I have always loved a good before and after! If you read Part 1 of our home remodel story, you know that I am calling these pictures before & nows! Mostly because our home is still a work in progress… so this is what it looks like right now!

For a while, I was reluctant to share pictures until everything was “just right”. But I’ve come to realize that there is beauty in the in between – the time where life happens, memories are made, and love is shared – between the before and after. And that is the now! We don’t have baseboards and there are still places that need touch up paint or new doors but… One year later (and a few months later) and there has been so much change and so much life lived. I can’t wait for you to see!

Before Move In

From closing date to move in date, we had about a month to work on the house. The day we closed the carpet was ripped out and the work began! ALL of the popcorn ceilings were scraped. My husband retextured every interior wall, primed, and painted them. Tile was jackhammered away and the house was scrubbed from top to bottom.

We were (and still are) so grateful to everybody who helped us during the remodel/moving process.

We feel SO blessed to be able to call this house our home and host our family, friends, and church home group within these walls. What a wonderful God we serve!

Creating Some Curb Appeal!

The front of our home was soooo overgrown when we purchased it! I couldn’t wait to start ripping out landscaping, trimming shrubs, and chopping down trees. We replaced the large window in the front, replaced the columns with wood beams, painted the exterior trim, and attempted to freshen up the flower beds throughout the Spring/Summer!

Front Entry

It’s hard to tell in that picture, but that was GREEN tile! It didn’t stick around long.. ha! I am now a firm believer that paint makes such a difference in a home. I snagged this entry way light on sale from Artika! I have dreams of a cute entry way table with a mirror above it. And of course some cute decor from my favorite store in town, Odds & Ends!

Dining Room

The dining room carpet was disgusting….well all of the carpet was disgusting. We closed on our house and within hours every piece of carpet was GONE! Updated lighting and new paint made such a difference in this room. One day I would love to have my husband build a custom dining room table that has benches on each side so we can squeeze all of the people we lovearound it!

Kitchen

I feel like the kitchen looks the most different, yet still has a long way to go! My husband painted the cabinets and it completely changed the look of the kitchen. New appliances helped update the look of the kitchen as well. Up next will be a brick backsplash and new countertops. I can’t wait!

I love the way my Facebook Marketplace table looks in this space! And again, an Artika light for above the table!

Living Room

The living room is one of my favorite transformations. The new built in is the space I never knew I needed! We will brick the fireplace in with the same brick that will be on the laundry room floors & the kitchen backsplash.

Our furniture in here is the same furniture we’ve had in our apartment. I have my eye on the Radley sectional from Macy’s…maybe one day soon!

Guest Bathroom

We decided at the last minute to mix it up for this bathroom cabinet! I think it’s a such a fun touch!! We snagged a faucet on sale and we’ll leave the rest for now.

And the rest of the rooms aren’t quite done yet. Carpet is coming soon, along with the brick for the laundry room floors, fireplace, and backsplash.

Backyard

One of our favorite places is our back porch. We repainted the exterior last summer and Cody built a porch swing!

Looking back we have made so much change! We have taken a house and made it our home. It has been so much fun to work on our home together. It’s a good thing my husband has all of the skills… I just dream up the ideas! ha!

I can’t wait to keep sharing this journey with y’all. Thanks for following along!!

Emily

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So many of you have been following along since the very beginning of our home remodel! I wish I would’ve started blogging regularly a year and a half ago (like I intended), but here we are now!

If you’ve been around, you remember the original house walkthrough stories on my Instagram! So much has changed since then, but I wanted a space to hold the story of our dream home, as well as our before & nows (still a work in progress!).

Finding the perfect home

We got married on March 31, 2019. We were antsy to buy a house, but we didn’t know exactly what we wanted. During the summer, we began going to open houses all across town just for fun.

Each weekend, I refreshed my Zillow app looking for the newest houses on the market – especially the homes that had open houses that weekend. In early December, I found a house that was out of our price range, but in one of our “dream neighborhoods”. We went to look at it on a Sunday evening. The house was on a nice lot, but there were soooo many things we disliked about the floor plan of the house.

When we left, I noticed a “For Sale by Owner” sign in the yard of a house just 3 doors down. I snapped a pic of it, and wrote it off as being out of our price range.

“How do we buy a house?!”

However – that Tuesday I came home from work and on a whim told Cody we should just text and see how much the house was listed for. To our surprise.. it was listed at $77,000 less than the house we had just looked at on Sunday!!!

We saw the house 30 minutes later. And it was a sight to see!! It was a rent house for 7 years… and you could definitely tell! It had a certain *unpleasant* smell to it, the carpet was ruined, and it needed some major updating and love put back into it…

BUT we loved it!! As soon as we stepped into the living room I asked my husband, “So how do you buy a house!?” ha!

The rest is history. God opened doors so that we were able to close on the house exactly one month from the day we first looked at it. We have lived in our dream home for an entire year now. It is still a work in progress. Any chance we get we are tackling the next project. I can’t wait to share the before & nows with you over on A labor of love: Our home remodel Part 2!

Emily