The *new* house

well, we moved. the new house, although not our style, or taste currently, is still an improvement from our other house. we are loving the added space, the covered patio in the back yard, and the garage. We have some pretty big plans for this home of ours. we don't have any plans of leaving anytime soon, so we have decided to take the renovations one room at a time, and slowly, so that we can save up money in-between projects so that we can do each room exactly the way we want it, instead of just "quickly" or "cheap" i guess i will have to learn how to humble myself and deal with living in these circumstances, and with these unusual design choices from the previous owners for a while until the time comes for us to put our mark on that room. anyway, lets just let the pictures do the talking:

Living Room

 Dining 

 Laundry Room/Pantry:

 Kitchen:

 Patio:

 1/2 Bath:

 Full Bath:

 Kids Bedroom:

 Kids Playroom:

 Master Bedroom

 Hallway:

 View of Front Door:

We're Moving: A Finished House Tour

We have always planned on acquiring rental properties as another source of income for us. Garrison is amazing at restoring homes, and doing the grunt work, I have an eye for good homes and can see their potential when we walk through them. So far it has been working out great for us, and we are excited about the new home we just bought. But... its a fixer upper and we will need to live in it under less than ideal conditions until we have saved up for the larger renovations. So... for now I am enjoying every minute of my beautiful, fully-restored home for the last few weeks that I have to live in it.

some of my favorite things about the house include:
-original hardwood floors and neutral gray paint through out entire home.
-huge baseboards
-the new octagon back-splash garrison put in for my birthday last year
-modern bathroom sink (a present from my parents for Christmas two years back)
-the inside of the kitchen cabinets are painted with chalkboard paint which we use for grocery lists, menu's and to-do-lists.
-unique kitchen "hanging shelving"
-my gas stove. Garrison had to switch it from electric to gas when we remodeled, which was no easy task. I've loved it everyday since.
-the dining room bench seat with storage underneath
-the bookshelf barn door that garrison built in the kids nursery just a few months ago
-the huge backyard with the twinkle lights and largest tree swing i've literally ever seen
-my bright yellow front door.
-large windows with lots of natural light.
-the large modern custom made house numbers.
-all of the huge mature trees on the property.
-so much storage! (we still had empty shelves and drawers until i started putting yard sale items in them a few weeks ago)

people have asked us why we are moving and they always assume it's because we have outgrown the space, but it is actually working for us still. we merely saw an opportunity to buy another investment property and decided to go for it.

some things i'm excited to have in our new house:
-an extra bedroom for guests, and all of the kids toys
-an attached garage that fits two cars! yay for not having to go outside at all on snow days!
-my own laundry room, instead of sharing one with the downstairs.
-central. air. conditioning.

Anyway... i'll be sure to post pictures of the new house as we start to remodel and decorate in future posts here on the blog. for now. here are some pictures of our beloved home that we are leaving in 2 short weeks.

if you want to see what the house looked like before the remodel. here is the link.

House... we will miss you. hopefully we find wonderful tenants that will treat you well. love, the Jones'

Meet Our New House!

so, my last post was a mess, i was a mess. but... all of that craziness is over with. (we even ended up having my grandpa's funeral in the middle of it as well) but, the break that i took from blogging was mostly because i didn't have my computer while we were living in my parents basement, and because i just wanted to figure out what i wanted this blog to be, and honestly who i was as a person as well during that time. well, not only have we settled into our new house quite nicely but we have also settled into "ourselves" too. overall it's just sooooo nice to get all of our things -and our sanity- back under one roof.

