You guys. We no longer own our home! Which is crazyyyyy and amazing all wrapped up in one! We are SO excited for a new season, and we are equally as excited to hand our home over to a sweet new family to love. We are living here still for a couple of more weeks, and then we will move to our new home, which we are super excited about! {For the full story of why we are downsizing and moving on, go here}. We bought this home 8 years ago. We were young and so in love with the idea of returning this former foreclosure to the beauty we envisioned it to be! We saw it's incredible potential. Even now as I look back on old pictures I wonder HOW?!?! HOW did we see what it could become!?!?! Ha! But God is good, He gave us rose-tinted glasses and exactly the money we needed to make her livable and loveable again! For the first two years of living here we poured our energy, time, and hard work into scrubbing, painting, rebuilding, sanding, replacing. Even now as I think back on those first two years I wonder how we had the energy to do what we did...but I wouldn't trade those memories of working side-by-side with J for anything! Between dog-peed carpets, a broken railing, exposed electrical work, and so many other little safety issues this home wasn't baby-safe when we moved in...and so we had to work our tails off to make it safe again. We were motivated to make it a family-safe home because we wanted to bring our babies home to this house. And that we did! And here we are just 8 years later handing it over to another family to love because God told us to, and we were eager to obey! We have such sweet and precious memories here, and lately, the memories from those early years are all coming back to the surface. I thought maybe you would enjoy a little before & after tour along with me as I walk down memory lane! I can't wait to give you a glimpse into this journey of making this house a home. Here we go... The Family Room:Oh, 90's mirrors and red brick fireplace. I'm SO glad you're gone! More mirrors. Ugh. Technically this is the formal dining room {notice the doorway to the Butler's Pantry/kitchen...}...but we decided to make the Sunroom the dining room instead. This allowed for us to have a "library" on the main level. We called it the office or library...but it often got confusing because my office was upstairs. SO...um, here's the first floor office. ;) Oh good-gravy, this was a major project! The railing was basically falling down when we moved in. We had signs plastered all over it so people didn't depend on it. It was awful. This first picture is after we had ripped it out to replace it. The previous owners had also painted the spindles poop-brown (yep #true)...which was NOT fun to fix. Most of the spindles were replaced with brand new ones, but two of the sections remained strong, so we decided to paint those back to white. OH MY GOODNESS that was TORTURE. But it ended up being worth the work! This is probably my favorite room in the house. It's so bright and sunny and the breeze coming through the open windows makes my heart so happy! All of my plants love this room too :) The kitchen included some beauties like ripped cabinets, blue-speckled plastic knobs, and a marble front dishwasher :) Sadly we never got to completely remodel the kitchen, but we were able to install new appliances and give it some much needed love. |