The Reveal

At last, what you have all been waiting on pins and needles for -- pictures of our "new" house! :)

First - our new front door. Perhaps it lacks the conversation piece of our last front door that had two peep holes (including one that looked somewhat like a telescope on a pirate ship) and the four locks/chains... But we rather like it. It looks a bit out-of-place with the dark brown aluminum siding - but we hope to someday (soon?) update the exterior of the house...

Our new entry way.

Our new living room. It's green! We actually originally had it painted one shade lighter, but it looked awfully lime greeny, so we asked them to paint it a shade darker. For those of you who have been in the house before, this is one of the most transformed rooms. It used to have orangey panel wood walls, and ceiling beams. And we added (recessed) light! Oh, to see again. :) We used to have to light the room only with lamps and the light fixture in the ceiling fan, which lit the middle of the room (coffee table only) way too brightly, and the rest was in shadows. We actually have plans to replace this fan (without a fan light fixture), but we couldn't decide on a fan. The patio doors are relatively new (installed last summer), but finally had stain applied. And the new floors are engineered wood. Engineered because our house is on a concrete slab, and so putting in real wood floors would raise the floor too high.

The kitchen actually stayed almost exactly the same. Except for the new floors.

The breakfast nook looks the same, but actually has a new door and new bead board. Also, we painted the walls a brighter shade of yellow. This was Ben's play area, and we are re-establishing it as such - but this time it's for a slightly older child! I had just put together this table and chair from Ikea, but it was much too tall for him, so we sawed the legs on the chair and table. Even so, it's still a bit too big, so I bought a chair designed for smaller tikes, and will need to take the table a notch lower as well.

Our new dining room! Again, new floors and new paint.

Mark's studio. This also had quite a transformation. We put in carpet (to absorb sound), and two fixed fluorescent light fixtures (beats the shop lights we had hanging in here). Even though we had originally picked and painted the old color in here ourselves, we decided that we were over mint , so painted it a neutral color instead.

And we installed french doors! Now Mark can actually close off the rest of the house (or we can close off Mark) when he needs to practice! We're pretty excited about this!

The hallway with our bedrooms. New hardwoods (actual hardwoods, because the slab in this part of the house was built lower to accommodate hardwood). New paint. And a cool phone nitch that you can't really see. But it's cool all the same.

Ben's room. The one wall with the window is blue, the rest are yellow.

The hall bath. Obviously completely remodelled (if you'll remember the pink tile and blue sink, bathtub and toilet). You've seen this shot before, but this time boys on toilets are removed.



Another shot of the bathroom. Mark pretty much was the stylist of this, and was going for a modern look.

I however, was the "designer" of these cut-outs to hold shampoo and soap. :)

Our master bedroom. Just a couple of changes here, including Elfa closet organizers from the Container Store. They were easy to install (except for the top hanging bar, I installed the whole thing myself), and they hold a lot of stuff!

We gained some unused space from our master bath remodel, so we took advantage of it by building a built-in bookshelf right at the entry of our bedroom.

Our Master Bath, with which Mark went for a more traditional look.

Our new master shower. Almost 2x as big as our old one.

That's it for the tour! Here's a final shot of Benjamin enjoying breakfast in his new spot. Once we get a bit more settled, we'd love for you to come visit and take a tour in person!