My husband and I have lived in four five places in the last six years. (Yay for being young and just starting out!!) Needless to say, we are both ready to be “stuck” somewhere and settled in.
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We started out in a cute little apartment. But, we soon learned we needed a place of our own. We were seriously babies…look at those young faces!
After a somewhat disappointing home search, we finally bought our first house!! Danny doesn’t like taking good pictures…
Once we got jobs an hour away, we decided that 1. Subdivision life was NOT for us, and 2. we were tired of driving so far to work.
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So we sold our first home (it was VERY bittersweet), and moved to my hometown 30 minutes away so we could rent while we house hunted. We rented a cute little house down the road from my parents….both convenient and annoying. After a few weeks, we realized we really missed it back home and living there was worth having to drive so far to work.
After a couple months of looking, we found our dream house!!! No house is perfect and this one could use some love (and updating). I cannot wait to take you through all the projects we will do in it! It’s slow going, so bear with us.
So, here is my home!! We have alot of work to do on the outside and landscape, so I don’t want to show you any of that yet. What I do want to show you is my adorable hubs playing with a kitten on the front porch 🙂
UPDATE: You can check out the “Two Year Home-iversary” home tour here and see what’s changed in the two years since move in day!
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If you’re in the Christmas mood, check out my latest “holiday Christmas home tour.”
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Once of the first things you see when you walk in are my sliding barn doors to the laundry room.
AND, now the laundry room is finally complete! I have always wanted a nice laundry room (we’ve never had a real laundry room before this house, so this was exciting!). Check out the before and after:
Then you will see the foyer closet that I turned into a “mud room.” We also have since painted the foyer and I added half round to the trim, but ran out….so it’s still in progress.
UPDATE: Trim is done 🙂 THANK GOODNESS THAT’S OVER WITH.
Next, you will see our kitchen…my favorite room in the house. Our kitchen has gone through a massive renovation since we moved in. And it was totally unexpected. Check out the whole story at these links:
Part 1: Reasoning behind the remodel
Part 3: Putting it Back Together
You can check out a few pics of before and after below:
You can see more kitchen pictures with details on the countertop here. You can also see the building of the farmhouse table here.
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Our living room has gone through a couple changes, too. You can see before and after below, but there is still plenty left to do 🙂 You can see where we showed a little love to the room in this post.
I did change out those pillows and coffee table since that picture was taken…
I added a chunky wooden fireplace mantle last fall because I didn’t like the white painted one.
Like the twisty table? It’s the perfect fit for this small space. I really had a hard time arranging my living room. It’s a good size, but it’s got a patio door, a fireplace, three windows, three doorways, and a bookshelf built into the studs. So it’s difficult to place furniture…or maybe I’m just really bad at that kind of thing ha!
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I have recently “redone” my office space. When we first moved in, the office looked like this. A few weeks after we moved, I made this sewing machine base desk.
I grew tired of that desk and built a new, larger desk. I also painted, and reconfigured the room. I also added some shelves. Here is my current office.
Next, is our bedroom. It is HUGE!!!! But it’s pretty plain. We are in the process of remodeling our master bathroom/bedroom. You can follow along with the series I am calling the “South Wing Project.” So far, we have new nightstands and a new dresser. We have remodeled our bathroom and laid new floor in the bedroom. The bedroom will not be priority to hurry and get it done, so we will be working on it a little as we go 🙂 haha.
This was our bedroom when we first moved in.
And now, after a few changes. Many more changes to come, though.
You can see the new doors I made for the closet and bathroom here.
We did remodel our closet a while back, though…shortly after we moved in! That was fun….check it out! Unfortunately, it doesn’t look anything like that now after the bathroom chaos. You can read about that here.
And then there is our master bathroom. It very much resembled a dungeon when we moved in haha. Seriously it was so dark in here!!!
We recently remodeled the bathroom and it looks so much different. Due to some subfloor rot, we had to gut the whole room and start over. You can check out the bathroom here.
