One of my “On This Day” posts that popped up on my Facebook today reminding me that yesterday was the 6 year anniversary of the day we settled on our house. Seeing the photo of the house the day we purchased it made me realize how much we have done in the last 6 years. I thought I’d give a quick little overview of some of the improvements and updates we have knocked out so far.
We updated quite a bit on the outside of our house. We had the shutters painted, replaced the front door, and updated all of the light fixtures outside.
We* added a fire pit in our back yard. We also added some things to our deck like the giant storage box benches Stephen made and some hanging lights (my fave!).
When we first moved in, everything needed to be repainted. Several rooms had drywall patches that still needed to be sanded down. So just simple paint jobs really updated a majority of the house. There are a lot of full posts that I have planned that will go into more detail, but here are a few of those paint updates:
The office is one of my favorite rooms paint color wise. It was one of the handful of rooms that we had painted professionally before we moved in. When the painter put the first swatch of the dark grey on the wall, he called us in to make sure it was what we wanted. It was perfect!
The top two photos show the “before”. We painted the bottom half of the wall a bright glossy white (the same as the trim work in our house) to make it appear like it was paneled. Having the bright white at the bottom made the dark color on the top work, even in the small space.
When we replaced out front door a couple years ago, we really loved how the black popped. We then decided that we needed all of the doors to be black (mind you, we had recently put fresh coats of white paint on several of them). In addition to the doors themselves, we also updated all of the hardware on the doors with oil-rubbed bronze spray paint.
Also, the photo on the right above shows a big change up; we* opened up the wall on the right to put in French doors. It had originally been an archway that the previous owners closed up to make that a bedroom. I so wish I had a “before” photo of that. Putting in the French doors really opened and brightened up the entrance to our home. You cannot really see the new one, but since we are reminiscing here… the photo on the right also shows a peak at the updated chandelier we* installed.
(*when I was “we”, I really mean our awesome handy man Brian! )
When we did the doors, we also decided to paint the banister black. It made a huge difference in freshening the whole look of entrance and hallway, making it a little less cookie cutter. In the photos above, you can see the previous color of the hall way on the left. What you cannot see is the spot at the top where you could also see that the hallway used to be sea-foam green. When the previous owners repainted the hallway, I guess they couldn’t reach it and decided to just leave it… so… yea. Getting the hallway painted was a HUGE deal for me!
In the laundry room, we painted, took down that shelf and added a cabinet and hang bar. I am toying with the idea of doing a deco- tile in here, but it’s not super high on my to do list yet.
The room we turned into Drew’s nursery had a BIG color change, going from bubblegum pink to “perfect greige”, my new favorite neutral… I want to repaint our kitchen/living room this color!
The guestroom has shifted rooms a couple times, but for the sake of before & afters, here it is! The one on the bottom is where it currently is.
The hall bathroom upstairs was a practice run for painting our kitchen cabinets (we haven’t tackled that project yet…). We also did a little DIY updating on the vanity top and used trim work to create faux paneling similar to the office.
Our master bedroom before and after…
The powder room was super patchy. In addition to the paint, we also added wainscoting, a new vanity, light, and mirror.
The dining room got a new chandelier in addition to new paint. This room was a super hot mess before we started. You can check out my blog post on this room’s makeover here.
I couldn’t find a before of the den/playroom, but it’s teal!
I did not realize how much we have really done. Looking through some of the pictures of the house when we moved in was fun to see and remember. A couple things that photos didn’t capture include making all of our blinds match (and work!) all the windows had blinds when we moved in, but there were 3 different types and most of them did not work. Our master shower also lost it’s sliding doors. And by lost, I mean I came home from work one day and Stephen had removed them. Ha!
Anywho… kudos to you if you made it this far! That is where we are now, but there is still so much more we want to do! Plus… I am looking to start repainting several of the rooms again. One thing is for sure, it is never boring around here!
