Our House Tour

We're not one of those blogs that show you only the best, "finished" parts of their homes.  Oh no, you guys are in it for the long haul with us, whether you like it or not.  So here's the good, the bad and the ugly of how our house looks today.  Hopefully this page will change a lot as we progress.  Check The List to see the plans we have for each room and what we've accomplished so far, or the Archives for all of the projects broken down by rooms. Don't be judgey, we still have a lot of work to do!

The Exterior

Listing Photo

This sprawling lodge was nothing like our first love the 1920's Bungalow, but for some reason it stole our little DIY hearts.  Maybe it was the great wooded yard and neighborhood, but this guy felt like our own personal retreat right from the start.  We have some ideas on how we can warm it up and give it more curb appeal, but we'll focus on the inside for awhile before we get to the outside. 

The Foyer 

Entering the home the first thing you see the is the staircase that brings together all seven crazy split levels. And yep, our front door is still purple.  Super. We spent hours recovering and refinishing the steps to remove the chicken wire and leave us with kid-safe and beautiful maple steps.

 

The Living Room  

We LOVE the high ceilings, big windows and beautiful fireplace, but we got to work right away removing the old, dirty carpet and replacing it with hardwood floors. The sliding door at the end leads to the Living Room deck. 

Living Room Deck 

This overhead shot shows the small, but nice space to work with on this deck.  We still have a lot of work to do here, but we've added a table and grill, as well as refinishing the deck box as a couch. The stairs at the bottom of the picture lead up a half flight to the Screened In Porch. 

Dining Room

This tiny little Dining Room still needs a lot of work, but the first thing we did was replace the tile floors with hardwood and remove the awful full wall mirror!  The sliding glass door leads out to a small backyard patio.

Kitchen 

We put in new solid counter tops instead of the porcelain floor tile that covered the counters and back splash, painted the cabinets and added wood floors.  This sliding door leads out to the Screened in Porch.  (Are you keeping a running total on sliding glass doors yet?  So far we're at three...)

Screened In Porch

We're still working on making this Screened in Porch a cozy place to snuggle with a good book, but we made major progress when instead of spending thousands on a outdoor sectional- I built one!

Main Bathroom

The Main Bath was by far the worse room in the house. I wish the before pictures could really illustrate for you the textured pink walls.  And yes, those are painted tiles that feature clouds, rain and grass growing.  We can't make this stuff up. We gut the whole thing, and gave it a natural-modern feel.  I even custom built that sliding wood door!  Now this is one of my favorite rooms in the house.

Laundry Room

It's unhealthy how much I love this Laundry, especially considering how gross it looked when we moved it.  But a main floor Laundry with natural light, plenty of storage and a set of beautiful, new front loading washer and dryer?  Yes please! It's light-years better than the unfinished room in the basement where I used to wash clothes.

Guest Bedroom

We made quick work of the minty green walls to turn this room into a bright and cheerful Guest Room.  Still on tap?  We want to work on the desk area and create some craft storage in the closets.

Play Room

This room used to be a bedroom before the previous owners expanded the home, but now is a walk-through space to get to the two other bedrooms on this floor.  We've made it our Lil' Men's Playroom.

Ryder's Bedroom

 

We've come to terms with the fact that we'll be living in a work in progress for some time. That's why it's important to us that our boys have a quiet space all their own, so that when the rest of the house is in chaos, they have a space to retreat to. We love the gorgeous vaulted ceilings in his room and all the natural light.

Nursery

After

To fit with the modern natural vibe of the house, we wanted a cozy and neutral Nursery with pops of fun color.  This might be my favorite room in the house. One of them anyway...

Loft

Heading back up the staircase, we reach the Loft.  We absolutely love this quiet little reading nook. And yes, those were rocks in the ledge, but we pulled those out in a hot hurry. 

Master Bedroom

The Master is very long and skinny, but since our last Master was only 12 x 12, this one feels like a palace.  Yes, there are windows wide open to the Living Room downstairs and we still haven't decided on a solution for them.   Those sliding glass doors (#4) lead out to the Master Deck.

Master Bath & Closet

Did we mention that the bathrooms were the worst part of this house?  Thank heavens that Bath Crashers came to our house and created this little spa retreat. Since they left we did a bunch of tweaking to make it feel more personalized like building the closet doors and making the capiz chandeliers.

Basement Bath

  

All the way back down the stairs we find the third bathroom. When was brown grout with white tile ever a good idea?  We're thrilled to have updated this to a clean and relaxing looking space.

Exercise Room

Sharing the same level with the Downstairs Bath is our fifth and final bedroom. Five bedrooms is far more than we need, especially with the Playroom, the Loft and the Screened In Porch serving as bonus rooms, so we were pumped (no pun intended) to turn this into our Workout Room.   Sliding door #5 leads out to a small, covered, paved patio which is situated under the Screened in Porch.  (Outdoor yoga in the fall anyone?)

Family Room

Here's the final level of the house, which is our Family Room and potentially the most used space.  We needed to do SO MUCH work to break up all that golden oak, replace the broken fireplace, and make this room a much more modern space. The last of the sliding glass doors- #6, leads out to a small, covered, paved patio under the Living Room Deck.  Yep, that is indeed a cat door in one of the photos above.  I mean, why wouldn't you cut a hole in a beautiful solid wood door so that your cat can poop in your closet?  

Family Room Patio

In Progress

This Patio was sort of an after thought, especially since there was no way to get from the backyard to it with out jumping down 4 feet.  But an addition of a custom climbing wall and slide has turned this useless space into the ultimate play zone for our little guys.  A toddler hamster wheel, for which we are very grateful. 

So there you have it.  A whole lot of house, and a whole lot of work.  We're up for the challenge though, and can't believe our luck in scoring such a large house with so many rooms and potential, for such an affordable price.  Now the trick will be making cheap smart DIY decisions as we give this baby a new life.