House Tour Part I: The Living Spaces

While the architecture of the outside might not have been my first choice, what sold me on the house was the inside floor plan (and the outdoor living spaces in the backyard). We had a few major criteria when house shopping and this was one of the few houses that met the “must have list:”

• LOCATION
• Master bedroom that could fit a king size bed (my must have, and apparently more rare than I thought)
• Two-car garage (hubby’s must have – and not easy to find in our budget inside the Atlanta Perimeter)
• Min. 3 beds/2 bath
• Some outside living  (front or back)

We were open to floor plan options, and almost bought a house that was much more traditional in layout. But the openness of the interior of this house was fantastic. The previous owners had already taken out a wall to open the kitchen to the dining and living rooms, and they had finished an attic as a bedroom/bonus with a full bath. But the finishes in the house were not exactly my style … and turns out some of their DIY work wasn’t perfect (more on that later!). In this post, I’ll walk you through a few before and afters of the living room, hall bath, kitchen & dining room. Next, I’ll cover the individual bedrooms and the man attic; and finally, I’ll give you a tour of the outside, which will be a huge undertaking!

Kitchen:

The kitchen had great space, but the space wasn’t being fully maximized, in my opinion. I’ll do deeper renovation posts with sources and details for these, but for now, know that we left the plumping where it was, but replaced all the cabinets and moved the oven to the wall, as opposed to the peninsula. We added a huge island for tons of counter space and some casual seating at the end.

Before:

After:

Dining Room:

In the dining room, we replaced the tile floor (that was also in the kitchen and front entry) and did new hardwood throughout the living spaces to make it flow seamlessly. We tried to match the existing hardwoods originally, but they were really sun damaged and not great quality so couldn’t be sanded and refinished.

Otherwise, in the dining room, we replaced the chandelier with a $40 clearance purchase I scored at Home Depot (it hangs a little crooked, but for $40? I’m fine with it – a little lead tape will fix that!). And the wooden blinds were damaged from the previous owners’ dogs but the bamboo shade looks 10x better and really opens the space to the backyard.

Before:

After:

Living Room:

As mentioned, the floors were replaced and the horrible popcorn ceiling came down. That stuff was like cottage cheese, y’all. Most importantly – the vertical plastic blinds over the sliding glass doors had to go! I cheered the day we tore those things down. Most of the changes in here focused on furniture and color. I’ve got plans for the big wall over the TV and can’t wait to get that done within the next month or so.

Before:

After:

Hallway & Hall Bath:

No huge issues with the halls, minus redoing the flooring and painting. A big change was redoing the landing to the man attic, but I’ll show you in that post. The light fixtures are on the list of to-dos and I’m still thinking through whether or not I want to repaint the doors.

The hall bath is in decent condition; the tile is way dated and we’ll be redoing that at some point, but for now, I hung my favorite shower curtain, we painted the walls a beautiful Tiffany blue and hung a mirror (don’t ask me, but the previous owners ripped the one that was GLUED to the wall off and took it with them). We’ll be replacing the mirror with a medicine cabinet leftover from the master bath renovation, but it’s currently waiting to be spray painted once it cools off a bit.

Stay tuned for Part II: The bedrooms & Man Cave!