Saturday, March 19, 2016

Our Fixer Upper, Before and "After", Part 2

We've made further progress on the home. In Part 1, you saw the master bedroom and guest room/offices.

This time, I'll show you the progress on our living area.  When we bought the house, the den was a sunken treasure of carpet with popcorn ceilings and track lighting overhead.

However, we knew the windows on either side of the main living space had such potential and this area could shine with a little love.

We debated back and forth on keeping the den sunken or raising the flooring.  In the end, the previous owners told us stories of 25 little children lined up around those den stairs with plates on their laps for various campfire or boy scout meetings.  I was sold! Honor the time period of the home and keep the sunken den.

We went in and pulled the carpet and replaced with new hardwood floors.  We plan to eventually put hardwoods where the brick flooring is, but once we start that project, we need to be able to lay down the whole area at once.  Since we plan to gut the entire kitchen in the future, we don't know the new footprint of the kitchen and thus can't lay down hardwoods today.

As with the rest of the entire house, we scraped all of the popcorn off of the ceilings and removed all the track lighting/replaced with recessed lighting.  A new coat of white paint was applied everywhere.

BEFORE:
AFTER:
The jury is out on what we do with this brick and mirror on the fireplace.  We'll live with it for now and think on it before we do anything.  
 Our new ceiling!
BEFORE:

AFTER:
I'm probably going to put marble down on the hearth where the brick is.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Special thanks to my friend Carson Carney for helping make this Pinterest inspiration photo come to life.
(Pinterest)
The white console was a built-in we pulled out of the guest room.  My dad added some wood for shelving and it was painted white. I think it fits perfectly under the TV.  Upcycling, for sure!

See that little corner nook? It was plumbed and ready to be a wet bar when the previous owners had it.  We decided to nix the wet bar.  (I mean, you saw our stairs- we are doing just FINE...) We put built-in shelves there instead for a nice little kid reading nook.
And the usual, "Mom, take a picture of ME!"
It's feeling like home now... I hope to knock out a guest bathroom this week and then will post another round of updates.  We're nearing completion for this phase, but I'm still loving every minute of it.

-Bethany

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