Then there is our guest bedroom. It currently is acting as a junk room, but it did used to look like this at one point. I built the headboard, refinished the dresser, and made the nightstands. But then I sold them all haha. I think it was so cute…BUT eventually I will get around to redoing it and it’ll be cute again 🙂 I hope.
Then there’s the guest bath. It’s a bathroom….not much to say. I hope to get to redo it far in the future, but for now, paint will have to do. Here it is before and after a quick paint job.
I left out a bedroom and a bathroom that we never use….nothing to see there haha. I hope you love my home as much as I do (but I don’t think that is possible), but it has many changes (upgrades, of course) to come. I feel like I’m dragging this home out of the 80s and I love every transformation. I think if it could talk, it would thank me 🙂
Deb
July 19, 2016 at 1:59 pmWow your home looks so lovely Shara! I remember when you wrote me last year about the clock coffee table. Haven’t stopped by in a while and I am just loving your home and your blog. Everything looks fabulous!
Shara, Woodshop Diaries
July 20, 2016 at 5:25 amThank you so much Deb! That means a lot coming from you–your house is straight out of a magazine!! I’m so glad you stopped by! I’ve made A LOT of changes on the blog lately and I just bought my first DSLR camera, so I’ll probably be switching out some old pictures pretty soon too 🙂 By the way, I hear you met a friend of mine in New York recently. I hope we get a chance to meet in person some day too! Thanks so much for stopping by!!
Decks Banff
August 27, 2016 at 2:05 amWow. Shara you have wonderful, beautiful homes with great furniture. I love your blog to see attractive pictures. Thank you very much dear for sharing it.
Linda
October 11, 2016 at 7:28 amI just saw your post on HomeTalk and have now signed up for your blog posts! You have inspired me!! My father’s favorite hobby was wood-working – he passed away in 2006 (a year after my hubby and I were married – thankfully, I got to dance with my dad at my wedding) – and hubby and i moved back in with my mom in 2008. We have a basement FULL of my dad’s wood-working tools – pretty much everything you’d ever need. I may just have to ‘clean sweep’ the basement and put those tools to use!!! I will be following along with your posts and may even try some of your ideas!! Thanks so much for the great posts – you are a wonderful inspiration and DIY’er!!! Keep up the great job (PS – hubby and I just traveled to Kentucky over Labor Day weekend – Louisville/Lexington – and we absolutely LOVED it there!!!)
Shara, Woodshop Diaries
October 12, 2016 at 7:15 amThank you so much! I’m so glad I was able to inspire you 🙂 that makes my day! What a great way to remember your dad by picking up his old tools and putting them back to use 🙂 Good luck and thank you so much for following along!
Debbie
October 12, 2016 at 10:31 amShara,
when/how did you learn to use all those tools.
When I was in school girls had sewing, needlepoint ,cooking and how to run a household. I was always envious of the boys in car shop, metal and wood shop classes.
Is it too late to teach this 57+year old dog some new tricks??
How “wood” I get started…yes, pun intended !!!
Shara, Woodshop Diaries
October 13, 2016 at 7:09 amHi Debbie! Well, I’d like to tell you that I was taught how to use them or that I took a class, but the truth is, I just picked them up and started using them. I never took a shop class in school and I had no idea what I was doing when I started (still don’t most of the time haha!). My dad has helped me some, but a lot of it was self taught…and I still have A LOT to learn 🙂 My advice on getting started is to just do it. You don’t have to know everything to get started. You will never learn until you try 🙂 Blogs and tutorials are a huge help and a great resource to start to get the hang of it.
Faith Still
June 14, 2017 at 12:21 amHi,
I know your sister-in-law Katie from church and when I mentioned my blog, she told me about yours. Your work is amazing. I am so impressed and in love with your farmhouse table.
I used to teach Family & Consumer Science before staying home with our 4 boys and now blog at Home Ec @ Home.
So good to virtually meet you.
Faith
homeecathome.com
Shara, Woodshop Diaries
June 15, 2017 at 11:26 amHi!! It’s nice to “meet” you, too! Such a small world. Thanks so much for getting in touch, and I’m glad you enjoyed seeing some of my projects 🙂 I am headed over now to check out your site!