Before

Be prepared for a stack of pictures on this post!  I attempted to take before (and will attempt to take after) pictures at our new house.  Not sure how well I did in properly giving you all a virtual tour, but it's as good as it gets.  I wish I had done it before we started doing ANYTHING, but I guess it would still look about the same.  

[begin slideshow by scrolling down ;)]

 The above three pictures is our guest bedroom...just kidding.  It's actually the H   u    g    e    downstairs bathroom.  We could probably host a concert in that thing. 

 There is hardwood floor in the dining room, and the...living room area.  Hard to know what to call that section because it's almost like 2.5 rooms, but you get the point.  Back to the floor.  It had a very glossy finish that was flaking, and because the basement at gotten wet at some point the boards were a little rippled.  We decided to go ahead and tackle sanding them...and we are SO glad we did! The wood underneath the finish is soo beautiful!  Props to all the man labor that went in to that project, between Brad, his brother Jared and my Stepdad Mike.  I'm sure they all ended up with some sore arms last week! I can't wait to see how it looks once we stain it ( We are going to go a bit darker) and then put a flat finish on it. 

Kitchen area. I'm planning (at this point) at eventually having a white on white with light blue accents kitchen.  My mom begged me to keep my "beautiful cherry cabinets" and told me how hard it would be to paint them...but I'm not sold yet. :) 

There is a 3-bay garage there, the third area was the previous owner's antique shop.  Lets just say, maybe one day I will revert back??  But that's in the future. :)  There was quite a lot of junk treasures left behind, but luckily most of it was in the garage, and not scattered throughout the house.  I wouldn't have made it my first priority to tackle that stuff, but it happened sooner than later just because it took about a week to get the water running at the house, and I didnt have much else I could do.  I made a trash pile, a yardsale pile, and a "keep" pile, which I'm sure will be sorted again.  In the keep pile are some cool dishes, tonnnnns of picture frames (including some of those chunky gold ones...love!) and just misc.  I think it will be fun to go back out there once we are moved in and "shop" my own stuff!

This is the downstairs bedroom, which was the newest addition.  (And that is my mother's hiney. :])  The bedroom has a nice closet (score!!) and even a little patio off the back.  I'm excited to make that a cozy space for us!  My dad will have his room upstairs to begin with (quick backstory, (can't remember if i've shared this before) my 80 year old father is moving in with his, which is a large part of the reason we looked for a bigger house in this stage of life) but it's nice that there is a downstairs bedroom option for later down the years if stairs become an issue for him. 

First floor laundry....thaaaank you!! We looked at some houses that would have this setup in the basement...no please! 

Here is where the wallpaper begins.  Yes, the pattern could be worse.  Yes, I'm glad it's upstairs and not down.  YES, one day I plan to remove it. :)

So excited about the prospects of this room.  It faces the North, South, East, or West direction (I'm SO terrible with that, just know that it gets GREAT sunlight in the afternoon!!) (secretly I think it's the South-west, wouldn't that make sense?), and I can see it being an awesome craft/storage room!

This is the teeny tiny upstairs full bathroom. Full meaning you can shower, brush your teeth, and use the bathroom without even having to lift your feet. :] I could see future expanding happening there as well. 

And that's what I've got! I should do a better job with the after pictures, and show the fun little redbarn in the back, and the cottagey front of the house, and the closed in porch that will perfectly house Shear Swagg!  Not to mention the other cute nooks and crannys inside the house.  Unfortunately with Brad's busy work schedule and other things going on will are not planning on painting before we move in, just to save time.  Brad installs solar, and being the end of the year he is busier than ever! His schedule should slow down some in January, so maybe that's when we will work on the "fun" stuff.  The plan at the moment is to finish those floors, and make sure that the cold/hot water is all working properly, and the propane tank is fueling the furnace with  no leaks and the stove in the kitchen, and then start moving in.  We will probably leave the "unnecessities" packed for awhile so the painting process would be easier.  I'm not a huge fan of that, if it turns into months and months, but I'm trying to be optimistic that it won't be long term. I also don't look forward to act of packing and unpacking, but it's all for a good cause I'm sure. :)

Wow, this is a totally boring post for those if you that don't give a rip about new house projects.  But it's something I wanted to document, and so here it is!  This week was busy with housey things, my mom and stepdad were here for the week and they pitched in and got a lot of things done. There was lots of raking in both yards (insert plea to the neighbors of our old house to PLEASE rake their leaves since I'm pretty sure 50% of the ones in my yard came from their trees) (Not the fun neighbors, we love the Underhills.  The unknown neighbors :]) 

They left Saturday, and Brad's family had a work day at our house, with a few extra helpers as well and BOY did a lot get done.  The boys were up on the room cleaning the gutters and raking (yes, raking the roof) and Brad's dad mowed the lawn while my dad did some serious work getting ALL the leaves out from around the house.  The women were busy inside, Brad's mom spent the whole day shampooing carpets while the rest cleaned walls, widows, screens, you name it it got cleaned!  I'm so blessed by it, because without them it would be a HUGE task!!

Well, its Sunday Funday so I'm going to spend a little time out from behind the computer screen.  (Translated, I should go make myself presentable in case someone sees me)

Keep smiling!