Join Me On A Tour, Won't You?...

Remember when I mentioned we bought a house? And remember when I said my husband bought me a new camera? Let's combine the two and get a fun little tour brought to you by yours truly!

But first, a little back history. Jake and I have been searching for a house since before we were even married. We knew we would be stuck in Pocatello for some time while Jake finished school. And the thought of throwing away all of our money into rental properties just made us angry. Se we house hunted. Turns out, our price range offered less than perfect options. So we pushed buying a home off for a while.

Then we decided, "What the hay! Let's buy a crappy home in our budget and fix it to our liking". So we did. 

The home we settled on was a foreclosure which basically means the last owners left us with a fun little mess of a house. Our home has a lot of potential but it will take us a while before it gains my complete stamp of approval. But I am so excited to finally have a "home" with my cute husband and we have so much fun making decisions on how we want to fix it up. 

Okay. Enough rambling. Picture time. And I really mean "overload of picture" time. 

Here is the front of the house in all its glory. [yep, you better believe I am going to include useless captions after every picture]. Soon this beauty will have a new garage door and a new paint job that will resemble this [green just isn't my color]....

via 

Opinions?

Oh, you noticed the absence of grass? Yah, me too.  Because, believe me, the whole "weed lawn" just really isn't cutting it for me. Speaking of cutting, this big tree will soon disappear as well. Funny story by the way. We called for a quote to cut it down. Then decided we would do it ourselves. Well the company we called for the quote took it upon themselves to decide to cut the tree down without permission from us. Luckily Jake was there to save the day. Or unlucky. I would have loved to ask them who gave them permission to cut it down AFTER it was gone and then refuse to pay the bill. So Christian-like of me, I know. 

Speaking of "weed lawn", check out our backyard. Oh. My. Goodness. It's like the owners just decided, "Hey, grass is for losers. Let's forget about watering it! And while we're at it, ignore the trees too! They look better dead!".  Believe it or not, this is ten times better than when we first bought the house less than two weeks ago. Jake and his heaven-sent parents have been working their little hiney's off back here. Our goal is to build a fancy fence around the whole property and plant grass. 

And the past owners were even so kind as to leave a grave for us to use. Watch out Jake. You annoy me, you get buried. 

Here is a lovely panoramic view of the backyard in all its glory. Heavenly.

Welcome to the beautiful kitchen. Well, soon to be beautiful kitchen.

Here it is with the one coat of primer I finished last night. We also got rid of the ugly ceiling fans and will replace pretty much all the lighting in the entire house. We are also getting shiny new stainless steel appliances and we hope to either replace the counter tops or try out this new technique of painting that makes it look like granite. The white on white is not cutting it for me. We are also adding knobs and cup pulls to the cabinet doors.

The sliding glass door goes out to this lovely deck. I am hoping to sand off all of the green [what was the past owner's obsession with green?] and stain it instead. There is also a lower deck that we will stain as well. 

Say "hi" to Jake! 

Welcome to the construction zone. Er, I mean living room. This room will pretty much stay the same [minus the mess] except we are going to replace the ugly baseboard heater with a Cadet instead. I am also going to paint the banister white. And maybe get new curtains. What? You don't like the sheet?

This is Jake and I's bedroom with a freshly painted ceiling [thanks Kimmy!] and a new fan. We will also get rid of the baseboard in here too. 

And this is the baby's room. Besides the freshly painted ceilings [again, thanks Kimmy!] any redecorating will wait until we know if we have a little girl or a little boy growing inside of me. Oh, did I forget to mention we're pregnant? Oops. My bad. Surprise, I guess. More on this later...

Upstairs bathroom. One word. Yuck. This will go through a major renovation. New lighting, new mirror, new vanity [or I might refinish this one...I haven't decided yet]. This is also one of the rooms I want to paint right away. Any suggestions?

This the the split entry front door. We don't love this aspect of the house but hey, we weren't looking for our dream house just yet. Like I said, the banister will be painted along with the missing handrail. We are also replacing the front door. And see that little track lighting there above our stop sign window? It will be replaced with a hanging light of some sort. 

This is the opposite side of the split entry. It kind of looks like it heads into a dungeon but I promise it is just a bad picture. The handrail will also be painted. 

Downstairs bathroom. We replaced both toilets the day we bought the house. I insisted. Something about using the past owner's toilets just freaked me out. You think the bathroom doesn't need much renovations, right?

Wrong. Whoever installed this mirror and lights really needs a lesson on centering. We are replacing everything in this bathroom too. 

This is the downstairs construction site a.k.a the guest bedroom. We had a wonderful leak in this room two days after we bought the house. Luckily we were able to fix the problem but the whole room will need to be repainted. I haven't decided on a color though. Speaking of repainting, all of the ugly brown doors throughout the house will be painted white. 

And last but not least, the downstairs living room. This room had a freshly painted ceiling [one last thank you to Kimmy] and will soon have the new ceiling fan actually attached.

And this concludes our lovely tour for now. I am sure you got way more than you bargained for. Stay in touch for updated pictures. Jake insists the kitchen has to be completely done before we can actually move in so feel free to come on over and paint some cabinets! We will let you know our move in date as well so you can come move us in, kay? Thanks! 

P.S. Do you sorta feel like I left you hanging on the whole baby thing? Great. That was my plan!