Our Texas House

***Originally posted to cregarstyle on May 27, 2014***

Well it is time to dive right into it.  I want to do a post about what our house looked like when we bought it just over a year ago so that when I do my other entries about the things we have changed you will have a good baseline.  I am not going to pretend to be one of those fantastic DIY bloggers with an amazing talent for making drastic changes that look professional on a minuscule budget by doing it all themselves.  That just isn't going to happen so I hope no ones hopes are going to be demolished by that.  What I can promise is that all the work will be done by me (or my husband and his friends if I can convince them to help....free beer and pizza usually works).  Its not that I have some mission to take over the world by doing it myself.  It's simply that we can't afford to pay anyone else to do it.  I am a full time student and am looking for part time work, but thats hard to find around a class schedule...but thats a whole long post in and of itself.  Aaron works for the Army and we do pretty well, and I feel very fortunate that he can provide for us so I can get my degree...but its not enough to fully renovate our home.  So DIY here we come :)

Our little home is 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, and has just shy of 1400 square feet.  It has wonderful 12 foot ceilings in the living room, kitchen, master suite, and one guest room.  I fell in love with the ceilings when we toured the house because it made the space feel much bigger than the 1400 sq ft that it is.  However, when it came to painting...those ceilings are the death of me.  Nothing like having to climb up on a tall ladder to paint an extra 2 feet of wall when you're afraid of heights (well more like afraid of falling off the ladder).

Anyway, lets dive into photos...remember these are from the listing so everything you see is from the old owners and they were in their 60's.

Ok so this is the front of the house.  Our garage door is actually beige...they painted it before we bought it but I guess they never planned to change the photo.  Please notice that the yard seemed to be struggling BEFORE we bought the house.  This is proof that I did not kill it.  I have a "black thumb" instead of a green thumb, but I am learning.  So far I haven't touched much in the front yard so it pretty much still looks like this.  That beautiful arched window is our guest room, so you can get a lay of the land.

I am going to walk through the home as if I was coming in through the garage.  First is the laundry room which acts as a buffer between the garage and kitchen.  It is a small room, but is functional.  After living in the house for a year now I think it would be helpful to have a sink in the laundry room, but that will have to wait for our next house.  Aaron and I have already started a list of what we want in a new home when the Army moves us on from Texas.  The laundry room was the first room I made over.  See that post here and the final product here.  I did that within the first month of living in the house.  

Next is our beautiful kitchen with that GORGEOUS french door refrigerator.  When I saw that it was staying with the house I knew I could live here.  The door to the left of the fridge leads to the laundry room and then the garage.

On the right we have the little door that leads to the pantry and on the left we have the door the laundry room.  For as small as the pantry door is, it is a pretty significant sized walk in pantry.  Its is expecially large if you compare it to the lack of storage our house has in general.  My wonderful mother organized our pantry for us this January when she visited, and I am happy to say that it still vaguely resembles the work she put in.  We just have too much stuff!  Time to start eating our way through our pantry.

Remember, this isn't our pantry...ours is packed to the brim with anything you can think of!

For a small house we have a pretty good sized kitchen and lots of cabinet space.  However, we have an awful lot of stuff to fill it.  How do two people generate SOOOO MUCH STUFF?  This room is in for a lot of work.  Not in renovation, but in a paint and possibly staining the cabinets kind of way.  See more of that in the coming weeks.

The pull our garbage and recycling bins are an Oregonian's dream!  I feel organized AND I get to recycle.  Its a win-win.  Plus, it doesn't take up under the sink space and I don't have to look at it.  Good planning homebuilders.  I appreciate it.

The breakfast bar in the kitchen leads into a small dining room.  I can't decide if this picture is an accurate depiction of the size of the room or not.  We hosted Thanksgiving dinner for 8 people last year and our annual Super Bowl party of 12 people and 5 dogs so its large enough for that.  This room was the next after the laundry room for some personalization.  Between having a large window and not having 4 complete walls it was quick to paint.  Not to mention the standard height ceilings.  That update will be coming later this week.

The kitchen and dining room flow into our living room.  When we toured the house I was not crazy about that pass through window from the kitchen sink to the living area, but it has become a godsend.  It holds the crystal ring holder my aunt got me as a bridal shower present and allows people in the kitchen to watch tv while cooking, or socialize with others while they're relaxing.

This is the view from our dining room looking toward the front entry.  Seriously look at those ceilings! 

This is looking from the entry towards the backyard.  I love our white mantle, but it just blends into the beige.  Beige tile, beige walls, beige carpets.  Can you see why I was itching to change some things even though the house was in perfect condition?  See the changes I made to the living room here.

Moving on to the master bedroom, which is in the back off the house on the other side of the living room from the dining room.  I don't know why the previous owners chose to put their bed blocking the only window in the room, but this is the view from the doorway.  To the left of the bed is a door to the master bath which also contains our walk in closet.  Nothing has changed in this room except how we organized out furniture compared to theirs.  I can't decide yet if I will do anything to this room, but I will post what it looks like so that you can see how differently we laid out the room.

This is our mini master bathroom.  We have that tiny stand up shower and a linen closet.  It is functional and works well for us.  Plus we have a huge clothing closet to the right of the door to the bedroom which you can't see here (well you can see the hinges in the mirror to the right of the shower).

This is the guest bathroom, which looks completely different now that the picture.  We have a bit more updating to do this summer, so I am not sure if I am going to post the entry about it in two parts or just wait until the room is finished.  We shall see.  But it is your standard four piece bath.

Unfortunately I only have a before photo of the office (bedroom 2) and not the front guest room with the high ceilings and beautiful arched window.  The two rooms are on opposite ends of a T hallway with the guest bath in the middle.  Our office is currently a little more cramped than this one is, trying to fit my husbands HUGE oak L shaped desk, his drum set, a bookcase, and still have room for me makes a tight space but my main concern when I get to this room is how to organize all the framed things in the room.  Currently Aaron has just been randomly posting them up and I can't handle the obscure format.  I feel a gallery wall in the making.

Our backyard is probably my favorite part about our house.  Although I don't think this version of it is so great, we have put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (mostly mine) into a backyard overhaul.  Also, it makes me feel good to look at these pictures and remind myself that the grass was struggling before we bought the house.  What I didn't understand about the previous owners (or maybe it was the builders) was why they would put 5 trees in the middle of the lawn.  I mean that is primo space that is just being taken away by blocking all kinds of activities.  That was changed this past February and I am just about finished with the yard now.  I am so appreciating the rain since we don't get a lot of it in Texas.  Free water for the lawn and plants.

That is pretty much the run down on our first home.  I can't believe how "grown up" it feels to own a home, be married, and be choosing to do home improving on our weekends instead of being forced to do chores by our parents when we lived at home.  I know it has been six years since I lived at home and seven for Aaron, but it feels like just yesterday.  I am so proud of our little home.  I don't know what I am going to do when I finish all my projects....I will feel so empty.  But who am I kidding, I will come up with new ways to change things around and more projects to do.  I can't wait to start posting the changes to our home.  Stay tuned.  Until then...