I’m excited to introduce our new home because we’ve got so many projects planned that I can’t wait to start talking about them! We actually came up with many of them as soon as we saw the house, but some of the specifics have changed after living here for the past almost 3 months. Some of the photos I’ll share are from the listing, and others are quick ones I’ve taken on my phone. None are great, I’ll warn you!
The house was built in 1973, so a lot younger than our old 92 year-old beauty, but at 46, she’s not a youngin either! While our old house had all the charm like thick baseboards and trim, and hardwood, I’m calling this house builder-basic with pretty much no charm! That’s okay, because the layout is great, and we can work with builder-basic to make the rooms more us.
I’ll share some of the major rooms now, and then go into more detail when we start sharing our plans for remodeling. The actual layout is very, very similar to my sister’s house actually, so you can check that out too to get a better understanding of the flow.
The first room to the left when you walk in the front door is what we’re calling the Living Room.
It’s pretty large (and really beige!) and has a large window that overlooks the front yard. The dining room is the room to the right and the kitchen is beyond that behind the wall on the right of the living room. The future intent of this room may or may not have a TV, but it’ll have some sort of built-in along that back wall with lots of seating. I imagine this room to be where we gather to hang out when we have people over.
New laminate flooring was installed in the first floor before we moved in, but we have plans to replace all that, install new baseboards, and brighten this room with some paint. We also are planning on recessed lighting since there is no overhead lighting in here and let me tell you something about living in the country, it gets real dark at night!
On the opposite side of the house is the Family Room, which is situated on the other side of the kitchen and behind the garage.
It’s a longer room with a fireplace and sliding door behind the curtains that opens to the backyard. The door on the right is the garage. The plan here is to have this the main hang out space with a TV and comfortable seating. The main obstacle is once we start using the garage, it’ll be our main entrance so that has to be considered when designing this room as well. It’ll get new flooring, trim, paint, and some recessed lighting as well. I also have plans to redo the fireplace with built-ins on each side.
The family room opens to the kitchen and eat-in area.
The kitchen is very similar to our old house in layout, but it seems to work only half as efficient and feels like so much less usable cabinet space. We’ve gone back and forth on this space and keep coming back to the original layout, just moving everything around, but we’re several years out from updating this space so we’ll take our time and think through the ways we see ourselves using it.
In the hallway between the front door and the kitchen area is a half bath.
I want to do something really fun in here, but this will get updated when we redo the flooring on the main level, so we’ve got some time. For now, this pregnant lady is enjoying every moment of having a bathroom on the main floor, which was one of my top NEEDS of our next house!
Upstairs are the 4 bedrooms, with a hall bath and an ensuite bath in the master bedroom. It’s actually where we’re starting our remodeling. Since we have more bedrooms than people at this moment we haven’t moved into our final bedrooms yet and plan to shift as we finish each up. All in time for baby in 2.5 months!
The master bedroom is pretty big, with a sliding door to a small enclosed balcony, two good-sized closets and the small ensuite bath.
Oh, and lots of wallpaper!
The bath is where we’re starting everything and I’ll go into more details next time on this project. We’re working with the same footprint, just tearing everything down to studs and adding materials and products that are very functional and stylish.
The other bedrooms are pretty basic boxes, but will all get new trim and paint and closet organization.
The room we’re currently in will be Archer’s “big boy” room (this makes me laugh because how big boy can he be at less than 1 year old!), it’s also known as the sail boat room, you can see why.
It’s a very big room for a small kid, but we’re planning to have the boys share a room down the road, hoping that they ask for it eventually. Right now, the plan is to finish the master, then move into there, remove all the wallpaper in here, new paint, new trim, and paint and organize the closets, before moving Archer into here.
After Archer moves, we’ll then focus on the nursery, where he’s sleeping right now.
The room is right at the top of the steps and is pretty basic, but I’ve got bigger plans for some sort of wall treatment down the road.
The final bedroom is the smallest of the 4 and will be made into a guest room, but we probably won’t get to any updates in there until later this year.
It’s our catch-all room right now, but my mom will be here to help with Archer when the baby is born so we’ll need to get this room operating quickly.
So, that’s the overall scheme and some basic plans for the place. Right now, it’s all our focus on the master bedroom and bath because of the baby, but come spring time, Mike’s focus will be the barn, which needs electric/gas/water (a little overkill, but ‘if you’re installing one, might as well get it all’ is Mike’s motto!).
Right now it’s not completely sealed so Mike doesn’t have any of his tools there, but eventually it’ll house everything and the garage will have my car, the bigger toys, and all the day to day items like strollers and camping chairs. We also have a shed in the front which will have all our lawn tools and mower.
One of the last major projects will be to remodel the exterior of the house. We’ll definitely be going in a very different direction with the color, and we’ve even talked about extending the porch to add more interest to the front. That’s much further down the road, and will probably wait until after most of the major remodels are done in case we move/install windows.
Overall, like any new project, I’m excited to start. Not to mention, I’ve hit my nesting phase in my pregnancy and can’t wait to start tackling the bedrooms! Archer’s sailboat room is much bigger than our old bedroom, but that ensuite bathroom is looking really nice with the amount of breaks I’m now taking in the middle of the night!
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So excited to see what you do with the new place! Our master bathroom is exactly the same layout as yours, so hopefully you can give me some inspiration for when we redo it (a long way down the road). Also, my grandparents had that same exact wallpaper at their house!
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