a house tour! (finally...)

Well. 
It's only been a year since we moved into this house before I finally got a blog post up. 
Ha!

We renovated it top to bottom and have spent the past year making it into our home. We literally changed every single thing in here…from the floors to the ceiling. And everything in between. We ripped up all the floors and re-laid them with laminate and carpet. We scrubbed, primed, and painted all the walls. We painted all of the trim and moulding. We painted every door and replaced all the hardware. We stripped and painted the cabinets, kitchen and bathrooms. And replaced that hardware. We changed out almost every single light fixture. We stripped all of the popcorn ceilings off and repainted them. We replaced all of the vents. We replaced the kitchen sink and the faucet and installed a reverse osmosis for our well. We scrubbed all of the sinks to the bare bones and refinished the faucets in all the bathrooms. We replaced all of the toilets in the house. We took down shelves and cabinets that didn't belong and put in shelves and cabinets in the laundry room. We took off ugly kitchen cabinet doors and ugly tile backsplash and put up bead board and trim. We replaced the range hood in the kitchen. We redid all the kitchen counter tops with concrete counters. We put in a new septic system and a new driveway. We put up a carport for our cars since this little house didn't have a garage.
We decorated and redecorated. We unpacked all of our belongings that have been in storage for over two years and place them lovingly in little nooks and corners. The boys got to unpack toys they haven't seen or remembered. We set up a new school room (yet again).

We made this house into a home.

And we did all of this for under $20,000.

At times I thought this was a waste of time. Or a waste of money. This is a temporary house while we build our big, forever home. But we are trying to build this big, forever home on a budget. And the best way to do that is to do it slowly. So we will be in this little house for a few years. And our thought was we might as well make it into our home. And it's been a year and I'm proud to say that this little house is our home now. And while it's not ideal maybe, we love it. Besides, it's the people inside and the love shared that really count anyway.

the boys' room

the dining room turned school room

nursery

my bathroom

kitchen

living room

dining room

*not pictured: the boys' bathroom (a yucky boys' bathroom), Mike's bathroom (another yucky boy's bathroom), the laundry room (boring), and our bedroom, which is never usually clean enough to take a picture of :)