the cheap included
Paint mirror
Clean and paint vanity lighting
New main light
New hardware on cabinets
New vanity top - someday
New faucets - someday soon
Paint everything
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| I can not tell you how much I love how the mirror looks now ( you will just have to take my word for it until I show you how different it looks since I've painted it). |
Oh the lovely fan in our bedroom lol!
This room's plan included
New lighting/fan
New Paint throughout
and that is about it for now. Anything else that we may have discussed doing with this area of the house would be a project atleast 5 years out so I'm not even going there ....yet!
Guest/bonus room:
New lighting
Paint
Window treatements
Master Bathroom
This is a very small bathroom. We have discussed a major overhaul in this are. But that is again something down the road too far to even talk about. So, for now we decided we will make due with minor changes here:
Paint
Paint or replace mirror
New side vanity lighting
Remove shower accordian slide door
New Hardware on cabients
Window treatment
New lighting in shower
Lets just say this is before and there are not enough words!
Usptairs;
We've discussed several ideas for the upper level. We aren't exactly sure what the first room will end up as. We've talked about a guest room, game room, excercise room or just more play space for kids. For now it will be the latter. I love this area. It looks so much better now than in these photos and I am so excited for the kids to have so much room for all their stuff! The upstairs is divided into two areas, this below is the smaller side. It has a full bath off to one side and has all the hookups to create a kitchen if someone wanted to (We don't).
Plans:
Painting and lighting is just about all we intend to do here.
This other side (below) is the larger part of the upstairs and is designated as kids area. We have them a setting area and tv and toys all piled in there. And behind those two lovely paneled doors is a large closet that makes me just set and smile and imagine what I will fill it with. I am so in love with the storage options at this house!!
The Patio
And apparently I did not take pictures of the basement. And I just realized that. OOPS! So there is a basement underneath the house and at the moment it is full junk lol! It has been a place to paint and work on things. It is a great unfinished space and perhaps we may end up finishing part of it, but I prefer personally having an unfinished area to store things and work on projects. So we shall see.
Now, don't think that there is nothing we liked about the house. There is lots of good things about the house that we loved! We just found alot of the things that are nice are hiding behind things that are not nice. There are lots of things we are not changing. For instance: the roof - it is brand new and lovely. We were so blessed that the roof is only a year old and in great shape! The flooring - the only flooring we are changing in the entire house is the kitchen and laundry room. The rest of the house has brand new, never been lived on carpeting, or hardwood floors that are in great shape. So that was nice not to have to go in replacing all the flooring. Lots of things we are trying to keep and either make over with paint or remodel somehow.
I'm so excited to begin sharing some after photos with you! Hang in there - someday!!
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