The House

I’ve been back and forth on do I share these before pictures now or wait until I have finished pictures of each room. Now or wait? Hmm… now or wait? I couldn’t decide. Finally, I decided… I guess now. A lot of people have been asking me what the house looks/looked like. Let’s just do this thing.

Here is where I also state that the house was described in terrible terms to us. If you look at these pictures, the house really isn’t “terrible.” We are remodeling it. In fact, as you saw the other day I had a kitchen/bathroom combo. Luckily, that has gone away. There is now a dividing wall again. We even have a bathroom floor!! There’s no plumbing so don’t plan on using the bathroom or kitchen for that matter any time soon.

My bathroom vanity is now in along with the sink. I have a bathroom mirror. We know what potty (yuck I hate that word… haha) we are going to get, but we haven’t yet. Our bathroom won’t have a bathtub, just a shower but we know what we want.

Kitchen appliances have been ordered as well as kitchen cabinets. So we’re making progress. Oh… my bathroom faucet should be in any day. The shower um… spout (word??) is in. So we’re making progress.

So without further ado, here are the before pictures I actually took before we even signed for the house. They had accepted our offer at this point, but we hadn’t signed. Our realtor came out and let us in so I could get some measurements and I went ahead and took pictures too while I was at it. This was the Monday before Thanksgiving.

Bedroom 1 (only because it’s the first one I’m showing you :))

So here’s the good thing about this bedroom… our plans are to repaint the walls, tear up the flooring, new lighting/fan, get rid of the window AC unit, and do something about the trim. Oh and curtains or something for window covering. Otherwise, it’s not in terrible shape.

The Livingroom

The living room is decent sized. We’re going to do new flooring, new paint, new fixtures, rewire. Just really the basics. We’re opening up the opening into the dining room/kitchen. Getting rid of the cabinets. Something with the trim obviously. In the last picture of this post, we’re going to do something different with the backdrop of the fireplace plus replace that fireplace.

The Kitchen

The kitchen has been a bit more of a headache. The floor sagged, so we had to raise that up. The whole floor has been torn out and is being replaced with some kind of tile, nothing decided upon yet. New cabinets. I already have a nice fridge, but we’re buying a new stove, dishwasher, over the range microwave. I own the new backsplash already. New paint. Initially, we were going to take out the wall on the right side of this picture, but it’s a load bearing wall that wasn’t supported correctly, so we decided to leave it and we supported that wall correctly with a ghost beam. New ceiling fixtures/can lights. The window has to be changed out, partially because it got broken and partially because it’s in a bad area. New sink/faucet. I have the sink picked out, the faucet should be in this week.

The Dining Room

So I was in this house 2 owners ago a lot. We lived right next door before turning that house into a rental and moving into my parent’s house which was the next one down. What we’re doing as our dining room was their initial living room that they turned into a formal dining room. I have no idea what the previous owners did.

Anyway, the floor will be redone. New paint, lighting, ceiling fan, trim work, etc. There’s the new opening into the living room. Otherwise, it’s pretty basic stuff as well. That closet you see in the hallway has been done away with. The other closet will be left as a coat closet.

The Bathroom

So that closet was done away with (seen on the left so you can’t see the vanity in this picture. New vanity, mirror, faucet, toilet, shower, tile, floor, wall, etc. The current tub/shower actually had a leak for apparently YEARS and so that wall where the window is, well you can see the back side of the siding. Not a good thing. So the window will go away and be replaced with I think the big glass bricks so you still get natural light but. It’ll also get new fixtures. We already have the over the vanity light. The closet will stay for a towel closet. It gets all new plumbing including the rest of the house because it was all old steel pipes.

Don’t ask what we found in some of the pipes. It was gross! The whole bathroom gets new sheetrock.

Bedroom 2

So this is pretty basic as well. New flooring, new wall color, new fixtures, do something with the trim, and we widened the closet door. The closet is a fairly good-sized closet but about half of it was behind a wall and that being said, whatever gets over to that corner, you couldn’t see. So we widened it. Most all of the closets in the house will get the barn door style closet doors so yey! You’ll be able to see the whole closet.

Master Bedroom

Again stating the obvious… new floors, new paint, new fixtures, yadda yadda. This closet was the same as Bedroom 2 so we opened it up wide. It’ll have 3 barn doors so you’ll always have to move at least 2 to be able to get to your side, but there won’t be a door opening into the room and you’ll be able to see your side of the closet. Win-win.

The laundry room

These cabinets are staying. New paint, new fixtures, new flooring. I think we’re going to add a wash basin in here as well as a sitting bench/coat rack to place coats and hide shoes that will stay here (aka barn boots, etc). It will also get new plumbing. That closet initially was going to be turned into a half bath but unfortunately, I won’t get my half bath. I’m kind of sad about this. There will be one out in the barn, so we’ll have 2 but if you’re stuck going out there in the cold… good luck!

And back to the living room. That wood cabinet will stay but the fireplace is already replaced and that tile wall will be changed out.

So welcome to our humble abode.