2015 was a pretty big and great year for me. Which is saying something...because 2014 was brutal.
2014 Recap: Got divorced. Divided stuff. Sold house. Moved in with an amazingly gracious aunt. Aunt bought a house, I packed up my stuff to move along with her to another temporary home (for me). Watched a lot of lifetime movies and pinned a lot of motivational quotes.
But you know what? God is good, and things can turn around pretty quickly.
2015 Recap: Bought a house all on my own (scary but awesome!), found a great roommate to help pay for aforementioned house, met an amazing guy (oh hey, Andy!), met a bunch of awesome new people (oh hey, Andy's friends!), extended a work trip to Hawaii into a great vacation, did a bunch of work and projects for the new house.
Needless to say, this house of mine really felt like a turning point. I think almost anyone would agree that moving is one of the most stressful and yuckiest things ever, and after buying and selling 2 houses in the prior 3 years, it was nice to have a place that I could really make my home.
I'll be sharing a bunch of projects and before-and-after type posts of the house, but it's hard to appreciate how far something has come unless you've seen where it's been. Don't get me wrong - I was incredibly blessed to be able to buy a nicely updated and well laid-out house, so this has by no means been a "fixer upper". To me, though, making a house your home means injecting a lot of personality so that it feels like you and functions how you want it to.
Without further ado, here is how my house looked when it was listed before I bought it. I know it's hard to get a feel for how the space lays out and flows from these pictures, but bear with me.
This is another view of the kitchen. It looks really tiny here, but it's actually a really workable two-butt space. It struggles a little bit if you start to try working with three butts in the space, but for me, a roommate, and an ever-present Andy, it's really functional.
The family room is one step down from the little dining area. I hope you're starting to get an appreciation for how much beautiful but very red Brazilian flooring I'm dealing with here.
The family room is pretty long and kinda skinny with a very large and very red-orange brick fireplace. When I bought the house I had grand dreams of all sorts of cozy nights in front of my wood-burning fireplace. I have yet to light it. Turns out I'm more of "I want my fire to be controlled and come with a remote" kind of girl.
If you go the other way through the kitchen, you'll encounter a formal dining room. This was one of the exciting elements of this house for me. Great room open concepts are nice, but I like having both a casual place to have a bowl of cereal, and a nicer space to host friends and family.
The dining room has pretty french doors that open toward the front of the house and into a room that I either call the "sitting room" or "my office". It's pretty spacious and gets nice light in the morning and afternoon, but doesn't have an overhead light fixture (odd), and has been sort of an awkward space to work with. Sidenote: Previous owner really did not care about light fixtures. If they exist, they're what I imagine was 80's builder grade. If you're keeping score at home, sooooo much flooring, very little effort into much else.
Tucked in front of the family room is this short hallway that leads to the garage. Just off that hallway is a long, narrow laundry room with a door that leads to the front porch, but isn't the front door (confusing, I know).
In that laundry room is a fairly cute little half bath. Let me tell you, that sink elicits more comments than almost any other feature of the house. Vessel sinks seem to be a very polarizing topic. Andy's grandpa makes jokes about how I left my mixing bowl in the bathroom, and my mother is worried about the increase in surface area that needs to be cleaned, but at least one friend has claimed it is "probably the coolest sink ever". I'm pretty indifferent.
That concludes the tour of the main floor of my house. This post is getting really long so I'll continue with the second floor in another installment. The second story is pretty standard though - bedrooms and bathrooms, so I won't be particularly offended if you're not on the edge of your seat waiting for that one.
I can't wait to catch you up on how far things have come in just one short year and share all of my plans for the future. I have a feeling 2016 is going to be a great year!