Home Sweet Home ~ A tour of our first home!

It’s been an insanely busy month here in the Counts household. We’ve been really focusing on our store operations PLUS we bought a house! And I cannot tell you how pumped I am about this little house that’s just waiting for lots of paint and decor. We moved in two weeks ago, and we’ve really only unpacked the essentials. And the Christmas tree (hey, that’s an essential in my book). There is still a bright orange beach towel nailed over our bedroom window. Yeah, the blinds have been purchased but have sat in their box for over a week now. Maybe this week sometime…

It’s been bittersweet to say goodbye to our lovely downtown loft apartment. And we’re definitely sad to give up living on the same block as both of our jobs. But, we’re still on the same street! It’s about 6 blocks away, so still an easy walk or bike ride except on the coldest of Iowa days.

You can count on tons of updates as we transform this little house into our home. I’m really excited to have free reign as a homeowner to paint like crazy and pound nail holes anywhere I want. We have put together a master plan of work to do on the house, and are going to try working one room at a time. So look for mood boards, tips and tutorials, and room reveals to come over the next year.

So, today I thought I’d give you a quick tour of our first home. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s all ours. And what I really love is that it is a blank slate. There is a fresh coat of gross tan paint on all the walls just dying for some color. I am very thankful that we didn’t end up with an old house that had wallpaper plastered everywhere.

Let’s start at the front door. When you walk in, there’s a tiny little entry with a coat closet. Pretty much just room to open the door and get your shoes off. You walk right into the living room. This edge of the living room is going to serve as our “entry way” and landing area. Don’t you just love the sweet arched doorways? That doorway opens into a small hallway with the two bedrooms, bathroom, and dining room.

If you look to your left, you see the living room and the doorway to the kitchen.

The living room has big windows that let in a lot of natural sunlight, which I love. A lot of the other houses we toured were really dark inside and I knew that would drive me crazy. In addition to the gross tan paint, the carpet is also a nice shade of tan. It’s new I believe, so I’m not going to rip it up right away. I need to investigate, but have a hunch there are hard wood floors under there.

Here’s the kitchen. That doorway looks out into the living room. Nice white cabinets and white appliances. Like I said, a blank slate.

It’s a small kitchen, but I really like that the cabinets go all the way to the ceiling. There is plenty of room to store things and it eliminates the wasted, awkward space that’s usually above kitchen cabinets.

I have big dreams for this awkward corner. I’m thinking either lots of shelving, extending the counter to make bar seating, or creating a built-in breakfast nook. It’s small, but it will be functional someday.

This is the dining room. Look at that paneling! That doorway over there leads into the kitchen. This is officially the first room that will be seeing paint. I can hardly wait to brighten it up. Oh, they even left some gross floral curtains on this window. I do love the hardwood floor!

There is a nice built-in hutch in the corner by the window. And there’s a big cedar closet in the opposite corner. I hear those things are good for storing blankets and clothes, so I piled all of our extra blankets in there for now. Is that what I’m supposed to do?

This is the second bedroom, which David is going to use as his office until we have some kiddos to put in here one day.

The bathroom is right in between the two bedrooms. They put in a nice new white vanity that I like. And there’s quite a bit of storage in here actually, even though it looks tiny. Behind the door is a small little cabinet to store things, and a laundry chute. To the left is a good-sized closet. There’s also two cupboards above the bathtub.

And here’s our bedroom, back in the front of the house off the living room. Both bedrooms have decent sized closets. They’re not huge by any means, but a bed and a couple dressers fit in there.

DOWNSTAIRS

The stairway is between the kitchen and dining room, and leads downstairs to this room. We’re calling it the rec room to make our house sound fancy. It’s really just cement walls and some cheapo carpet. It is a walk-out basement, which I’m really excited about. Just to the left off the edge of this picture is a door that leads out to a cement patio area with potential and the stairs are to the left of the door. I’m actually really excited about the future of this room. It has great sunlight in the afternoons.

Oh, and here are the stairs. Look at that retro metal going on. I actually think that will look really cool with some cleaning and a bit of paint. That door opens to a huge closet under the stairs.

Here’s the utility/laundry room. It’s pretty sketchy, but it’s a room. We haven’t gotten a washer and dryer yet, but they’ll go back in the corner where the outlet is dangling from the wall. We have our work cut out for us in this room, but I’m thinking I’ll eventually hang some simple curtains to section off areas. Oh, and there’s sort of a bathroom back in the left corner. It’s a dark corner with a toilet 🙂

And the final room is this beauty, our future craft studio.It’s just cement floor and cement walls, but it has a couple windows and, strangely enough, it even came with that pencil sharpener on the wall to your right there. How strange is that?! That door leads outside as well, which will be great for spray paint projects.

On the opposite wall from the door are some really fancy built-in shelves, haha.

That’s all the rooms! It’s so much space compared to our one-bedroom apartment, that we hardly know what to do with it all! Here’s the only picture I really have of the backyard. Sorry, it’s taken through the screened window in the dining room. That is our little one-car garage. It’s not much, but it sure beats scraping our windshield every morning. Look, we even have a clothesline and an overgrown sandbox! I have grand visions of an awesome patio back here.

Thanks for coming along on the house tour! I am so excited to have a place that’s truly mine, and I’m nervous but excited to begin testing my home improvement skills. Between Google and Pinterest tutorials, I’m feeling pretty good about turning this house into our home. Stay tuned for lots of updates as we go along! I am already really pumped to do a one-year later blog post and see our progress in each room.

If you have any grand ideas for a room or tips for a first time homeowner, I’m all ears. Comment below, I can use any help you’ll give me!