Home Updates

When we bought our house last year it had recently been remodeled and I feel lucky that we found a house we could afford in such great condition. The interior was painted a tan-yellow color and although it wasn't horrible I never really loved it. I prefer gray and that's what we chose to paint our bedroom the day we closed on the house. My plan was to paint the whole interior soon after we moved in but finding out I was pregnant a few days after we closed put a damper on that.

I feel like we've just recently reached the point where we have the time and mental capacity to really work on the house. It's crazy how much a baby can change your life!

The first project we decided to take on was the kitchen. The cupboards are a cream color with an orange-red distressing on the doors. The tan-yellow walls weren't a hugely offensive clash but it just did not go together. The colors were just off and it was so boring! We toyed around with choosing a gray but we couldn't pick one that went with the cupboards and the granite and the tile. It just wasn't meant to be a gray kitchen. We thought of blue or even an orange but in the end we chose a dark red- Benjamin Moore Heritage Red.

This simple change has made such a huge difference in how the house feels. It's like someone actually lives there now! It was a great place to start making changes in the house because it was very quick to finish and the impact was bold and satisfying.

Since we loved the kitchen change so much we decided to bite the bullet and paint the living room too. After Christopher went to bed one night we pulled the leftover paint from our bedroom out of the basement and did a first coat. We thought it would take longer since it's such a large room but the windows and doorways made the process very quick. We picked up more paint in the morning and finished the rest of the painting while Christopher napped. This gray is one of our favorites- Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter. We now have it in our bedroom, the guest room and the living room and we will probably paint the office and main floor bathroom this color too. It looks different in each of these rooms but I am in love with it!

This is what it looked like when we first moved in:

^^See that plant there? That's our rubber tree, it's much bigger now and I am very proud of that!^^

This change wasn't as bold or obvious as the kitchen but again, it totally changed the feel of the room. It looks so much more modern, the drapes look better (they had the same issue as the kitchen cupboards- just slightly clashing), and it just looks more "us".

The most recent change is one I have been wanting since the first time we saw this house- getting rid of the huge "old lady" shrubs in front of the house. I am fairly certain these bushes have been in front of our house since it was built in 1953. They were too old to just cut back because the branches were so thick. They weren't fluffy like you'd think they should be. Plus I just hated the look of them! 

This summer a boy in our church congregation has been mowing our lawn and his eyes lit up when we offered him a big chunk of money to get rid of these beasts. He, his dad and younger brother came over one evening with the chain saw and in a matter of minutes they had cut these bushes back to stumps. Our law doubled in size and I was giddy!

I want to plant some hydrangeas and peonies out there and maybe some tulip or buttercup bulbs. I also have a pack of hollyhock seeds from my grandma's garden that I want to attempt to grow. I have managed to keep our rubber plant alive for about three years and an herb garden alive all summer so I am feeling pretty confident in my gardening skills right now. Or I could kill them all in one season and have to start over. Either way, I am going to try and bit by bit this house will become ours!