Before & Afters! (Part 1)

I'm so excited to have put together some 'Before' and 'Afters' of our house! I didn't have all the before's, but enough that I can look back on these fondly and remember all the blood, sweat and tears that went into every room.

We will have owned this house for 2 years (in Oct. '15) and have accepted an offer on it this week! I'm actually more sad to see it go than I thought I would be, b/c I never loved it. It was't my mid-century style and never could be, but it still had good bones and cleaned up really nicely. The house had a frenzy of showings when it hit the market last week and got a total of 3 offers (one offer which eventually walked, one offer was wayyy too low, and the perfect 3rd offer which we accepted yesterday!).

Here we go!

Welcome to our home:

None of the curb appeal was changed. Just properly maintained :) And Ross got the sidewalk light working again. (We got a LOT of things working again *big disgruntled sigh to previous homeowners*)

Again, just properly maintained, nothing changed.  This backyard is why I love older homes... I can't put a price on mature landscaping and private backyards!


Walking inside, here is the foyer. Such a small space, but one of my favorite 'Afters.'

The flooring is just peel-and-stick vinyl. I have a feature plank wall behind the mirror which really gives the space some visual interest in person :) The chandelier was from World Market ($99!! compared to the expensive PB version). And lastly, since all of the walls are painted a clean white, I painted the door black to make it *pop*. I have a new obsession with black interior doors :)

This is the view you get walking in from the entryway:

The walls were repainted a warm gray, popcorn ceilings scraped smooth and painted white, trim painted, decor added and *boom* what a difference! :)

Next up, the dining room:

Again, we painted the walls gray, ceilings smoothed, trim painted, new light fixture. Oh, and we removed the chair rail wainscoting and had a lot of wall patching to do b/c of that. The chandelier I got on clearance for $50 from Lowe's becuase they switched out their display lighting. *Score!*

Also, all of my window treatments are super cheap. Rods from Walmart and white curtains from IKEA, hemmed to length. I love my frugality :) But also how crisp and clean they look.


Let's move into the Kitchen:

This was one of our biggest undertakings. If I could've completely demo'd the kitchen, I would have (b/c honestly, the cabinets are original (from the 70's) and in bad shape, the previous owners put new faces on them to only make them look good. The inside of my cabinets are avocado green and in rough shape!).

First off, we removed the door leading to the garage on that wall in the right of the picture (behind chandelier) and moved the garage access to the mudroom, where it belongs. Just by closing off the door, the kitchen felt 1000x more home-y. No longer was I looking into the window-pane door to the junk in our garage! I then decided to also plank that wall to give it some visual interest since it's painted white (I'm obsessed with neutral paint right now but using textures instead to give the rooms some interest). Also, a HUGE update was changing out the florescent light to 3 new recessed lights (on a dimmer switch!). It gave the kitchen such a different feeling and WARMTH! I am obsessed with the recessed lighting! Props to Ross for becoming a self-taught electrician these past few years! And with the help of one of his more experienced friends who helped us wire up the 4-way switch.

Another view of the kitchen and the eat-in kitchen area. The clean white walls made such an improvement. We removed more outdated and dirty wainscoting and chair-rail in the kitchen. There was also a LOT of wall-patching to be done when it came down. That's sort of how the plank wall came to be about... I chose to cover up the ugly wall instead :)

Ross & I also finished the crown moulding in the kitchen (a feat I'm really proud of us for. Cutting all those angles was quite the learning curve, but now we're pros!). Ross also finished putting up new baseboards and quarter round. All of those finishing touches really brought the kitchen up to the 21st-century without breaking the bank!

Moving on....

This is our pantry, that leads into the mudroom, and leads out to the newly installed door to the garage. I'm obsessed with our pantry. It's huge!! It was the old washer/dryer location that we converted into shelving, with the same vinyl flooring from the entryway. I also love the hardware I installed on the bi-fold doors, they reflect nicely off of the black photo frames in that hallway. I sadly put a LOT of obsessive thought into these tiny details :/ But pretty hardware makes this girl happy :)

In the photos above, the wall on the right of the pic was actually the first plank wall I decided to do about a year ago when Ross was out-of-town one weekend. I didn't tell him what I was up to but it was fun playing with his miter saw and nailgun :) He wasn't sure if he liked it at first, but over time, is really happy with it. And I am absolutely obsessed (hence the 2 additional plank walls down the road)! I also get a lot of compliments on it so it's makes me blush and love them even more :)

Next up...

 Ok, I lied about the kitchen... the mudroom was DEFINITELY the biggest under-taking.  We hired out a plumber back when we bought the house to move the washer/dryer connection from our pantry to this new location. We had no clue what the purpose of this room was previously, but to us, it made sense to turn it into a mudroom/laundry room. This is also where we installed a new (fire-rated) door to the garage. I came up with the layout, w/ a lot of pinterest inspiration! I needed to make sure I made good use of every inch of space in this tiny room and I think I succeeded! I love this room! The cabinet was from walmart.com and we built around it. Ross made me the built-in bench. I just love how the room serves so many functional purposes!! We also hired an electrician when we bought the house to update the breaker box, a much needed update to this house and well worth it.

That's it for today! The post is already too long, so stay tuned for 'Part 2' of the Before & Afters!

*Kristin*