Saturday, March 16, 2013

our house: before and after

I really love our house.  Although there are a few things I would have done differently had I been the original architect (more south-facing windows, for example), our house is nearly perfect.  It's cozy, homey, practical and cute.  The places where we spend most of our time are bigger (kitchen and living room), the others smaller (bathrooms and bedrooms).  We have a sunken mudroom/laundry which is nothing short of a godsend in Wyoming.

I've never shown before-and-after photos of our house.  Now that we've lived here a year and a half and we've owned the house for almost 2 years...I thought this would be a good time.  Plus, we're trying to refinance which means the appraiser was here the other day and our house was actually a little bit clean.  I took photos.  

Mainly, this house lacked an open kitchen and a good, solid place to sit and have a family meal.  We wanted to change that.  Also, we can't abide by carpet and linoleum, so we fixed that while the fixin' was easy.

Living room before:

Living room (with added-on dining area) after:

Kitchen before:

Kitchen after:
(The tiled area to the right of the wood beam was added-on.)  

In the two bedrooms, we painted, replaced doors, and installed "rustic" hickory flooring. (In the bathrooms and mudroom, we laid tile.)  Our bedroom before:

Our bedroom after:

I don't have before photos of the kids' room, but it pretty much looked like ours.  Kids' room after:
^See the light fixtures?  We tore those out of a million dollar home that was slated to be burned down.  Crazy, I know.  We replaced all light fixtures, fans and curtain rods for free.^ 

Upstairs, we added on to the loft.  What existed originally is our guest-bed/ play-area/ exercise area.  Before: 
 ^Juniper was Hazel's current age when we first looked at this house, oh my!^

Original loft after:
^Okay, so not much has changed there.^

It was important for me to have a studio space.  A project room.  A place for my computer, sewing machine, books.  So we extended the loft another nine feet and viola.  Before:

After:

No one ever expects this little nook of a bathroom to lurk behind that chalkboard door (no changes here):


Looking back toward the living area, stairs and bedrooms.  Before (it was all cathedral ceiling):

After (now, there is a flat ceiling over the couch and ending at the chair where we extended the loft):  

The only major external change to the house (now our kitchen and dining area):
As they say, a house is never finished.  We still have lots of little finishing work as well as bigger, grander dreams (a sunroom off our bedroom???!!!???).  But for now we are just peachy.    

5 comments:

  1. Oh wow its amazing. You have made it such a nice home!

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  2. LOVE it! Love how you opened up the kitchen/living room space, and I'm swooning over your work space. That's one thing I don't have in our house, nor have I been able to successfully carve out a little niche somewhere, and it drives me crazy. Super fun! Thanks for sharing.

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  3. It looks so nice. :) I really like what you've done with it. Lofts have their charm, I suppose, but I usually just think about what a waste of space it is. It must be much, much nicer to have more useable space vs. the towering ceiling. And so great to get rid of carpet while you're at it.

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  4. WOW. All of it is stunning, but the kitchen transformation is really gorgeous..

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  5. Looks so light and airy now, your studio/ work space looks fantastic, mine is tiny and my daughter always wants to join me there so would love a bigger . I like that your home looks like a welcoming family home but not cluttered - well done.

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