We’ve lived in our current home a little over 2 years and although it is a solid, well built house with tons of character including crown molding and sculpted ceilings, it needed some updating when we moved in. Blue carpet and outdated curtains aren’t really our thing….
We did a few updates here and there but mainly focused on getting grown up furniture. You see, Seth and I are going on 10 years of marriage and up until last year, we were still sleeping on a queen bed frame without a headboard and have owned a variety of cheap couches and dining sets. As in, extremely cheap couches and dining sets.
Anyhoo, we decided that it was high time to grow up and get some decent couches, a decent dining room table (pre-distressed of course, to camouflage the boys’ destructive tendencies), and a real bed. Since both boys and Ruger usually end up in our bed by morning, we went with a king size this time. If only the twin-bed-sleeping-teenage-me could see me now! The sad thing is, I still had more room in that twin bed than I do now….
So, after working on some real furniture, we started working on updating our house and making it a little more appealing.
We started with painting the boring white exterior a muted green color.
Before
After
Oh, and we finally replaced the ugly, drafty, old front door with a nice new one that I don’t have a picture of because I’m a dingbat.
Here’s a couple pictures of the back of the house before we painted it. We, by we I mean Seth and his dad, also moved the garden beds to the other side of the yard and built a shed/playhouse for the kids.
(note: please disregard the dates on some of these pictures, my camera resets the date every time that I replace the batteries and sometimes I’m too lazy to fix it. Yes, I’m lazy and I’ve come to terms with the fact).
We (again, Seth and his dad) also built the benches on the patio. Hey, at least I helped paint them.
Our grass used to be green all the way up to the house, but Ruger figured out how to jump the side of our fence that is still chain link so we tie him up when he’s outside and that darn chain of his cleared off a nice little space next to the nice patch of green grass that he turned into his brown grass bathroom area.
It’s still better than paying fines and going to municipal court in our tiny town for having a dog that decided to roam the block twice for a matter of minutes in search of some sweet loving.
Yes, that’s the chain link fence that I’m talking about. It also has the added perk of giving us a nice view of the neighbors as they sit out back with their yappy little dogs and smoke while their little girls yell across the fence to my sweet little angel boys that they have a monster that will rip my boys’ heads off and eat them. I’m certain that my sweet darlings would never do anything to incite the wrath of those little girls…
Here’s a view toward the other side of the yard. The neighbors on that side smoke like chimneys and fight with wooden swords in the backyard. That’s not weird at all….
Some before views of the office.
After!
Before’s of the kitchen and dining area.
After!
After picture of the master bedroom because I was too excited to take a before picture once I talked Seth into helping me paint and rip the old blue carpet out.
Sweet mother of mercy – a before picture!
Ripping carpet out of their room was a big deal for the boys as they were able to indulge their natural destructiveness for a good cause.
Living Room – picture some ugly old blue carpet and all white walls or go through my archives and search for some before pictures from this spring. Again, my laziness prohibits me posting any links or before pictures. In fact, I’m not entirely sure that I’ve ever posted before pictures of the living room at all. Just rest assured that the current living room is a vast improvement over the previous one.
Not much has changed in the bathroom other than painting the walls gray. Other than that, we’re still rockin’ the pink tile.
We haven’t really touched the basement since that’s Erin’s space and let’s face facts: There is no way to work around the mountains of stuff that she keeps down there. It’s not humanly possible to have so much stuff and still be able to squeeze through it all, but she’s managed it somehow for the past couple of years.
I was able to talk her into letting me paint the dark brown panelling along one wall gray, and the fugly green and fake brick wall white at the end of the family room. It looks much better. Still no before pictures, but that is because I have no idea where my camera is and, you guessed it, I’m too lazy to look for it.
Erin’s room – no picture of the bathroom which is behind the door in the picture below.
And, finally, the guest room without the mountains of tubs, shelves, bins, boxes and hanging racks that are now filling the double garage that we can no longer park in.
Hey, no longer having a usable garage is totally worth not having to fight my way through the guest room to get to the laundry room. Now, I can just walk through to the laundry, grab my clean clothes, and walk back upstairs without being overcome by an inner anxiety that my mother will suddenly appear and make me pick up the mess.
So, now that we’ve updated our home and changed everything that we don’t like about it, the next logical step is to sell it, right? Of course right!
Our house went on the market last Monday and we accepted an offer Thursday of the same week.
We’ve found a home closer to my work and Seth’s school that we actually plan to stay in longer than a few years (shocking, right?) and Erin is moving to an apartment until she and her boyfriend in Michigan decide if she should move there or if he should move here.
Our closing date is in a month so I’ll be sure to post pictures of our new place provided my laziness doesn’t prohibit me doing so!
(Note: All after photos – i.e. the nice ones – were taken by The Group, Inc.)
It’s really nice to be able to make a house a home. I’ve moved around a lot and haven’t really done that yet. I hope that once I do, it’ll be the ONE! My aunt used to fix up her house and then sell it 4-5 years later. I never understood it but that was her thing.
Thanks for commenting Bethany 🙂 My husband and I have been married for 9 years and this is our fourth place together. The next house that we are buying needs some work, but we are planning to stay in this one for a very long time so that our boys can have some stability while they grow up. I am so excited to make this next house a real home.