Thursday, August 25, 2011

House Tour (Finally!)

We have been in our house for almost three months now.  It's about time we share some pictures of the inside! First off, here is the outside of the house again.  Lots of trees need to come down so that you can see the front better.  The front porch also needs some work....more on that later.
The back of the house.  A screened porch up top with a deck and a covered area underneath.  Lots of outdoor living space, but the backyard needs so much work and the bugs have been so bad that we haven't gotten to use the back very much yet.
This is what the backyard looked like when we moved in.  Lots and lots of ivy everywhere.  Sam has slowly been conquering it, but that stuff is tough and keeps coming back!  It is all the way up every tree and was covering the ground in the entire backyard.  




 Now, moving inside....this is the foyer.  More of that grasscloth wallpaper in here that we haven't gotten to yet.  It actually starts here and goes all the way up the stairs and in the whole upstairs hallway!  Removing all that is going to be a huge project!


Downstairs half bath.  The only thing we have done in here so far is removed the popcorn ceilings.

 Dining room.  This room has not really been used yet.  We don't have a dining room table right now, so it is pretty much just empty for the time being.  The wallpaper is going to go, and the light fixture is going to be updated or replaced.  We are still deciding exactly how we want this room to look.

Breakfast area in the kitchen.  Nice and large with a great view into the backyard and french doors leading onto the deck.  We just painted the kitchen this color last week.  It was sort of a split pea soup green before and now it is a sunny yellow-green.  The color makes me happy!
The kitchen is pretty nice, but we are sure missing our gas stove that we have had at the last 2 houses.  We will definitely be putting one of those in soon!


Laundry room is right off the kitchen and has lots of space! 

Living room with french doors leading to the screened-in room or the "screaming room" as Hannah calls it.  We can't wait to use this fireplace when it gets cold!



Screened room

This is our other downstairs living space, which we are using as an office for now.  It has really been a struggle for me to keep my desk looking presentable, since this is one of the first rooms people see when they walk in the front door.  Oh, and our dog, Daisy, is posing for the camera too!

Moving upstairs now, this is the guest bath/girl's bathroom.  There is no bathtub in here, so the girls don't really use it too much now.  This bathroom and the master bath had just recently been remodeled before we moved in and are awesome!


 Our master bedroom.  Love this room too.  Has lots of space!  I am planning on painting this room in the near future!


Master bath


Hannah's room.  We painted this room right before we moved in since it was a dark blue and Hannah insisted on having a pink room.  I just made these curtains a couple weeks ago to brighten things up!  Her little toddler bed looks so little in this big room!


This is the guest room.  I apologize in advance to our guests since we have no furniture in here other than a bed!  

Reagan's room.  This room is set up pretty similar to her last room, but we painted the walls a light green and she no longer has the tree painted on her wall that I worked so hard on.  

 Whew!!!  Ok, moving down to the basement!


 The basement is basically one big finished room right now.  When you come down the stairs you see this part which we use as our main living space.  This is where we come to watch TV and hang out.  

Behind the couch we have this space set up as a play area for the kids.  They play a lot here and it is nice to have most of their toys down here instead of all over the main level of the house.  This back half has these awful drop ceilings, hopefully soon we can get rid of those!  Also the wet bar is back here too. Not really sure what we are going to do with that yet.
There are 2 other large spaces down in the basement that are unfinished as well that we are just using for storage for the time being.  I guess if/when we need more space we can finish those spaces out!

This is another full bathroom down in the basement. I so wish we would have taken before pictures of this bathroom.  Very soon after we moved in we painted in here, changed the faucet, painting the frame around the mirror and painted the cabinet.  I know it still does not look that impressive, but it was a huge change for very little money, so we were pretty excited about that.
Well, that is the whole house.  It is a lot of house for us, so much more than we are used to, which is why there are so many rooms that look like they need furniture!  One project at a time we are working on the house.  No hurry though, since this is the house we plan to be in for a long, long time! 

Major Project #1 : Living Room

We have always used this blog to chronicle our family happenings, but since we have bought a house with so many projects to do, it will also be a place for us to see the progress we have made on the house.  We hope to be able to do lots of before and afters so that we can look back and see how far we have come!  Our first really major project was tackling the living room.  I know it is hard to see in the pictures, but we have a lot of this hideous grasscloth wallpaper throughout the house.  To make things even worse, the wallpaper had been painted over.  We also are removing the popcorn texture from the ceilings room by room.  So, Sam worked on scraping, sanding and painting the ceilings and I removed the wallpaper, patched my gauges in the drywall, sanded and painted the walls.  I think the whole project took about 2 weeks working on it after the kids went to bed.  It wasn't that hard, just very time consuming and MESSY!

Here is the before picture, popcorn ceilings and grasscloth wallpaper.  Ignore the just having moved in mess!

Scraping the ceiling would not have been too bad if there weren't so many places where the ceiling had previously leaked.  These patched spots were the worst and took forever to get off and get sanded.
 Yup, there was a time where our living room looked like this.  The walls looked awful and the ceiling all bare.....luckily we kept on going and got a great end result!

 

 The AFTER!  Beautiful smooth ceilings, painted the walls a soft gray. No more wallpaper!!  Love it!  We still need more furniture and I am thinking of painting the wall in the back of the built-ins, just not sure what color yet, but it is a huge improvement from before!


Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Girls Weekend!

We were so excited to have the girls from my side of the family come up for a visit!  My mom, grandma, Ashley and Maddie all came up and stayed with us for a few days for some girly fun.  My dad couldn't come because he had to work and Sam was away at a retreat for work, so it was all girls!  We went to IKEA, had a nail painting party, watched movies, had popcorn, went swimming and I got to show off our new house!  It was so much fun!  

Ashley and Grandma looking over the IKEA catalog in preparation for our big trip!


Everyone in the pool!


 It is not often that we get all the girls in a picture together!  Four generations!  Can't wait to see all of them again soon!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Hilton Head Beach Trip

We got back last night from our first family beach vacation.  We went to Hilton Head for a few days and had a great time!  Hannah loved the beach and Reagan sometimes liked it and sometimes hated it.  It was quite an adventure with all  4 of us sharing a hotel room!  Luckily we had a balcony for Sam and I to hang out on at night after the kids went to to bed.  Here is Hannah all ready to hit the beach!
 Daddy and the girls checking out the water.  Reagan is on Daddy's hip which is pretty much where she stayed most of the time that we spent at the beach.

 Reagan hated the water but liked playing in the sand.  When the tide was coming in and the water kept creeping up closer to her she would scream when the waves touched her even the littlest bit!
 On our second day we decided to rent some bikes and take the kids for a ride on the beach.  I think this was my favorite part of the whole trip.  What is more relaxing than a leisurely bike ride on the beach?

 Everything was great until about 15 minutes in when both kids lost their minds crying and we had to go back. Hannah was begging to take a nap at like 9:30 in the morning.  This whole trip was really exhausting to them!

1st nap of the day for Hannah, followed shortly after by another one and an early bedtime...

 Reagan did have some fun times at the beach.  Her favorite part was chasing the sea gulls.  This kept her busy for quite a while!




 All cleaned up and ready to go out to dinner!

 Reagan's stylish beach hair!
 Last day early morning beach outing.  The girls had a blast on the last day and collected shells and played in the sand.


 Reagan checking out a starfish! 
We had a great time!  Can't wait to do it again!!