New house tour

Okay, now that I FINALLY shared our before and afters of our house in Michigan, I can give you the house tour of our house in West Virginia - since it is now officially ours and people have been bugging me about it! So, without further ado - our beautiful new house:

After the first time we walked through the house, Steve and I had an ongoing argument about what the color this house actually was....he thought white, I said light blue. Truth is, we were both off (it's actually a light grayish blue), but what really counts is that I was MORE right. ;)

This is the main entry way. Straight ahead to the kitchen, upstairs to the bedrooms, right to the main floor bathroom and an entryway to main living room. And if you turn right....

You'll see the coat closet and the front living room:

Walking through the front living room takes you through this entry to the dining room...

With 5 kids, white carpet, and beautiful floral wallpaper, what could go wrong?!?!? (Sense the sarcasm...I can't WAIT to get rid of this wallpaper and put wood floors down since our 2 year old has already stained this carpet with red koolaid, among other things!)

Turn right again (I hope you've figure out we're walking through in a clockwise circle), you'll enter the kitchen...and the door across goes to the main living room, which you'll see in a minute.

This kitchen feels much smaller than it is. There is TONS of storage, a huge food pantry, which is a dream come true, but the cabinets are so dark and close off this space, and of course the 80's wallpaper and floral curtains don't do it for me. Can't wait to get to work on the after of this space!

The door below you see on the left with a doggie door in it goes to the basement.

Okay, here is the main living room. Love the brick fire place and the giant space....but Lord have mercy, that wood paneling will be the FIRST to go! (In fact, we've already started painting it the day we closed on the house!)

 From the main living room, you walk out to the deck...

And you get to see this beautiful view....

We live next door to a wildlife preserve, so we get to see TONS of deer in our backyard!

Okay, to complete the full circle of the main floor, here is the main bathroom. Complete with more floral wallpaper...

Alright, now onto the upstairs... (this is from the top looking down)

Hallway

We'll go counter-clockwise on this level. If you reach the top of the stairs and take an immediate right, you'll come to Reagan and Faith's room...

Nothing too exciting, YET, but it is significantly bigger than their last room..with a lot more closet space.

Next up on the same end of the house, is our oldest Zada's room. Also, much bigger than her last room - and we plan to Zebra this place up soon!

Keeping with our circle, next you come to the upstairs bathroom with double sinks and a shower! What a novel idea for the upstairs where all the bedrooms are! (I kid because our previous house only had a bath upstairs, the main level had the shower)

Next we come to another bedroom that was converted to a laundry room. As much as we want to convert it back to a bedroom - I absolutely LOVE having our laundry room upstairs. No more folding laundry on the couch, transporting clothes everywhere and making a big mess. The kids can grab their laundry and bring it right to their rooms. Not to mention, it's HUGE. So for now, it will stay a laundry room.

It's actually a turquoise color (the same color you'll see in the boy's room next, in fact, but you can't tell in these pictures because the lighting is weird)

Next is the boy's room. All of the rooms are significantly bigger than our last house. Lucky for these guys, cause there might be three rambunctious boys in here for a couple years.

Last room upstairs is our beautiful master bedroom...

Our master is the size of our old living room! So needless to say, we barely have enough furniture to fit in it. But we're happy nonetheless. Plus, it makes plenty of space for baby for the first few months. And...check out our own master bath....yes, double sinks again. 

If you think I'm spoiled now, check out this walk-in closet!!! I about peed my pants when I saw this. I have no reason to leave my bedroom now (I'll just order room service from my children and husband hehe)

That completes the tour for now. I don't have any pictures of the garage or basement yet. The basement is the ugliest space in the house, and the dog lived down there, so the smell is messing with my pregnancy nose big time. But right now, everything we haven't unpacked yet is being stored down there. Someday, it will come together. It's hard to be patient to watch things come together, but I'm brewing with excitement to create a space that suites our family.

Thanks for taking the tour with me. More importantly, thank you for all the prayers and kind words of encouragement that got us here in the first place! I love you all.

Coming together

Our house is really starting to feel like home. A lot work has been done, and a lot more remains to be done, but as we unpack and settle in, it feels good to call this place mine. I promised some before and after pictures because some of them are quite drastic. I only have a few, as the house is obviously still not completely done, but I thought I'd update everyone.

This is the before view of the livingroom, as seen from the front door. Notice that the molding is different colors...not sure what that's about.

And this is the after of the livingroom, as seen from the kitchen entryway. Can't really tell in this picture, but floors were stained and refinished to a walnut color, and crown molding was painted white.

This is the livingroom before. From left to right: Entryway to the kitchen, main floor hall with bathroom, laundry room, garage and basement, stairway, and front door.

And now the after: This is my favorite view of the house. I love the little bump out wall under the stairs and the charming built-in book case at the bottom of the stairs. It's so cozy on a sunny day.

The dining room before: I'm pretty sure this is the most awful wall color I've ever seen. So awful, we decided on an equally awful name for it: 'breastfed baby poo.' Yuck.

After: I really didn't understand the different colored trim in the house, and this room took the longest to paint because there are little teeth in the dental molding. Pretty, but a pain. But the after is well worth it (especially since I'm not the one who painted it! lol) There will eventually be actual pictures in the frames...

Kitchen Before: Light wood cabinets were ok, but I had my heart set on something a little grander...

Ahhh, my kitchen.  Painted walls, trim, and cabinets, refinished the floor and added a desk. Soon there will be an over the range microwave and some beautiful  window treatments.

Can't wait to show you more!

Table before and after

I've been waiting to post these pictures for ages! I actually completed this project over Spring Break (it was on the many things on my TO-DO list) but my camera died on me and my old camera wouldn't upload to the computer. Now that I've figured that out, you can see the BEFORE and AFTER of my cheap dining room table and chairs that was looking pretty rough around the edges.

We got this table from my mom when we first got married and moved into our townhouse:

This is actually a picture of the table and chairs in its prime at our sweet little townhouse:

Well, over the last 6 years, it's a little worse for the wear. So, with a little help from this:

(keep in mind, these photos came off my old, screwed up camera - sorry about the lines)

I managed to create a whole new dining room set:

It seems to look very dull in this photo, but it actually turned out amazing - looks brand new! Maybe I'll take some pictures with my new camera soon so you can really get the whole effect.

Now that I've painted the back wall, painted the dining room set - I still need something to make this space POP. I have a few ideas, but I'm up for suggestions. What do you think would really make this space?!?

And don't forget to enter my first EVER giveaway - only two more days left!