Home Sweet Home {Part 4 - Living Room}

Welcome to Part 4 of 8 of our little home tour. You can find Part 1 - Kitchen; here. Part 2 - Dining Room; here and Part 3 - Playroom; here.

Here is our little living room. Directly off both the dining room and kitchen, it isn't used much during the day, but at night it's where the boy and I put our feet up at the end of the day and spend our quiet nights together, chatting quietly, catching up on our favourite shows and unwinding.
As far as renovations go, we didn't do much in this room. We painted the walls before we moved in so we'd have a room that felt like ours while everything else was happening in the house. (I strongly reccommend doing this to any prospective renovaters.. You need a space to relax and get away from the mess of the house if you're going to be living in chaos!!) We replaced the trim & baseboards along the way and added new light fixtures, but that's pretty much it. Later this year we'll be replacing the 7 foot window with something that actually keeps the weather out and once the littlest one has grown a bit, it will be time for some new furniture.
Speaking of the littlest one, he takes up quite a bit of the living room right now, sure, there is a playroom.. but we like him being a little closer what with being a baby and all. :) I'm not sure why we felt the need to make a playspace for him though, since all he really does is stand and cruise along the furniture and make mad dashes for the stairs - which are finally gated... and the coffee table has been removed for the time being.
So, the living room is a mish mash of furniture and pieces and things that we've collected along the way. It's comfortable, it's a place to relax. It is well-used and well-loved.

Home Sweet Home {Part 3 - Playroom}

Welcome to Part 3 of 8 of our little home tour. You can find Part 1 - Kitchen; here. and Part 2 - Dining Room; here.
As I've mentioned before, our home is very, very old and thus doesn't have a basement useable for much other than storage that doesn't mind getting a little damp. It was important to us while house house shopping, that the kids get a little space to themselves. The baby has a small corner to call his own in the living room, currently, but when he gets a little older, we'll move his things into the playroom as well.
I'll admit, while I would love to have a basement/rec room type thing one day, it is nice having the kids on the same level as us for the time being.
The playroom used to be alot bigger.. way too big as far as I'm concerned, but we remedied that by building a bigger room for Ms. Hailey as the very end, a room with a closet, something that the smaller bedrooms upstairs don't have (but we'll get to that later!). So with the new wall came new floors (there was only a painted plywood sub-floor when we moved in) and we downsized alot of the junk that the kids had outgrown. During the winter months, the playroom gets alot of mileage and I'm grateful that the kids have a place for their things that they can call theirs..
Here are some before and afters. The room is right off the kitchen, and the white door belongs to Hailey, while the wooden pocket doors leads to the workshop/laundry room. The first picture with Hailey in the rocker is what the room looked like when we bought the house, the 3 following are what it looked like when it was filled with their things and the last set are what it looks like in it's current state. Enjoy!

Home Sweet Home {Part Two - Dining Room}

Welcome to Part 2 of 8 of our little home tour. You can find Part 1 - Kitchen; here.

Our dining room might be one of my least favourite rooms in the house. That's not to say that I don't like it, per se, but it just is not one of my favourites. Mainly because it doesn't really get used more than once or twice a year, and is just a room with things in it that I have to clean. Har, har.
A small corner of the room has been dedicated to being Rob's little office space for about a year and a half. He recently moved his things into it, once we were finished renovating, and since the man is so often strapped to his desk, it's nice having him on the same level as us.
While it isn't my favourite, it is the most rewarding to look at.. Oh man. The dining room was A HOT DAMN MESS when we bought this house. There was old, weird, pasted-on wallpaper, a false brick wall, the stairs were bare cedar, the walls were in dire need of repair, it just was no the prettiest thing you've ever seen. As far as furniture, we didn't buy anything new for this room. There's a table that needs refinishing, an enormous (and heavy) china cabinet that houses a bunch of crap, a beautiful teacher's desk that I picked up at an auction for Rob (which he promptly refinished- and did a beautiful job) some paintings from a local shop that imports from indonesia, an antique record player (again from the auction) which is used for photos and will one day be a liquor cabinet, a cedar chest full of blankets (hello 1700's house with no storage closets..) and my late father's guitar.
In case you can't tell, I have a hard time deviating from brown when it comes to painting.. and as you continue to see into our home, you'll start to notice the trend continuing through much of the house. I'd love to experiment with different colours, but all of our things are so earthy and country, I have a hard time pulling things together without brown walls.
Anyway, without further delay, I present to you Rob's office, part time dining room. I've included a few before pictures of the disaster for your viewing pleasure.
Enjoy!

Home Sweet Home {Part One- Kitchen}

Welcome to part one of eight of our home tour.
Why am I doing a tour of our home? Well, for a few reasons.

First, I am proud of our home. It is the first house that Rob and I bought, and unless our life takes some kind of unexpected turn, I think we will spend many years in this house, raising our family and creating memories. This house was a hot damn mess when we bought it. Run down, dirty, infested with mice, just to name a few turn offs. It had gone unloved and uncared for, probably for twenty years and we had to work our butts off to get it to a place where we felt comfortable.. and three years later, we are just getting there. We haven't spent mass-amounts of money updating and renovating, nor have we thrown our money at contracters to have them breathe life into the house, but instead we have taken our time and used our own skills and resources to make this house our own. We have learned alot along the way, and most things we did together.
Our home is not the newest (in fact it is over 130 years old..) it doesn't have the latest or the best countertops or floors and it is as crooked as can be, but it is ours.
Secondly, I like peeking into other people's lives.. so here's a little peek into mine.
Part One- Kitchen
The kitchen is the gathering place in our home. Not only is it the first thing you see when you walk in beyond the mud room, it is the largest room in the house (with the most seating). When we were shopping for houses, we had a very small wishlist. One of my hopes for my new kitchen would be at least one window that faced the backyard, so that I could watch the kids play while I did my houeswifely duties (har har). Obviously, this wouldn't make or break the deal for me, but it sure would have been nice. Well, when I walked into this house for the first time, a wall of windows with a walkout patio door right into the backyard stared right back at me. Perfect.This room is always busy. directly off of it are two main entrances, a bathroom and a playroom, and it's also the only way to the rest of the house from the entrance. (Unless you used the front door but who does that?)