When i left you last we were just about to enter wedding season and just about to close on our house. well, all of the weddings worked out nicely, and beautifully. we closed on our house. basically, everything went as planned. it was crazy, and we were stressed, but, we had planned for that too.

the day after we closed on the house, we did a walk through, and got the keys and instantly turned right around to go up to Idaho for my grandpa's funeral. after his funeral, when we got back to town we started right into working on the house and we haven't stopped working on it. we started moving in 3 days ago and today i unpacked the last box. (my sore arms are cheering inside!)

initially we had planned on moving in the day after closing, leaving everything "as is" besides some paint on a few walls just to make it feel like "ours" instead of like our stuff in the previous owners house... you know? well, when we did the walk through we realized that the floors were not in as good of condition as we had thought because we never saw the house empty, and the previous owners rugs and furniture were blocking most of the bad parts on the floor. so... it was decided to do the floors now, when the house was already empty instead of moving all of our stuff in, just to turn around and move it alllll back out again when we got around to doing the floors (because every room in the house has the same hardwood floor) well... one thing led to another and we just realized that it would be easier and faster and all around better to just do the entire house remodel at once. and... to save some money (since that was the main reason why we were going to wait to do the remodels) we did ALL of the work ourselves. and, we are assuming that the entire remodel only ended up costing us $3,000 including the new appliances! crazy right! we love it!!! so.... without making this post even longer... here are our before and afters with a list at the end of this post of all the things we have changed about the house, and what we still plan on doing with it!

The Bathroom

The Master Bedroom

Bayli's Room

View from the front door

View of the front door

Dining Room

Kitchen (you will notice that because we no longer have a wall between the kitchen and dining room that it is much easier to get farther away and a better angle in the "after" pictures)

^^pardon the dirty dishes, we are going to use those tonight when we install the dishwasher to make sure it's working properly.

^^that cabinet will get a door asap and the step stool is where the dishwasher is being installed tonight!

^^is a view you never would have gotten in the last layout because of the doorway and appliances in the way.

 Hallway (there is no before because... well, nothing besides the floor has changed here so i didn't take a before)

What we have already done with the house in the last two months:
-taken the wall down between the dining room and the kitchen, which also included supporting the trusses in the attic to counter the weight that previously was being held up by the wall.
-patched the ceiling
-created a bar on top of the already existing counter tops
-ripped out the previous two layers of lenoium that were on top of the hardwood floors in the kitchen
-patched the hardwood floors (this we hired out to family)
-sanded, stained, buffed, and sealed all of the hardwood floors
-painted the walls in every room besides the hallway and the bathroom. (we took the walls from every color in the rainbow besides purple to... like 10 different shades of gray)
-painted the ceiling in the new great room and the master bedroom
-painted the house's crown moldings and baseboards
-added onto the already existing cabinets in the kitchen (the white ones)
-installed Ikea cabinets on the opposite wall (the gray ones)
-changed out most of the outlets so that they now have a ground instead of just two prongs
-re-wired the oven from electric to gas (this we hired out to friends)
-running water and disposal lines for a dishwasher as well as cutting a space in the existing cabinets for the dishwasher to sit
-stripped the kitchen cabinets of their teal "crackled" finish with paint stripper
-painted the cabinets white
-fixed electrical issues
-created 2 new air ducts
-installed new light fixture by front door
-added an extra outlet outside
-installed new appliances

things we still want to do with the house:
-put some of the missing baseboard/crown moldings back up (we are doing this tonight)
-finish installing the dishwasher (we are doing this tonight as well)
-put one final coat on the cabinet doors and put back on the black knobs
-build two bench seats, one under the large window in the living room, and the other against the wall in the dining room.
-house numbers on the front of house
-put in central air instead of window units
-replace carpet on the downstairs and hallway
-hang things on walls and decorate
-build a dining room table
-set up t.v. and surround sound
-patio/bbq area outside which will include a fireplace, firepit, overhead lights, and dining furniture
-remove dead limbs from huge tree in backyard
-paint the front door mustard yellow
-new light fixtures in the dining room and living room
-make vent for the duct that is currently a hole in our kitchen entryway floor
-backsplashes on both kitchen walls (subway tile and octagon tile with dark grout.)
-change large closet in living room into a hidden sewing room
-sheet rock the laundry room
-put up window curtains