Home Sweet Home

We've officially been in our house for almost seven months now. It's crazy to believe, since there were definitely times in the two year gap between us selling our NC house and finding this house that we felt like we'd never be settled in our own home again.

When we started looking for houses this time around, I was determined to find a house that spoke to me. If there's one type of house that is definitely not my style, it's the cookie cutter house. Our house in NC, while lovely in its own right, was too traditional for me. This house hunt, I refused to even look at any houses with traditional floor plans or houses in cookie cutter neighborhoods. We also knew we wanted a house that needed a little love. We weren't up for a full blown reno, but we wanted to update things ourselves over time, as opposed to buying something that was move-in ready.

When we first saw our home, I'll admit, that I didn't immediately know it was "the one." It was January and the house was vacant, so there wasn't much charm, but I could tell that the floor plan would totally work for us and I'm so glad I trusted my gut on that! It's been a busy seven months and I still alternate between feeling like we've accomplished so much in this house and feeling like there's so much left to do. Regardless, this is home and we couldn't be happier.

(I put "before" and "after" pictures in here but the "before" pictures are huge and I'm not willing to invest the time in figuring out how to resize them right now, so bear with me. The pictures that were taken of our house when it was listed were taken at night for some reason, so the "before" pictures make the house look so dark--it's crazy how different it looks with daylight and furniture!)

This is the MLS photo we saw online before we moved in and then a somewhat current photo, taken this summer. We've painted the front door, swapped out exterior light fixtures, painted the storm door, painted the trim above the window, and added landscaping and landscape lighting.

In the kitchen, we've swapped out light fixtures, added tile backsplash, added the center kitchen cart island, taken off the doors of a few cabinets and painted the interiors, changed out the cabinet hardware and painted all the walls and trim. Next summer I plan on recruiting my mom to repaint all the cabinets with me. Yay, Mom!

This is probably the biggest change. When we bought the house, there was a full wall between the kitchen and family room. The day that we closed on the house, we had someone come open the wall up into a half wall. This has made a huge difference in the openness of the main floor! This picture has made me realize that we need a new foyer light fixture though...hmm...

Tom's college roommate and his fiancé came to stay with us for a week while they were waiting for their rental to be ready so I put them to work. Pretty sure they'll never stay with us again, but my bathroom got a great makeover! We ripped up the old floor and put new tile down, painted the vanity, swapped out the mirror, changed the shower curtain and painted the walls.

Our most recent project was painting our den and putting up a mantel. We plan to tile underneath eventually but I'm so happy with how the turned out that I wanted to share before it was 100% done. (If you're wondering--yes! I BUILT that thing!) 

We've also painted all the trim, walls and doors in the bedrooms, but I didn't photograph those yet. Thanks to Pinterest and a (mostly) cooperative husband, we've knocked out a good chunk of our "to-do" list from when we first moved in. Anyone who knows me though knows that I'm already dreaming up the next project before the current one is even finished, so stay tuned to see what's in store next for the little blue house!