Our House [Befores and Afters]

I LOVE our new house !! We've been here an entire one month (tomorrow, one month tomorrow - but it's Saturday on Daylight Savings night so I'm allowed to say it's an entire one month! haha) That's one month of having my own kitchen and bathroom and living room and dining room and driveway and address! It's been fabulous! Yes, I know, I have had to share all that with Derrick, but that's okay - we share nicely :)

Anyway, I have promised several people photos of the new house, so I figured I'd show ya'll some before & afters. We've done a lot of work in the last month and we're still not finished. Derrick laughs at me and says we'll never be "finished", and that's true: we have a lot of big ideas for this house, some of which are going to take several years to complete. But I'd consider things "finished" when I can check all the items off of my to-do list [things like touching up paint and hanging pictures]. So, we're working on it and slowly getting there.

But, I'll give ya'll a tour anyway :)

We'll start in the kitchen - the room that's gotten the greatest transformation so far. It started out looking like this: (with my little sister Ruby so beautifully modeling)

Well, with a little bit of help from Derrick's Dad, we got a new sink, new faucet, painted all the cupboards and hardware, and put up a FABULOUS backsplash! And it now looks like this:

I LOVE being in my kitchen! Which is good because it seems that Derrick is always hungry! But that's okay because I love to cook :D

Okay, next is the dining room:

We really didn't do to much to change the room - eventually (it's on our "in the future, we'd like to" to-do list) we'd like to rip the wallpaper down and get a nice new chandelier (I'm keeping my eyes peeled for one) but - for now it looks like this:

Most of the furniture in our house came from my parents, or my grandparents, or another relative (for example the secretary desk in the corner of the room belonged to my Great Uncle Dave). And, the table that is our dining room table - was my parent's first table when they got married! I remember sitting at this table as a little girl - the way the chairs squeak when you rock in them and the way the wheels fell off - it's all still the same and I love it! It makes it feel like home.

Oh! And I have a window-seat! I always dreamed of someday having a window seat :D When we originally looked at the house, we didn't even know it was there because they had all of their moving boxes piled to the ceiling in this room. So, you can imagine how excited I was when we got the keys and walked in and I found it! I want to make a cushion for my window seat - it's on my to-do list :)

If you haven't noticed yet - our house is filled with AMAZING woodwork! Hard wood floors in both the dining and living room (also on our someday to-do list, to refinish them) and simply amazing woodwork all over! It's so gorgeous and warm. I love it!

On to the living room - it was originally painted this "lovely" shade of purple. Yeah, we changed that first thing :)

It's now a golden warm color that complements all the wood. Anndd - you can kind of see in this picture (bottom left corner, with all the duct tape) where we have a spot for a wood-burner? We are getting one next week! YES! It'll help us out so much since this house is heated with oil - yuck & expensive!

Another story: a family from church gave us this couch and chair - and it is from the same set my parent's had in their first house! And that they still have to this day! Just goes to tell you, it's good furniture :) On my someday to-do list, I want to make slipcovers for all of the cushions so they all match - but that'll be someday.

Oh, and tucked away in the corner of our living room, I have my own little reading area :) Our living room has these fabulous built-in cabinets on either side of the fireplace and all of my books found their way in there - so now I have this cozy little spot.

And last but not least - our bedroom :) It used to be this lovely dark green color:

And now, it's red :) I've always wanted to paint a room red - I was just surprised that Derrick let me paint our bedroom this color! He secretly loves it - he really does :) We have projects in here too - like Derrick wants to put in a new ceiling and I want a headboard, but, like I said, in time - it'll all come together :)

And so, there we have it! Yes, there are more rooms in our house - we have 2 other bedrooms: one became the office (which is still a disaster, it seems that that is the room where all the odd boxes ended up "not sure what to do with it? take it to the office!") so, it's a work in progress. And the other room is affectionately called "Adam's Room" and it still isn't put together either. It's going to become my Disney room tho' - whether Adam likes it or not :) I have to hang all my Disney stuff somewhere! And then, our laundry room is off of the kitchen and it isn't finished yet either. Hopefully this week our washer and drying will get installed :) Then I won't have to do laundry at Derrick's parent's house anymore! haha But, for the most part, everything is coming together beautifully and we really really love it!!