Meet the House ( An Oldie but Goodie)

We bought our house three months before our wedding. We had searched high and low and toured homes that had everything from dirt basements to broken foundations. We had had about enough of crazy houses and real estate agents that didn't want to give us the time of day (probably because we were really young) when we decided to give our house a chance. I think it was actually my sister that suggested we check it out. We had driven past it a million times without giving it much thought. It had overgrown bushes and a fence that connected to nothing but hey, it couldn't be worse than what we had already seen.

When I walked in, the first thing I said is "those kitchen cabinets have to go!". The house had a few other quirks (okay, so it still has a few weird quirks but that's why we love old houses, right?) there were light switch panels with red buttons to turn the lights on, but here's the kicker, there were only two in the whole house to control the lights. So when you walk into a room, you couldn't just flip the light on, you had to walk to the bedroom or the kitchen to turn it on. The interior was not our style. There was blue carpet throughout, and all the walls were some sort of peach shade or very frilly wallpaper. It definitely needed updating. Despite all that, it had good bones, decent size rooms, a somewhat open plan, a HUGE deck, a good size yard, is all brick, and a good solid roof. But most of all, it felt like home. It was the first house that felt right in every way. I remember sitting in front of the house in our car with Christmas like excitement deciding if this was the house for us. We both felt good about it so we put an offer in. Turns out other people felt good about it too and the lady we got the house from had rejected offers similar to ours before. But luckily she gave us a chance! This blog chronicles how we have showed our house some love. Hopefully some of my DIY projects and stories of remodeling will inspire you or at least make you laugh. I have no qualms telling you that updating a house is one of the most challenging things I've done. We always say that our marriage got through redoing the house so it can get through anything. It tested us in pretty much every way. But now that it is done (sort of, you're never really done, right?) we are so happy with the results.

Here are some before pictures of our house. . . Now I wish we would have kept chandelier because I've seen so many awesome spray painted chandeliers. It could have been awesome.
The kitchen. See the tiny fridge and lovely cabinets?

Taking down wallpaper. I HATE taking down wallpaper. . . The bathroom. . .

The office. . . The peach walls and blue carpet are displayed nicely here. . .

The front room in all its glory. . . The bedroom before the wallpaper came down. . .