You may recall a while back I told you about a house that we'd bought to renovate. Well, after over six years of labor, sweat and tears, we passed our final inspection last week! We can now legally inhabit our house.
To celebrate, I wanted to share with you a few pics. I've shared pics before, but I'll link to them here, just for completeness.
Here's an interior tour when we bought it. (It's okay to laugh and know that we were nuts to buy it. )
Here's some pics of the gutting.
And putting in the new foundation.
This post has pics of painting the walls.
And here's how it looks now:
#1 exterior front (beige and gray, with a dark red door). The front porch has a "bridge" over the lowered front yard, creating a sort-of moat. The main floor is wheel-chair accessible.
#2 exterior back (I had a hard time getting a good pic of this). There's a walk-out basement, and a huge deck off the main floor. We'll eventually put a second stove out on this deck so that I can do summer canning outdoors.
#3 - #4 Gutting the house removed a lot of old character (it was originally built in the 1890s), so my hubby custom-built molding to re-instate some of the character. Main floor walls are gray, trim is white. Exterior doors are dark gray.
#6 Hickory flooring on the main floor. It's stained a grey-ish mid-tone that is a bit lighter than I thought I wanted, but I ended up loving.
#7 Kitchen has cream cabinets with dark hardware, concrete countertops, stone-look linoleum flooring, and a stainless steel backsplash behind the stove. Same gray walls and white trim as the rest of the main floor. Eventually we'll pop a panel over those holes under the sink....
#8 Second story (there's 3 bedrooms and a big bathroom up there) has very pale greyed out blue-green walls (that I'm mentally thinking of as "Russian sage", because it's nearly the color of their leaves), with light maple floors and teal doors.
#9 The second story bathroom has dark wood, and eventually will have some color other-than-white walls, but right now they're still just primed. It also boasts a jacuzzi. (Main floor bathroom didn't make my pics - it's a very greyed-out lavendar color, with white trim and all white fixtures).
#10 The basement stairs have bright carpet to visually signal that we're entering the kid zone. Basement walls are where the bright and fun painting is, and where the kids play area will be. It's officially unfinished territory (we're not adding a ceiling or floor other than the concrete), but I suspect we'll be down there an awful lot. You can see pictures of most of the fun wall murals here.
The basic themes that we went for in decorating is muted and calm main floor (it ended up with light and mid-tone neutrals, with dark hardware and dark gray doors. The main colors are cream, white and gray - floors add in a mid-tone brown.) Upper story theme is light and airy - it's mostly blue-green - very light on the walls and teal doors, white trim and light floors. The basement theme is fun and kid-friendly - there's murals on the walls, and wild crazy carpet going down the stairs.
Thanks for indulging me with this post - I'm so thrilled with how things are turning out, and excited to move (we'll officially move toward the end of this month - we have to build beds for the kids, do lots of finishing touches and pack up the house we've lived in for the past ten years).
