Our new house!

 

After what felt like a long wait, we finally closed on our new house and have started the renovations.

I’m so excited!

I’m trying to take as many photos as possible along the way. We completely changed everything about our first house in the 7 years that we lived here – most of it in the first month – and I wish I had taken more photos.

So, here is a photo tour of our new house!

The house we purchased was a foreclosure, which made the whole process such a pain! However, we made it to the end and we bought our house! It has been vacant for about 5 months and rented prior to that.

So, it is some pretty rough shape…

Being vacant and a rental shows in the dirt and neglect of the house. It’s also obvious that it wasn’t cleaned or updated much in the 13 years since it was built. We even noticed the same paint colors noted on a 2×4 by the builder.

One of the big things that probably scared other buyers off is that there was some water damage on the kitchen ceiling. However, we really lucked out and already found the leak in the master shower that only required a $38 part to fix and a bold that needed tightening on the toilet. We were also happy to find the ceiling dry and in great shape.

The house is going to be gorgeous! It has such a great use of space, beautiful wood details, and excellent craftsmanship! We love the unfinished basement and the chance to put our stamp on the house.

My husband is so excited about the 3+ car garage. It’s huge! The ceilings are so high and it has floor drains and is heated. The back portion is a fantastic workshop and it has huge windows for light.

Off the garage is a mudroom with a closet to one side and a deep bench to the other. There is also another coat closet near the front door and a powder room.

I love the look from the front door! It has a beautiful door that opens right to all the gorgeous woodwork of the stairs to the second floor and the basement.

One of the biggest changes we are making is in the kitchen. It has nice maple cabinets. The dining room through the doorway to the right and the large living room is to the left. There is a huge screened porch off the back!

Our plans are to remove the majority of the wall between the kitchen and dining room and extend the new quartz counter tops into the dining room for extra seating. In fact, the wall came out not even 24 hours after our closing!

The last room on the main level is what will be kind of a formal living room. It is separated from the dining room by some pretty french doors.

The basement is unfinished, but it’s completely ready to go for a new bathroom. We love the huge windows and how much space there is down there. That will be a project for the next year or so, but we can’t wait to finish it!

Upstairs are all the bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a laundry room. The kids rooms are a nice size and have the same beautiful doors on all the closets. The laundry room is on the same level as the bedrooms, which is going to be so nice!

The master bedroom is huge! There is a small 3/4 bath as you walk into the large bedroom. I love the window configuration that surrounds the bed. There is a big closet with a completely unexpected bonus room for storage through a separate door.

Another unexpected area is one I’m most excited about! There is an adorable little room that steps down into a cozy little room that will be my mom space. I love it! There is a window that overlooks the backyard to watch the kids. I can’t wait to decorate that relaxing space!

That’s pretty much it! We’re so excited!

We’ve been in there everyday since the closing, and working our tails off.

So far, we’ve fixed the plumbing problems. We’ve also removed all the carpet in the house and will be installing over 1600 sq feet of new carpet after we paint.

Speaking of paint… The only room we will be leaving untouched is the laundry room. The rest of the walls needed some major patching and we’ve nearly painted the entire house already. My hoarded mistint paint finds have finally come in handy!

It’s really coming together!

The next thing to tackle is the bathrooms. Just like the rest of the house, they need some major cleaning. I have some new shower heads to go in the two upstairs bathrooms and the future basement bathroom.

We got these shower heads from Nova through the Tomoson review site. The handheld shower head will go in the kids’ shower. We have a handheld shower head now and it’s the best for washing the kids up, especially their hair. I love that this one has a long cord and an on / off switch to stop the water flow right from the shower head.

The other two shower heads are both rainfall showers with 6 functions. The difference is that one is larger, and the other has a filter. The filter shower head is  a good inch or two smaller than the other.

The advice I’ve gotten from others is to use the filter shower head and save the larger one for the future bathroom in the basement. The reasoning is that the filter will take care of anything hiding in our current plumbing. The basement bathroom will have new plumbing so the filter wont be as important.

I’m torn. The larger shower head has a more luxurious rainfall feel, but the filter is pretty great. Which one would you choose?

It’s exactly one week to the day of our closing! We’ve been at the house 9+ hours a day everyday and my husband is there after work and until after the kids are in bed. We’ve gotten a lot done and I’ll share that soon!

Have you done any remodeling projects? A whole house?

Are you a DIYer or do you like to hire others to do the work?