Getting close!

Just a few weeks until we move into the new house! Seems so far away yet so close. 

Lots of progress has been happening so I figured an update was in order. 

First up, we painted the garage! No I take that back *I* painted the garage about 95% by myself. We planned on painting the ceiling as well, but after how raw my hands felt after painting that entire garage I realized I could live with the ugly ceiling. Ha! We had paint from the interior leftover so we decided to paint the garage the same color as the walls inside and my little laundry nook the color of our bedroom. Once it was painted I realized I'm not a huge fan of the grey and the beige next to each other, but it's fine, for now at least. I apologize for the picture quality. Most of these pictures are spur of the moment iphone pictures. 

Semi-before (primer was on the walls)

After:

Next project was changing out all the door knobs in the house. Most of the old hardware was bright ugly brass. That just had to go. We opted for an oil rubbed bronze which is my favorite!

Before:

After:

I've decided on a blue accent color for the kitchen and I've been loving finding new things and items I already own to put together the kitchen. Here's a sneak peek at some I've found. I'm a mason jar fanatic so when I saw the mason jar hand towel at target I knew it would be perfect in the kitchen! 

I've been moving things slowly into the house and I found this perfect contact paper to put into the cabinets. You can barely see it until the light hits it a certain way but it's a beautiful lace and it fits perfect in the house. 

We recently had the floors professionally cleaned as well which was great. HOWEVER, once they cleaned the grout in the tile downstairs the imperfections and wear and tear really were apparent. 

So needless to say another project presented itself. Luckily it's not the ENTIRE downstairs that looks like this, only about 3/4 of it. 

After that is done, then it's time to start moving things in! We have been getting some window treatments as well as packing up all our non-essentials. The move is getting so close, we can't wait!

The kitchen, the beautiful beautiful kitchen.

The kitchen is a huge focal point in our home. It's basically in the dead center of the house and it's part of one big room with our family room. When we purchased the house the kitchen was a huge eyesore. The sellers painted it the worst brown possible and it was just FILTHY. We contemplated just painting the cabinets and maybe just upgrading the appliances but it just wasn't going to work. We were already going to have a contractor come out and repair and paint the inside and outside of the house and we decided to have him re-do the kitchen as well. 

Here is the original kitchen to refresh your memory:

It may not look as bad in the pictures but trust me. TRUST ME. It was gross. 

First step was gutting the whole thing! 

We were making some slight changes in the kitchen. First, getting rid of the double oven and getting a slide in oven/stove combo. As much as I LOVE the idea of having a double oven I decided having a larger pantry is something I wanted more since I would only need a double oven a handful of times throughout the year. We also decided to move the dishwasher to the opposite side of the sink so it wasn't so close to the oven. Also the kitchen had some random lighting. Two fluorescent lights placed very strangely and I believe 3 can lights also not placed evenly. So we got rid of them all and had 5 new can lights put in. 

The next step was picking out granite, and the cabinets! 

We went with white cabinets. I've been pinning like crazy on pinterest lately and I love the white farmhouse kitchen look. 

It was so exciting to see it in progress. I knew it was going to look amazing. 

Then this morning we went to check out the progress and it was DONE! (With the exception of a couple cosmetic things.) We were blown away. It looks so beautiful. Just perfect!

(Lazy Susan that way the deep cabinet is more easily accessible)

As slight "ledge" was created that way it would block any possible liquid from going into the windowsill. 

We are in LOVE! It's so crisp and clean! I still would like to add some knobs to the doors but we will revisit that at a later time. For now, it's perfect. 

 

A new beginning!

We have lived at the ranch now for about 3.5 years since my parents retired. While we did enjoy it before we had Lincoln, once you have a baby, the responsibilities got fairly difficult for us. Also, to be honest, the ranch was my parents dream- not ours. Its definitely a 24 hour job, 7 days a week. Well the time came where we all came to the conclusion is was time for everyone to "move on".

We started house hunting in early-mid October, and crazy enough we found our home within only a couple weeks. We only saw a handful of houses before we found ours. Everything in our budget was small. We would have had to downsize from the ranch. Which honestly would have been tough, especially if down the road we decided to have another baby. Then one day, my mom found our house online, the next day we looked at it and I just knew it was "the one". It was also larger than any house we had seen (in person or online) and it had no HOA fees!

When we did the first viewing it was all very exciting and you didn't notice all the "issues". The next time we went back to the house was for the inspection. Then you started to notice the way the sellers did things here and there. The paint for instance was pretty bad. They didn't cut any of the edges of the walls and it was SO sloppy. It looked as if a child painted the house. Paint got all over the closet doors, the ceiling etc. It was pretty bad. AND they painted on top of every hole or nail in the house, and there was A TON of holes and nails. I've never seen a house with as many holes as this house has, and I'm not talking nail holes (although there is PLENTY of those too) I mean just random holes! Anytime they "repaired" something they did it wrong. It was just crazy.

Then, we went after we got the keys and the house was empty. OH MY GOODNESS. Then you REALLY saw all the...imperfections to put it nicely. They didn't clean at all before they left. Actually, pretty sure they hadn't cleaned anything in like...a year, maybe longer? Not exaggerating. The ceiling fans had what seemed like an inch of dirt on them, the kitchen cabinets still had things left in them (including general GRIME and dead bugs) they left broken computers in the closets, and even hard drives in the backyard. Cigarette butts EVERYWHERE outside including just lots of trash in general. And the best part was THEY PAINTED AROUND THEIR BED in the master bedroom. Crazy crazy crazy. But to be positive about the situation, now we have the opportunity to make it our own.

This house is going to be going through quite the transformation process so I figured it would be a great opportunity to blog it all! We won't be able to do EVERYTHING we have dreamed for this house before we move in, but since we won't be moving in officially for a few months we will be able to do a ton before then.

I wish I would have gotten some TRUE before pictures of the house, but we have already taken down so much crap so its more of an in progress look of the house but I think you will get the idea. Overall we are SO EXCITED and cannot wait to make this place "ours".

So, here are the "before" pictures!

The family room

 

The formal dining room 

 

 

LARGE Kitchen Window

 

Lincoln helping grandpa!

 

 

The kitchen. (And grandpa)

 

 

Awesome patch job they did in the family room.

 

 

The office closet.

 

 

Bleach anyone? Yuck.

 

 

Office closet.

 

 

Backyard

 

 

 

Awesome piece left behind. (Not sarcastic, I actually love it haha)

 

 

 

 

Kitchen

 

 

Dining room ceiling fan, plan to paint this and get rid of the awful brass.

 

 

Formal living room.

 

 

LOVE this light.

 

 

Linen closet upstairs.

 

 

Guest bedroom closet.

 

 

No, that isn't painters tape left behind. That is actually paint.

 

 

 

 

Upstairs bathroom

 

Awesome paint job.

 

 

 

What I call, the cloud room.

 

 

 

 

The master bedroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside one of the master closets. Not even going to attempt to clean that. Going to rip that shelf out and put our laundry basket in the "hole".

 

 

Entryway.
 

 

Total 80's fireplace. Still figuring how what to do with this bad boy. Because it is AWFUL.

 

 

Skylight type feature in the kitchen.

 

 

 

Downstairs bath.

 

 

 

So there you have it! Can't wait to see this place transform! It has SO much potential and cannot wait to make it ours.