Several people have asked to see pictures of our house, so I thought I'd take all the blog readers on a tour. Sorry this took awhile to get on here and I apologize for the length. I'm not sure why most of my posts seem to be long. I guess when I get going, I just have a lot to share. So here goes.
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| Our home |
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| The side yard and playhouse |
Our plans for the outside of the house are mostly just landscaping, although that will likely be a big job. We don't have any trees on our lot and we'd like to plant some. I had a really nice guy from a local landscaping company come to blow out our sprinkle system earlier this fall and I think I'll call him back this spring to offer some advice about how to spruce things up.
When you walk in the front door, the first thing you see is the living room. Here's some before and after shots. The before shots aren't truly before shots though as they don't show the wallpaper border that was on all the walls in the living room and dining room and was a pain in the neck to take off. In the living room below the wallpaper was also a very dark maroon colored paint.
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| A before shot of the living room |
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| My Dad painting the living room ceiling |
The whole house practically was the brownish color you see in the before pictures. They even painted the ceilings this color. The ceiling in the living room is vaulted as was difficult to paint. It needed two coats and my Dad did the second coat on his own. What a great guy!
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| The "after" living room |
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| The fireplace |
When you turn around, you see the entry area. I don't think we need to make any changes to this area. There is nice tile flooring - the grout just needs to be deep cleaned.
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| The entry area before |
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| Another "before" entry shot |
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| The "after" entry |
Past the entry area is the dining room. In the dining room we'd like to put in hardwood floors and matching curio cabinets in the corners.
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The dining room before, but after the ceiling was painted
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| The dining room |
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| A view of the dining room looking towards the kitchen |
Through the dining room is the kitchen. I like the footprint of the kitchen, but would reorganize it if I win the lottery. I'd put in hardwood floors and change the cabinetry. The fridge also needs to be moved to a new location because you can't open it all the way as it sits now because the right side door hits the wall. The first thing we need to do is get a new dishwasher. The one we have is on it's last leg and is driving me crazy!
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| Before view of the kitchen with Nate and my cousins Haley and Kody |
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| The kitchen |
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| Another view of the kitchen |
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| View of the living room from the kitchen |
Past the kitchen is our laundry room which we also use for a recycling room. Billings does not do curbside pick-up and it's not a law to recycle, but we choose to do it ourselves. We made our first trip to the recycling plant today. Very exciting. Next to the laundry room is a half bath. We are planning on re-doing this room but it's not so easy since the heating vent currently comes out underneath the sink cabinet and we want to replace it with a pedestal sink, but I'm not sure how the heating vent thing will work. Ah, the challenges of being a homeowner!
Between the dining room and kitchen are the stairs downstairs. Luckily the basement was all finished except for one room that we are currently using as a storage room. The room doesn't have windows so I don't think we can technically use it as a bedroom. I'd like to use it as a playroom/craft room. I think that's far down on the list of projects though.
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| The basement family room |
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| The guest bedroom downstairs |
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| The guest bathroom downstairs |
Between the living room and entry area are the stairs going up to the bedrooms. The first room on your right when you get upstairs is our new home office. All of the rooms upstairs were bright colors except, thankfully, the master bedroom. I don't think the pictures accurately portray the squint inducing colors.
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| The before office shot |
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| The bookcase in our office |
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| The office |
The next room on the right is Emma's room. So far this is my favorite room in the house. It took me quite awhile to finish painting it. The border is actually paint - I used stencils. Once you see the before shots, you'll get a better appreciation of why it took so long. The colors on her wall are two different shades of yellow, but I don't think the camera could quite capture them. The colors are called "sweet chamomille" and "banana split". Perfect for a sweet little girl.
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| Emma's room before |
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| The pink disaster |
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| Horray for Emma's room! |
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| Emma's room again |
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| Another view of Emma's room |
Across the hall from Emma's room is the spare bedroom and her bathroom. We're going to leave the spare bedroom as it is for awhile. It will likely be another nursery, hopefully fairly soon! We are also planning to paint her bathroom, which I think will be our next project, as it's fairly easy. But painting always sucks.
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| The definitely blue spare bedroom |
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| Emma's bathroom |
At the end of the hallway is the master bedroom. We'll probably paint this room eventually. Again, not thrilled about painting, though, so it will probably be awhile.
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| The master bedroom |
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| Another view of our room |
 The master bathroom |
So that's our digs. We really do love this house and have a lot of rooms to fill, so we better get cracking!
