We have been in our beautiful home for a whole year!! I seriously can't believe it. It feels like we were always meant to be here. We love this house. And we have loved making it feel like a home. I wanted to make a post about all the things we have changed and done in the past year. We have been working hard!
So room by room (in no particular order because I can't remember when we did everything) this is every thing we have done.
Starting with the Downstairs:
Kitchen -
- Kitchen Cabinets: paint, hardware and new molding
- New ice maker in the fridge
- broken water faucet
- re did the table
- made a bench for the table
- new center piece for the table
- new sideboard
- made the chalk board to go over the sideboard
- decorations for sideboard
- made shelves
- new floor runners
Laundry Room -
- re paint cabinets
- put wall hooks in
- painted
- new rug
Family Room -
- I made new curtains and we got a new curtain rod for sliding door (I really wish I had a before of this one. The curtain rod wasn't big enough and was held together by tape in the middle. The curtains weren't long enough and they were SOOOO dirty)
- new console
- new TV (my parents gave it to us! Thank you!)
- Kyle and Carson did an awesome job drilling holes and hiding the wires for the TV!
- Made shelves
- new couch, rug and ottoman
- bench for blankets and extra seating
- Proclamation, The Living Christ and Family canvas
Living Room -
- Piano
- Thomas Kinkade painting (thank you Cordners!!)
Den -
- rearrange (100 times)
- got a new tv stand and put old TV in there so girls can watch movies
- moved the old couch in there
Upstairs - All upstairs new carpet and Baseboards
- stairs - re stain handrails
- hallway - diplomas
- picture shelves
Loft -
- made bookshelves from Colorado into benches
- new bookshelf
- new kitchen set
- chalkboard wall
Master bedroom & Bathroom -
- paint
- removed old broken blinds
- new curtains and curtain rods
- new ceiling fan
- paint bathroom
- new white towels
Spare Room -
- new bed (thank you Dyes!)
- new ceiling fans
- new paint
Abby and Juliet's Room -
- new curtains and curtain rod
- gallery wall
- repainted furniture
- new wall paint (x2)
- ceiling fan
Jane's Room -
- new ceiling fan
- new paint
and thats about it... but I am working on some cute decorations for her room!
Girls Bathroom -
- new paint
- new curtain
-new stool
- new rug
Outside -
- remove NASTY security screen (thank you grandpy!)
- paint the front door
- take out nasty cactus
- put hammock in the backyard
- learn how to take care of the rose bushes
Also the whole house got a new coat of paint. I painted the bathrooms and bedrooms and laundry room. But we hired painters to do the rest. It made such a big difference!
I think thats about it. We have done something every single month since we moved in! If you go more than a week or two coming to our house it will be different in some way. We seriously love it. The memories we have already made here have been fantastic. I can't wait to see where the next year takes us!
These pictures are in no particular order, mostly because it is such a pain to rearrange them.
The loft: It actually looks different than this now! I've rearranged some thing to make it flow better. I still want to make curtains for the window and make some pads for the benches so they are nice to sit on. I want to get a table and chairs and some other cute decorations. I want to come up with a really fun way to display all of their Art work (there is always a lot of it).
A really good before picture of the kitchen. I have a lot of these because I really want to remember what a difference it made to paint it!
Looking for hardware for the kitchen. I always wanted these cup pulls. Its fun to get to choose exactly what I want!
The After!!!!!!!! Its seriously the prettiest kitchen! The company we hired was amazing. They did a fantastic job.
furniture shopping. We do a lot of this. I have to look at things 100 times before I actually feel comfortable buying them.
The piano and our favorite colorado picture.
When the Christmas tree fell over and ripped my shelf out of the wall. Kyle patched it up and fixed it so nice. You can't even tell. That was a bad night!
The after of the laundry room. I still want to make some shelves and other better storage solutions for some of the things I have in there. I also want to do a cool vintage sign on the wall opposite of the cabinets. I repainted these cabinets, they don't look nearly as nice as the kitchen ones but it looks so much better than what was there before!
Picnics in the backyard! I love having a yard! We ned to plant a lot more trees in the backyard, I would love a lime tree. We want to get either a trampoline or a playset. We would love to add a pergola and some fans and misters out there too. Oh and a built in BBQ. And in the fall I am making some garden boxes so we can have a little garden!
We have loved going for walks around the neighborhood and to the park. We run into neighbors all the time and its fun to stop and chat.
When the britta drinking system on our sink failed. We realized there is a broken seal around our sink and there is a lot of water damage. That was not fun. We're still not sure what to do about that. Its not going to be fun to fix.
In the middle of painting the bathroom. Its hard to tell but it was the same color as the whole house when we moved in. Desert brown with hints of pink. UGLY! It looks so much better in the grey/beige color. That bathroom feels like a spa now! Also don't mind the messy closet. The rest of the house was a mess that week I painted. I painted three rooms and two bathrooms in a matter of a couple days. I was SOO tired.
This was a picture taken by Juliet. But it was the only one I could find that showed how awful our ceiling fan was! Those lights pointed straight down and it was like turning on an interrogation light. It was the worst! The fan was so loud and that was miserable. There was only one setting for the fan too. Also it was terribly ugly.
