Original 1970s Home, Our new home

It’s Fall!!  My favorite time of year.  I’m anxious to start decorating, but we’re still swimming through boxes.  Our family is slooooowly getting moved in and settled into our new home and community.  It’s a huge adjustment, friends, with plenty of roller coasters along the way.  Fortunately, the girls LOVE their new school and neighborhood and I can see how life-changing and wonderful this move will be for our family.  When I start thinking that we’ve bitten off more than we can chew by choosing a home that was immaculately maintained by its original owner from the early 70s, I remind myself that HOUSE PROJECTS has always been our favorite activity and this house provides endless opportunities for doing what we love.  ha!  So without further ado, I present a glimpse into our “before” – our new home.

We chose the school and neighborhood first and, as you know, moved down into an apartment so that we could find the right home for us.  The neighborhood is well established with huge trees and beautifully maintained homes.  It is primarily ranch-style homes built between the 50s and 70s.  The house came on the market as we finished moving out of our last house and we opened escrow here the same day we closed escrow on our last home.  It seemed serendipitous and just so right.

You gotta love the orange carpet!  It’s original and looks in perfect condition.  Not enough reason for it to stay 😉 but I do appreciate how well it represents the way the previous owners lived in this house.  The living room/dining room is large and has great windows, and of course, I fell in love with the chandelier. Update: Did you see the floors that we eventually put in this space?  GORGEOUS!

So pretty, right?  We took the dining room chandelier from our last house because it was really special and we did hang it here in the dining room.  This chandelier, though, has a new home in the foyer and it’s looking mighty gorgeous!

Lots of wallpaper, of course, but the bathrooms have pretty neutral cabinets and tile in perfect condition, so we’re going to love them for awhile before we think about remodeling.

Some things had to go immediately.  We tore off the wood paneling and that whole bank of cabinets over the peninsula the day after we got the keys.  It’s just too dark and dated and we thought it would be easiest to have the drywall patched and walls textured before we even moved in.  That was a long week of dust and chaos, but the whole room is improved a hundred fold.

My new laundry room makes me happy every day.  It’s huge for this neighborhood and it has doors to the backyard and garage.  I have big plans for storage/pantry/mudroom in this space.  Finally a place to put in bead board and benches and lockers!  Or at least someplace to throw the backpacks on the floor in the meantime.  Update:  See our laundry room makeover here – I did put in beadboard!

Many more progress pictures to come, I hope!  We’re excited, the kids are happy, and the home improvement bug has moved in!  Now if we could just stop trying to do projects and, instead, unpack the boxes!