I’m a little behind, but I’m finally sitting down to catch up on cataloging the projects we’ve done to the house now that we’ve lived here for two months. Two whole months, can you believe it??

One of the high impact/low cost projects I’ve been working on is slowly repainting the trim and walls. This house felt so dated when we moved in (& still does and will for a while) and trying to tackle everything at once felt really overwhelming, so I decided to paint the majority of the downstairs area Alabaster by Sherwin Williams and the trim Pure White by SW so I could a) cover up the weird yellowish tan that blanketed the walls and some of the trim, b) get the trim to all match (some parts were white, others were that tan color, and yet others were yellowish stained wood), and c) just to get it to a neutral, clean slate so we could figure out what would work in this home and what we want.

Sadie and I also tried to relieve some stress by putting on our own little kitchen concert, much to the dismay of all of you who saw it on Instagram and the concrete workers installing a new curb outside our house. Sure, we looked ridiculous, but I did find the motivation to paint my kitchen that day.

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Now our kitchen, breakfast nook, awkward area between the two, and hallway are all neutral white. While I was painting, however, we figured out that all of our back windows and sliding doors on the main floor leak when it rains, so we’re currently saving up to replace those. Until then, the current mismatched window casings and trim in the breakfast nook will have to stay and torment my OCD heart.

Also pictured in our kitchen concert series photos is our new fridge, as the one that came with the house decided to spring an unrepairable leak and give the wood floors a bath. It has since been exiled to the garage where it will live out its days in shame.

What else, what else… oh, that’s right! We gutted our Jack and Jill bathroom and have been slowly working away at rebuilding it. The tiles were falling off the walls, there was mold all the way through the insulation, and the vanity was so dirty that I honestly thought it was painted an off white (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). Currently we have a tub, some cement walls prepped for tile, and a ruined vanity (the bathroom drama will have to be a whole post of its own, otherwise we’ll be here for years. Below are some before photos. I had taken some on my DSLR, but I may have accidentally deleted them, so we’ll have to settle for these iPhone photos…

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We also had to tear out our basement bar and all the flooring. A few weeks ago I had spent a few hours cleaning the massive bar, including removing all the old contact paper and sorting through the piles of belongings the previous owner had left in the cabinets, and was on my last cabinet when I found mold. After some further inspection, we figured out that the kitchen sink drain ran behind that wall (the wet bar sink in the bar connected to the same drain), and the drain from the kitchen sink had failed, whether just from the joints going bad, the pipe cracking, or a hole created from a poorly placed screw. I think that’ll have to be its own post as well, because again, the drama is just too much to include in this general overview.

So now we have an empty basement, a demoed bathroom, and some painted walls. In the meantime, we’ve been busy dreaming up all the different spaces in our home. On the list:

1. Updating our bedroom.

This will probably involve removing the lower crown moulding trim, repainting the walls, maybe doing a fun wall treatment behind the bed, and installing some built in bookcases in the little nook by the bathtub. Eventually we’ll renovate that bathroom and make it an actual separate room, but that’ll have to wait until we have the money. I’d also like to run the hardwood floors into the bedroom, but again, money.

2. Renovating the dining room.

This is the first space you see when you enter the house, and it looks pretty much identical to the day we closed on the house, except that we took a leaf out of the table and rotated it 90 degrees. I’d like to remove the mirrors and redo the wainscoting. I’m considering making the wall treatment taller so it covers 2/3 of the wall and adding a picture ledge so we can prop up some vintage art and add some color to the space. Also on the dream list:get a rug, paint the space, hang some curtains, and build a sideboard to sit where the mirrors are currently.

3. Figure out what the heck to do as a phase 1 renovation to make the kitchen area look better.

Do we paint out the cabinets? Rebuild the fireplace surround and mantle? What style? What color? What about that weird capped wet bar between the awkward space and the living room? Help!

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All I know is I don’t miss that old paint color. Feel free to send any and all ideas for this awkward space my way!