Last October Dustin and I purchased our forever home nestled amidst mature trees on an acre and a half at the top of a mountain in Southern Indiana. If you've been following along you know it hasn't been an easy journey to get here, but we are so thankful that we've finally found a place that we can call home, plant some roots, and raise our family. When finding our home we were both very focused on location, schools, what the scene was out our backdoor (in other words, we wanted space and beautiful scenery instead of looking into our neighbors' windows), and the bones, structure, and space in the house. We figured no matter what we purchased, we'd want to change some things it to make it our own. So we focused more on the comfortability of the space the house already had as opposed to walking in and thinking about which walls we wanted to move. We also didn't want something that didn't require any updates as we quite enjoy house projects.
Now that we've finally moved in, made it through the winter holidays, and are starting to settle down, we've made a punch list of all of the things we want to accomplish with our home. While Dustin and I typically move fast with home updates, we're slowing down with this one. Instead of constantly having the thought of, "When we sell, are we going to get our money back out of this improvement?" we've changed our mindset to, "What is going to make us and our children feel comfortable and at home here? What changes do we want to make that will satisfy our needs for the long haul?"
Admittedly I'm not the best when it comes to before and after pictures of projects we've completed, so I'm starting a new little series on the blog documenting the progress of our home updates as we go along. I have a few friends who always ask where we get certain items so I'll link out to those as I can.
Welcome to our first little installation - the living room built-ins.
At the very top of the "to update" list was the living room. For us the space was not very functional. We had one long wall with a hole for a gas fireplace adorned with a tiny oak mantle from the 80s and a LOT of empty space. Not to mention the dijon mustard color on the walls. Our focus was to lighten up the color and keep the space open and airy while also adding function and storage.
One of my favorite living room features is shelving and cabinet storage. We didn't realize how necessary storage was until Forester started crawling at our last home. He'd get toys out, would move them all over the room, and at the end of the day we didn't have a great place to tuck everything away yet keep it convenient. Are you surprised we added a built-in in our last home too?
In February we scheduled for the trim carpenters to come out and add two built-ins to either side of the fireplace as well as remove the old mantle and replace with a shaker style, more modern mantle that had clean lines. The painters updated the wall color and color-matched the existing trim to cover our built-ins. We requested poplar wood for the countertops and stained them to break up the white a bit and add some warmth. We finished it off with my very favorite brass pulls. I still have lots of decorating to do, artwork to hang, bookshelves to style and furniture to be purchased but we're well on our way.
I'm hoping to have the living room furnished and complete by mid-Spring, so that's the next focus. In the meantime we're still working on small projects around the house: moving our washer and dryer, replacing wall outlets throughout the house, fixing the doorbell etc. The list is never-ending!
[This is the only before picture I had - it's from the original listing. But you get the gist.]
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