The After, Part 1

Ok, so here is a much anticipated after post of our house that I promised to post here.  Notice I said a post and not the post.  After pictures always seem to feel really overwhelming to me.  It is hard to capture our home in pictures, especially when trying to get the same angles as the before pictures, and especially since I am no gifted photographer.

So anyway, I decided to be content with the fact that my home would never be perfectly clean and put together; there will always be little projects that need finished and updates that I add to our home to do list, and since it takes me a long time to determine how I want to decorate and collect the pieces I want, our walls tend toward the side of bare.  That being said, I decided to post after pictures in phases, because that feels less overwhelming, and because I really want to wait to post pictures of certain rooms, like the baby's room, after we actually have it done (since we have a quickly approaching deadline on that one).  Just a quick tidbit about the upstairs, it was originally green carpet and flimsy ceiling tile/paneling with one room and one not-so-useful half room.  It is now our master bedroom with walk-in closet and bathroom.  For a refresher of what it looked like before, go here.  Another side note, the bathroom is still a work in progress, but within the past few months we have removed the awful sliding glass door (lesson learned, it is not always worth it to settle for free things when it comes to remodeling, even if they are FREE), and purchased a shower curtain that partially hides the horribly outdated biscuit color (again, lesson learned), and within the past few weeks I have painted the walls grey (which I think does wonders in making the coloring more desirable against the biscuit shower) and the vanity and medicine cabinet white (which really modernizes the standard construction-grade vanity we purchased for cheap).  I still need to get some art-work/shelving on the wall, talk my husband into finally finishing the trim and adding drawer pulls and door handles.  The bedroom could use a new, more modern headboard, trim holes filled, trim finished on the stairs (again, gotta talk the hubby into it), a solution to our drafty attic access door, and some artwork on the walls; I have plans for a mini gallery wall.  So anyway, here are some "after" pictures from the upstairs:

A Glimpse into Our House (Before)

As I mentioned in a previous post, about four years ago amidst house hunting for the home we would move into after our wedding in August 2010, we came upon a lovely (and by lovely I mean awful, outdated, unlivable, piece of work) house and we thought, "Hey let's make this our home."  Or more accurately, I thought "I cannot live here.  No way could I ever live here!"  and Ryan thought, "This place has potential.  Let's make this place our home."

Somehow, his excitement backed up by cad drawings of a new floor plan, his creativeness and his passion behind making a house our own, convinced me, and we were both in for an adventure.  He purchased the house in late March 2010, and that same weekend, we began destroying it from the inside out.  Down with the walls, down with the ceiling tiles, goodbye ugly carpet on top of ugly tile, good bye ugly paneling, good bye EVERYTHING! We left the studs and the foundation (but even that needed some work in places), and everything else got a makeover.  I could go on and on about our adventures remodeling a house (Ryan and I actually often reflect on the days of remodeling and spending countless hours at what is now our home), but I will spare you and just give you some lovely before pictures for now:

The upstairs before

Upstairs Before

Living Room

Living Room

Living Room

Living Room and Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen

Lots of Junk to Get Rid of

Outside Before (March 2010) and After (May 2012)

Floor Plan Before (designed by Ryan)

Floor Plan After (Designed by Ryan)

After pictures to come!

In the beginning-the story of how we became {Mr. and Mrs.}

Hmm...where to even begin.  Ryan and I got married in August of 2010, but our story started long before that.  We have know each other since, well, as long as I can remember.

We grew up going to the same small church together, and then when I was in second grade, my parents built a house in the country right across the road from them...literally.  So we have lots of memories together including- me falling off of his horse while I road with him, him injuring my toe on our trampoline, a family vacation together when I was in 6th grade, him driving me and my sister (who was actually in his class) to school before she could drive, being in "youth group" together (this group consisted of me and my older sister and him and his younger brother (who is just a week older than me) and another girl), hanging out together with my older sister and another mutual friend Christine, and from there it got a little more romantic.

My junior year of high school, I developed a tiny little crush on him, but was convinced he, being a mature college student, was way out of my league.  Sometime after that we started talking on AIM (anyone remember instant messenger from the dark ages?), and sometime after that we started talking on AIM until like 3,4,5 in the morning.  Then he invited me to hang out with his friends on campus, to which I regretfully and embarrassingly wore my letter jacket to (oh the shame, oh the horror), but despite that major fashion blunder, he still asked me on a first date later that fall to Olive Garden and ice skating, and a short month later we went on another date to see "The Bee Movie" and spent the next day riding the snow mobile, during which he stopped and got off and nervously told me why he "liked" me and we became boyfriend and girlfriend.

Over the next couple of years, we had ups and downs and God had a whole lot of grace on us and our immature, highly lacking in communication skills, selves.  God brought us through that time! In January of 2010, Ryan proposed, during a snow mobile ride, in the same spot he had defined the relationship the year before, and I said yes.  And the wedding planning began.

Sometime between saying yes and saying "I do", Ryan bought our first home, and then we decided it would be a good idea to destroy it and start over (aside from the studs and foundation), and so we started remodeling, with the naive (dare I say stupid) goal of having it finished (or done enough) by our wedding night in August later that year.  It was not finished by our wedding night; in fact it was not finished by the time we returned from our honeymoon.  We stayed in his parents camper the first night we returned and then the basement for the next few nights before we moved in to our "done enough" home (although our definition of done enough had drastically changed by that point).  We moved into dirty sub-floors, a mattress on a tarp on the dirty sub-floor, one mostly finished bathroom, and a kitchen consisting of a card table and chairs, a mini fridge, and a microwave and toaster-luxury!  It was rough, but looking back now it is fun to think about those days (and be thoroughly relieved that they are behind us).  Anyway, more on the house later!

August finally came, and our wedding was beyond hot and in an un-air conditioned chapel at a church camp Ryan had formerly worked at (our church was too small for our guest list thanks to giant families), so we began the ceremony at 7:30 hoping to avoid much of the August heat.  It was still hot, and I don't remember much from our wedding honestly; it was all a blur and super surreal.  We had a simple wedding, and while I enjoy helping other people plan their weddings, I am glad you only get married once because wedding planning and budgeting but still making things look good and serving your guests that are so generously giving of their time to support you and attend is STRESSFUL.  But, at the end of the day, we were married! Isn't that kind of crazy? For those of you who are not yet married or maybe even engaged and in the midst of the craziness of planning, this might not really make a lot of sense to you, but marriage is a crazy and miraculous gift.  We had spent 8 months planning this wedding and then after a hot, humid, 30 minute ceremony, suddenly we are husband and wife.  It didn't matter what music was played or what attire was worn or whether the flower girl made it down the aisle or what people ate, or how fancy the decorations were-we were married! Crazy!

God is good! We look back on our wedding day with thanksgiving and humor-thanksgiving for how faithful God has been despite our immaturity and ignorance and sinfulness, and humor for how young and ignorant and silly we were.  It's fun to look back and the two of us standing at the altar-20 and 23 years of age, and remember them as a faint memory.  Time flies and God changes us (hopefully), and we get to look back and think "how fun that season of life was" and at the same time "thank you God that we are not the same people who said "I do" back in 2010".  I mean, neither of us has changed to be a completely different person with completely different personalities, but by God's grace, we have changed, for the good, and I am so thankful!