Settling in (and some Improving)

We've mostly settled in, although I still need to hang things on the walls and finish organizing a couple of rooms. We've been able to do some small improvements - I am continually re-amazed at how much of a difference cleaning, painting, and removing or replacing (small) things can make! I was really bad at taking before pictures, since we were so focused on doing things, but I did get a couple (although they are mostly in-progress pictures).

The living room - this room we painted, and I love the cheery yellow (it was a dirty, dingy white)

The kitchen - this is my favorite room in the house, which is funny because when I first saw the pictures of this house online during our hunt, the pictures of the kitchen made me cringe. We removed the doors on some of the cupboards and I am loving the open shelves! I also replaced the foil-covered burner pans on the stove and I feel like I have a whole new stove!

Before Pictures:

The dining room had old ugly wallpaper (the sellers also left their huge, heavy treadmill which is still sitting in our garage until we figure out how to get rid of it), which we started removing. The first layer peeled off easily, leaving the lower layer firmly stuck to the wall. I started scraping that off - my plan is to paint the top half of the wall yellow, and the trim blue, but that will happen sometime next year!

Here's what it looks like right now:
My drying rack is also in there right now, which helps with the electric bill! =)

And, on with the tour!


I have to admit that the bathroom isn't my favorite room, probably because it needs the most work. The bathtub and the surrounding tile wall (and the floor, probably) need to be ripped out to fix the water damage behind there. We have a shower curtain covering the falling-off tiles until we can get to it - hopefully sometime this spring/summer.

I do like the linen closet, though. We removed the ugly, plastic, accordian-style door and I'm planning on hanging a cute curtain there.

The bedrooms are small; ours pretty much is what you can see, except for the closet behind the door, and the dresser next to that. Curtains for this room are first on my list, since there are no blinds, and I'd like to replace the black plastic garbage bag we have hanging there right now! =)

The kids' room before:

Dark, ugly paneling - not a very attractive room.

And now:

We painted the paneling, and that made a world of difference! The room is bright and happy now. Red will be the main accent color in their room - I can't wait to get some red curtains at the window for some color! Ezra has just about outgrown his basket, so after Christmas we'll be getting another bed set up for Joanna, and he'll be moving into the playpen.

The laundry room is definitely still in progress. There's a bunch of stuff in it that needs to be moved to the gargage, and I'd like to put up some more shelving. We did remove some built-in shelves to make room for our chest freezer, since I preferred that to not have to be in the garage. I'm loving the new-to-us washer and dryer! The house didn't come with those, and after a few unsuccessful tries at getting some off Craigslist, we were able to find these at a used appliance store.

And last but not least is the office/library/sewing room.
This is technically Seth's office, but my sewing stuff and our books are also in there. This room mostly just needs organization, but Seth also has plans for painting and someday replacing the ugly built-in shelving that is currently there.

That's our house! We are absolutely loving it and are so thankful for it! We do have lots of work to do (we also have to do some electrical and other work), but are very encouraged by the small improvements we've already done. I'm looking forward to the spring, when I can get outside and dig a garden and plant some flowers!