NEW house sneak peak & updates

I’ve been a horrible blogger because life’s been so very busy! We are still trying to sell a house and will soon be closing on, and moving into, a new one. I can’t wait to move in, but selling a home is super stressful! The purchase of our new home isn’t contingent on selling ours. If we don’t sell ours in a timely manner, we will be either dropping the price, or doing a lease-to-own option. We’ve had people looking, and have some interest out there, but we’ve also already had gotten our hopes up prematurely a few times. We are new at this. It’s definitely an adventure!

Enough about that – onto the fun stuff. A sneak peak at the new place and some progress. Here’s the outside of the house. The yard will need a LOT of work, particularly the back yard, but that deck is really nice and it’s fully-fenced with a nice vinyl fence with the exception of the front gate-pieces which we will be doing right away. {Pictures aren’t very good, because I was trying to snap fast during a quick plumbing-check visit!}

A few inside pictures. The kitchen! I love it. I wasn’t too sure about stained wood cabinets {I prefer white} but these are alder and really nice. We’ve already bought a fridge that will be delivered around move-in time – a stainless steel French-door LG, same as the white one we already owned a loved. My mom now has our white beauty. (:  Eventually we will cycle out the black appliances for stainless. There’s waaay more storage in this kitchen and that island! I love! The door on the left of the second picture opens to the deck, obviously.

The entry / living room. You walk in and see the fireplace. The living room and kitchen are open so it’s a typical rambler floor plan. The fireplace is in need of a nice mantle installed, so that’s another project for the first year there I think. Shouldn’t be too hard to come up with something that makes it more of a focal-point. I kind of love how this house is sooo plain. Means I don’t have to undo any wackadoo stuff from the previous owners. Very blah though. Can’t wait to inject lotsa personality into this joint and have some crazy friends come help us break it in!

Master bedroom and bathroom. Wow that bathroom pic is bad. It’s a nice, huge space though with a jetted tub and glassed in shower and double sinks. Fancy! Can’t wait to spruce up these areas.

Lots of other spaces I don’t yet have photos of {like I said, this was a sneak peak! ;)}, like the nice laundry/mud room, 2 more bedrooms, a second bathroom, and plenty of space to work with in the completely unfinished basement.

Here’s a list of the things we know for sure we will be doing to the house {short-termish}:

• Put some gates up on the sides of the house so the fence is fully closed off.
• Paint the whole place. Kitchen, dining, living room, entryway and hallways right away, all the same neutral light gray/tan. The bedrooms and bathrooms can wait.
• Window treatments – maybe some bamboo shades? – throughout the house. I am horrible about making decisions on window treatments for some reason! Someone help. Ideas?
• Building a mantel for the fireplace.
• Remove the huge mirrors in the master bathroom and put up two smaller ones. Switch out faucets and fixtures eventually.
• making something of the rest of the existing landscaping. It’s hard to tell quite yet how much work we have ahead of us. Maybe in the spring we will be pleasantly surprised and the grass will survive.
• Furniture and decor will be very use-what-we-have. I don’t plan to buy anything new except for what’s required to fix up what we’ve already got. Meaning I’ll be spray painting some lamps and maybe staining/glazing our kitchen table a nice color.

Not-so-immediately:

• Paint the rest of the rooms.
• Replace the dining room chandelier and kitchen faucet with something nicer. Put some hardware on the cabinets.
• Pouring a side RV pad, building a shed, and putting in a garden in the back
• Re-stain the deck to a less reddish/orangish color. Possibly pour a patio. JB wants to do a stamped concrete patio, which I think would be fabulous! It’s so awesome he is handy.
• Finish at least some of the basement, to include a family room. We’ll have the tv upstairs for a while til that’s done, and the bulky leather couches.

And a wishlist of some other projects:

• Paint the front door, garage doors, and trim around the doors a nicer color. Black? And hang some bulkier black outdoor light fixtures. Some awesome huge carriage lights perhaps?
• Build a bench under the master bedroom window.
• Maybe get a decent-sized flat panel TV for upstairs once the basement is finished, and revamp a dresser for a media console.
• A craft area downstairs – nothing fancy, just some space to make messes.
• Replace the mirror and fixtures in the second upstairs bathroom.

So yeah – the list is gonna require a second job and lots of Red Bull … or else just a long time and lots of patience and creativity. Or maybe all of the above. I’m super excited and hoping the sale of our house works out soon! Can’t wait to get in there and get started! I’ll certainly try to get back to better blogging in the process.

Anyone have any priceless house-selling or moving advice for us?

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