Wednesday, January 27, 2010

"Before"

This post is inspired by Laura's "before" home tour.  I figure posting my horrible "before" pictures will not only help me document my home renovations but also keep track of my progress, or lack there of!

Before we get started, please ignore the mess.  Remember, this is the raw, real, "unstyled" peak inside my home and yes it was the weekend, and I don't like to clean on the weekends.  So here we go......Welcome to my home, please come in!

Here is the front of my home, not bad if you like 70's retro stonework.  It's personally not my thing but I have a whole bunch of it if you know anyone who is interested!  So needless to say, the stonework is going.  Mike has already tried chipping away at it and it comes of pretty easily, so consider it gone!  We have a cute little front porch that I want to fancy up with some chairs, maybe a porch swing and we would like to do some landscaping and painting.  We are thinking gray exterior, red door, new lighting, but the wreath stays....it's a family tradition since my mother in law's maiden name literally translates to wreath, she always has a wreath on her front door, she changes it out as the seasons change.  It's a tradition that I don't mind carrying on....Now, that's enough standing around outside, let's go inside.....



First we'll check out our office.  This is one of the first rooms we started working on but we are far from finished.  The paint color stays, that is our doing.  As are the Billy's up on the wall.  We also bought a Parsons desk and we have a little chest of drawers that the printer is sitting on now that we want to refinish.  Once we get electric run in the closet the printer will go in there along with lots of shelving and storage.  My sewing machine will stay in this room, right now it's sitting on an old vintage school desk in the corner (can you see it behind the pile of sewing?!)  I'm not sure if this will be its permanent home but it's functional for now.  We plan on doing hardwood throughout the entire house and the ceiling fans all need to be replaced, crown molding and base boards need to be installed.  We need an office chair, I'm thinking something mid century modern (maybe an Eames?)  I also want to get a nice comfy arm chair for reading and knitting, sewing, etc.  Right now the office serves as a catch all for all the stuff we are tired of tripping over in the rest of the house but I want to make it a cozy and inspiring place where we can both work, and I can sew and be creative.  Basically, not at all what it is right now!



So here is one of our bathrooms, and well, basically it looks like someone took a bottle of pepto bismol and shook it all over the room.  Have you ever even seen a pink bathtub?  The reason there is a pillow and a blanket in here is not because this is where I make Mike sleep when we are having a fight!  This is actually where Peewee gets crated when we aren't home.  Obviously this room needs a complete makeover but it's big, and that's the one thing it has going for it.  Florida bathrooms from this building era are not typically this large.



This is our kitchen.  It hasn't been updated since the house was built, in 1969!  The picture on the right is where phase 1 of our kitchen reno is starting.  We are basically taking that empty wall you see there and building cabinets on it, around a bench seat and we will have a kitchen table here as well.  (I will finally get my nook!)  It's a pseudo nook really, I don't know how "nookish" it will really feel but it makes me happy so my husband is obliged to build it!  As far as the other side of the kitchen goes, we are ripping out the header to make room for larger wall cabinets.  We are replacing the appliances (why did they ever make bisque a color option?!)  We want to add recessed lighting, remove the ceiling fan, paint, tile, etc, etc. The wall which you can see the edge of in the picture on the right will come down and the brown cabinet that juts out of the wall will also be removed and the kitchen will come around in a U shape and will be open to the back room in the house, which we will see next....



The back room of the house.....this room has been a huge thorn in our sides.  First of all when we moved in, it had dark brown paneling, ugh, another building element along with popcorn texturing that I just can't understand.  We have struggled with this room for many reasons.  This is a typical "Florida Room" It is original to the house and at one point we assume was not air conditioned and full of jalousie windows. The room is long and narrow and doesn't really make it useful for much in terms of furniture layout.  We figure the best thing we can do is turn it into a dining room.  Where the two large picture windows are above the purple couch, we will put in doors to the outside and the brown door you can see in the photo to the left will be framed in and closed up.  Right now the room is full of our kitchen cabinets and that part of the wall where the drywall is exposed, needs to be repaired.  That was a half wall a couple of weeks ago and we framed it in so the cabinets could go on the opposite side of the wall. We would like to have a big farmhouse style table back here and on the opposite side of the room some cozy arm chairs.  We would like to eventually put a fireplace back here as well, you know for the two times a year you actually get to use it in Florida!





Here is our living room.  Nothing major here in terms of renovation except for replacing the ceiling fan and adding crown molding, etc.  This room just needs a complete design overhaul which we are in the process of now.  The couch is going, we are shopping around for a new one now.  The arm chairs may or may not stay depending on which direction we go, they may get split up and go into the back room and/or the office.  The coffee table will go and the credenza which you can kind of see in the picture is the new one I mentioned before.



Here is our guest bathroom, another room that hasn't been touched since 1969.  This is the bathroom reno we are going to focus on first and soon!  Everything will be gutted and replaced.



Phew, so that's it.  I'm exhausted from showing you around!  Hopefully you didn't mind me sharing all the raw "before" shots of the house.  Over the next few weeks I will share with you my design and inspiration boards for each room so you can get an idea of the direction I want to go in.  I'm open to any ideas or suggestions you all may have.  I have lots of ideas but nothing concrete...I'm terrible at making decisions which is one of the reasons why it has taken this long to get started.

That's all for today, thanks for stopping by!

2 comments:

customessay-s.com said...

I like that place. It looks really great, as I think. Should be a good choice for living.

essay writer website or company said...

I liked quite a lot of different moments in this interior, but I can not say that I liked everything completely.