A House: The Saga, Part 2

It's picture over-load time!

We were able to take several photos before we moved into the house, which is really nice because we can look back and see how much we've already done. Let's begin:

First up, the house itself. We love the porch and the fact that there are some good bushes in front already. However, you can tell a bachelor was living here- there are no flowers, no color, nothing that makes it stand out. We're not planting anything this summer since I won't be there to help take care of everything, but I can't wait to get my hands dirty next spring!

This is facing the front door. Garage is on the left and dining room is on the right. I love that light fixture (except for the green glass). All the men who've come through the house have hated it, though, so we'll see if it stays for the long haul.

If you continue on past the entry and garage door, this is to your left.

This is looking into the dining room from the kitchen. Those windows face the front yard.

The kitchen from the dining room. Pantry is to the right, there.

The master bedroom from the master bath.

Master from the other corner.

This is the other bedroom off the same hallway as the master bedroom. Someday it will be a nursery, but it will serve as an office/craftroom for now.

Off the office is a little vanity nook ("Jill" side), which connects to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom that really isn't a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, because the other side opens up to the other hallway where the laundry room and the other two bedrooms are.

This is the other side of that bathroom, on the Jack side, we will say.

And here is the living room.

Other side of the living room, with the awesome teal accent wall (it has swirls on it!).

Next up are pictures from spring break. I managed to get some during the chaos of the actual unpacking, but most are after painting and getting stuff put away.

This is after a lot of the unpacking happened- I tried to put all the decoration stuff in the dining room so I knew where it all was. This was definitely easier than trying to put it in the room that it was in in our apartment, because I pretty much moved everything to different rooms in the house.

So overwhelmed, but so happy to finally be home.

Testing paint swatches.

Not gonna lie, I was a little nervous at this point...

The light blue is the primer, the dark blue is the actual color.

My beautiful mom, who painted and painted and gave advice all week. She braved her first trip to Houston just to come help us for the week.

Uh oh, you know what this means.

Ikea time!

The finished-for-now look. The baskets and that bookshelf behind the door are my SIL's since she was staying there for a few months to watch the house for us.

Our glorious king size bed. I cannot wait to sleep every night in it. We've got big plans for a headboard. And pictures. And everything else in this room, for that matter.

I hung up these $3 sheets form Ikea thinking they would make decent "for now" curtains, but they look pretty terrible. I like the linen-ish texture to them, though, so I might have to actually sew them into proper curtains with liners this summer.

Here is our master bathroom. It's the same color as the awesome accent wall in the living room. I cannot wait to paint this room, but it may be the hardest room in the house with all those crevices I'll have to reach. Oh, plus we'll have to use primer.

We didn't have time to do anything in here except add a few personal effects.

This is as far as we got in the office. To the left of this picture is a whole wall lined with more boxes that I didn't unpack.

And this is my Dirty Little Secret Closet. At the end of the week there was a lot of stuff I didn't know what to do with, so I stuck it in the office closet. There's plenty of time to deal with it later.

Here is one of the guest bedrooms. I didn't snap a picture of the other one, but it looks about the same.

Laundry room, with my beautiful new washer and dryer! I was set on front loaders, but we were worried about the price. We stumbled upon these babies, who happened to be cheaper on sale than traditional top loaders. They are like a dream. And they sing at me when they're done :)

Backing up, here is the entry way when we left. We painted all the walls from the front door all the way through to the back door (including the living room) a warm grey. The table in the entry is my SIL's, but we're getting one about that size this summer.

A nice landing spot for keys and purses.

Dining room, with our chair-less table, which is apparently not centered.
Let's take a moment to pause and look at that beautiful chandelier:

Isn't she gorgeous? What was once before a terribly offensive shade of brass is now a nice, contemporary black, thanks to the help of a wonderful friend and a few cans of spray paint.

Continuing on through to the kitchen. One of the things I LOVE about this house is the arched doorways.

Look, a new fridge!

I'm not sold on this arrangement of stuff. I like it, but I can't decide if it's too cluttered. But on the other hand, it looked kind of dumb with less stuff up there, and even more dumb with nothing. I can't exactly put something simple like greenery up there, either.

And moving along to the living room- I adore this grey color. Too bad my paint swatch got lost so I'll never know exactly what brand and color it is. Thankfully I still have the paint can lid with the barcode, so they can at least get the recipe for it (we had it color-matched to a non-VOC paint at the Home Depot).

I think these guys feel quite comfortable already.

Nap time! Painting is hard work.

And finally, the back porch. Can I just say that I'm super excited about this porch? I can just imagine the evenings that will be spent out there reading or cooking out with friends. Later our kids will be eating Popsicles back there. (Oh, can you see the tracks around the furniture that the dogs made? The yard is kinda swamp-like when it rains, and they get super muddy paws.)


So, that's the house as it stood when we left. Obviously, we have so much left to do. I don't think I'll ever be "done" with the house, as my style is ever changing. I'm itching to get started on some projects this summer while I'm done there, but for now making tons of pins on Pinterest will have to suffice :) We are so proud of all the work we were able to get done over spring break, and there's no way we could have done it without the help of all our family and friends that came down. We owe them all big time!