A Tour of our House- Part 2

Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you all had a great week and are looking forward to a beautiful weekend! Richard and I have big plans this weekend to FINALLY finish moving everything over to our new house! (You never realized how much STUFF you accumulate over a year or so until you have to move it).

I wanted to go ahead and finish up the photo tour before too many items were moved in so you could really see a blank canvas.. so without further ado, welcome to the other half of our house..

Our house is set up like a traditional ranch. As you walk in the front door, to the right are all of the "living spaces" (detailed here) and to the left are the bedrooms and bathrooms. Here is a view down the hallway to the left of the front door.

On the left side are 2 guest bedrooms and a linen closet and on the right is the guest bath, another closet and the master bedroom/bathroom.

   

             Okay, so linen closet, guest bedroom # 1 and guest bedroom # 2. Sorry for the small pictures, but empty bedrooms can only be so exciting. The hardwoods are in great shape, and each bedroom has a good amount of natural light, so I am excited about that.

Now for the guest bath.

The design choices of the 60s never cease to amaze me.. a color palette inspired by calamine lotion? I'm sure it was lovely at some point in time..

I am actually glad they never tried to update this bathroom because that tells me that I get to start from square 1 and really create a space that I love! This project is also high on the priority list after working on the kitchen. 

Here are a few shots of the master

Standing in the doorway, looking in (excuse the mess)

Standing in the far right corner (not pictured: another closet.. thank goodness)

And here is the (tiny) master bath

This bathroom has been updated a little with new tile and a new vanity- though not exactly what I would have chosen, this project will be low on the priority list. I hope to be able to expand this one day, but for now, I don't mind it. 

And that's it! Hopefully you can get some sort of idea of what we are starting with. For now, our focus will mostly be on the living spaces (and the guest bath), because that is what will most often be seen. Some fresh paint and window treatments and the bedrooms will be just fine for a while, though I will be dreaming of a huge master bath and walk in closet for the future :)

Thanks for reading! As always, on to the next project! We are meeting with a few different contractors over the next few weeks and will hopefully get to work soon!

A tour of our house- part 1

As promised, I'm going to attempt to do a photo tour of our house before any changes have been made- I am going to do this in 2 parts and today I am focusing on the "living spaces"- living room, kitchen, etc..

 I think I will look back and really appreciate having these photos after the renovation starts and I can see where we started. Hopefully (fingers crossed) in a few short months, our house will be unrecognizable when compared to these pictures! 

Okay so here we go- I will try to be as organized as possible! (And I'm sorry for the lengthy post)

A closer view for the front of the house

One of the things that attracted us to the house in the beginning was the curb appeal- I love brick, ranch-style homes and we really like the color of the brick. We do plan to update the shutters to a darker color for some more contrast and of course update the landscaping. (Can't wait to have some hydrangeas!!) Oh- and those lions guarding our front door.. those will be gone, but man those things are heavy!

This is a view of the front door- if you were to walk in the door, immediately to the right is what used to be a den, I believe. Currently, our plan is to use this as a dining room. To the left is just one of the MANY storage closets we have!

Here is a view looking into the dining room- beyond our dining room (previous den) is the old dining room. We plan to use this as an office or small seating area. The office/seating area is connected to the kitchen.

Now... onto the kitchen. This is the project I am most excited about transforming. (See: Wood paneling EVERYWHERE). Here is a view from the office/seating area. It's a small kitchen, but has two huge windows that will provide some GREAT natural light. There is also a pantry and a laundry room off to the right (no pictures, sorry!)

We have limited counter space and cabinets, so we are planning to have a little coffee area/small table down by the windows. We will have our coffee pot and coffee mugs stored in a little dresser to help save counter space in the kitchen. 

This is another view of the kitchen- standing in the (future) coffee nook. The doorway by the refrigerator leads into the office. 

One of our major projects in the near future will be updating the kitchen and opening it up to the living room. The cabinets are SO well built and in great shape, so we are going to try to salvage as many of them as possibly and update them with fresh paint and new hardware.

 One more view of the kitchen- looking in to the living room. 

Here's a view into the living room- excuse the terrible quality of the picture. That wood paneling isn't quite photo friendly. 

 One of my FAVORITE things about this living room is the fireplace. We love fires in the winter and I love the brick! 

Here is a view from the living room, looking back into the kitchen. To help open up these rooms, we are going to remove the cabinets above and to the left of the stove. I am hoping this will really open up the room and give us more of an open floor plan!

Okay- well that's it for the first half of the tour and gives you a good idea of what we are starting with. In the initial stage of renovating, we are definitely focusing on the living spaces, because that is where we spend most of our time. We are excited to get started and post about the progress along the way! 

Later on this week I will complete the tour of our house with the bedrooms and bathrooms! Thanks for reading!

Welcome to our blog!

I will preface this entire blog by saying- I am not a professional blogger. This blog is simply being used to let our friends and family members follow along the process of us updating our home! So, I won't have fancy gadgets, I don't know how to edit pictures and none of my pictures will be professional.. and I'm fine with that. A simple blog that can hopefully help some others out if they decide to purchase a fixer upper like we have done! I will try to be detail oriented, and include costs (when I can remember to save a receipt) and have plenty of pictures along the way! As most twenty-somethings are, we are on a tight budget- so will everything be top of the line? Absolutely not. But I am a FIRM believer that you don't have to pay an arm and a leg to achieve a beautiful home.

A little about us- my husband and I recently moved to a small town in Georgia where we went to college (Go Bobcats)! After a small obsession with all things HGTV (most notably, Fixer Upper) we knew we wanted to eventually buy a fixer upper of our own. I love older homes- they have so much character built in that is hard to achieve ($$) in new builds. Our fixer upper dreams came to fruition much quicker than we had expected, when, on a whim, we called about this little beauty that was for sale by owner.

We have been so blessed to have had a simple, no hassle buying experience (I hear this isn't the norm) and can attribute that to nothing other than this house was simply in God's plan for us. It's a great house with great bones, and the good thing is, nothing NEEDS to be done immediately (though my impatient self begs to differ).We have so many plans and ideas of how we will make this into a home that works for our needs and wishes and we absolutely cannot WAIT to get our hands dirty and start knocking out projects one-by-one. In the Pinterest Perfection world we live in, it is easy to get a little  MAJORLY carried away with trying to achieve the perfectly styled farmhouse of my dreams- I know this isn't realistic, but I still figured I would share some inspiration of where we hope to end up one day!

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Looking for inspiration for hours- these are some of my all time favorite blogs to follow:

Dear Lillie - Jenna Sue Design - Magnolia Homes 

(Magnolia Homes is the website of Joanna Gaines- host of Fixer Upper)

Currently- we are a far cry from anything pictured above! I will do a tour of the interior of our house later this week- expect LOTS of wood paneling in all of its 1960's glory.