Welcome to our home!
After living in a brand new builder grade house for 3 years (you can tour that one here), we moved into our 57 year-old brick colonial in April of 2017. It was quite a leap of faith, and really wasn’t our original plan. (If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans, right? Ha!) But we are loving the adventures in our “new” fixer upper place.
It is a stark contrast from our first house with crown molding and character in every room nestled in an old established neighborhood with big oak trees. This place needed some lovin’ (and still does), so we’re making her shine little by little.
Robert’s not a contractor, and I’m certainly not a school-trained designer, but we have a whole lot of determination that has paid off in these past 12 months.
This house will continue to change, but here’s where we are so far…
You can shop any of the rooms by clicking on the items in the galleries.
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Exterior Front
We gave our brick a limewashed makeover in November/December and shared all about it the process in this post.
Brick color: Romabio Bianco White | Shutter color: Behr Cracked Pepper |Trim color: Behr Ultra Pure White
Foyer
We went the neutral route with paint and hung a simple black and white gallery wall up the staircase (that isn’t quite finished). I found this Victorian chest for cheap on Craigslist and cleaned up the marble top. For the light fixture, we faked the look of a pricey one with spray paint and Rub n Buff.
Wall color: Benjamin Moore Classic Gray | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Simply White | Door color: Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron
Dining Room
The dining room isn’t quiiiiite finished, but it’s very close. My favorite part, by far, is this $100 carved dining table that we built a retrofitted oak table top for. My mom and I hung up the mirror gallery wall together, and I love how it now bounces the natural light around the entire space.
Wall color: Benjamin Moore Kendall Charcoal | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Simply White
Breakfast Nook
We still have big plans to totally gut this space one day and change the floor plan a bit, but for now, we stuck to cosmetic fixes. This spot gets no natural light, so we bright the outdoors in by using a lantern light, a wall planter made out of an antique banister, and French bistro chairs.
Wall color: Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Simply White | Door color: Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron
Laundry Room
This was the room that accidentally became a makeover. When we first moved in, we discovered this spot of the house was really the command center. It has to serve as our pantry, mudroom, and laundry room all in one. So we pulled as much function out of it as we could. The vintage laundry photo art and vinyl floor tiles were easy fixes to hide eyesores like the cable box and existing yellowed floor.
Wall color: Sherwin Williams Slate Tile | Trim/Ceiling color: Benjamin Moore Simply White | Door color: Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron
Living Room
This was the very first room painted the day we moved in, and I still would not change a single thing about the white walls and black doors. It’s the room that made me fall in love with this house. We limewashed the brick fireplace, built a window seat to hide our television electronics, and hung up cheap botanical prints in a grid to balance out the space.
Wall color: Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Simply White | Door color: Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron
Powder Room
Our powder room gave us our first “Ha! Gotchya!” fixer upper moment. Our tile floor ended up costing us double what we had budgeted because we discovered is used to be a concrete porch! Yaaaaaay drama! But we could not be happier with this beaut. We saved the budget by using porcelain tiles that look like marble, painted the existing vanity to look like weathered wood, painted the existing mirror frame, and hung inexpensive wallpaper. I love the city-meets-country look that came together here.
Bead board color: Benjamin Moore Hollingsworth Green | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Simply White | Door color: Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron
Playroom
We crossed this room right off of the Resolutions list after New Year’s. Olivia’s playroom desperately needed storage and function, so we made built-ins from IKEA bookcases and fashioned a reading nook out of an old armoire. Olivia has a ball in here, and she now knows how to organize it herself. Well, she knows how, but I wouldn’t say she likes organizing it. 😉
Wall color: Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee | Built-In color: Sherwin Williams Tree Swallow | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Simply White | Door color: Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron
Guest Bathroom
This bathroom was really just a quick, inexpensive fix. It needs a gut job at some point, but to brighten it up without spending a hefty chunk, we painted the sink/countertop and tub/shower using a Rustoleum Refinishing Kit. (P.S. It’s held up beautifully.)
The rest was just paint and accessories. And the tile grout got a quick perk.
Wall color: Magnolia Home Weekend | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Simply White | Cabinet color: Benjamin Moore Coventry Gray | Door color: Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron
Olivia’s Bedroom
We finished our 5 year-old little girl’s bedroom in May with a butterfly theme (at Olivia’s request) using LOTS of DIY solutions and a few thrifty finds. See the full room reveal post here.
Wall color: Behr My Sweetheart | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Simply White | Wallpaper
Regan’s Nursery
Regan’s sweet little room was a labor of love, but I’m so happy with how it turned out! Ripping up the carpets to find these gorgeous floors underneath was like finding a million dollar bill. Those exist, right? I’ve been looking.
Wall color: Magnolia Home True White | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray | Door color: Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray
Master Bedroom
We jumped into this room without an actual plan, just a bunch of furniture that we found on clearance in a local home shop. There are still some things left on the agenda here, but it’s been a great calming escape.
Wall color: Benjamin Moore Moonshine | Trim color: Benjamin Moore Simply White | Door color: Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron
Back Porch
We’re almost finished with our back porch, with the exception of an outdoor electric fireplace we plan to build. We painted the ceiling “haint blue” for some Southern tradition and put up these white and wood outdoor fans. You can see more of this space here.
Brick color: Romabio Bianco White | Ceiling color: Benjamin Moore Palladian Blue | Trim color: Behr Ultra Pure White | Door color: Behr Cracked Pepper
As for the rest of the house…
Rooms still untouched:
Kitchen
(Except for adding a cover-up on the backsplash, but that’s really it.)
Robert’s Office
Robert said HE is going to design this one, and the dude has a million and one ideas.
The Nursery
Once we find out if this little one due in October is a he or a she, we’ll be painting and decorating our booties off in here really soon.
Master Bathroom
This is the one room I probably won’t even bother with a Phase 1 makeover (like we did with our guest bathroom). Robert and I have SO many great ideas for best utilizing this small-ish master bathroom, but it’s going to require a full gut job, knocking out drywall, and moving around plumbing. No easy feat, but it’ll be very worth it once we’re ready to tackle it financially (and physically).
My Office
This room that sits right beside our front door has really become a dumping ground until we can get around to making it my office. We plan to put in double French doors to seal it off from the rest of the house and install a closet or two so that one day, if we eventually put the house on the market, it will count as another bedroom and increase our home’s value.
So that’s where we are! I had no idea that this house could possibly come this far in such a relatively short amount of time. It’s already so much more than I imagined.
If you don’t already, take pictures of the rooms in your home, even if you consider it the ugliest room on the planet. It’s incredible and so empowering to look back and see just how far you’ve come.
