Home Tour

So, like I mentioned a lot back in July, in August we bought our first home. We couldn’t be more excited, and have been so happy here, but I haven’t given any kind of even hint of a tour of it here on the blog. I kept feeling like it wasn’t ready, or I wanted to get such-and-such done before posting any pictures, but the reality is, we bought a fixer-upper and so I’ve gotta start somewhere. When we started house hunting, we knew we wanted something that we could work on and really make our own. I hoped that would be some kind of great craftsman bungalow that had great bones but had been mistreated over the years, or an old farmhouse style home. However, my brother had a fixer-upper he’d been working on for a few years and when he offered to sell it to us as-is, we jumped at the chance. A yellow split-level with a blue front door was never my dream, but it’ll just be even more of a challenge to get it looking like we want, and I love a good challenge.

When my brother bought this house five years ago, it had been really beat up by renters. It was moldy, leaking, and literally falling apart in places. He spent a few years living in it and gutting it at the same time (bless his wife’s heart for living in a construction zone). When he bought it the ceilings were literally falling down. He ripped out all the dry wall in the upstairs and all of the ceilings, replaced it all, laid wood floors in the upstairs, ripped out the bathrooms down to the studs and tiled and dry walled them, took down the chimney, and replaced the basement drywall. All of that also included fixing plumbing, putting in lights and fans, and tons more work. He really did a lot, and I’m lucky to have a brother who does fantastic high-quality interior work. The pictures below were taken at that point. Since it was constantly being worked on, you can’t see a lot of what he did. We’ve done more since these too, but here is our work in progress home when we bought it –Kitchen
Dining
Living Room
Master Bedroom
Master Bath
Kid Bedroom
Hall Bath
2nd Kid Bedroom
Entry WayBasement Living Room
Basement BedroomLaundry/Utility Room

Already there have been huge improvements made. We are nowhere near being done (there are still a few boxes I haven’t even unpacked), but we have floors everywhere, décor, and some furniture!

The beginnings of a gallery wall with one of my most prized possessions, Loretta Lynn’s very first album.

I’ll definitely be sharing more pictures as we get more done and when I don’t have a little snuggly newborn to distract me!