Our New House - The Downstairs BEFORE Pictures

Whew! What a crazy few weeks it has been! We did not end up getting our internet up and running Sunday afternoon as I had hoped which is why I didn't post yesterday but we did finally get it running yesterday so I could finally upload a bunch of my photos into blogger last night!

We moved into our new home two weeks ago. The move itself was much more overwhelming than we anticipated and I am so relieved to finally have it completely behind us. We moved in on a Monday and Tuesday night my parents arrived. I don't know if I have ever been so excited to see them in my entire life as I was that night! Wednesday and Thursday they helped with the unpacking and cleaning (my poor mom scoured the oh so very disgusting kitchen cabinets!), removing light fixtures and they even took several loads of laundry to the laundromat for us seeing how first our washer and then our dryer decided to call it quits on us right after we got them moved into the house (as I mentioned the other day we ran into quite a few hiccups...haha!). Then on Friday we headed out of town to Robert and Maggie's wedding. After a wonderful weekend with all my extended family we headed back home and got back to work Monday morning unpacking. We were able to get most of the unpacking done by Monday evening and then Tuesday Jon's parents arrived and we got right to work. They helped with things like taking down doors and ceiling fans, mowing the lawn and then endless hours of painting. My mother-in-law and I painted for four straight days from sunup to long past sundown and were able to get pretty much all of the kitchen and adjoining family room painted! I can't imagine having had to do that whole space myself. I think I would have thrown in the towel mid-way through. I am so so so very grateful for both my parents and Jon's parents coming down and helping us so much! Along with them all being more help than we ever could have asked for I know that Lillie and Lola loved getting to spend time with both their Mimi and Papa and their Grammy and Coach and getting to show them around our new neighborhood. We can't wait for them to all come back so they can actually enjoy it and not be working non-stop! 

The family room/kitchen room is now about 80% done. We are just waiting on two or three more things and then I'll share pictures of the transformation. For today though, I want to show you all the before photos. 

Before I show you them though, I want to tell you about the overall house and what we fell in love with. First, and foremost we love the neighborhood. It is an older neighborhood with a great sense of community and so much for the girls to do outdoors! We love the overall feel of the exterior of the home - it's a two-story brick home. We do plan on painting the trim, shutters and front doors different colors eventually. The doors and shutters hopefully this fall) We LOVED the yard (I'll try to show some photos of that at some point) and absolutely loved the floorplan and flow of the house. We also were thrilled with the fact that there were wood floors throughout the entire house. Cosmetically speaking though, the house needs a good amount of updating. There is nothing wrong with it - I just want to update things and brighten it up and make it feel lighter and happier for our family.

So, here are the BEFORE shots. They are all cell phone pictures they are not very good. I am going to try to remember to take "real" before shots here soon before I get everything changed! 

When you first walk in there is a staircase on the right leading up to the second floor and a hallway on the left that leads back to the family room/kitchen. There are also a few doorways leading to other rooms. The projects in the entryway involve replacing the runner, painting the trim and removing (or possibly priming over) the wallpaper and painting the walls .

 

At the bottom right of the stairway is a doorway leading into the den. This is the one room I am going to leave pretty much as is for now. We've got our furniture in there and I've decided I want to live with the dark trim in here for a while and see if I like the cozy feel it has or if I want to go ahead and paint it all Simply White like the rest of the house. I am going to be painting the walls though. It's hard to tell in these photos but they are actually a light peach color. I started painting them yesterday in Benjamin Moore's Soft Chamois and am hoping to get that finished up today in time to hang up the curtains and hang some things on the walls! 

If you go into the room to the left of the front door you are in the dining room. In here I am going to be painting all of the trim Simply White and adding some wainscoting below the chair rail and then possibly wallpapering the upper portion of the wall. Then I am going to replace the chandelier and start adding furniture.

If you head through the door Lola's about to go through you are in the kitchen (you can also get there through the front hall). 

All of this has already been painted - YAY!!!! Although we are using Simply White in the whole rest of the house we mixed it up a little and used Benjamin Moore's London Fog for all of the trim and cabinets in here and left the walls white. 

The scalloped valance is now gone. 

 

And these upper cabinets above the peninsula are long gone! Whew! That was probably the item that was driving me the most crazy!

This lovely light fixture also came done a few minutes after these pictures were taken. 

Off the kitchen is a family room. This has quickly turned into my favorite room by far! Although we painted all of the trim and the fireplace London Fog we left the beams wood.

AHHHHHH! MOVING DAY! 

And there is also a little laundry room. I have some projects in mind for here! 

and for in this little powder room too!

And here's a quick cell phone shot of the girls baking in our kitchen for the first time this weekend! You can get a little peek and see the space lightened up and and if you notice there aren't any upper cabinets above their heads! YAY! This now give us much more usable counter space.

Well, that's it for today! Next I'll show you the upstairs. And if you are waiting on an e-mail response I will hopefully be able to properly start attacking my inbox tomorrow!