The Before [welcome to 1981]

We sold our first house in August and just closed on our new, much larger house yesterday! We're most excited to have a huge yard and such a nice neighborhood with lots of other families and kids. We are not so happy that the house has not been updated since it was built in 1981 though. It was very well built and well maintained so it has that going for it. I will say that the style house is far from the classic farmhouse that I love [our first house was an 1890 farmhouse], but I'm looking forward to an open floor plan with tv and toys being downstairs.

We're doing all of the work ourselves [and by ourselves I mean Tom mostly] and although we're doing it as cheap as possible we also don't want it to look cheap. We did upgrade the cabinets and the countertops [but kitchens sell and this is not our forever home] but Tom will be installing the cabinets and we're doing butcher block countertop on the island to almost even out the cost if we had done solid from Home Depot on the entire kitchen. We also went with a cheaper hardwood floor even though hickory is actually harder than maple and we used Lumber Liquidators to keep the cost even lower.

We'll be installing floors, painting every wall and remodeling the kitchen within the first 1.5-2 months of moving in. The rest [like the blue bathroom and puky master bath] will be done as we have time/money over the next few years.

And what you've all been waiting for, the before...

We'll be Joanna Gaines-ing the crap out of this by painting all exterior brick a light grey.

So I love the entry way Vermont slate but we'll be re-treading the stairs and putting in spindle railings.

Joanna Gaines is my spirit animal and we're going to shiplap the right wall there. Just not sure if we'll keep it natural or paint it white.

All of the upstairs carpets and linoleum will be ripped out and replaced with hardwood Hickory floors. 

That wall is coming down to create a completely open floor plan and I can't wait!!!

We're taking out the kitchen (the picture actually makes the ugly/cheap cabinets look good) and putting in white, shaker cabinets from a local company and beautiful soapstone counters from a local company. The island is grey cabinets with a butcher block counter that Tom will make.

We're painting all of the molding white in the whole house and getting new white doors.

It's not an 80's house without a blue bathroom.

A nice pink master that hasn't been painted since 1981. New floors and paint is pretty much all this needs though.

Thankfully the master bath is small so this reno shouldn't be too pricy. The floors and shower will one day be tile and I can't wait to put a 1920's style bath into a 1980's house :P

the boys room is getting the new floors and some paint, plus bunk beds of course!

This is the mudroom right off of the garage. We're gonna put tile in and mega, floor to ceiling storage for coats and shoes and bookbags.

Super excited we have a laundry room and all it needs is some cheap click n lock vinyl waterproof floors, paint and of course new appliances that are HE so we can be our crunchy selves and keep using cloth diapers :)

The basement is huge so we're just going to sand the rough wood beadboard and paint it white. One day we may replace the carpet but it's the last thing we would do in the house.

This tiny bathroom in the basement is getting new wallpaper - yes wallpaper! It will have some super funky design that only I will probably like but whatever. We have an antique mirror we'll put in here but the sink is staying and we'll just paint the vanity.

And that's it haha It's a lot of work but we're excited to turn our 1980's house into a modern farmhouse that we love!