Old House, Sold House

This post is way, way WAY overdue.  We bought this cute house (our first home, tear) just before Christmas 2010.  What a great Christmas present to ourselves!  We were so excited to move in and essentially double (or quadruple) the living area we'd had for the previous two years.

Downside: only a one-car garage.
Upside:  the market was slow and we got a great deal.
Bigger Upside:  It was a HOUSE, that we OWNED!

So yes.  Our first home.  It had a lot of potential for us.  That little tree was some some sort of of magnolia tree--the blossoms each spring were breathtaking.  The bushes under the big window were gorgeous and fragrant liliac bushes.

We couldn't leave this little cutie behind, so he came with us.  I can't believe how little my sweet William looks in this picture.  Can I have him back like this, just for a little while, so I can love on those cheeks?

This was the view that greeted us when we first walked in our house.  We did not love the green carpet, but we lived with it for quite a while.

I did like the double-entry doors, beige though they may be (even painting them white, only a few shades lighter, really brightened them up).

And, here is a similar view almost three years later, when we sold the house.

Changes that were made:  Stairs completely re-done with wood flooring and painted risers.  New handrail.  Gray walls, white trim (as opposed to cream walls and painted beige trim).  If you look at the doorway at the top of the stairs, you can see our taller baseboards and craftsman-style door casings.  My amazing father is responsible for helping us install much of the improvements you'll see.  

My plan was always to put in a cute little table with some decorations and art on that wall facing the door. . .but we moved too quickly.

If you went up the stairs from the front door, you'd find yourself in the living room.  This was taken when we first moved in (see the boxes?).

Living room when we moved out.  

Changes:  new carpet, painted walls, brand new baseboards and casings, new couches (I may or may not have spent hours at the furniture store agonizing over those babies), pretty curtains, painted fireplace grate.

This is the family room, to the right of the front entryway, when we first moved in.  It was painted with a beige wall and tan trim.  I know everyone doesn't like white, but the tan and beige trim always just looked a little dingy to me.

Other view.

Annnd. . .when we moved out.  Changes:  new bookshelves (I meant to put some cool art above those but never got around to it, go figure), new couches and rug, painted walls and trim.  I never got to the cute and awesome throw pillows I was going to make, thanks to pinterest.

Other view, obviously not staged for moving.  The walls look very baby blue here, for some reason.  In real life they are much grayer.  We never did get that tv stand we were wanting.

I didn't love having the washer and dryer in the hallway right off the family room, because the noise interfered with anyone who wanted to watch tv.  But the washer and dryer came with the house, so we didn't complain!

Changes:  Painted the cupboards white (they were a dark, 60's brown), painted the back door, and installed cubbies.  All of a sudden the entire laundry area was bright and cheerful, and I was left wondering why on earth I hadn't fixed all that up for me rather than just to sell the house!

I built these all by myself so the kids could hang their junk up somewhere, but we moved before we could use them.  It was my first project of this kind.  Don't look too closely.  The end.  (Stop looking!  Moving on. . .)

P.S.  You may notice some missing doorknobs.  That is because we cheated and spray painted all the downstairs ones to match the nice knobs we put in on the top floor.  It was one of those last-minute, had-to-be-done-before-moving projects that I really hated.

Probably the biggest change was the kitchen.  This kitchen was not too bad, but we never did like it very much.  The cupboards were very old and some were falling apart.  The storage space was not used efficiently.  That peninsula you see used to be a full wall; the people before us cut it down and installed a narrow countertop over it.  That was probably a good improvement but it wasn't very usable.  The refrigerator was framed in by a narrow wall on the right side.  The cabinet below the shelves was free-standing and looked like an afterthought.  Oh, and the white linoleum was almost the death of me.  

BUT, we lived very happily with this kitchen for quite some time before we decided to remodel.  I still remember the feeling I had when I stood in this kitchen with our realtor and Joel.  I knew this house would be home for us at that moment, and that feeling never left me.

This was the dining area, which was just across the peninsula from the rest of the kitchen.  Green carpet under the table + three messy kids eating at least three meals a day + back door footprints = nightmare for me.

I left the chair rail on the left side of this room, but painted it white.  It looked good against the gray walls.

