Happy Memorial Day everyone!! This year not only does the 2 year anniversary of us being in our new house fall at the same time, but also the 6 month anniversary of Eaphis being at his new job which = a more flexible work schedule and more time spent with us ---- so it feels like a great time to take a look back at how far we've come before we move forward (and a good excuse to give everything a spring cleaning). So without futher ado, here is a little before and after of the house (and us) two years ago and today! I've been doing some smaller projects here and there while finishing up the looonnnnnngggg journey to get the floors done so I'll share those along the way. This is a wordy post so feel free to just scroll through the pics and ignore my rambling if that's your style - I don't mind!
Kitchen
I feel like holding a Photo Hunt contest for these pics of the kitchen - there are so many small but great changes we've made to not only make it look awesome but also make it super functional! I just put the backsplash in a few weeks ago, and we added the under cabinet lighting right before that - so pretty and shiny!
I don't think I ever shared a pic of our "Command Center" which resides right between the kitchen and the dining room. It holds our schedule for the week, upcoming big events, grocery lists, and Eaphis just hooked up his new Amazon Echo....I'm not sure if I like it or I'm terrified it's going to kill me one day.
Morning Room
Happy to report the table is holding up very well and serving us well not only for meal time, but craft time / hot wheel time / work time..........check out the details of my first big building project here
Living Room
So clearly my will to cleanup died in this room - as you can see not all that much has changed but now that the floors are done we have some big plans for the next year - hopefully in the year 3 update all those toys will have a nice hidden home
Powder Room
Ahhh - that's better..............check out how the Powder Room came together here
MudRoom
The mudroom is like my Moby Dick - I just can't seem to finish it. But it has everything we need to function right now so slow and steady seems to be working
One of the first projects I ever took on was to turn the coat closet off the mud room into a toy closet. As you can see, we definitely put this thing to use!
Hallways
Dining Room
Again, not any huge changes in here, but we did hang up my wonderful light fixture from West Elm (super discounted because a sales associate broke one of the glass jars) and added some antiques that I've been collecting
Front Room
Besides changing up the furniture and bringing my favorite antique table up from Florida, Eaphis bought me this awesome butterfly print for XMas and I used a technique from my girl Joanne Gaines to make the hanger
Front Door
Since I walk past the front door of our house 100x's a day to get upstairs, I love that this little corner makes me smile every time I walk past it! There have been quite a lot of small projects in here recently - I built the coat rack in the corner, painted the front door, made the wooden picture frame (where I can swap out pictures and quotes through the year), hung our new pet antelope, and added this awesome brass floating frame from my mom (I used a leftover drawer pull to hang it - Eaphis literally just noticed that little detail yesterday for the first time LOL)
Loft
The loft has come together great and serve the exact purpose we were hoping - a 2nd living space upstairs where we can lounge, work, and let the boys play - thanks to adding our leaning shelves from Crate and Barrel and two chaises from Ikea. It's hard to tell but we're also about 75% done painting in here - baby steps right?
Guest Room
Ummm yeah, still a hot mess
Master Bedroom
Wow - I really didn't realize how far this room has come until comparing these pictures! Goes to show how far switching out a few things (trim, floor, paint) can transform a space! I also gave in and bought blinds....and I have to admit I love them and Eaphis was totally right about buying them for the whole house.
Master Bathroom
Not much to report that I didn't include in my last post - Check out the details on our first two rounds of bathroom updates here and here
Guest Bathroom
A little bit more lived in, but holding up great and we all still love it! If you want all of the nitty gritty of how I re-did this space you can find it all in the archives and check out the final reveal here. Two additions - 1) I added crown molding which I didn't get to earlier 2) Made my own Restoration Hardware inspired Eye Chart...Blake loves to test his eye site before bathtime. Guess I'll know when it's time for glasses!
Grayson / Blake's Rooms
So - now we've come to the moving forward part of this post.........the next rooms up in my master plan are the boys room. We will be moving both of them into Grayson's current room (as you can see, it's much darker and smaller so perfect for a bedroom) and Blake's room will become a dedicated playroom (again, as you can see much brighter and bigger, and besides the tiny little bed it's basically a playroom already). I've already started to paint, move things around, built a desk out of two Ikea cabinets, and my dad just stopped by on Friday to hang the ceiling fan....the next step in my plan is pretty big so I will post a much bigger "Phase 1" post then and let you know what's up next. My goal is to have the bedroom part of this project done by Blake's birthday so need to keep the DIY train going!
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So phew....that's it! I hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane with me.....I actually remembered some things I had forgot! Oh, and if you're social media inclined, you can follow me on Twitter at @lindseyjoy_diy Full disclosure, I am not the biggest fan of Twitter but I do find it's a good place to share progress photos before I have time to write a full blog post, and to cyber stalk my HGTV crushes : ) So until next time - enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend and the start to your summer!