Texas House : Living Room

Our living room in this house feels a little bit bigger than our last, although if you'll remember, we had a pretty big one in our last house as well.

As a refresher, here's what the selling picture of our living room looked like :

I couldn't get the same exact angel (darn no wide angle lenses!), but here's what it looks like now from pretty much the same viewpoint :

All of our furniture kind of fit like a glove in this living room, with the exception of the rug.  I really wanted a larger area rug at the last house too, so I kept my eye out for one that I'd like that would fit into this space when we were in temporary living.  Serena and Lily had a 30% additional off sale price, and I found exactly what I wanted.

Everything else is pretty much the same, with the exception of that coffee table.  I had gotten the round one when Kalia started walking.  Our previous table (you can see it under the window in the first picture of the old house) I nick named the death table.  I love, love, love the look of it, but we obviously got it before Kalia came into the picture.  It is super not kid friendly!

We found this one on craigslist (along with almost all of our new bedroom furniture, stay tuned for that post!), and it has the same feel as the old one, but with rounded edges.  Perfection!  It is so nice to be able to set a few drinks or magazines or whatever on a flat surface without having the small circle to work with!

We left my pallet shelves screwed into the wall at the old place, so this bowl houses all of my magazines and coasters.

The fireplace wall is my favorite.  I love it so much.  The hidden TV behind those cabinet doors to the left, the fireplace itself, and the bookshelf (that looks sort of sparse, but that's what I've got to put in it for now!) make me so happy!!

I love all of the crown molding and big baseboards in this house as well.  The shutters, and all of the trim is a creamy off-white.  I love white trim, but I'm not re-painting it all in this house.  Not with the shutters matching the cream color.  Trim I'm up for, shutters?  Outside of my patience level!  It is growing on me though!

So what do you guys think of our living room?  It does feel pretty homey to us since this was our basic setup for the last 5 years!

Hope everyone is having a great week!

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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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House Tour : Out With The Old, In With The New

I have promised you guys a full house tour for awhile, and I'm finally going to deliver on it.

Even though this house is no longer mine.  We closed on it at the end of April.

To make a long story short, Chris accepted a job out in Dallas, TX, so for the first time in our whole lives we are no longer Floridians.  We were actually officially homeless for the first time since college!  We lived in corporate housing for a little over a month, and closed on a beautiful new home in McKinney, TX at the end of May.

Our house wasn't even on the market for a week before we were under contract for 99% of our asking price after receiving multiple offers.  We closed in less than 6 weeks.  Happy happy joy joy dance plus lots of mayhem and tears and hugs and yay's all around.  It's been a whirlwind of a few months to say the least!

Onto the Tour!

The Back Yard.  We didn't sod all the way down to the back, so it looks a little barren in this picture.  The new sod that we laid a year ago has started spreading and filling in the dead areas though.  Hopefully that'll continue on for the new owners!

The in-law suite bathroom.  We didn't really do much in here...

Kalia's bathroom.  We painted the walls, took out the old shower door, painted the cabinets, and faux painted the countertop.

The in-law suite bedroom.  I wish I had before pictures to go along with this, but I was in panic mode to get it done.  This room used to be Barney purple...blah!  I painted it Moonshine by Benjamin Moore and painted all of the trim white.

Kalia's room.  Ah, this was such a labor of love...I'm not gonna lie,  I cried the last time I walked through here.  We completely gutted this room and pretty much built everything that went into it.  I replicated this as closely as possible in the new home.  I really loved everything about it!

The daybed room.  This room used to have two daybeds in it, but I moved one into Kalia's room, and then into her playroom.  Chris installed the floors one weekend before we listed it.  It's the same floors we installed in Kalia's room.

The front door and the dining room. 

We hung up mirrors that went to the dresser in the in-law suite, and I painted little shelves and put fresh flowers in there for showings.

The exterior of the front door with the hanging pendant that we installed.

Our living room.  I painted the back of those book shelves along the wall and really loved how it turned out.  All of this trim was an off-white too, so I painted that all shiny white as well.

I also did that key art and those pallet shelves...

and made the Hart sign, and hung the ski's in an x with pictures of Chris and I from our snowboarding adventures.  I'm glad that my 'stuff' gets to stay with us!  I am happy to report that almost all of it fits in perfectly at the new home.

Here's a few of the front of the house, which we re-painted once Kalia got here.

We had to leave the Gator flag.  It was actually a part of the negotiations!

Moving back to the inside...the kitchen.  Oh, how I loved that kitchen.  I pretty much did nada here.  It was the huge huge selling point when we bought the house.

Kalia's playroom.  This room evolved quite a bit since she arrived.  The pictures over the daybed are just black fabric with a picture of her from every week for her first year.  It's amazing how quickly she changed!!  I painted the chalk wall, built and painted the ledges, and then added a family picture wall above the ledges.  Both Kalia and I miss the chalk wall.  If I'm being 100% honest, I don't miss the dust though!

The entry to the Master Bathroom from our bedroom, or the vanity area.  I painted this area twice, did all of the trim white, and we took off the closet doors and spray painted them to get rid of the yucky gold color.

Last time you saw our Master Bath, it was the light blue color.  I painted it gray (moonshine by benjamin moore, my favorite light gray color to go to) because I felt it was more calm and would appeal to a larger audience.

Next up, our Master Bedroom.  I re-did that trunk that my parents gave me and added my sewing machine cabinet that I also re-did to finish out the space.  We've upgraded furniture at the new house, so I can't wait to share what our room looks like now.

Here's a picture of the office.  This room also got painted, and we took out the built-ins, sanded them down, and re-stained them.  They were a blonde honey color before.  I also painted the back of them to make our things pop.

This is the office bath that Chris and I completely gutted and re-did just days before listing the house.  There was striped wall paper and an old toilet, laminate vanity, and builder grade mirror in here.  For such a little room, it required a ton of work, but the difference was amazing.  As you can imagine, we were in a rush, so just use your imagination for the before pictures!

And last, but most certainly not least, the pool deck.  Oh pool, how I miss you.  Our new home does not have one.  I think we'll wind up putting one in, but that yard and that pool were irreplaceable!  

This house and our old neighborhood and our old state, ha, were so hard to leave, but we had to do what was right for our family.  As soon as I quit my job, Chris put out his resume, which is why things got so scattered here on the blog.  Balancing a baby plus Chris interviewing and making up his time with his old job and trying to get house projects done during naptimes and bedtimes because I knew the move was coming was quite a bit challenging.

I'm hoping that I can come back here and share projects and our lives with the four of you that still read this blog (hey 'rents!!).  I'm still working on finishing up getting the last of the things unpacked...like my sewing machine...yuck!!

In personal news, my little girl turned two last month.  Crazy how time flies.  Here's a picture of Kalia jumping on her big gift on her second birthday.  We're still a little hair challenged!!

Hope everyone is doing well!

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