So. . . we remodeled.  I convinced Joel to go through Ikea, and I don't think either of us regretted it even though we had to rent a trailer and drive to Chicago to pick up our cabinets.  It saved us TONS of money.  If any of you would like to know more about this, let me know and I'll show you where I found some good tips.

The big dark space you see past the refrigerator is a set of stairs going down to the backside of the family room.  I loved those.  I think I had two babies who each fell down those stairs once or twice, but since there were only a few stairs, no one was hurt.

Changes:  We ripped out the half wall, the narrow wall where the refrigerator used to be (where you see the shelf with the vases on it now), and the soffits above the cabinets.  We put together and installed taller cabinets (I always meant to add crown moldings but never got around to it), new countertops, new light fixtures, new wood flooring (all the way under the table, woohoo!), a new sink/faucet, and a glass tile backsplash, which I loved and we completed mere days before putting our house on the market (sob).  

My favorite thing about getting new cabinets:  using the corner spaces with lazy-susan cabinets.  We had two: one by the stove and the other under the peninsula by the refrigerator.  I was never less than amazed by the amount of storage space we gained from those alone.  Moving the refrigerator helped a lot as well, and it didn't disrupt the efficiency triangle that is recommended for kitchen layouts!

I also took down the vertical blinds by the porch doors, which are by the table (and which you can't see in the above picture).

Oh, and we had also painted and installed new baseboards and casings in here.

I was worried that our older appliances would discourage buyers, but that didn't seem to be the case. 

This is the master bedroom.  I know walk-in closets are seen as a necessity now, but we never felt the need for more space.  That closet was actually a little bigger than it looked.

I think this was one of the rooms the people before us had updated.  It looked pretty good, so we didn't do anything with it (I did want to paint the beige baseboards, but I never got around to it.  Do I sound like a broken record yet?).  We fit a king-sized bed in here with no problem.

Changes:  Nothing.  We did replace the gloriously gold and white patterned 60's fan, but that was done after this photo was taken.

I also meant to do something with our furnishings in this room. . .but you can guess that I never got around to it.  Nice headboard, non hand-me-down furniture that was more our style. . .well, frankly we were fine with what we had and didn't feel a great need to "upgrade."  If it ain't broke, don't buy a new one?  Something like that?

Master bath, when we first moved in.  It had already been pretty well updated.

Master bath, moving out.  I didn't do anything to this room besides use what I already had to decorate with.  It's amazing what a little sunlight and color can do, right?

Ashley's room, when we first moved in.  Below the dark chair rail was some totally awesome, textured, hospital-type wallpaper.  I loved that stuff (hah).

Same room, later.  Changes:  Removed wallpaper (only to find shocking blue paint underneath), painted walls and trim.  Nothing too extensive.

Ashley shared this room with baby James.  She never complained, but after we moved to our new house she told me that she was scared every night because we shut the door and kept the lights off for the benefit of the baby.  (Full disclosure: she did have a night-light and often turned the closet light on as well.)  Oops.  Being scared at night is part of a healthy childhood, right?  Right?  Hello, is anyone there?

I don't have a before picture for the boys' room.  It was cream with a brown accent wall.  It didn't look too bad, but I wanted to do something fun.  Joel wasn't too keen on the idea of stripes, so I waited until he went out of town for the weekend and put them up so he could see them before disagreeing with me making a decision.  "Don't worry," I told him nonchalantly, "I have more paint so I can just paint right over the stripes, no problem."  Either I won him over or he surrendered; either way my awesome husband did not utter one word of complaint and the stripes stayed.

Here is the kids' bathroom upstairs.  It wasn't too bad.  The floor wasn't as grungy as it looks in this picture, but I was interested in replacing it (never happened).  The plus to this room was all the storage.  I never even came close to filling it up!

We replaced the toilet and painted the walls and cabinets, and I tacked up a couple of bright accessories (homemade, don't look too closely) just before putting the house on the market so I could "stage" the bathroom a little better.  The tub, which you can't see, was still a peachy beige and didn't match the new toilet.  Oh well!

We ran the wood flooring you saw in the kitchen up the stairs to the second floor and all the way through to the end of the hallway just outside this door.  It was awesome.  Sweeping stairs is so much faster than vacuuming!  We also replaced the mottled coppery-brass doorknobs and hinges with oil-rubbed bronze.

