HOME TOUR - NEW HOUSE – Oh So Lovely Blog

OUR FIXER UPPER HOME TOUR (IN PROCESS PHOTOS)

This summer we sold the Olathe, KS house that we updated ourselves (over five years), and bought a fixer upper in Leawood, KS.

We have big DIY plans for this house, and are completely updating it as we go. We plan to stay here until Vivi graduates high school since we are in one of the very best school districts (then we hope to downsize to a cool modern house…yeah, we like to plan ahead, ha).

I’m sharing a photo home tour of the in progress photos incase you want to follow along in the craziness.

Here’s a before pic of the front of the house. We don’t really love the left roof area/windows, so we plan on adding some elements to help camouflage that in the future. We also plan on updating the landscaping, painting the front door, etc.

HOME TOUR – NEW HOUSE, Oh So Lovely Blog

We’ve been meeting some super nice neighbors, getting settled in quite nicely, and have done some painting in Vivi’s room, the main level living room, and a guest room so far. Slowly but surely we’re updating this place to our liking.

We have A LOT of DIYs ahead of us — renovating/updating three bathrooms, the kitchen, and lots more. We plan on knocking down some kitchen walls and really opening it up as well as adding new countertops, backsplash, etc. I can’t wait to get the kitchen project going. Hopefully we can start in the next few months. I’ll be documenting it all, so stay tuned.

So far I’ve given you all a peek at some before (Realtor) photos of Vivi’s room and attached playroom/observatory and our main living room. And if you follow me on Instagram you might have seen some other interesting pics of this quirky house. Oh, there are plenty of quirks, ha!

So for you nosey home tour people out there like me, here are some before pics of our main living room.

MAIN LIVING ROOM

The Realtor photo:

And where it is right now with our furniture and decor in place. I’m planning on painting the walls a light sagey grey color soon, which will really help brighten the room.

We have 31 mature trees on our property (that should be fun this fall), so although we have plenty of windows in the house, not as much light comes through them. The new lighter wall color will help brighten the room.

You step down a few steps from our foyer entrance area into our main living room.
And this is the view straight on. Ted wants to remove all of the parkay flooring and replace it with dark, wide plank wood flooring eventually.

After you walk down the stairs you look to the left and we have our new IKEA entertainment center, and a hallway to a half bath, the laundry room, the garage, and the basement.

Do you see that mirror/window thing to the right of the entertainment center area? Well that was a lizard cage with lighting and a water supply. We plan on removing it and returning it to painted drywall someday soon.

The new wall color will really brighten the room a lot. And I plan on painting the closet doors near the fireplace built ins white to match the trim. I also found some cool old brushed brass doorknobs in another part of the house, and Ted is going to switch them out for the ugly ceramic floral closet door knobs. Yess!!

The fireplace wall use to be the tan color and the fireplace was orange, so i painted them both the same color as the trim to make the fireplace feel like one big unit. I think it helps brighten the room so much.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

And now we face the fireplace and built in shelves. I LOVE the built ins! So much pretty storage.

And look at the pretty vintage brass pulls. Love!

But let’s not ignore the two creepy built in wooden faces on the fireplace (and two more in the ceiling woodwork). We are going to cut them out, and we have four friends who have claimed them, haha. Soon, they will find new homes. 🙂

Next, we turn to the couch area and the bright skylight sitting area behind the couch, which leads to the deck.

I hate our big dark sectional couch. It shuts the other parts of the room off way too much, and doesn’t allow for conversational seating as much. I really want to sell the sectional and buy a more clean and modern one or for two modern couches. Someday soon, someday.

Next we turn to another seating area and the built in bar area.

The lit corner bar with sink and storage is very dated, so we plan on updating it and adding an actual bar top and shelving to it eventually. For now it will be the awkward corner bar. Or we might decide to remove it all together. We shall see.

And this is the view up the stairs into the foyer, entry living room, and kitchen.

The house has lots of great features and bones, but we plan on updating and modernizing most rooms over the years.

We have a lot of projects ahead of us, but we have some time to knock them all out DIY style. We’re really looking forward to it.

I just painted all of the walls a lighter color, and it turned out great I think. I’ll post all of the after photos of the new paint soon.

ENTRYWAY LIVING ROOM

Here’s the REALTOR photo of the room. The before, before…You walk into a foyer with a coat closet, stairs up to the bedrooms, entry into the first living room, entry into the kitchen, and the steps down to our main living room.

And a couple more befores I took with my phone…I really love the ceilings in this house. Def one of my fave features.

Too much beige paint! This room needs some major brightening! Red stair carpet. Sigh.

