Anniversary present...to our house!

In a couple weeks it will  be the 1 year anniversary of us buying this new house....can you believe it! I had  told Lee that I thought every year around our house anniversary we should try to do a home improvement project as a "gift" to the house haha. Since we really hadn't budgeted for any huge overhaul this year we stuck  to a few simple "spiffy up" projects, but I think they turned out great! The house is very thankful :-)

The main focus of our sprucing up was the laundry room/ half bath. When we first moved in this  was the room of the house that I hated. I actually  didn't  mind the way the previous owners had  decorated, but they had painted their laundry room a godawful shade of neon green! I think they were trying to brighten up a small space and make it feel more cheery ,but  it was a big fail in my opinion. Way too much neon in a tiny space and it gave me a headache haha. So we painted it yellow when we first moved in, but never did anything more than that.

Here was the BEFORE (this was how it looked when the previous owners  lived here):



This was taken without lights on...it was waaaay more neon than this in real  life.  Notice the lack  of storage  space for laundry items.

Notice the builder  grade mirror,  faucet, and lovely white knobs :-P

And now for our AFTER picture:

It's  hard  to capture the real  color of the walls with the lighting the  way it is, but it's a buttery yellow. I knew I wanted something to brighten the space up so I painted  it yellow right  when  we moved in, but  never got anything to bring in accent colors until  this weekend. I love  it!

One other thing we hated  before was the water line hookup for the washer is on the far right wall, so you can see the old owners had the washer dryer pushed  up along that right side. We had to put ours there too and it has been such a pain getting laundry out with the toilet in the way! We also had no place to store  our soaps, etc. So this weekend Lee bought an extra long water line hose (can't believe we waited a year to do that! lol) and now we can push the washer dryer to the far left and actually open the doors with tons of space! We also bought that white shelving at Walmart (I think it was in the garage organization section) for less than $20. Tons of storage now! Eventually  we'd like to update the kitchen counters and at that time will install countertop over the washer dryer to make that whole area look more like a built in, but for now it works :-)


Then my new organization system...I like a place to put dirty towels and rags from the kitchen (and bibs) that  isn't in our normal laundry hampers in our rooms. So the basket on the left is for that dirty laundry now. The basket on the right is for clean. The little green basket is for crap I find in pockets, and the blue basket is for items being stain treated (I always have something of the girls' being treated it seems!)

Over here we replaced the ugly exposed lightbulb looking fixture for new lighting. Lee also replaced the faucet (it has a removable sprayer and is extra tall...great for filling buckets or handwashing clothes, etc. (not that  I ever do that ;-) ...he bought  new towel bar, toilet paper holder, and updated those ugly white  knobs with brushed silver. Last but not least he framed the mirror!!! He did this with all  the bathroom mirrors at our old house but hadn't gotten around to it here yet.

I still  want  to get  some wall  art to hang  above the towel bar to bring more color to this  corner---just haven't found anything yet.



This  is our mail center and all the hooks were here when  we moved in...like a mudroom area. Normally these hooks are covered in coats and hats and bags :-P

Found a rug with all the colors I wanted!  $7 at Gordmans :-) I don't  like fancy rugs in here because during the winter our boots and stuff stay in here.

Found  this  pretty metal  wall art at Gordmans too...I wanted  something on either  side of the cute window and this was perfect.

And my most favorite part of all, my new retractable clothesline! I  have not been a big air dryer in the past, but lately I've been trying to air dry more of the girls' clothes so that by the time it's passed down to Brielle it doesn't have so much wash wear and fade. I  am  also starting to air dry more of my shirts because  I hate buying something I love and then hating it a week later because it shrunk weird lol.

So now I just pull stuff out of the dryer and hang it right up! So fun. I had to wash Raya's ballerina stuff just so I could try it out :-)

And when not in use it just  folds  up against the wall  and out of the way!

Moving on,  we did a tiny facelift to the kitchen sink.

Here it  was before, when the old owners  lived  here:

Please note  the counters are never  that  clean  now that we live here :-P  *But* see the boring white faucet? It leaked a little too

Well, now we have a fancy bronze faucet and soap dispenser! Looooove it. All the hardware in our kitchen is bronze, as are the light fixtures etc.

And lastly, perhaps the most embarassing part of all this is that we  bought this  house and had  one weekend to paint, etc. before the movers came. We knew it was now or never because once we moved in we'd be busy. Well we started painting the master bathroom and then ran out of time! We got the middles of the walls painted but nothing around door frames, mirror, ceilings, etc. So we left the painters tape up, the outlet covers off, etc. hoping to finish it later.

....and "later" ended up being this weekend...almost one year later LOL. Yes, for one  year we used that bathroom with the tape up and outlet covers off :-0 ....at least we are the only ones who use the master bathroom ;-)

So here is the before when the old owners lived here:

The walls were just white

And after:

It's really  hard to  tell in this  pic, but  we *did* paint haha.  We painted  it a tan color, to match the  attached master bedroom. The master bedding etc. is all  reds, so we carried that  accent color into the bathroom. I feel like this bathroom is still  kinda  boring, but oh well. I can't really  think of what else to do ! Eventually we will chnage out the fixtures to bronze in here---we prefer bronze over silver (we did silver in the laundry room since the washer/dryer had silver).

Here was Raya helping Daddy in the laundry room during the redo!

And just because it's cute, here was Brielle waiting for Grandma on Saturday (she took the kids so we could work on this stuff!)

So Happy (early) Anniversary house....we love you! :-)