Painting Jane's room
Painting the girl's bathroom
Cute hardware on the laundry room cabinets that match the hooks I put in on the opposite wall.
trying to choose a new paint color for the girls room. I painted that room one as soon as we moved in. The walls were SOO gross in their room. The color I painted it was NEON. I didn't like it at all. So I repainted it again. It was so hard to choose a color because all the swatches I put on the neon color looked awful. This is the exact same sample of paint in 4 different places in their room. I finally went with Breaktime by Sherwin Williams. It feels so much better in there now and is a lot of fun.
Building the bench with Uncle Avard and Grandpy! That was such a fun day!
The bench works perfectly. I love it!
New carpet in the loft. We love our new carpet. Even though we got totally ripped off by the company. If you are reading this and you live in Arizona don't EVER use Express Flooring. They are the worst. But the carpet that was in the house was so gross. Worn down and so so dirty. Come to find out our neighbors were telling us they were pretty sure the original owners were selling drugs out of the inhome daycare they were running. So apparently the people that lived there originally were really really nasty. I'm so glad the carpet is gone!
before and after
The before and after of the neon paint to the more toned down fun color.
The lovely little touches the girls (Jane) have added to the house as well.
One of the razor blades that express flooring left behind while working on our upstairs baseboards. Seriously they are the worst!
New Carpet and baseboards upstairs. It looks so much better!
Diplomas all framed and up on the wall.
Kyle helping me install the shelves I made.
They turned out so cute and fit that wall so well. I really need to get updated pictures in them!
Setting up the girls room for the first time. Neon pain on the walls.
Our new ceiling fan! It has up lighting and downlighting. You can dim it and we can control everything from an app on our phones! So cool!
Choosing a paint color for our bedroom. We went with the one on the sides. I love it. Its dark and I really like it. Its a big room with lots of light and I want it to feel comfy and cozy. We really need new furniture in there. Thats going to be a great day.
the Before and after of the door! It looks so amazing now!
I love this picture. Before we moved in my family went over and deep scrubbed the kitchen for us. I was so grateful. It was seriously so gross. Look at how dingy it looks too. It looks nothing like this anymore.
My uncle Jackson helping me build my massive chalkboard. I saw one I really liked at downeast home that wasn't quite as big as I needed it to be and it was $500. I was like I could make one bigger than that for less than $100. And I did and I love it!
This was 4th of July Sunday. We had been in the house a month. The walls weren't painted yet, no piano and you can kind of see the nasty yellowish curtains on the slider door behind us.
Abby's birthday party! This house cleans up nice!
All the accessories I used for this are brand new (except the books). It was the first thing I totally accessorized with new stuff. I've just been making what I have work. But I'm all out now. Everything has been used up so now we need new stuff.
The before with the console and TV. Before I made the shelves and put them up.
Our very first morning waking up in our new house.
Right after we moved in. Look at that front door! So nasty. That screen door was totally rusted over. It was so gross. And it made the biggest noise every single time you opened and closed it. I really didn't like it. You can also see the tiny nasty looking cactus where you walk up to the front door. That was a happy day when Kyle took it out!
Decorating the Christmas tree. Christmas was awesome in our house!
We have packed this hammock around for nearly 8 years. It was so fun to finally put it up!
Choosing colors for the cabinets.
The during process of the cabinets. That was a long week. But totally worth it!
My shelves and new centerpiece I made. This vase was from a flower arrangement at my great Grandpas funeral. I love how it turned out.
The during pictures while our house was getting painted! That paint color changed the entire feel of our home.
Before of the laundry room. The floor must be a little uneven. We had to prop the washing machine up. It kept moving like this every time I did a load of laundry.
Jorge getting up there and painting those high, high ceilings.
This was only a couple months after we moved in. We had that red couch and rocker in there and that was it. I hadn't painted the table yet either.
Making the shelves for the family room.
Painting the table. I was so excited to get it done so I could put all the fall decorations on it so I did it before it cooled off. That wasn't the best idea. It was SO hot out in that garage.
I did the chairs inside so I didn't die of heat.
The finished table. It made the cabinets look even more dingy. We were so excited to get them done!
Shelves were in, but we still had the couch and that nasty rug in October.
My awesome Grandpy helped us fix the ice maker and change the water filters in the fridge.
That tiny couch in that big room. It didn't work at all!
Juliet's birthday in our house.
Planning out how to hang these awesome pictures in the family room.
Christmas morning!
Almost done!
The bench I wanted to add the family room. I seriously looked at it 5 times before I committed to buying it.
And thats pretty much it. We still don't have any furniture other than the piano in the living room. So that will be a fun thing to furnish. Abby and Jules need real beds. Jane needs a bed. We need new bedroom furniture. New lighting in the kitchen. New baseboards downstairs. New window treatments. We need to do new landscaping and repaint the outside of the house too. The last really big thing we want to do is knock down the wall between the den and the third car garage. Then insulate the garage and turn it into one huge game room. Put a pool table and a projector screen in there. Maybe a golf simulator. It will be a party room for sure! I also want to turn that half bath into a full bath downstairs. Its exhausting and so fun at the same time. We are so incredibly blessed to be able to live here. We love the ward, we love our neighbors, we love the area. We love the schools too! I can't say it enough we are so blessed and so grateful for this wonderful life and this wonderful place we get to live it in. I'm even more excited for this second year! I wanted to give a huge thank you to everyone that helped me with all my projects to make all these awesome things happen. I have a lot of ideas, and I like to make things myself. I don't have all the tools, supplies and knowledge to make it happen. So thank yo to everyone that let me borrow stuff, and taught me so much!
