New House Pictures : Texas

As promised, here's my actual house tour.  I haven't gone around and taken room to room pictures of the house yet, so these pictures are the listing pictures of the home.  I will soon though, there's so much more to see (and the house has so much more life to it with our stuff in it - Kalia and Kodi help :-)).

The front.  This picture was taken when it was still coolish outside (seasons...weird...), so everything has greened up quite a bit.

A huge selling feature of this house was this gate.  Behind the gate, off to the side of the garage, is a big courtyard area with a super nice basketball net.  We love to close the gate and all play basketball (including Kodi and Kalia!) and not worry about either one of them running into the street.  The street is pretty quiet, but they're both a little crazy, so better safe than sorry!

The living room.  I love that fireplace.  And the TV goes inside of that closed cabinet.  We still don't allow Kalia to watch TV yet (with the exception of college football - Go Gators!!), so this is a great "outta sight, outta mind" solution for us!

This is the view from the other side of the fireplace, looking into the kitchen and breakfast nook area.

Here is the kitchen.  It already isn't this color paint on the walls anymore.  It was too busy for me.  Chris came home to the kitchen being painted and said he knew I wouldn't last a month with it that way!  I'll share before and after pictures soon!

I do love how big it is, we were used to a large kitchen in our old home, and this is very comparable.  I have visions of putting a vent hood over the stove...it feels like it got dressed and forgot to put on it's pants to me, and I also am tinkering with the idea of tearing out the drawers on the left side of the above picture and moving the whole thing back so our stools can fit all the way underneath the island.  We eat there a lot, I'm not sure why it was designed that way!

I also want to put new handles on the cabinets.  While I don't absolutely love the color of the cabinets, I have zero intentions to paint them.  I'd love to maybe stain them a little bit darker, but I doubt that'll ever come to fruition either!  I'm probably the only one in the whole blogging world who doesn't want to turn their kitchen cabinets white.  I wonder if wood cabinets will become the "so 2000" thing.  Like gold hardware is the so 90's thing...

The kitchen window overlooks the basketball courtyard area and I love it.  Most mornings there are rabbits and about a guzillion birds hanging out in there.  The entire house has plantation shutters on it too, which we absolutely love.  I do love the warmth and texture that curtains bring in, but there is no way I'm doubling up every window here...too expensive!

Here's another view of the breakfast nook...which also is no longer painted that color.

And the butlers pantry.  Not sure why it's called that.  I wish a butler would've came with the house, that would've been awesome!

Next up is the office and the office bath.  It's technically a downstairs bedroom.  There's a full walk-in closet and a full bath attached to it.  The coffered ceiling is amazing.  While I do love the look of painted coffered ceilings, that is an arm workout that I'm not willing to do anytime soon.  It works as is for now!

This is the formal living room, which is what we're using for Kalia's downstairs playroom.  Do people who have formal living rooms ever actually use them?  It's what you see right when you walk in, which generally isn't the most ideal for a playroom, but I don't mind it!

This is the formal dining room.  We put our table the opposite way which opens the room up a lot more.

Here's the entry way.  The door to the left is to the office.  I don't love that the stairs and the whole upstairs is carpeted, but I will admit that it's nice for Kalia's little knees to play on.  

Chris might come home to find that I've ripped out the stair carpet one day though.  I hate it.  I hate vacuuming it!  The rails are really nice though!  I would actually be okay with carpet upstairs if I could just replace the carpet on the stairs!  Someday...

This is the only half bath in the house, and it's off of that butlers pantry area near the kitchen.  It has a future date with my paintbrush as well.

The Master Bedroom.  I love all the windows!

The master bathroom...which also has a future date with my paintbrush...

...and the view from the other side.  We have a giant closet that is through the door in the above picture.  Everything is bigger in Texas.  We tried to find a 'reasonable' sized house.  It didn't exist...

This is what you walk into once you get up the stairs.  We use it as Kalia's upstairs playroom, and keep her more mellow toys up there for wind down time before going to bed.  Both daybeds are in here.  There is a set of doors that closes this whole upstairs off, which was also a huge selling feature.  Someone can knock at the door, Kodi can bark, we can cook, clean, yell, sing, whatever we want to while Kalia is sleeping and she can't hear us.  I cannot even begin to tell you how freeing that feels!  Her bedroom is through the door that you see in the picture below.

One of the two guest rooms.  This will eventually become baby #2's room ... you know, when Kalia gets old enough to babysit him/her....

Onto the outside.  This is our back little porch.

A view of the yard...

...which is obviously missing our pool.  There's room for one, and I do think we'll add one.  After having one at our last house, we've been spoiled by it!  We could buy the house or the pool, but not both, so we chose a house that felt like "home" to us and we'll save for the pool.  There are a few great community pools less than a mile away, so we've been hitting those up A LOT since we've been here!

So that's it!  Our Texas home.  What do you guys think?!  We've been busy busy busy putting our stamp on it, so I'll be back next week with some posts to share!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!  Happy Friday!

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