This was one of my favorite rooms in the house.  It was a bonus bedroom off the family room (right across from the washer and dryer).  We used it as a study, which is my fancy way of saying that I could throw whatever projects we were working on in there and, while whistling a happy tune, shut the door and ignore the mess.

(You may notice the doorknob, which is the same as the rest in the house.  This picture makes it look gold-ish, but they were really more orange.  Joel hated them, and I ignored them.  Spray painting them made a huge difference.)

Technically this was also our preschool room, but the real kitchen table worked just as well.  I didn't do anything to this room except use rubbing alcohol to scrub red sharpie off the wall just before we moved.  I'm still not sure which of my children did that, but the alcohol worked perfectly!

This bathroom was right by the back door (to the left of this was our washer and dryer).  I am not sure why the walls look peachy--they were actually a nice cafe au lait brown, as was the accent tile you see.  I loved having a bathroom by the back door.  It was a great place for little people to wash off!  As a result, there was always a lot of mud in this room.  Sometimes I missed spots before we had guests over.  The only unfortunate thing about that is that the color of mud is suspiciously similar to poop.

We had a little bit of a basement.  I didn't do anything with the basement except put toys down there.  It was a great space for the kids.  They enjoyed sleeping down here on occasion.  I slept down here with them once too, during a tornado warning.  Fun stuff!  The doorway you see on the right leads to a pretty sizable workroom and storage room.

This was our backyard when we moved in.  Obviously we did not move in during springtime.  My favorite part of the backyard was that it backed onto a vacant field.

Backyard, later.  You can't tell from this angle, but we removed the large grass bushes, took out the pavers by the patio, and laid sod in its place.  We did not need more places for little knees to get skinned.

This house had some nice plants, courtesy of the people who lived here before us.  We had yellow day lilies lining the borders of the grass, and my personal favorites, two lilac bushes in the front yard.

I loved this house.  It was very good to us.  My baby James was born when we lived here and we had a lot of great memories within those walls.  We put our heart and soul into that house and it was a little hard to see it go.  But, we had a great offer on it and everything worked out well for our move to Des Moines.  

Next up: our new house!  (When I get around to it, whew.)

Summer Chalk Fun

 I am trying to catch up a little bit.  While it is technically still summer (don't remind me), these pictures were actually taken a few months ago at the beginning of the summer when it was still new! and exciting! to go draw pictures on the driveway.

Well, it never gets old for Ashley, but I stop buying the chalk after a while and then the kids discard the little nubby ends like confetti across our yard, and my enthusiasm wanes significantly.

Ashley takes her chalk art very seriously.  She drew these huge flowers for. . .well, I don't know what reason, actually.  She usually doesn't answer me when I ask her anything about her drawings, because she is in the zone, as they say.

James really took to the chalk, however.  He was dying to help his sister.

She humored him, for a time.  

But soon she had to shoo everyone away before the little boys in question destroyed her artistic vision.

Ashley has to stop every so often anyway to survey her progress and plan what to do next.  Sometimes I can get her to talk during these brief pauses, but sometimes she is still too swallowed up in the dreamland of her art.

 

And this picture is to remind me of my amusement every time we drain the bath water in the summer.  Kids sure bring in a lot of dirt, don't they?  (Of course bathing four at once only compounds the problem, but I'm not going to split hairs, here.)

I do love summer.  I do not love the humidity in our area of the country.  But I have learned to live with it thanks to our blessed modern-day convenience of air conditioning.  Pioneers, I do not know how you did it, but you've earned a place in heaven just for surviving the midwest summers in all those petticoats and long sleeves!

William and Cars. . .and trucks and airplanes and helicopters and tractors and trains and boats. . .

William is my car guy.  He loves cars and trucks.  He has loved them for almost two years, which is the majority of his young life so far.  I keep thinking he will move onto the next phase, but instead his car fever intensifies by the week.

I took this picture right around the time he turned three years old.  "MOMMY!"  William had exclaimed, "Look at this car!  This car is the coolest car I've ever seen!!!!!!"

"The coolest car you've ever seen, huh?"  I replied.

