Our First Rental Home

Welcome! Make yourself at home : ) Here’s a little recap of our first rental home and the progress we made!

Layout: (three bedroom ranch just over 1,000 sq. ft.)

Living Room Before: 

Living Room Progress: The large mirror and window treatments were not our cup of tea so we removed them, painted and added our furniture. This is one room that was constantly changing in terms of color schemes with pillows and artwork, but here is an example of what it looked like at one point! (minus that 5 bulb lamp that got switched out after these pics were taken!)

• We shared our paint colors for the space
• Revealed the pictures below
• Upgraded the 5 bulb lamp (embarrassingly enough from college and it was a use-what-you-have kinda thing) to a DIY chandelier lamp

Kitchen Before: 

Kitchen Progress: We were lucky enough to have our landlord update the kitchen and add a dishwasher before we moved in, making this kitchen much more functional and user-friendly. This is another room that had constant changes and small updates, but the main ones were:

• Showing the space in the reveal
• Adding a polka-dot painted curtain valance

Paige’s Bedroom Before: 

Paige’s Bedroom Progress: Phase one of this room happened when Paige and I first moved in and it became her bedroom.

• Full reveal

Phase two of this room happened when Paige moved out to go back to school, and this space has been transformed into the guest bedroom!

• The room got painted in Benjamin Moore’s Edgecomb Gray
• Quick and inexpensive pillows were made and added to the daybed
• A painted rocking chair was moved into the corner
• The whole space was revealed in a big follow up post

Office/Guest Before: 

Office/Guest Progress: This is another room that had two phases during the year and a half we lived here. First it was an office/guest room combo.

• We added vertical blind covering curtains and an easy window valance, made from a shower curtain
• An old office chair got a new life
• We hacked an Ikea storage system to create craft supply storage
• The full room was revealed

As phase two, this room evolved into an office area only after Paige’s room became the guest bedroom.

• The curtain valance was updated to a faux roman shade
• We went shopping and picked up some new accent chairs
• A quick and easy chalkboard was created for organization
• The desk got a major overhaul and was primed and painted to match our style

Jodie’s Bedroom Before:

Jodie’s Bedroom Progress: This room started out with peaceful purple walls with gray and white accents.

• Faux crates were created to manage my messy bookcase
• We added some DIY striped curtains
• The room was officially revealed

After living with the color scheme for a year, I wanted to switch it up to a lighter and brighter space.

• We repainted the walls a soft blue
• Made over a Target clearance table lamp find
• Made an easy cover for the old headboard using a shower curtain and Command strips

Bathroom Before: 

Bathroom Progress: This is the room we invested in the most as renters, because the state of it when we moved in was anything but clean.

• We painted the walls and cabinet, added a chair rail around the whole room, updated the towel bar and TP roll holder, added a shelf and updated the mirrors- all shown in the reveal

Front Before:

Front Progress: As this was a rental home, we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the exterior landscaping. We managed to find some large rocks buried in a flowerbed in the backyard to use as a border, cleaned up all of the weeds, added a couple perennials that were on sale and topped it off with mulch and a hanging plant on the cheap. See all of the details here.

Thanks for stopping by!

*Most before pictures taken from Zillow.com