Finally a House Tour

Hello again everyone.  Happy New Year.  

I thought I would start off the new year with a long over due house tour.  We have already done so much to the new house, but everything is half done.  Hopefully, this year I will get a few rooms completely done to show you.

Our drive way is very long.  You can't see the house from the road it is on and as you can tell it is surrounded by trees on all sides.  So it is very private.  We have almost 5 acres.

The house is small but a tiny bit bigger than our previous house.

There is however a huge 3 and a half car garage.

From the garage, you enter directly into the utility/laundry room.

The laundry room was very dark and dirty.

The utility/laundry room connects to the 50's kitchen.  This is what the kitchen looks like right now.  We haven't done anything to it yet.  We are going to completely gut it at some point.  My haters probably love the way it looks now.  But I don't do brown so it is my least favorite room in the house. 

From the kitchen, you enter into the living room/dining room area.

The home has brand new hardwood floors throughout.  Guess what?  They are going to be painted white.  Gasp!  How dare I.  I hate wood so it has to go.

Off of the living room is the hallway that has the bedrooms and bathroom.  This is the one area that is 95 percent done.  I've already painted the floors in here and it is a huge improvement.

The first bedroom you come to is the largest of the two and we turned it into a dressing room/Walk in Closet.

In between the bedrooms is this unique 50's bathroom.  Plastic tiles galore.  This room will be completely gutted as well some day.  We may even add onto the house to expand the bathroom.  We will be getting quotes here soon.

When you walk into the bathroom the double vanity is directly in the middle of the room and you have to walk to the right to get to the toilet and the left to get to the shower.  A very unique floor plan.

The second bedroom is our bedroom.  It is almost done as well.  I have to make a couple changes and it will be finished.

One of the doors in the living room leads out to the back yard.

We added a temporary fence for our dogs.  This year, we will be building a deck where the temporary fence is now.

We have already done so much and there is a ton more to do.  But, we are excited to do every project in this house because it is our forever home.

If you were wondering what happened to our other house, we do have a renter.  She has expressed that she may want to purchase it at some point.  So we are perfectly happy with that.

I hope to be back soon with a few room reveals so stay tuned.

I'm Back with a Big Announcement

Hey!  Remember me?  I know, in January (almost 5 months ago), I proclaimed that I was going to post finished projects here once or twice a week.  We all can see that didn't happen.  But, there was a good reason. 

We decided to buy another house.  It is technically not ours yet, but we are in the final stages of the process.  We have gone through inspections of the house, well and septic and the appraisal.  Now, we are just waiting for our closing date.  Hopefully, the rest of the process goes smoothly and by the end of June, we can be the new owners of this little house.

Why did we decide to buy another house?

The house we currently live in was never our forever home.  My husband bought it right before we met.  It is located in the middle of a somewhat crappy neighborhood on a busy road.  We have no privacy whatsoever.  We suspect that our new neighbors may be up to something illegal.  Our other neighbor decided to cut all her trees down that were providing some privacy.  So we had enough.

The real estate market in our area hasn't improved yet and trying to sell our house wasn't an option without losing money.  We were very fortunate to have someone in our family that needed to rent a house at the same moment we decided to move.  It couldn't have worked out better.  But, keeping our house did make it a little more complicated in buying another house.

I have been extremely busy lately.  I'm trying to get our current house ready for the renter.  Also, coming up with ideas for the new house is always on my mind.  I'm a little stressed.

    
We picked this house because of the privacy.  It has almost 5 acres.  You can't even see the house from the road.  It is surrounded by trees on all sides.  It is the complete opposite of the house we live in now.  It is only slightly bigger than our current house.  But, I thought the land surrounding the house was worth more than the extra square footage I could have got in another house.  We are so excited to get started with all the projects in this house and I can't wait to share all of it with you.

I am not going to disappear for another 5 months, I promise.  I hope you'll follow along with this new adventure in my life.

I'm linking up to: Life in Velvet, Carrie This Home,  

What I've Been Up To...The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Hello again everyone.  Boy, it has been a long time.  Sorry that I disappeared for like 5 months.  Life happens I guess.  You know how it is.

So what happened?  Where did I go?

Well, in September we did a lot of traveling.  In that month alone, we went to Ann Arbor Michigan, Cleveland Ohio, Indianapolis Indiana and Buffalo New York for various reasons.