"YES!"  William grinned from ear to ear as he balanced the red and gray car on his outstretched palm so I could admire its obvious coolness.

Several months later, William's favorite TV show is still Mighty Machines, he is a constant admirer of things that move as we drive around town, and he always has a small collection of cars with him.  But he still calls that one "My coolest car."  

We attended a city parade shortly after our move, and William had the people around us laughing each time any vehicle came around the corner because he'd exclaim (never with lessening enthusiasm) "I REALLY like that car!"

"You'd better watch out," one man said to me after William drooled over a few Porsche convertibles, "that boy has expensive taste!"

A few days ago, I went on a walk with William and James and we saw a police car sitting by the side of the road with its lights on, a huge tow truck that was winching a smashed pick-up truck onto its bed, a tractor tilling dirt, a dump truck, a cement truck, and countless other construction-type vehicles.  The two boys were in heaven as we stopped to watch some of these vehicles.  The tow truck captivated them both for at least ten minutes--neither child made a peep or moved, seemingly afraid they would miss something.

And now, the only problem is that James is getting old enough to have a preference of which car he plays with.  William's least favorite is not good enough anymore!

Saying Goodbye to Muscatine

We moved away from Muscatine, our home sweet home of three years, about two months ago.  Before that, Joel went back and forth for a while between our home and Des Moines after he started his new job.  Thankfully, he was home on the weekends, so we tried to do some fun activities.

It was perfect weather one day for a hike.  The best place to go was the state park a few minutes from our home, Wildcat Den.  We love this place!

Once within the boundaries of the park, it doesn't feel like you are in Iowa anymore.  Even the humidity seems to dissipate a little.  Stone hills soar around us as we walk on the dirt trails.  Plants grow on every horizontal surface these stone cliffs have to offer.  The landscape is lush and green (although the leaves weren't all the way out when these photos were taken).

The kids never tired of climbing rocks and exploring new crevices.  Everett's main goal seemed to be to discover a secret cave.

It was at this park that Ashley decided she wanted to be a mountain climber when she grew up.  But why wait that long?  The angle of this picture makes the ascent look quite dangerous but it was very safe.  Ashley, however, felt the euphoria of risk and would have tried to climb to the very top if we had let her.

She was pleased to "summit" in the middle.  "Now I'm a real mountain climber!" she'd exclaim periodically that day.

This tree was my favorite of the day.  The spindly root-web is fascinating and breathtaking.  Everett was impressed by it, too.

Walking on fallen trees is always a highlight.

After walking through a lightly-forested grassy field, we stumbled on a hidden bend of the sandy creek people like to wade in.  I don't think many people get to this part; there is no trail and there are plenty of animal tracks leading to the water.

It was the perfect place to stop and eat our trail mix.  James made sure to add lots of sandy flavor to his.

William had to gulp his drink down before venturing into the water.

Ashley didn't bother finishing her snack before she gave it a try.

And it didn't take the kids long before they discovered the deliciously messy, sandy sludge at the bottom of the water.

They would have played in it for hours and hours.

What is it about kids and mud?  Maybe I should go stick my hands and toes in it sometime and see if I can remember what all the gloppy, tactile fuss is about.

Ashley didn't want to leave the water.  She loves water as long as it doesn't go above her waist.  She panics every time her face gets close.  She took swimming lessons this summer (level one) and after I watched the teachers try to certify her to move onto the next level, I just laughed.  The teachers would hold her by her sides and ask her to make the swimming motions, but even though her face was still far from the water, Ashley screamed bloody murder each time until they righted her again.  The first time she did that, the teachers stopped immediately in alarm, thinking something was desperately wrong.  When they realized the problem, they looked at each other and I knew right away what they were thinking--I'm not sure if we can get her to pass this one. . .

They did try, and so did Ashley.  She tried very hard.  But the screams kept coming and a few days later at the end of the swimming session, she brought me a note that said, "Ashley, you are a great kicker!  See you here next time!"

Ashley didn't seem to mind that she did not pass level one.  All she knew is that she was done with the pool for the foreseeable future.

All that is to say, the knee-deep creek was the perfect water for Ashley.

 Thanks for all the fun, Wildcat Den!  We will miss you!