Fall in Love: House Tour

Earlier this week marked another year of living in our house. It's hard to believe it's been four years already, although some days it feels like forever. I can barely remember apartment living but I do remember the awful packing routine every year. It feels good to have a home of our own and we do love it here, although it's not perfect and certainly has its pros and cons, it def works for us now and where we are in our lives.

When we first bought the house, we thought it'd be our starter home and we'd live here for 3-5 years, unfortunately due to the economy it's looking like it'll be a much longer term home, which isn't the worst thing in the world, but we do dream about and talk about our next home, whenever and wherever that will be. Sadly the home values in our development have gone done about 15% from what we paid for our house 4 years ago. Plus that doesn't even take into account the closing costs we paid at the time. We're slowly paying down the mortgage and we were lucky enough to refinance last year but the home value is still far less than what we currently owe on the mortgage, putting us under water like many other families in the country right now. It's sad to think about that right now we are saving all our money to pay off the mortgage, then save to pay a realtor, and then have to save 20% to put down on our next home, which will likely cost more than this house.

But until we can get to that point we are enjoying the home that we have, although there are still some small cosmetic projects we'd love to do to the house due to the fact that most of it would just be another expense and we won't get anything out of it when we sell it we probably won't do much else to the house than we have already. It's actually been quite a long time since we've done any home projects or bought anything decorating wise for the house. I would absolutely love to change the countertops in the kitchen, mostly so that I could expand and lower one part, but Mike hasn't been on board with my project at all, so I don't think it's likely to happen. That is the one home project I'd love to do if we did nothing else.

We did a lot when we first moved in to make it our own and we love how it turned out. Since I never posted pictures of our house I thought it would be fun as we mark the anniversary of living here to post some pictures of our little first home.

Kitchen (First Floor)

I'm not going to lie, while the kitchen seves its purpose, I dream about a larger kitchen. I do love the colors of the kitchen, like the cupboards and appliances and it does have a fantastic amount of pantry space and closet space in the laundry room, especially for a town house, I do dream about the day I will have a large kitchen to cook in. Just some paint and changing a light fixture in here. You can catch a glimpse of our new fridge as well.

The Living Room (First Floor)

This is my favorite room in the house. In the winter time I love to lay on the couch here with the fireplace on and read my book, it's also great for entertaining. I could not be any happier with the way the decor came out. First I would like to say, you see those pictures hanging above Mike's head, those were hung up with VELCO, yes velcro. Who in the world hangs pictures using velcro? The people we bought the house from did, what a nightmare it was to get the goo off the wall, some intense scrubbing, goo-off and elbow grease were involved. Once we got past that and painted, including an accent wall on the fireplace wall, it was looking really good. My next favorite project was changing the fireplace, we stripped off the varnish, painted it white and had it titled with granite and it came out fantastic, so much more modern. I even spray painted the candle stick holders on the mantle black to match. Also love my pottery barn wine glass and wine rack shelf, it fits the space perfectly (an awesome engagement gift from the in-laws). Cannot say how much I love this room!

The Dining Room (First Floor)

Connected to the living room space is the dining room. This room even came with some lovely crayon drawings on the wall in the dining room, again who lets their kid color on the dining room wall, more elbow grease required for removal before paining from yellow to beige. My other favorite project in this room is the chandelier, we originally looked at replacing it and buying a new one but when that didn't work out we decided to spray paint the existing one black and it turned out perfect! The other project I'll mention, our biggest investment in the house, was putting in the hardwood floors.

The Basement

This is where we probably spend about 90% of our time, although in Mike's case it's 100% since he sleeps down here!!! (Don't ask). I think it was the same pistachio green color as in the master bedroom, again totally not our color preference, we decided to go with a blue and brown color palette in the basement. This room also serves as our home office and since we are both full time work at home employees you can see the close quarters we share (not my preference either). Thank goodness there are windows down here at least. Rocky also spends all his time laying in front of the door.

Guest Room (Second Floor)

When we bought the house, the seller had their two children in this room with a crib and toddler bed. It was a tight squeeze which is the reason they sold us the house. Admittedly we haven't done anything with this room, aside from paint. It serves as a great guest room, and also has a deep walk in closet. Eventually it could become the nursery if we had children in this house.

Master Bedroom (Second Floor)

The biggest change in the master bedroom was just the paint color. It went from pistachio green to a much more soothing and neutral brown tone which is much more our style.

Master Bathroom (Second Floor)

We made a couple minor changes to the bathroom, although not all were right away. We essentially changed all the hardware in this bathroom. We changed out the facets in the sink and shower in the bathroom. We also changed all the towel hooks to brushed nickel to match as well. In addition we also had to paint since it was some kind of mauve purple to a neutral beige color. We also changed the light fixture in here as well.

Master Closet (Second Floor)

There is no way I could live with one wire rack going across this huge walk in closet, that was just not going to work for me. My wonderful father-in-law helped us construct this awesome closet set, which we purchased from home depot. And I still have room to spare for more clothes! Of course Mike's wall is designated behind the door. I can't imagine not having this to keep everything organized, no wonder their closet was such a mess. All I have to say is my next house better have room for one of these as well!

Half Bathroom (First Floor)

First we took out the horrible fire engine red color, which was terrible in such a small space and replaced it with a much more neutral green tone. The other two things that we did in here, although hard to see in the pictures was replace the 'bulbs' on the light fixture and also replace the faucet.

We didn't take too many before pictures, but there's more to the house.....

Guest Bathroom (Second Floor)

Worth mentioning, we also changed the guest bathroom. For one when we moved in there were fish stickers or something stenciled to the wall which Mike had to painstakingly remove. I wish I had a picture of them. We also changed the faucet and light fixtures. My favorite change in this room is the bowed out shower rod, love that feature, I'd never go back to the straight rod again.

Laundry Room (First Floor)
The laundry room although nothing fancy does deserve its own shout out. For one we put in the nice shelf piece above the washer/dryer. It was just an open wire rack when we moved in. The shelf gives us storage for the laundry supplies, my cookbooks, and some other things as well. And my beloved laundry room closet. I do not know what I would do without this closet. You don't know how much stuff I have shoved in there. It contains every kitchen appliance we own, which are quite a few and a lot of other supplies, like the other closets in the house this too was ONE wire shelf, one shelf! You know that wasn't going to fly for me. Mike had to put additional shelves in after my bridal shower since I had so much stuff. You can see my beloved Kitchen Aid mixer on the end as well, once day in my next house it'll have a nice spot out on the counter, but for now there's just no room for it.