Home Tour- Front, Entryway & Dining Room

I fell in love with our house as soon as we walked up to the front porch with our Realtor.  I loved the layout and all the space it offered.  We were used to a small 2 bedroom apartment, so the 4 bedroom house seemed like a mansion!  It was in desperate need of a face-lift, but Adam and I could see beyond the lace curtains and wallpaper.  

Making the house our home has brought me lots of joy.  I loved picking out paint colors and finding the right furniture and decor for each room.  We were lucky enough to have a few months to spend fixing it up before we moved in.  We were able to make a huge mess and then go to our apartment to get away from it all.  

Here's part one of our home tour:

Front

This picture was taken the day that we closed on our house:

We haven't done a whole lot to change up how the front of our house looks, but we have made some improvements:
-Had a sprinkler system installed
-Had the driveway mud-jacked
-Bought some patio furniture
-Added solar lights
-Got rid of the dogwood tree that was planted way too close to the house (The tree actually just fell down all by itself.  I woke up one morning and went outside to go for a walk.  As soon as I opened the front door, I noticed a tree on top of my car.  It had somehow just fallen down.  There weren't even any roots on the bottom of the tree!  It was as if the previous owners just cut off a tree at the base and stuck it in the ground.  Luckily, it was a pretty small tree so it didn't damage my car, but that was quite a sight to see.  I do believe I just stood and stared at the tree for awhile, trying to figure out what to do with it.  Adam was out of town, so I just drug it into the front yard and left it there for Adam to tend to when he returned.  At least that solved the problem of the tree being too close to the house.)

Here's our front porch today:

We have plans to get a new front door and paint it a fun color.  We'd also like to either repaint or replace the shutters.  Eventually we're going to redo the posts and railings, but that might be a ways away.  

Entryway

Here's how our entryway looked when we closed, complete with ugly tile, an ugly light fixture and ugly wallpaper.

We made some major changes in this tiny space:
-Removed the tile (This required renting a jackhammer and using it inside our house.)
-Had hardwood flooring installed
-Removed the wallpaper (My least favorite job of all the jobs we've tackled in our house.)
-Painted the walls (Can't remember the paint color.)
-Added artwork and a mirror to the walls.
-Added a small entryway table (We bought this table on Craigslist and refinished it.)
-Switched out the ugly light fixture with the light fixture that was crammed above our sink.  It fits much better in this space.  

Here's our entryway today:

Dining Room

This is what our dining room used to look like:

Here's what we've changed up:
-Had hardwood flooring installed
-Replaced the light fixture
-Painted the walls (Behr's Blue Agave)
-Added a wedding photograph
-Added a new pub-height table
-Installed new blinds (Don't look too closely or you'll see all the extra holes I drilled in the window frame trying to install them myself.)
-Hung a new curtain rod and curtains

Here it is now:

More of the home tour to come later!