Good Bye First House!

After last week’s big news, we’re back to wrap up the final photos of our first house! We have a few projects we never got to sharing that we’ll try to post over the next few weeks, but here’s a little recap of everything that was our home!

Exterior: One of the things we never quite got to sharing 🙂 We ended up completely updating the landscaping and added some new stone to create defined garden beds. A fresh coat of red paint, new door trim and new exterior lights were the final touch! We always dreamed of painting the house so it was less, well, brown, but never quite got to that one. I’ll definitely miss that garden too!

Entry: Another something that was never shared! So far we’re 0 for 2. We added a chair rail of sorts and painted the walls a deep gray blue. The old carpeted stairs were removed which exposed some raw 2x12s. In order to try to work with what we had, we spent hours sanding them down and staining them a dark espresso color, then restained the railing to match. Painting the spindles white nearly took the life out of me, but after 4-5 coats they finally looked fresh and clean! We also added trim work to the spindles in the hallway so that the old carpet didn’t wrap around for a cleaner look. The final update was to swap out the old light with a new version, which made the space much more bright and airy.

Master: This is a room we made over not too long ago, and the bathroom was one of our many One Room Challenge projects! Since then, we updated the shower tile with some petting-worthy braided marble tile, and subway. The closet was a DIY project that I put together for M’s birthday one year, and by building the entire thing we were able to save thousands and get the exact storage we wanted.

Guest Bedrooms: The front guest bedroom was another One Room Challenge project, and the back room was painted in a light gray once all of the lovely floral wall paper was finally removed. We used furniture that we already owned to pull it all together, but as we maybe had 6 guest over the past two years this room wasn’t on the top of our list to begin with 🙂

Hall Bathroom: Often used more than our master bathroom that was under construction for the better part of a year, this space was painted in my favorite warm greige, Behr’s Wheat Bread, and the little renovations we did made such a huge difference. The concrete countertops held up really well (if you seal them often!) and this was by far our most “Pinteresty” room with the countertops, painted cabinets, framed mirror and wood look tile, but was our first big project in the house that I’ll never forget!

Office: The last One Room Challenge we completed, and one of the rooms that I’m sad to leave! That storage was everything in this space, and I can’t wait to add more to our new house.

Front Living Room: Apparently we went upstairs before we walked the main floor. There are a lot of things I could say about that but let’s just move right on along 🙂 This room was another room that we sadly didn’t get too much use out of, hence the absence from the blog! This ended up being Kuma the puppy’s space most of the time, but we had a few accent chairs and a coffee table to make it feel less empty. It ended up being an extension of our dining room most of the time, and came in handy for hosting big events like Christmas or getting ready for our wedding.

Dining: Another room I’ll be sad to leave! Those windows were always a favorite and the shiplap treatment is still one of our highest viewed posts. We ended up selling this table before we moved, so I look forward to working on another monster project to fit the new space!

Kitchen: This room cracks us up. We started with adding new appliances, and then had about 45 million ideas for it over the last few years, ended up sticking to the same layout in the end, and finally got countertops installed less than a month before we put it on the market. Those couple of weeks were fabulous you gorgeous sparkly quartz. I’m also happy to report that the painted cabinets have held up amazing over the last two years, and adding the slow close function to them made them feel brand new. This project did however make us rethink the importance of the kitchen, and definitely bumped it up the list in the new house.

Family Room: By far one of the most used rooms in the house was our family room, which almost every surface got touched! We built out the old stone fireplace and added a wood mantle, flanked the fireplace with shelving, painted, updated the trim, purchased new furniture, added the huge gallery wall and replaced the carpet. While we originally planned on painting the ceiling beams white, I’m so glad we left them wood to cozy up the space and add some character.

Half Bath: This room was one that was painted multiple times and M likes to make fun of me, but we replaced the vanity and added the wood shiplap accent wall to give it a little bit of “oompf” since to me, powder rooms are meant to be a little fun!

Garage: Last on stage 🙂 This project was one of the craziest projects that we took on, but ended up making it within two magazines, Good Housekeeping and This Old House so we could not be happier or more shocked! The task of making a garage pretty was a bit funny to wrap our brains around at first, especially since we have 4 seasons here in Michigan to deal with, but the added function and storage that came out of the project was a game changer to keep us more organized and on track with other projects. No, it wasn’t always this clean, not even close most of the time, but it was used daily and was such a fun project to work on!

And just like that, this home is on to it’s next owner! We were beyond lucky to sell it within just a few days, and can’t wait to share more about the new space 🙂