House tour

So, Brian and I have been homeowners for one week. What have we been up to? Mostly, spending money or promising to spend money. I'm sure you can relate. But, as promised, when we did our walk-through Tuesday night (to make a list of projects), I took photos to give you an idea of what we're working with.

Let's start with the entryway - when you walk in our front door and turn left, you see a narrow hallway. This is where our half bath is, as well as an awesome closet/pantry. At the end of the hall is a door to the laundry room/breezeway. The wood door leads to our two-car garage. On the list of projects: tear up this carpet, paint and seal the concrete floor, and paint the door.


Now, if you come in the front door and turn right, you're in the living room. We don't have much need for a formal living room, so we're not sure what this room will be used for, but we love the big bookcases. The top photo is taken from the entryway while the bottom photo is taken from the doorway seen above. Projects for this room include a new light fixture, blinds or curtains for the windows, and paying someone to widen the doorway seen in the top photo.

If you walk through the living room through that small doorway, you'll enter the family/dining room. This room is massive, but we're not planning much. We'll buy window treatments for all of the windows and purchase a dining set (yes, soon you'll have the option of eating somewhere other than our couch/coffee table when you visit us for a meal!), but otherwise we'll work with what we have for now.


The double doors you see in the picture above lead to our sunroom. We're still debating how to use this space, but we know for sure that we'll be taking up the carpet and painting/sealing the concrete floor. And we're probably getting rid of the rope lights and the air conditioner (although we're not sure yet about the latter.)


Since we're in the sunroom, I might as well show you the yard. The yard was what sold us on the house, I think. It's not in the best shape right now, but it has amazing potential. The top picture is taken from our back fenceline. The yard basically runs the whole back and side of the house. The bottom picture, then, is taken from the fence across from the sunroom (my back facing the fence), looking down the side of the house. We have almost no use for the swingset, but we're keeping it. That grill you see in the first picture is going, however. Projects out here include pruning some trees, digging up all the bushes, etc and putting in planting beds. It's really amazing how completely out of my element I feel when it comes to these outdoor projects (this city girl has *nothing* on gardening of any sort!).




Back inside, the last room on the main floor is the kitchen - the photo is taken from the doorway to the family/dining room and the front hallway leads into the kitchen next to the refrigerator. One day we'd like to replace the floors in here (and the entryway/hallway), as well as the dishwasher and fridge, but for now we're just replacing the stove (we're getting one with four functional burners). We are also buying stools for the island and paying a contractor to put a pass-through on the wall that you cannot see, which divides the kitchen and dining area. (Some of you might notice a microwave mounted above the stove - no word yet on whether or not we'll keep that long-term.)


When you head upstairs, you have four choices: master bedroom suite, two other bedrooms, and a bathroom. I didn't take pictures of the bathrooms (although I should - they need a ton of work long-term) or the other bedrooms (they're pretty basic), but here is the master. The top photo is taken from the doorway to the master bath and the bottom photo is the attached study, which you can see at the far end of the top photo. Projects in the bedroom include a new light fixture, window treatments, and a new closet system (including getting rid of those massive closet doors). Projects in the study include new window treatments and setting up an office of sorts.



The two things you might have noticed throughout the pictures are the dingy off-white paint on every wall and the dirty, drab carpeting throughout the house. Needless to say, we put these on the top of our project list. We have new carpet being installed at the end of this week (in 1600 of the 1750 square feet of our house!) and we spent this weekend painting the upstairs. I'll post pictures of the painted bedrooms midweek. That's all for now - I need to get over to the house and work on painting some more!