Our House: The Before-ist Befores and the Nows

Before-ist is a word.. It means ‘most before’. Silly spellcheck.  I’ve been working on posting pics in the home tour if you haven’t looked through them, you should.  It’s hard to remember how much we’ve accomplished in these last 8ish years without looking at some really old pics. So I thought I’d post those here.  Some of them are pre-moving in, and some of them are my first attempt to ‘make it work’.

Here’s the kitchen. It got an overhaul pretty quickly. We made it 3 feet wider by taking 3 feet out of our bedroom sized laundry room and replaced appliances and cabinets.

I’m a sucker for built-ins. We didn’t really do much to this one in the kitchen–a fresh coat of paint and some new pulls. I also covered that wallpaper with dictionary pages, which is one of the first things I did and one of the only things that hasn’t changed from our first months here.. I love the dictionary wall!

 Sometimes I just stand in front of it and learn words and stuff. ***The More You Know***

 I posted this pic in my gallery wall post. It just gets better and better with time. I love the idea of a house evolving. Buy (or make) stuff you like and replace it with stuff you aren’t as crazy about and, someday, you’ll love every nook and cranny of your home. That’s good stuff.

 This is the front room after ceiling scraping but before we tore down the walls and made it part of the living room

We lived with this sweet ‘stud motif’ for a while. Obviously this was before children #exposedwiresandnails. I was giving private art lessons at the time and the hubs had a sweet little boy believing it was a cage for our lion. He told his mom….

This is the girls room before we moved in.

We scraped the ceilings, stained the floors, made it a guest bedroom and eventually a preciously, lovely nursery to welcome our sweet Nickerbean 1. It basically stayed this way for Nickerbean 2 until I made it a shared big girl room.

So this isn’t the most before it can get but this is the girls’ bathroom after I stripped the wallpaper and gave it a fresh coat of paint. Still with green linoleum though. So that’s good.

I painted the gold accent tile black (you can do that) and we stripped and stained the concrete floors, and here it is now.  Someday well redo it. I have plans in my brain to make the long vanity a double vanity and turn the bath tub and surround into a shower.  (tile all the way to the ceiling in there) Make room for when the girls are mirror hogging teenagers!

Here’s another first go ’round in our bedroom. Is that a box I see in the back corner? And the days of a queen sized bed. We have tasted and seen and it’s a king size for us, please and thank you.

Our room is always changing because I’m trying to get it just right. The problem is, I’m not sure what that means. So I just keep tweaking it. I’ll know when I get there. In the meantime, look at that amazing headboard that my dad made us–under my close supervision obviously ; )

 And last but not least, because its my favorite transformation to date, our tiny bathroom turned beautiful haven of goodness.  This was hubby’s side of the bathroom before we moved in.

The bathroom was in 3 small sections and I dreamed and drew plans and then we saved and saved (and hired out most of it) and now we have this beautiful room that we love to be in.

I’m so thankful for our home and the way we’ve been able to make it ours. I used to view it as more of a starter home but its not, it’s our forever home. Unless God has different plans for us, we’re gonna pay this bad boy off someday and enjoy it for free (minus crafting supplies obviously).  Can’t wait to see what changes in another 8 years.

What about you, are you in a work-in-progress house? What are you doing right now to make it your own?

Thanks for reading, friends!

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6 thoughts on “Our House: The Before-ist Befores and the Nows

  1. Love the white painted brick! I'm about ready to grab some brick & mortar and start laying, just to get that look! Amen on the king sized bed! It's the best thing that ever happened to us! 🙂

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