I'd been trying to wait to do some before and after tours of each of the rooms in my house. This has been a big flat flop, mostly because there are no after pictures, because although I have lived in this home for roughly three years now, none of the rooms in it are done, there are still projects in each just waiting for me. Which, who of us really have a finished house? So, I have decided to give an "in progress" house tour. You can see the things I immediately did, some of my top priorities, and maybe some of the things I have left to do.
Hopefully every month of the year I will be giving an update on each room, and yearly a tour. So, stay tuned for an in dept look into each room.
The first thing I did after I bought the house was to paint and get new floors. They would have been fine for the average person, but I am not average. So, we took all the walls to a lovely white color, and the chimney wall - it is black.
When I first told my boyfriend (now husband) that I was painting a wall in my house black he was horrified. He continued to try and convince me out of the black baseboards as well. I of course won this battle, and now he, and everyone that comes in loves it as well.
The living room itself has gone through many different furniture arrangements. For a good solid year there you never knew when you would visit where the furniture would be. Here is how it is currently laid out, and I think it will stay, I love the piano placement half under the stairs and it isn't easy to move.
I also changed up the floors. Now, I would have LOVED to change the floors in every room - the carpet is brown, and how I detest brown in my home, but alas, it wasn't in the budget. However, the main living space and master bedroom were on the list. I found this flooring called blueprint, and seriously, couldn't take my eyes off of it. I stood in the store for like 10 minutes. It was twice the price I wanted to pay, but there was no other flooring options after I saw that. I had been wondering about a light floor or a dark one, and this worked perfectly.
As you can see here my rug is the carpet I put in the master bedroom. This is a cut off that was extra, so we had it taken to a carpet shop that edged it, and now I have a rug for my living room.
Another thing that had to go was those cabinets. The one thing I don't like about the layout of my house it that the first thing you step into when you come through the doors in the kitchen. I know open concept is the thing right now, but is the first thing you want your guests to see is your dirty dishes and smell the leftover grease of your last meal? (FYI - multiply this by 10 when you have a husband that loves to cook!) So, I wanted the kitchen to blend into the background as much as possible, so I went with black cabinets. I painted them all myself, (stay tuned for a future blog in which I tell about that) and I have to say, I love them now. The kitchen could still use some work, but for now it is working.
The dinning room also got those cool new floors, black baseboard, white walls, and black and white furniture (one day the chairs will get painted.) All of these things I mentioned before, but added together they look like a new room. Oh, and I put in a new light fixture.
As you go down the hallway, it got a makeover. Hallways are not something that you stay in for long, so they can be crazy, and I figure this was the perfect place for my lego mini-figure collection. They are of course not finished, so stay tuned for project to get done. But, hey, they are on the walls.
To the right we have a laundry room. It is, small, tiny, a closet shared with our furnace and water heater. Gosh I want to make over this room, it hasn't been since the place was built, but, here it is:
Let's be clear, I don't want to give it a makeover because I want to spend more time in there doing laundry, I also hate laundry, so the room matches it function I guess.
Next to the laundry room is the guest bathroom. Arguably the best designed room in the house, this is covered in Flamingos of all shapes and sizes. A full tour of it would constantly be outdated because they multiply so much.
The guest room is currently being used by my mother-in-laws items, so nothing new there except new white paint.
Our Master Bedroom has recently got a mini makeover, so I won't talk about it much. But as I mentioned before it got new carpet, a variety of curtains, and a multitude of furniture. To see the full (updated) makeover, go here.
As we go upstairs we have a library. As I searched for a home I always knew I wanted a space for my books. I guess growing up I was spoiled. I was an only child, so in our three bedroom home we didn't need the third bedroom as a bedroom and so it was a library, full of the best books. It wasn't until I grew up that I realized not everyone had a library. But, that didn't stop me from wanting one in my home, plus, the books needed to go somewhere.
The bookcases aren't finished yet, like everything else, but a wall of books is just amazing. And this little wall is the perfect place for the TV.
To the side of the library is the art room/studio. I know, it looks like a mess, and I do try to keep it clean, but I also like all my supplies at an arms reach away. This was a long time in the making, I had boxes of supplies for months before we got the tables built. But now I can make, do, or wrap nearly anything I want with very little effort in trying to find what I need.
So, there you have it, my in progress home tour. Be sure to stick around to see how it changes. I also look forward to doing a room by room tour to give more details on each room, how it has changed, and what I plan to do in the future.