The First of Many...

So here is the first of the 'before' pics! This is the entire upstairs of the house: 3 bedrooms and a full bathroom. I would love to be posting 'before and afters', but right now we are slow going, really taking the time to wipe walls thoroughly and fill in holes and everything. I figured, read previous post, that if I'm living in the 'befores', you can too for right now :-)  So here we go:

This is the first bedroom and the smallest. It will be my 1 year old's room.

This is the 2nd bedroom, and it will be my 3 years old's room.

This is the 3rd Bedroom, the original master in the house, and it will be used as the master for a while, maybe forever. I don't like being on a different level than my kiddos at night :-)

Here is the hallway to the upstairs bedrooms.

 



And my personal favorite: here is the upstairs full bathroom.

Okay. So i'd love to say that everything all these spaces need is happening today, but that's not going to happen. A lot will be changed, and, hopefully, each room will slowly be tranformed, but it'll take some time. In the meantime, my family of boys are going to love this pink tub!

Before and Afters...

I love 'before and afters'. I mean it is always inspiring to see how the old and sometimes ugly is transformed to the new and beautiful. For the past weeks I've been invisioning all the 'afters' in our new home. I could SEE it you know. But, yesterday, as I walked around in our first full day in our new home, I was beginning to panic. I am surrounded by all the 'befores' right now and suddenly doubting if there will ever be an 'after'. Have you been there before? I mean who lingers on the 'before'? You look it over quickly and then even more quickly scroll to find those 'afters'. And you linger and drink in all the details of how those wonderful 'afters' came to be. Right? Sigh. Of course I know that any beautiful 'after' probably involved a lot of blood, sweat, and tears as the 'before' disappeared, but yesterday the thought of all that blood, sweat, and tears was more than a little overwhelming. Sleep is good though, and today when my sweet 3 year old woke me up at his typical 5:45 wake up, and I groggily made him cereal and me coffee, this house began to feel like home, and, even more importantly, I began to feel some peace about everything. I mean don't get me wrong. This renovation is going to be difficult, and I have no doubt I will second guess our decision numerous times. But, hopefully, please Lord, we will have our 'afters' too, and they will be beautiful. And regardless I will have my sweet, loving family beside me. And, I must remember, that's what's most important.

p.s. All those wonderful 'before' pics will be up soon!

Good Bones...

If someone were to refer to her home as having "good bones", I would probably assume she means the house has character, has some hidden beauty that only needs to be unearthed or what not, like an old farmhouse that has sat in neglect, waiting to be restored. Something romantic, in a housey way.

Our new home has good bones, but not exactly like the above. I mean I use the word "cottage" loosely right now to describe the place. Hopefully, one day, she will be truely Cliffwood Cottage, but she's not there yet, not at all!

So how does this home have good bones? Because for over 20 years a wonderful couple and their 11 children have lived there. A family of 13! Yes, this house has had 11 kids! Well, the couple has had 11 kids, but you know what I mean. I actually graduated from high school with one of their 11, and my husband grew up playing frequently with a few of their boys. We have known this family for most of our lives, and they have raised an amazing family in this home. So, in this way, to me, our new home does have good bones.

Now the last of this couple's 11 just graduated from high school, and they want to downsize. This is where we come in.

When we heard it was for sale, my husband was really excited about taking a look. He was over there frequently as a kid, but I actually had only been in the house once or twice years ago and had no memories of it. But he felt like I would like its possibilities. And I did, for the most part :-)

I'm pretty sure that not all 11 kids lived there at one time, since they are pretty spaced out; but, needless to say, the house has been well lived in! And, at first, it just wasn't what I was invisioning as our "forever home". But, once we started thinking about all the positives and all the possibilities, we both got excited about making this big transition for our family.

So in two days we will be moving into what we hope is our "forever home". And in two days we will begin quite a renovation to transform this home with "good bones" into Cliffwood Cottage!

p.s. You should have seen my husband's face when I told him our home's new name. And his response: "who names their houses?" :-)

New Beginnings...

So here we are: a little over a week away from our big move. A few months back, as the decision to move was slowly becoming a reality, I kind of discovered the land of blogs. I was looking for inspiration, ideas, and how-tos because I knew our new house needed a lot of love and elbow grease. I also knew that we (my hard-working husband and I) were going to have to do a lot of improvements ourselves. Laughs! Neither of us are really handy or big DIYers, but I figured we were going to have to change that; because, well, A. the house needs work, and B. there's no way we can afford to pay someone to do it all for us.

So, I went to the internet. I had no idea how many amazing and inspiring blogs were out there! And for a girl who has hundreds (maybe more) of pulled out pages from home and garden magazines, pinterest is like heaven. Note: it is not pack-ratting when everything is in file folders and organized under specific labels of kitchen, bath, living, outdoor, kids, right?

I have more inspiration than I know what to do with; so, like many before me, I'm hoping by beginning this little blog I can organize the many ideas I have for our home and also motivate myself to actually complete them!