One year later- Before and After

 Exactly one year ago today my sweet hubby and I closed on our first home! I seriously can't believe its been a whole year, it has flown by! Ironically enough, we also started working on (and almost completing) the final room in our house this week, the nursery. Its taken a year but every room in our house has paint, curtains, and furniture! We still have some bigger projects we hope to complete one day (the kitchen, floors on the main level, backyard, etc) but all of those are put on hold for the moment until after baby girl arrives and after we make a trip back to Australia to visit family. So, for the most part most of the rooms in our house are complete, other than a piece or two of furniture, some light fixtures here and there and some blinds in a few rooms. We have done so much in a year I really can't believe it. When I say we, I mean mostly my hubby! He has spent countless hours painting and working on the house. I've done my part too with the help of my momma, but he certainly has done most of the "heavy lifting"! Its crazy to think that 18 months ago we moved back to the US with all our belongings in 4 suitcases, lived in a tiny one bedroom apartment and now we have a house complete with furniture and all!

This week was my spring break so my mom was here helping me do some spring cleaning and organizing, as well as work in the nursery. I can't believe after only living in our house for a year we've accumulated junk that needed to be cleaned out, but we had! We also got a lot done in the nursery, finally! I've been so impatient to get started working in that room so it was fun to finally be able to see our vision come together. That room is still a work in progress and should hopefully be complete in about 2 weeks.

So enough small talk, here are the before and after pictures of our DIY dream home...a year later! (I apologize for the poor quality, half were taken with my iphone, which I love dearly but it doesn't compare to a real camera!)

Dining Room- Before

Dining Room- After

This room was a big job mostly because of the wallpaper. We changed out the light fixture, curtains and of course paint. We still need to order and install the blinds for this room and my hubby is going to build me a buffet/cabinet one day we'll change out the floors, but for now its done.

Downstairs Den- Before

 Downstairs Den- After

This room was probably one of the biggest changes and challenges! We hated the wood paneling so we knew we would paint it, but I had the hardest time being able to see it. The whole room was painted, beams, shelves and everything! It is painted the same color as the dining room. Its a cream color with a hint of yellow (this photo does not do it justice!) I believe it is called Napery from Sherwin Williams. We wanted clean, warm colors in our house and this one looks great in this room! The only projects left in this room is to order and install the blinds and paint the back doors (not pictured). 

Living Room- Before (from front door)

 Living Room- After (from front door)

We didn't have to do a lot of work in this room other than painting and adding blinds/curtains. We went with accessible beige from Sherwin Williams on the walls. We will change out the floors one day after baby girl destroys them :) This is going to be our family room or play room for the kiddos or at least that is what we are planning on. Its on the main level with the kitchen and dining room so we can easily block off the stairs with baby gates to keep the kids contained. We tried to think kid friendly when picking out things for this room and arranging it. My hubby is going to build a shelf that will go opposite the couch that will be more storage for kid stuff and we'll mount a TV above it one day. 

Living Room- Before (from dining room)

Living Room- After (from dining room)

Same room, just a different angle. This room is ridiculous long and a little on the narrow side. It took a while to figure out the best way to arrange it. Yes, we have a wall of clocks. One is set to local time, another is set to Australian time and one doesn't have batteries in it :) It seems silly to have a clock set to  different times, but it sure it helpful sometimes when we're trying to work out a time to Skype with family overseas! 

Kitchen-Before

Kitchen- After

Kitchen Eat in- Before

Kitchen Eat in- After

Kitchen- Before

Kitchen- After

We still have quite a bit of work to do in the kitchen. All we did after moving in was paint (we're doing grey, yellow and white, the grey is useful grey from SW) and added a refrigerator. We plan to put hardwoods in (the whole main level), refinish the cabinets to be white, change out the appliances and backsplash/counter tops, light fixtures, etc. So, this is no where near complete yet, but it is livable for now! 

Master Bedroom- Before

Master Bedroom- After

Once again, I feel like my little iphone camera doesn't do any justice to the colors in the room, but oh well. This room just needed paint, a new ceiling fan and some blinds. Thankfully they had put all new carpet in before we bought the place. This is one of my favorite rooms in the house. The walls are a pale sea green (called livable green by SW) and our bedding we found at Pottery Barn had the exact colors we wanted. We really wanted a simple, peaceful bedroom and I think we got it! I opted for shelves instead of bedside tables, as much as I love tables I always clutter them up for some reason, so shelves seemed to be a little more practical, plus we don't have a headboard, so with the shelvers and wall lamps I wanted to create some sort of headboard wall without actually putting in a headboard.

Guest Room- Before

Guest Room- After

This room was another easy room to work on, just needed paint, blinds and a ceiling fan. The walls are the same beige as the living room (accessible beige from SW). This is kind of our catch all room. There really isn't a theme or anything. The furniture is mix matched, some of it was my childhood furniture my parents gave us. The bedding is blues, beige and grey that we got as a wedding present, but since we switched to a king size bed we couldn't use it in our room anymore. And this is the only room in the house that is allowed to have red. When I was living on my own several years ago, I loved red! My apartment had tons of red decor. Well, hubby was not a fan of red...so this is the only room in our house that you can find some of my old "red" decor items. Its also the room that has a lot of my artwork from Europe and other places I traveled before getting married. So, its kind of our mix matched guest room, but I love it. 

So, there you have it a before and after of most of our house, a year later. The only room I did not include is our nursery. We have about two more weeks until that room is complete and I think it deserves its own post. It may not look like we did a lot in a year, but we really did. We've been on a tight budget, but we've been able to create the perfect, simple, peaceful home that we both wanted. I still can't believe it is ours and can't wait to bring our baby girl home to our DIY dream home in a few months!