Our new house!

Hey!

It has been so long since I have blogged. Almost a year! Not like I was ever a "blogger" but I did enjoy it and sharing our journey. Over the last year, I had various ideas for blogging ...recipes../some good finds, ideas, decorating, etc but then the excitement about the idea of writing a post wore off and then it just never happened. But, you can make time for anything that is important to you, right? So, here goes. I thought I would give it a whirl again and set a goal for the upcoming year and blog at least once a week. So many sweet friends and people I have never even met have reached out to me with sweet words of encouragement....so here I go!!  I hope you will join me on this journey.

So, we are beginning our next adventure. A little bit about me. I am a Virginia girl born and raised until I moved to California when I was 24. I lived in the same beautiful brick house for almost 20 years that my parents built. My parents ended up selling that house and building another house when I was 19 and they are still there today. So, my mom, and some of my friends always wonder why do I like to move so much since my childhood was very stable?! I am not sure how to answer that besides the fact that I love remodeling, enjoy change, and maybe we have not found what we were looking for yet. I did believe this last house was our forever house though. This will be our 4th move in 11 years!! Well, we have been living in a fairly rural part of San Diego but still somewhat close to the beaches restaurants, etc. And, as much as I am a country girl at heart, we realized we missed the coastal lifestyle where we can walk and bike to the beach and restaurants and have an active lifestyle. And a little less house and yard to maintain. So, we put our house on the market in May and closed on it almost 2 months ago. So, here goes our next adventure. And for the record, I think this is our forever house. But, never say never, right?!The Buyers are the sweetest family and are so gracious and allowed us to rent back for 3 months.  This allowed us to find a home and start the remodeling process. We were in escrow on another home but had to cancel because the inspections turned up a lot of deep issues...I will save that for another blog post.  I am not sure if our house will be ready January 7th which is when we need to be out of our house.  Well, I know it will not but we hope it is somewhat livable:)

I wanted to give you a quick tour and show you where we are presently:

Here are a few photos of what the house looked like in the MLS:

Nothing terrible...just a little dated and dirty carpet and tile, etc. But, one of the first things we had to tackle was building a proper staircase.  The spiral staircase is not our style..ha ha and it could be very dangerous among other things. So, that went bye bye.  We were going to salvage the kitchen cabinets but the closer we looked, they were in bad shape and we were tweaking so many things (i.e. there was not a dishwasher near the sink?) therefore we all ended up deciding that we could justify taking them out and replacing.  BYE BYE Budget!! A couple other things that we are dealing with...we were going to salvage the master bathroom. It had decent white tile.  But again, and after taking a closer look..it was pretty dirty, the shower was too small and the old Jacuzzi tub had broken jets, etc..  There was no way to get out the tub without messing up the tile. So, we demoed the master bathroom. We were able to save the cabinets...we are refacing them. I am so glad we made the decision because when we ripped out the shower there was a ton of dry rot that we think was caused from a window that was not properly sealed.  We ended up taking out the shower window and replacing all the wood. Another issue..a wall that we wanted to take down to open up a stairwell on the other side of the house..turned out to be a shear wall.  Now, we are dealing with an engineer to figure it all out!!

We have 5 weeks until move in and this is where we are...well these photos are from about a week ago.  Everything has been cleaned up...we are awaiting a couple more construction projects..opening up that wall and completing the framing of the master bath and then we are ready for some pretty stuff finally!!

Everything will be painted white, black front door, lanterns and barn lights, new driveway, new roof, and add some stone

 

Hardwood floors throughout and white brick on the double sided fireplace, paint everything white, beams and boards on the ceiling...these pictures were obviously taken out night so they are not great

 

 

Stairwell built..just need drywall at this point and railings will come later

 

 

Will be doing new subfloor in here to even it all out, drywall repairs and paint, cabinets will be installed the week of December 15th

 

 

Bathrooms framed out

 

Master bedroom...added a wall for the bed and a walk in closet..we were thinking about putting it against the windows but then you cannot see the view which is why we bought the house!!

 

So, let's take a look at some pretty stuff and the direction that we are taking the house!!

 

All white exterior with a dark gray roof and some black accents..would love copper gutters...

 

 

White brick fireplace

 

Lighter oak floors

 

 

Obsessed with basket lights!

 

Beautiful tile from Cle Tile

This is for the upstairs den fireplace

Below tile is for the kiddos' shared bath floor and shower pan...Cement Tile Shop

 

 

 

Obsessed with Watermark plumbing fixtures in brass and black

 

Beautiful lighting from Studio McGee...swoon!!

 

 

 Ceiling inspo..so good via One King's Lane!

 

  Built in inspo via Amber Interiors

 

Kiddos bath inspo..black and brass for the win!

 

Master bath inspo

 

Overall vibe inspo via Kate Mark Interiors

 

 

Thanks for checking it out!!  There is a lot going on.  I will be updating the blog often and going room by room with design plans and progress!! Hope you will join me on this adventure...would love to know your thoughts!!  And, do you think we will be in January 7th..ha ha? xo, Paige