A Look Back

I’m sitting in my new family room with semi-chaos surrounding me and I’m thinking about our first little house.

My hubby and I have been looking through pictures of our first home and we have totally forgotten how much we had improved it! I thought I’d share a few “Before” and “After” pictures.

The picture below was taken a few days after we had the keys of our new house. 

We had all the carpet ripped out and the original hardwood floors refinished. You can see the rolls of carpet on the front lawn! See that humongous Bird of Paradise plant in the front there? We had our neighbor help us pull that plant out with his truck on the lawn and a chain wrapped around the stump. I used to love Bird of Paradise…now whenever I see it, I think of what a bear it was to take out!

We moved in right before Christmas, 2004. My dad came down to “help” us out and paint the day after Christmas. It was the rainiest season San Diego had seen in quite a few years. It rained non-stop for 3 weeks, and my dad’s short trip to help paint a few rooms lasted pretty much that entire 3 weeks! I remember seeing my dad sitting on the edge of the guest room bed with his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes and just shaking his head. I knew he was thinking “What were they thinking?!” I know that because I was thinking the same thing!!! 

Jason was still up in the bay area for an extra day and he remembers getting a call from my dad saying “Hey Jason, I didn’t realize how handy you were! This house needs a lot of work!”  Every day, something new would happen, like someone was saying “You wanted a house? Here you go! See if you can handle this!” After patching about 1000 cracks, painting and texturing the walls, and doing some other changes, the house was at least somewhat livable.

The following spring, my brother-in-laws and father-in-law came down to help put in a sprinkler system.

We planted a new tree and new plants in the planter.

After 6 1/2 years…Home.

 

This was the front bedroom when we moved in. There were clouds and glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, wallpaper boarders and half finished paint jobs. This room first started as our guest room, then our first son’s room, then a room shared by brothers.

 

The living room when we first moved in. 

 Dark walls, terrible, non-functional cheap woven shades that didn’t work!

Again, the previous owners painted around their furniture! 

We added a door into the garage a couple of years ago because our “laundry room” was in the garage and laundry with a newborn was even more of a chore when you had to head out the back door, around the house and through the side garage door.

I don’t have a picture of the Before of our bathroom but it was icky when we first moved in. There was an old, non working wall heater, a gross medicine cabinet, a short vanity cabinet.  We eventually changed everything in there without any too extravagant changes.

 

Our kitchen was a big project. And ended up being my favorite room. 

This is what it looked like on the day we got the keys. 

Are you noticing a theme of the house…not the cleanest house on the block with a lot of work needed.

 

This was our “mudroom” There was a sink on the opposite wall that was old and dirty. My mom had sewn a cute skirt that I velcroed around the basin to make it look a little cuter.

 

Our first change was a new floor. I couldn’t walk barefoot in our house because our kitchen floor was so gross! This picture is of my dad working to get the floor prepped for a new layer. 

Isn’t the green floor terrible!?!

I love this kitchen! We remodeled our kitchen through Ikea when I was about 6 months pregnant with our first little guy.

This past week we moved to our new house and finished getting this house ready for our new tenants. As I drove away for the last time with it being “our” home, I was a sobbing, bumbling mess. We (and I mean Jason, me, and our families) put so much love, work and effort into this little house to leave it better than we found it.  (A funny side note…it took a few years for us to really love this house, but a few years ago, Jason said “I love this house” and I asked “Since when?” and he answered “Since Duane (my dad) made it nice!” My dad (along with our other family members throughout the years) helped make our house a home. And Jason and I learned so much about home ownership, DIY projects, working with contractors, landscaping, etc. from this home. We both will miss it but we are excited for the memories that we will make at our new home. 

So here’s to leaving your home a little bit better than you found it and making your house, whatever or where ever that may be, a home.