The new house!

I've got a few minutes before I've got to get me and the peanut to bed...I go back to work (from home) in 2 weeks and I'm trying to get us in bed before midnight so the early mornings aren't too much of a shock for me when I start back!

I had mentioned before that Brad and I had plans to build this summer, and while we still do have plans to build one day and are so in love with our house blueprints, we had the opportunity to purchase a foreclosure this summer.  Lately we've really been trying to evaluate our goals for life and my biggest one is to be able to stay home with my babies.  While I love my job more than any other job I've had and know that I would never find another boss or company like the one I work for, my heart is now with Hadley and focusing my attention on being her Mom.  So while we would've loved having a brand new home, we recognized that having that brand new home would mean I would be working for a number of years longer than I really wanted to.  

When this house came along, I think we held our breath because it seemed too good to be true...it was very cute and needed minimal large repairs done, the price was unbelievable, and we could completely "see" what the house could be if some TLC was given to it.  So we made our offer, it was accepted and that was that.  

Okay, onto pictures...there's a ton of them!

The outside of the house - we're putting on a new roof and the window trim is all being painted the color of the trim on the screened in porch - that off white color.  We'll also paint the wood posts of the little entryway to match the trim.  I'm looking forward to filling that planter bed with pretty flowers!

This is the view right when you walk into the house - there's a small room , sort of like a foyer?  Then the bigger room in the back is the living room

This will be Hadley's room...pardon the ugly ceiling fan that Brad told me  I was free to paint cause we weren't replacing it :(

This will be our bedroom.  It is HUGE.  There's still a whole big section you don't see here.  Lots of windows.

Bedroom...the doorway on the left goes to the  closet (the only one in the house, might I add...) and the doorway straight on goes to the bathroom

The bathroom.  Brad put up the paneling on the ceiling, as well as paneling with a rail trim above it.  When I took this photo we were experimenting with paint colors but we eventually decided on white

The sink.  Not sure what mirror/medicine cabinet we're going to do over that, but we're doing a white top with  an oil rubbed bronze faucet and black cabinet hardware.  

Bathroom...this door basically goes right out to the kitchen, which is to the right of the hallway

The kitchen!  My favorite room!  Doesn't look like much now, but our plans is to put in dark wood flooring in the  kitchen and breakfast nook (this flooring is gorgeous and is normally around $9/sq ft but we got it for half that cost!).  We're doing dark stained wood countertops, black hardware, and my favorite part...putting in a farmhouse sink!  The whole room has since been painted white, and we're doing white subway tile on the backsplash.  Also doing stainless steel appliances.

The view from the kitchen out to the living room.  We knocked this hole in the wall to open the room up as the kitchen didn't have any windows in it and was pretty dark.  That hole now has a countertop bar on it, and the sink will sit in the middle of the big cabinet

This is the view from the other end of the kitchen looking into the breakfast nook.  That room has been painted all white, and Brad built an L-shaped bench that extends along that entire back wall and part of the wall on the right.  The bench is white with the board paneling on the front and dark stained tops to match the countertops in the kitchen.  We came up with this idea as a way to create more storage since the house only has one closet

This is looking into the kitchen from the living room.  Because the wall that we ripped into was a  supporting wall we couldn't take the whole thing out, and we had to still have supporting beams to hold the wall up.  Brad wrapped these posts with rustic wood and we'll stain them dark to match the countertops.  The paneling in the front was to disguise where we had to tear into the wall.  That ugly brown paneling was painted white, FYI!  This is going to be the front of the little bar.

The screened in front porch...we're considering painting the entire thing white or off white.  Can I just say I'm not a huge fan of a screened in porch...in fact, something about it seems wrong!  Give me a big, open front porch any day!

The kitchen has now all been painted white, as have the boards on the front of the bar

Another view of the kitchen/living room and the bar top area.  Also, Brad "wrapped" the existing beams in the living room - meaning he put wood over them to look as though we have timbers up there.  Those will be stained dark also...he recently added white panel ceiling to the living room, similar to what is in the bathroom

The bathroom that's been painted white!  Looks good!  The floor is going to be the same dark wood that we have in the kitchen.  We went around about doing tile in the bathroom but decided that since we were getting the kitchen flooring for a good price that we would do that in the bathroom as well

A shot of the benches that Brad built - they've now been painted white on the bottom and the tops are a similar stain to the wood that's currently there.  The ugly heater that's taking up the whole right corner of the picture is getting ripped out as we're replacing the heating system in the house

I think that's it!  Brad's done some more work there recently but had to go back his real work today (AKA the work he gets paid for...) so we probably won't see a ton of progress for the next few weeks.  We're seriously SO excited for this house, though!  We're doing a lot of the same ideas in here that we had for our house that we were going to build, so it's exciting to still see some of that come to fruition.  We're hoping to be in there by November 1st, so while Brad gets the new house ready, my job is going to be getting us out of the house we're in right now.  To say I'm REALLY not looking forward to that is an understatement, but it's a good consolation to know that we're moving into a much better place!