House Renovations-Part 1

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We have been NON STOP with fixing up our new house and it feels like nothing is complete yet. There are ladders and paintbrushes everywhere. Accessories are randomly located. Paint samples are strewn about. Not one room is finished and it’s driving me nuts! However, it’s been really fun doing all of it. (well, not all of it was fun, but most of it was). Plus, seeing progress is so rewarding. Not to mention…. I get the fun job of picking out paint colors and then I get the even BETTER job of WATCHING Garrett do the painting, while I sit back and relax!

Don’t get me wrong, our house was great AS-IS, but definitely not our style. The walls were all the original builder’s white and everything was um, dirty. And I don’t mean dirty in the sense that it was untidy, I mean DIRTY. We bought the house from an older man, his teenage son, and their beloved Golden Retriever. Apparently, these people didn’t enjoy cleaning and it appears they also loved to wipe their dirty hands on every wall and light switch. Yuck. So, painting the entire house was almost a necessity ( I use that as my excuse). I suppose that it wasn’t a necessity to paint and decorate the laundry room, but hey, it’s a room I spend a lot of time in!

Want to see some before and almost-after pictures? I will call them “almost-afters” for now because each room still has a long way to go until I would consider it a “true-after”. Unfortunately, I can’t find all the “befores” on my computer, so trust me when I say that what we have done is an improvement 🙂

P.S. The following pictures remind me of why I NEED a new camera. Ours is getting very old and it just doesn’t take good pictures anymore. Please excuse the blurry pictures!

Kitchen Before: (notice the amount of watering cans on the cabinets…hmmm, too bad all our plants surrounding the house were practically dead. Perhaps they should have used the weird watering cans a bit more?)

Kitchen Almost-After: SOOOO not done, but SOOOO much better. We warmed it up by painting it Tobacco Road by Duron (long story, perhaps I will blog about that another time?), ripped down their old curtains, and CLEANED the cr*p out of the cabinets. There was gunk built up in every nook and cranny. BLAH!
So, this is how it looks for now. We have plans. Big plans. Some of those big plans have to do with replacing those awful ceiling light fixtures. Ugh.

Family Room Before:


Family Room Almost-After: We have since hung artwork, added a sidetable, spraypainted some accessories (LOVE spraypaint, by the way) etc. I will post more when it’s finally complete. However, we adore this room. Super cozy, love the chenille couch, and can’t wait to use the fireplace in the winter.

Living Room Before: This room was nice, but definitely not our style. We decided early on that we were going to use the living room and dining room (which I can’t find the “before” picture of) as playrooms for our kids. The dining room and living room were the only two rooms in the house that didn’t have stained walls and dirty carpet. They are both right off the kitchen, making for an ideal play area. Here is the living room before…. nice, but way too formal for our lifestyles right now:
Before:

Living Room Almost-After: Here is Garrett playing with the kids in the living room. This room is nowhere near complete and we have since hung shelves and a really great mirror, but it is still fun and functional for us as a family.

Here is the dining room, turned playroom. Eventually, (many moons from now) this will turn back into an actual dining room, but for now, it’s 100% perfect to house all the kids’ toys, books, playdoh, and randomness. They love it and so do we!

(I have plans to remove that awful chandelier…. BIG plans.)

The Exterior Almost-Afters:

Unfortunately, I can’t find the before photos of our house before we moved in. I think my computer ate them, so I am just going to show the almost-afters. Really, they aren’t that much different anyway. We added plants, house numbers, and weeded the unruly gardens. Eventually, we plan to change the shutters, garage door, and front door to black. We also plan to redo the gardens that surround the entire house (huge bushes everywhere!) However, for now, this will work for us!
I spraypainted some old pots, and added our house numbers (3-1-2) to the front. I love it!

Picture of the house, but I cut out the 2nd garage. Oops.

Downstairs Powder Room Almost Afters:

This is the only room in the entire house that is almost complete. Unfortunately, I don’t have any before pictures. When we moved in, it was actually fairly decent. Well, aside from the hideous border, which I promptly ripped down. I added beadboard and trim (which I cut and attached all by myself! Wahoo!) The only thing we still need to do is touch up some paint:

Foyer Almost-Afters:

Again, there are no before pictures, but it was so dirty. Yuck Yuck Yuck. We added a cute pedestal table, some hydrangeas and a nice picture. I plan to do something different with the table one day.

Notice that I have absolutely no pictures of the upstairs quite yet? It’s because everything is a mess up there! We just painted Ainsley’s room, but we haven’t hung the shelves. I am in the middle of doing Ethan’s room (can’t wait to show that!), the master bath is hideous, and the spare bedroom is basically a storage room for now.

The laundry room was painted this past weekend, so I will get pics up soon.

Everything is coming together and we are so proud of our work. Trying to get this done with two kids is crazy!!!!

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Hayley

Hayley Crouse is a wife, mother and multifaceted designer. Her love of sewing, crafting, cooking and interior design infuses her daily life and naturally spills over into her online presence. She pushes the envelope of her creativity and hopes that others will be inspired to do the same. She currently authors the Welcome to the Mouse House Blog, is the pattern designer behind Mouse House Creations and is a collaborative designer with Willow & Co. Patterns.

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