The Preview
The Walk-Through
So when we last visited, I shared the skeleton of the house. The "before" move-in pictures.
Building a house was, as some might have experienced, a challenging experience. A dance, or maybe a boxer's ring at times, of compromises! But we survived. Actually, we are still surviving because there always seem to be more decisions that require convincing from one person or another.
The inital process was stressful with many decisions to make. I felt slightly outnumbered many days with my husband, my builder (male), and my father-in-law all giving me their opinions. However, even the decisions that I actually did get to make were stressful. Obviously, designing cabinets can be overwhelming, but I wouldn't have dreamed that considering knobs would make me lose sleep at night! ;)
In the end, the house is nice. Some favorites would be master closet overall, cabinet space/storage, slide out pantry drawers and trash cans, glass cabinet doors in kitchen, mud room, laundry room, hobby room (if I ever get it organized so I can actually use it!). Some things that I would seriously reconsider next time would be glass block window in master bath (I actually think I requested that but nobody else seems to remember that but me!), stained vs painted cabinets through the whole house (Obviously, we needed to make budget considerations and that was one of them. We chose stained cabinets in living and kitchen but painted everywhere else. I am not super impressed with the outcome. Part of it is the color we chose-dark, but i think part of the problem may also be paint quality. A builder issue we need to address.), my idea of the pull out spice cabinet next to stove ventahood (unforseen dimensions rendered it useless for what I wanted), and not having any trees around the house.
The pictures below were taken before our guests arrived for a church class Christmas party. You can rest assure my house is never really this clean or pretty!!
looking from hall with dining on left and living on right
dining room
office
looking from entry towards living room
another dining room pic
looking into breakfast/kitchen from living
extra seating!
kitchen pics
powder bath
master bedroom. still lots to do. i decided on green, creme, and taupe so it would flow into the bathroom which already had green accents in the tile. it has been tough to find curtains to compliment the taupe in the bedspread. i'm gonna have to take a sham cover with me when i go hunting next time. i also want to find an old piece that is much longer to house the TV and accessories. i'm thinking of painting it creme then aging it once i find what i like.
master bath
laundry
mud room. i want to make one of the side walls a fun place for notes, messages, etc.
brax's room. still lots to do. poor guy lived with in his parent's room for 14 months! he has inherited lots of hand-me-downs like the crib, toy storage, book bench, and rug. i am still trying to figure out what i actually want to do for him in here.
boys' bath. i think i may keep the jungle theme and just grow it. what do you think?
anysa's room. we are still working on the transition from little girl. i so loved her dick and jane theme for the last 8 years, but i can live with pink and black. i agreed to a little zebra and a little hot pink, but not TOO much! notice we still have the d and j dresser. we got her bed at an outlet and my mil found her desk/hutch at a garage sale. it was white and we painted it, along with painting her night stand and a few accesseries that had previously been green. her gigi passed along the pink chair. i would really love to try to recover it, but it seems like a scary project! i am hoping to find things to redo. we have a lot to do and i hate making decisions!
luke's room. it was pretty easy because we had everything from previously and we weren't making any major changes. we added the red shelves above the doors. i had them in other places before in previous homes. they are from an original red school house.
FYI, I have had pretty good luck with my orders from Overstock. We got our living room curtains and rug from there. I tried to order my master curtains and some bar stools from them as well, but the stools were too short and curtains wrong color. It was harder to pick a taupe than a dark brown like in the living! We got our dining room curtains from JCPenney. We got our two couches, chair with ottoman, and end tables from a wholesale warehouse in town. Price was great, but not the wait! That being said, I really love the colors. Dark brown and a pretty sea foam/aqua. I am doing red accents in the living, breakfast, and kitchen, then pulling in complimentary colors into the dining room. I love my buy one/get one red lamps from a discount place in town! And did you notice the piano tucked in a corner in the living room?! I snagged that from Freecycle! Yes, free! Well, minus the physical labor from me and husband to move it! Can't wait to get it tuned and start Anysa on lessons!
Hope you enjoyed the tour!
Now would someone please come help me make decisions!! :)
Stacey
http://www.achconstruction.net/index.html
