So, let's begin, shall we? This is the view from our front door, you can see up the stairs and through the kitchen into the main room. Not very exciting, but it gives you a sense of perspective, I think.
If you turn left at the front door, you'd be headed out to our laundry room (which needs some updating) and then the garage. But, on the way, you'd pass our pantry (and the only substantial cabinet space in the house. I should note that the hallway is pretty narrow - to get this photo, I had to stand in the half bathroom located across the hall from the pantry. The top shelves hold our serving dishes and less frequently used cooking tools. The middle three shelves hold mostly dry goods, but also cooking tools (like Brian's deep fryer and my ceramic baking dishes). And then, on the floor, are more serving items, dishes for entertaining, and two tupperware bins: one full of wedding things I don't know what to do with and the other full of my baking stuff (pans and rolling pins and sil-pats, etc). Thank goodness for this pantry!
Head back out towards the door and go right to enter the kitchen, which, trust me, is filled to capacity with all of our cooking/baking stuff.
And, have you wondered about that island and its practicality in what is already not a very big kitchen space? Well, it makes a fantastic food prep area and also houses more storage (thank goodness). Top shelf holds baking dishes that don't fit anywhere else and are used too often to keep in the pantry, mixing bowls, and cutting boards; bottom shelf holds my stand mixer, our food processor, Brian's mandoline, our waffle iron, a cheese grater (which also doesn't fit anywhere else) and more mixing bowls.
Exiting our kitchen past the island leads you into the dining/family room area. Let's start with the dining room. For the first time in our time living together, Brian and I have a dining room table. It has a leaf so it can comfortably seat six, but we have that stored in a hall closet because it's usually just us. And yes, we eat here far more often than we eat on the couch in front of the tv. It's pretty nice.
In that picture you can see the corner of the pass-through I've mentioned before, but that doesn't do it justice. Have a look at my favorite part of the house (SO glad we paid to have this done immediately):
And, in the dining room photo, you could also see the family room. We will definitely need to buy new furniture that better fits the space, but that's a shopping trip for down the road. For now, we're making do with not a lot of space and a weird layout for the couch and chair. Brian also needs to finish setting up the new sound system we purchased (the receiver for which is housed in the corner next to the tv) and I need to hang photos on the wall over the console table (which is now much cleaner), but we're getting there.
The doorway visible in the photo above, which we had widened to allow for more light to enter the space and to create a more open flow to the house, leads into the formal living room. This room took the longest to unpack and organize and while it is finished now, it was not finished when I took these photos. Still, you will quickly see that we deemed this room our media room/library. The first shot is taken from the aforementioned doorway. The second shot is taken from the front of the house entrance, looking back towards the family room. Between the two, you see the shape the room is taking.
That concludes our tour of the first floor. Let's head upstairs, which houses three bedrooms, an office, and two bathrooms. When you get to the top of the stairs there really is just a landing off of which are four doorways: the guest bedroom, the hall bath, the other bedroom, and the master (which holds its own bath and the office).
First up, the guest room, which was probably the first room to be unpacked since it was my sister Lindsey's space while she helped us move. We have art to hang up on the walls, but everything else stays pretty much as is. (For the record, I'm standing between two dressers which sit in the corner opposite that lamp. And that big blue pillow has since been donated.)
And, the hall bath. This is our main bathroom right now since our master bath leaves a lot to be desired at the moment. I put up two photos, one from the door and one from inside, to give you a sense of the space.
The green room looks mostly the same. As I have mentioned before, we don't yet have a purpose for this room, but we sure are putting it's closet to good use!
And finally, our master suite, as it were. When we walk in you're in the main bedroom part of the space. We will probably look to buy another dresser or something to put on the far wall to house Brian's workout clothes, but for now those live in the guest room closet. Otherwise, things in this space are pretty set.
The second master bedroom photo is taken from the doorway to what we are using as an office. We took down the doors because they seemed unnecessary and have filled that space to capacity with clothes and the computer and Brian's CD collection.
I'll finish with a look into our master bath. I don't know what design aesthetics were popular in the early 1980s, when our house was built, but I'm not sure why the master suite was created in such a way as to give the homeowners a big bedroom, a big bonus space and a narrow, cramped bathroom. To give you a sense of what you're looking at - the counter is flanked on the far end by a walk-in shower (not even big enough for me, let alone Brian) and on the other side by the toilet (which is also where the doorway is - the door almost hits the toilet when being opened). There is a little more than three feet between the wall of the bathroom and the vanity and the floor, which you can barely see, is stick on tile placed poorly on top of green linoleum. Both of our old bath mats are in use in this space to create clean places on which to stand. Needless to say, this room needs a lot of work, but we're not even sure where to begin or how to pay for it, so for now it's just a place where we get ready for bed and for work.
The big thing not pictured in this post is our yard. That has pretty much become Brian's project and I might even ask him to do a post about it in the future. Lately it has been much too hot here to enjoy any time outside so he just cuts the grass every week and we sort of ignore the space. But there are plans to make it a more functional, manageable, outdoor living area soon enough. Promise.
Also, tomorrow we are getting new windows installed throughout the house. I am SO excited by this I can't even explain. I promise to take some photos and share the results with you soon!
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