House Progress

Posted: December 15, 2014 | Author: oliviacarswell | Filed under: Design Inspiration, My Design, Our House | Tags: before and after, design reno, Home, interior decorating, Interior design, wood beams | Leave a comment

We have now officially owned our house for 2 1/2 weeks and I feel like so much has changed in the house in that short amount of time!

First order of business, which you saw in the last post, was carpet removal! What a huge difference it made when that carpet was gone! For now, we are having hardwoods installed in the living room/dining room/hallway and leaving the carpet in the bedrooms until the budget permits!

Here is a list of things we wanted to do immediately:

-remove carpet in the living/dining/hallway and replace with hardwoods

-have ceilings sanded, refinished and painted

-take down ALL light fixtures(get rid of them where they can never be found again haha) and replace with beautiful, new fixtures

-paint beams and brick fireplace

-paint all walls

-refinish both bathroom vanities

-tile bathroom floors(and scrub every surface :))

That’s our starting list! We have started to tackle each of those things the last two weeks and a lot has changed in the space!

Here are some photos of what the house is looking like at this point:

It’s amazing how much brighter and airy it feels now! Note: that pile of wood is our hardwoods acclimating to our house. If you didn’t know, real hardwoods have to acclimate to the space they are going in for several days before they are installed or else they can warp and bend. We decided to go with 5″ wide plank white oak hardwoods! Cannot wait for those puppies to be installed!!!

We hired someone to sand and refinish the ceilings and it was SO worth it! Perfect, smooth, brand new ceilings that really took it from 70’s to modern day! Note: that light fixture is hanging on by a thread…don’t worry its time is coming to an end very soon 🙂

Before:

After:

We spent Every. Single. Night. last week painting the walls!! Exhausting and tiring, but fun at the same time. Getting to see your place transform with something as simple as paint is fun to watch 🙂

Guest bedroom with new ceilings and fresh paint on the walls. That weird box light will be parting with us also 🙂

We removed the gold brass shower door, the cabinets are being refinished(just primed in this picture), the floors are getting new tile, fresh paint will be going on the walls and a new light fixture will be going in!

View standing in the hall facing the living room.

The only thing different about the kitchen is the new ceilings and the the old light fixture has been removed.

I absolutely love the brick fireplace painted white! It has a whole new life now!

So that is where we are at this point!

Still to do:

-finish painting remaining walls

-have flooring installed(which is happening this week ahhhhh 🙂 )

-remove old light fixtures(and replace with new ones soon)

Oh, here are a couple shots of the backyard because I forgot to put them in my last post. Great space, lots of potential!

More photos to come as progress is made!

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo,

BEFORE Photos of Our House

Posted: December 4, 2014 | Author: oliviacarswell | Filed under: My Design, Our House | Tags: before and after, Home, renovation, transformation | 2 Comments

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!! AHHH!!! Can you tell I’m excited? 🙂 It has been a long, stressful, overwhelming, exciting and crazy road, but we are so thrilled to finally say that we are homeowners! I have been dreaming of the day when I can customize, design and put my stamp all over a house and that time has come!! After looking at house after house since the beginning of April, we stumbled upon our 1975 brick ranch, just before I was about to throw the house hunting towel in. The moment I saw it…I knew. Just like I knew when I saw my wedding dress for the first time! I envisioned us in this house, living life, making memories and I immediately had a vision for what it COULD be. One word…POTENTIAL. That is the one word I kept using when we saw the house for the first time! It’s our little diamond in the rough that I cannot wait to shine up and make pretty! It has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, an unfinished garage room that we want to turn in to something cool and a great big backyard. Now, for some lovely BEFORE photos! Get ready for a lot of not-so-exciting pictures. (we had already started the carpet removal process when I took these photos..) Welcome to our home! View when you open the front door. You walk right into the living room which is open to the dining room. One of the reasons this house caught our attention was this living room. Open concept, vaulted ceilings with beams, amazing natural light and a brick fireplace! Front door View from living room towards the dining room Dining room. Doors lead to backyard. Hallway First bedroom on the left will be the guest bedroom. Nothing exciting here, beige walls, beige carpet..basically a beige box! Haha Hall bathroom is the first door on the right of the hallway complete with gold brass and peel and stick tiles! Last door on the left of the hallway is another bedroom, which, for the time being will be Stephen’s office/music room. **Note: Don’t you love all of the beautiful light fixtures they left for us 😉 View from the bedroom, looking back towards the hallway. Back of the hallway looking back at the living room. Master bedroom is the last door on the right of the hallway. View standing in the master bedroom. Hallway door to the right, closet, and on-suite bathroom..(although I don’t think I would call this a master suite at this point in time) ha! Master bathroom Master shower..eeekkk The kitchen is to the right of the dining room. I love that it has windows above the sink! The whole house has great natural light which is something I look for in a space! Standing in the kitchen, looking back towards the dining room The day after we closed on our house, we were itching to make some progress, so I put Stephen to work! 😉 He ripped out all of the carpet in the living room/dining room/hallway! Such a freeing experience ripping out carpet! Goodbye carpet, please don’t come back! One last view. Probably my favorite view. Standing in the dining room looking back toward the living room. Kitchen to the left and hallway to the right. If you want to follow along with our transformation, I will be sharing the entire process here! xoxo, O