House to Home {Living Room & Kitchen}

A few days before Easton was born, we moved.  Note to self…pregnancy and moving don’t mix…I know, I’ve moved 3 of my 4 pregnancies, and it sucks. Especially when you’re moving at 40 weeks pregnant and it continues the weeks following while you’re sleep deprived and hormonal and your husband has to be gone moving all.the.time…thankfully we’re done having babies, cuz maybe now we’ll never.move.again.

We had a beautiful, much older home that we loved and had remodeled for a few years, however with the unstable economy and the amount of work and money it still needed (mainly in the form of yards, the pool and a bit more interior work), we sold it.  It was, and still is, a very hard decision for me…but I kind of think this quote says it best…

So much of our blood, sweat and tears…and MONEY went into that house. It was definitely a dream project for us to take on, and we did it.  We didn’t finish like we wanted, but our “wants” changed and in the name of more family time, long term financial security and less projects (no honey I just said less, not zero)…we moved on.

That part is hard, moving on. It’s not really the house at all, although it is heart wrenching to look at these photos of our personal selections throughout…but it’s all the other stuff. The memories we made, the accomplishments & learning we mastered…and failed, the time working with our little boys on yards, baseboards, paint and moldings. It’s the dreams now changed, the close walk to the school, the friends we made, the kids sitting up on the wall between our house and the neighbors. It’s knowing we brought our baby girl home there, the long driveway for bike rides and the big yard (that we were so.sick.of.mowing). Most of all it’s the end of an era, a separation of friendships and a time to regroup and start over…CHANGE…I don’t tend to like it one bit.

So in my effort to move forward, I first want to remember and share what was…to remember we DID IT, even if it didn’t go the way we originally planned…

We started with this…wallpaper covered nearly every room of this house…it.wasn’t.pretty.  We spent HOURS scraping those walls. In this room we took out the pantry, false ceiling, low pony wall and kicked out the wall on the left about 6 feet to increase the room size by a lot…

That took us to about this point where we built out a corner pantry to maximize our space. We also raised the ceilings in the hallways, which ended up making it feel so much bigger in there.

This shows the exterior area where we built a new wall gaining a lot of space in the kitchen.

And after 4 months during a hot summer, with no A/C because the ceilings were torn up, while pregnant with little kids…we finally were able to move into this…(ok the decorating was done later but you get the point)

I almost forgot how much I love those cabinets…until I make dinner tonight and struggle with the pot/pan cabinet =)

The living room also had some of that pretty baby blue wall paper and some pretty pink carpet too!

Without too much effort it became a much prettier space…

And as I’ve done more thinking on this over the past year than I care to admit, the end result is this…this “House” became our “HOME” not because of the cabinets I loved, or the tile we selected…but because of THESE PEOPLE which we created fabulous memories with.  And the best part about change is that they all come with the move, and together we will make our new “HOUSE” a fabulous “Home”, in fact, we already started =)

I’ll share a couple more of our remodel pics in another post! And I look forward to sharing before/after pics of the new house, which we LOVE, at some point too!