Before Pictures of Our New Home

Welcome to our new to us home!  Today I thought I would take you on a little before tour.  We built our last two homes, so moving into one that is older was little different for us, but just as exciting and maybe a little more so!  You can read our full story here about why we picked this one.  And if you don't have time to read that long post, it was basically for the location :)

To give you a quick start, it's a 4 bedroom 3 & 1/2 bath home.  The first few pictures are of the entry, dining and formal living (which will be a study and piano room for us.)  Nice size rooms that have lots of natural light!  The floors look a little more orangey in these pictures, but are actually a darker brown wood color.  We plan to keep those.  Lots of great molding in these rooms.  So really just paint in these rooms for now, which we already did before we moved in.  We went with Palomino Gray which I absolutely love!  It is a light gray, with the overall feel of white.  It really freshened up the house.  You can get a peek at the color in this post here.  The light in the study/piano room will need to be changed soon for both function and style.  It puts off very little light and when the kids practice piano after dark it is not ideal for reading music.  We had planation shutters in our last home and we would like to eventually change the blinds out for those, but not right away.

Moving on to the family room and kitchen.  I was happy to find this layout in the kitchen.  Several homes we looked at that were built in this same neighborhood did not have an island, but instead either a "U" shaped raised bar or a closed off kitchen.  The first thing everyone says when they come in is, "you have dark cabinets."  They know how much I love a white kitchen.  So here's where we are with the kitchen.  When we had the painters come to paint the entire house (walls and ceilings,) I also picked out paint for the kitchen cabinets and they were supposed to paint those too.  But we had them hold off on those for now.  At first glance the cabinets look like they are a dark stain, but they are actually painted that dark color and if you look close, not the best paint job.  So, we are torn between sanding them really good and repainting, or replacing the fronts, or holding on both those ideas and replacing them completing.  I can't decide if we should just do a whole remodel in here since the granite is a greenish-black color.  I know backsplash is easy and we can do that, but when you throw in new countertops, it makes me want to start with new cabinets too.  So we are still deciding and the kitchen still looks exactly like this except with freshly painted walls.  I would love to hear your thoughts on what you would do in here :)

I love the family room!  Nice built-ins and a great size.  We removed the TV bracket from above the fireplace and rewired the cable to the adjacent wall.  I'm not a huge fan of the TV above the fireplace if you have another option.  I realize some times it's the only solution and some folks really like it and that's great too.  But I like to decorate above my fireplace, so the TV had to go.  But in here we just painted.  The tile around the fireplace is something we would like to change soon, since that's an easy update with a big impact. The stairs are in the back of the house, which is a little different too, but I like the change.  I have already planned for our Christmas tree to sit right near those stairs against that big wall :)  The windows are great in here as well.  They are floor to ceiling providing us with great natural light and a nice view of the backyard.  I removed the blinds for now and plan to do bamboo shades in here.

Here is our lovely master bath :)  It will one day need to be updated, but it's functional.  The positives in here are the great size and the his and her closets.  I never thought how great this would be, but I love, love having my own closet! 

And for some reason , I could not find a before picture of our master bedroom.  It on the first floor off the living area and of course opens up to this bathroom.  If you scroll back up to that last family room picture, it's through that door to the left of the fireplace.  It also has the great floor to ceiling windows like in the living room.  And the only update it needed was to be painted.

Moving upstairs to the kid zone.  The two pictures above show this space, which is a good size playroom with a closet and some built-ins.  Lots of space for friends to play and hangout.

The next two photos above are of the guest bedroom and bath.  Another bathroom that will one day get an update, but for now we have only painted.

And finally, the kids' rooms and bathroom.  Same story as with all the bathrooms, a future remodel.  The carpet on the stairs and throughout the upstairs is a Berber and fairly new, so that will stay for now.  And then there are little details, like the ceiling fans and some of the lighting that will need to be changed as well. 

So that is our before tour.  Lots of projects to come with this house, but it has a good start.  It already looks so different with the new paint and our furniture and décor moved it, but this gives you a good look at what we started with.  The best part of this move is that we have met several of our neighbors and I can see lots of fun memories to come in both this house and this neighborhood!