Tag: first time home owner

House Tour: 11 Months Later

Lauren1 Comment

Ay yi yi, is it Friday yet?  We’re officially at 30 days until the wedding so it’s crunch time and conveniently we are crazy busy at work so life is feeling a little like a whirlwind lately.  But I’m headed off to New Orleans this weekend for a little bachelorette excursion and I could not be more excited.  Methinks a few days away from the office are just what the doctor ordered 🙂

The fact that it has taken me SO DANG LONG to write/publish this post is proof that life has been a little busy.  So it’s taken me 11 months, but I’m finally sharing before and after pictures of our house!

Living Room Before:

Okay, sorry, I only seem to have “in progress” pictures of our living room.  Basically, it was just a teeny tiny room with a teeny tiny doorway to the kitchen.  The very first thing we said the first time we saw the house was “this wall has to come down.”  Kind of blows my mind that in the 100+ years that our house has been around, no one else said that same thing.

photo 1

See that tiny hole I had just made?  Thus concludes any real help I contributed to the tearing down of the wall.  Don’t you wish your girlfriend was helpful like me?

photo1

photo 2

And on the other side of the room…

IMG_4890

At one point it was a lovely shade of green plaster…

photo

But now…

Living Room After!

4

3

2

In case you’re keeping score at home, that’s -1 wall, -1 drywall/plaster layer on another wall, +1 kegerator, +1 Ikea shelf system and +1 giant TV.  That TV was on Joey’s wish list since day one so who am I to deny him?  Also he tore down a wall, exposed the brick on another, built a little column between the kitchen and living room, built Ikea furniture, and fixed a vent in that room so I think he earned a new TV 🙂  Also, I am IN LOVE with that exposed brick wall!

Kitchen Before:

IMG_4513

IMG_4514

photo 4

IMG_5377

Kitchen Now:

1

5

Yeah, I think I like that better.  We upgraded appliances, took out the tile (ourselves… never again please), had hardwood put in, switched the pantry to the other side of the kitchen, painted, put up a pot rack that Jory made for us 🙂 and added an island.  We still have a few finishing touches to do, but for the most part it’s done in here.

Bedroom Before:

IMG_4515

If you can believe it, this room was once two rooms.  Two TINY rooms.  Luckily, someone had made it one pretty decent sized room long before we lived in it.  This was the first place we painted/unpacked/set up with furniture.  The rest of the house may have been a dusty disaster for months but at least this space was organized.

Bedroom After:

6

7

8

I guess I should’ve taken a picture of our closet but then everyone would know that I only own like 5 shirts that I just wear over and over again…

Bathroom Before:

I already did a full post on the bathroom makeover, so I’ll be brief.

1

10

And I’d like to announce that I officially don’t even remember what it was like not to have a tiny bathroom and have a hard time fitting two people in it in the mornings.  That readjustment was tough!

Hallway & Spare Room Before:

IMG_4516

IMG_4521

Hallway & Spare Room After:

9

11

Okay, so maybe that back room still isn’t the most exciting thing and we might have a piece of wood under the end of the bed to compensate for the slope in the room but it makes the perfect “getting ready” space for me.  Those built in shelves in the hallway kind of threw us for a loop (what do we do with these?!) but I think they look pretty cute right now!  I’m loving our growler display!

And that’s all, folks!  It’s small, it doesn’t have air conditioning, the basement is literally made of dirt, the floors aren’t even and the doors shrink and swell depending on the weather, but we’ve put so much work into our little house — it feels like home and I LOVE every inch of it 🙂

 

 

 

10 Things I’m Excited To Do In My New Denver Home

Lauren3 Comments

Well, we were all set to close on the 20th, but we got word that the very last piece of the puzzle, aka loan approval, had fallen into place, so our closing was moved up.  To Tuesday!  Commence seriously excited freak out.

IMG_4494

1. Knock down walls.

You can’t exactly do that living in an apartment.  One of the very first things we plan on doing after we get the keys, is knocking down the wall between the living room and the kitchen.  Open concept, baby!

2. Cook.

My mom had a gas stove when I was growing up and the whole “I can actually see a flame underneath my food!” thing is far superior to those ugly electric coils.  I didn’t do much cooking when I was still living at home so I can’t really say what the difference is between the two types of stoves, but I’m about to find out.

3. Check the mail.

Because my mailbox is attached to the front of my home.  No walking involved.  Okay, that sounds lazy.  When we first looked at our house, I noticed that the mailbox had a Fleur de Lis on the front.  I took it as a good sign.  Also, if anyone would like to be my snail mail pen pal, let me know.

4. Sit on the porch.

Please, Mother Nature, bring up some warm porch sitting weather so I can enjoy some weekend morning reading outdoors before that season that follows fall comes.

5. Have a housewarming party.

Again, please let there be enough warm weather in our future to host such an event.  Our house might be a tad on the small side… cough 877 square feet cough…but we have a big old back yard so unless we want to invite people over in 15 minute shifts, we’re gonna need some weather that allows people to be outside.

6. Decorate.

I do not have an eye for design.  Like none whatsoever.  But I am determined to try really hard to decorate our new home.  I have been obsessing over bedroom, kitchen and living room pictures on Pinterest for months.  Mostly in an attempt to keep myself motivated.  Lest I should be all gung ho when we move in, then fizzle out a month later and deem everything “good enough.”  Not that that’s ever happened before.

7. Greet trick or treaters and hang Christmas lights.

I’m crossing my fingers that our neighborhood is one where kids still go out trick or treating.  I mean, I don’t need hundreds of kids to stop by (I’ll leave that to my uncle’s neighborhood.  New Orleans just celebrates everything a little harder, don’t they?), but a few would be fun.  And wouldn’t you know, our front porch already has hooks for Christmas lights.  How perfect.

8. Garden.

Only half kidding when I keep saying I’m going to invite Joey’s mom over to take care of the veggie garden and my mom over to take care of the plants.  My whole life, I watched my mom tend to her garden religiously and vowed that I would never be a gardener, but now that we have a yard, I wanna garden so bad.  Go figure.

9. Park.

Two car garage, for the win!  Finding parking at an apartment complex is getting so old.  The previous owner had the roof of the garage fixed up before she sold it to us, so we’re good to go on adding a rooftop patio with a fabulous view of Denver, right?  Maybe one day 🙂

10. Leave it!

Okay, let me explain.  A lot of my desire to move to Denver was to enjoy all the things the city has to offer.  Restaurants, breweries, ice creameries and Coors Field!  I’m am beyond excited to leave behind the chain restaurants of the suburbs and explore a ton of unique restaurants that are minutes away.  We might even ride our scooter there.  Not even joking.

Closing, here we come!