Our first house: 'Before' and 'After'

Our beloved little 1907 ~1200 sq ft home in Old Town took us all 5 years that we lived there to fix it up- Jamison did amazing work (with some help from our handy dads)!

I thought it would be fun to show all of the listing photos from when we bought the house vs the listing photos from when we sold the house. I put this post together a few months ago, but then was superstitious about posting it before the house sold (weird- I know).

Front of the house:

Before

After- new roof, paint, storm windows, front door

And disregard the lack of green... that is due to the season :)

Before

After- still love that big tree (even though it has caused us some grief)

Back of the house:

Before- the walkway leads to the back alley.

After- we didn't really change anything here other than paint the garage and add horseshoes. And we also added some stone to the parking spot in the alley and got a new garage door.  If I had been home while they were taking pictures, I would definitely have moved that wheelbarrow! 

Before

 After- new paint! If we had been here longer, I would have loved to replace the window on the right with a door to our bedroom and then create a nice relaxing patio.
Did you notice the house next door substantially grew? :)

And now moving inside!

The dining room

Before- bad lighting fixture and curtains that just don't do the windows justice

After- new paint, chandelier, wood floors, window shades, painted molding . We kept the built-in.

The living room

Before- you'll see a common theme throughout the house of darker ceilings

After- new paint, front door, canned lighting (goodbye track lighting!)

This may be my favorite picture- you can get a feel for how open the main area of the house feels with all of the windows. You can also see the glare from the windows which has a slight ripple from the original glass.

Before- a really ugly non-original fireplace. Also check out the hallway with lovely blue shag carpeting  (I tore that out the first day we moved in, and then it remained that way for ~4 years :-p)

After- fireplace removed (that was a mess!), window air conditioning unit removed, new floors (I still don't know if I agree with covering up the original, but it allowed us to place it in the hallway and make the whole house flooring on the same level). You can also see all of the upgraded doors in the hallway.

Kitchen

 Before- This was seriously marketed as an 'upgraded kitchen' in Old Town... That lovely green tile outlined the small doorway entry into the kitchen too.

After- Can you believe the change? This was definitely our biggest remodel project. And yes- it feels waaay larger by simply getting rid of the false low ceiling (why would anyone ever do that?)

Before

After

You can't really see it, but Jamison re-finished the side door going outside, and it looks great.

Bathroom 1

Before- everything about this room was bad

After- I love this color. To gain more storage, the mirror slides to the side and there are shelves behind it like a medicine cabinet.  And the shower has two shower heads, one extra high for Jamison :)

Bathroom 2

Before- the wall between the shower and toilet was so close to the sink, that I had to quit getting ready in here while I was pregnant!

After- the room looks so much larger with some simple re-arranging!  And nothing is better than a cast iron bathtub.

Bedroom 1:

Before- dark ceiling, odd shelf around a very small closet

                             

After- Emmery's bedroom (you can't see the closet, but it is bigger and full of organizational shelves),  new blinds and fan ceiling light

Bedroom 2:

Before- blue ceiling with horrible drywall seams showing, corner shelves.

After- our bedroom with a skim-coated ceiling (Jamison skim-coated and re-texturized many of the walls in this house- he's a bit of a perfectionist), new paint, frames around windows, blinds, and ceiling fan. In addition the closet has some organizational shelves.

Bedroom 3:

 No before pic available, but it basically looked similar to the bedroom with the green ceiling but is a bit smaller.

After- a great office!

And that's all!  After all his hard work (Jamison touched practically every square inch of this house) you would think he would have had a hard time moving, but truthfully it was me that had a harder time.  I loved this house, the neighborhood, being close to yummy local restaurants, and our amazing neighbors- I often thought we could have made it work if only we had a basement...  

But, we are very happy now to have more space to fit our growing family (no, I am not pregnant), a cheaper mortgage payment (which allows me to stay home with Emmery), and being closer to Denver and more of our friends and family.