Then, when we were done with all of that, I got a part time job at my sister-in-law's dog grooming business.  I went from not working a "regular job" to working 3 days a week which put a cramp on my decorating projects.

I did manage to start a dozen projects, but never felt like finishing them.  I don't like showing unfinished projects on the blog, but at this rate you may never see anything on my blog again.  So, I decided to show you the state of my house - The good, the bad and the ugly.  Please keep in mind that these are unfinished rooms.  The quality of the pictures aren't great because they are progress photos. 

Here we go...

The Good

The living room/dining room is almost finished.  I made a lot of progress in this room last year.  The biggest improvement was getting our new couch.

The black and white stripe feature wall shelves are mostly finished.  I have a few pieces of art to add and a couple of bookends to make.  It is coming together which is good.

The Bad

I changed our kitchen AGAIN.  I've added tons of color to the living room and I felt like the kitchen needed more color since it is right next to that room.  So on a whim, I painted our cabinets turquoise and pink but never finished them.

I was tired of the Asian theme in our bedroom and like the kitchen, I wanted to add more color to the room.  So on another whim, I decided to paint one wall a dark blue and then left it that way.  I'm not sure I like the blue and may go back to my original idea of painting the room black with pops of color in the accessories.

The Ugly

We did manage to start the deck on the front of our house, but sadly the hideous messed up siding is still there.  Priority number one for Spring.

Remember this picture of our bathroom.  It still looks like this, paint sample and all.  

Now, the floor is peeling up by the tub.  It just gets uglier and uglier.

The bathroom is priority number two.

The Dog's Room/Mud Room was safe from my spur of the moment changes, but I did add some things to the office and have plans to add a makeup station to that room.

Why haven't I finished all of these projects?

A few reasons... 

1. Being busy with life. 

2. The bitter cold/snowy weather in Ohio. 

3. Being burnt out from all the other projects I did last year.

The final reason (the biggest reason) I haven't wanted to finish projects is that in October I made a decision to become healthier.  I was tired of the way I looked and tired of being out of shape.  I realized that I had a milestone birthday coming up and I wanted to make a change for the better and get out of the funk I was in.  

I have already lost almost 20 pounds with more to go.  Losing weight awakened my love of fashion and makeup.  Because of that, I bought a new wardrobe and some new makeup and I feel so much better about myself.  I started posting my new outfits on lookbook and started posting on my fashion blog again (If you are into fashion and makeup, I hope that you will check out Punky Little DIYer).  

My 2014 blogging goals will be more focused on the fashion blog.  That doesn't mean I won't post on here.  I just won't post as often.  Maybe once or twice a week max.  However, I hope that you will stay subscribed and follow along because I do plan on finishing projects and can't wait to show you the reveals of all my rooms.

Thanks for letting me explain what has been going on and here is to a productive 2014.

Weekend Creativity Round Up {No. 6}

It is party time again.  Welcome to another Weekend Creativity Round Up.  If you are new around here, this is an opportunity to link up any projects you have been working on.  If you don't have anything to link up, that is OK, this is a great way to get inspiration for future projects as well.  

Don't forget to check out last week's awesome features here.

Some party rules:

*Please follow If It's Not Baroque in some fashion via Google Friend Connect, Email, or Bloglovin. 

*Please link to a specific post not just your blog

(Anything goes - home decor, recipes, crafts, etc. that is made by you)

*Link up as many projects as you want, old or new.  As long as you haven't linked it here before.

*Please do not link up giveaways, Etsy shops or other link parties.

*Please, please, please put a link back to my blog.  I am helping you get more exposure, please help me get some exposure. 

(use the button above or a text link)

*Please visit some of the other links and leave a few comments. 

Every week, I will pick a few of the links that I like the most and will feature them the day before the next party.

I can't wait to see what you all have been up to!

Round Up #5 Features

It is link party feature time.  My favorite time of the week.

Here are my favorites:

DIY Map Boxes by Craft Dictator

DIY Nursery Wall Art by Domestic Superhero

Dresser Makeover by Pneumatic Addict

Black and White Nightstand by With A Blast

If you have been featured, please grab my button. (You can find the button code in the tab above).

I will be pinning the features on my Pinterest page.  If you would like to pin something, please click through to the original source before pinning.  Thanks.

Thanks again to all who linked up last week.  Be sure to stop back tomorrow to link up your projects for a chance to be featured next week.