House Before and After: Entry and Stairs

Yippy skippy, the home reveal fun has begun! You'll have to be patient with me as the moving-in process is still underway and there's some areas of the house I'm just not ready to reveal yet! Eventually I'll be able to show pictures of the home fully furnished and decorated, but for now the renovation pictures are pretty fun to share.

First up, I'll show you the before and after of the areas you see when you first walk in the house. Before you see anything, one thing you need to be aware of is that the previous owners of our home were not only hoarders, but just plain gross. They had animals...and lots of them... and left them unattended in the home for long periods of time. So it goes without saying that any of the carpet in the house HAD. TO. GO. We now have hardwood flooring throughout the house, except for bathrooms.

The first thing you see as you open the front door is the staircase, surrounded by old blue wallpaper. The stairs themselves are great because they are wider than most, but that carpet was guh-ross. Here were the stairs before:

And from the top:

I'm including this picture so you can see the ugly pendant light that was hanging in the stairway (and then compare it to my obvious improvement...):

And AFTER!!!

See? Isn't that light fixture SO much prettier?? Please ignore the one missing bulb. It has since been replaced.)

As you can see, getting rid of that wallpaper made it so much brighter in there! We used Behr's Sandstone Cove for the paint color, and while I'm not completely sold on it, so many people who have come to visit have commented on how much they like it. I think once I get some stuff on the walls it will make it interesting enough for me. Plus, I'm not in any big hurry to figure out how to paint those high walls again. haha.

And just for another view (and a peek at the half bath), here's how the entry way looked from the blood red living room before:

And here's the same area AFTER:

Yay for new base boards and beautiful crown molding!!

We're loving the new place. It's so nice to kind of spread out a little bit and to feel like we're in a grown up house. We picked up some of our furniture this past weekend and the rest has been ordered and should be delivered in a few weeks. Boxes are being unpacked and cabinets are being filled, but I can already see that this moving-in thing takes some time.

Have a great week!

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