We don’t have any carpet in the house EXCEPT for this lovely RED stair carpet. Sigh. I pulled those Victorian decor elements from the staircase the moment we turned the key to get into the house the first time, ha. They had to go stat.The dining room paint is too dark, and the trim needs to go to white to go with all of the other trim. I plan on doing that next week.

And here are my in process photos.

We plan on knocking out the big wall where the shelf is as well as a wall in the dining room and opening up the kitchen a ton. We’ll add a DIY island in between the room as well. More on that one down the road.

I had to set this room up on night two to give myself a sense of peace, ha.Then a couple of weeks ago I painted the room a light blue grey color (Opaline from Sherwin Williams). It really helped brighten the room, and let the decor pop instead of competing with the beige paint.

I still need to paint the wall leading up the stairs. I just ran out of energy.

As I mentioned before, I hate the red stair carpet. We plan to either pull it and replace with wood or completely take out the staircase all together.It only leads up to the playroom/observatory, so there really is no need for it. If we remove it, it will make the room much bigger, and save some extra heating and cooling energy.

I painted the under stair built ins in the same Opaline color to help them blend in. It helped a bit I think.Here are a couple progress shots…

I love the extra deep built in storage.

And here’s the view out the windows. I’m hanging floor to ceiling curtains soon. I’ll either use some I already have on hand (in light aqua or light gold) or sew my own. We still need to remove the rectangle residue from the windows. That is a lovely remnant from the 1972 alarm system. 🙂

This is where the dogs hang out and wait for us to come home when they’re not otherwise occupied getting into the garbage or sleeping.

Another view. You can see some of the foyer and dining room in this shot.

Hi Edgar.

I’ll be painting the foyer walls soon in a brighter color. We’ll also be hanging the pendant light from Vivi’s old room and painting the beams the same white as the ceiling. More detailed before and after photos of the foyer coming soon!

DINING ROOM

As you might have seen over on my instagram, I’ve been working on updating the dining room over the last month. It was finally finished last weekend, and I’m so happy about it!Here are a few of the dark, drab, and dreary before photos.

Onto the new room….

Best part—it only cost us about $175 to update it. All we bought was a Target rug, a can of paint (Valspar, Midnight in Paris), and a piece of wood for the wine rack top. Not too shabby.

Ok, I’ll take you on the tour….

Here’s the view when you walk in from the entryway living room.

(All that’s left to update in this view is the gross red stair carpet—the only carpet in the house, thankfully).

Look to your right, and there is a small seating nook surrounded by bright windows and a skylight.

I originally wanted to replace the golden pendant light, but I kinda like how cool and vintage it is, It also puts off some fun shadows. I bought a new pendant light at IKEA, but ended up deciding that it looked better in Vivi’s room.

I use the mid century cabinet to store all of my crafty supplies (I got it for free from a previous neighbor’s trash pile…best find ever)!

When you turn to the other direction you see the view into the fixer upper kitchen, which I cannot wait to update. I wanna rearrange it and open up to the dining and living rooms as much as possible. As soon as possible.

The wine rack belonged to Ted’s late father, and we are happy we found a home for it. It used to just be a stand alone rack, so we added a stained piece of wood to the top, and I added a few decorative elements to it.

The painting is something I did a couple of weeks ago. I like the color it brings into the room. And the canvas was one of a few left by the previous owner…score.

The lamp used to be part of a pair of aqua lamps, which I love, but I wanted this one to be a more fun color, so I spray painted it coral. When it dried I decided it needed something else, so I reverse paint dripped it with metallic gold spray paint. I love this effect.

Now we turn to the buffet table area. This wake table belonged to Ted’s mother’s parents, and dates back over 100 years. We love it, and I love that the dark stain helps bring some weight to the bright room.

I use it to mainly store office supplies…you know what a normal person would use a buffet for, haha! I’m a strange one.

I really wanted to hang the mirror that’s sitting on top of the buffet, but it weighs about 50 pounds, and I had a hard time finding a stud where I needed it, so I left it leaning.Not my preference, but I like that it at least reflects the chandelier, making the room even brighter.

Sorry for the bad yellowy lighting here.

The chandelier used to be a green color, but I spray painted it with some metallic gold spray paint. I love how it turned out.

The table used to be in my home office in our last house.

It came from a thrift store, and was chrome and cheap wood to start, so I painted the top white, and the legs a metallic gold. I really like this table.

And here’s a view of the top.

And here’s is my fave bar cart with a little gallery wall above.

The left print is from minted, the bottom one is one I made, and the top sunburst came in a set of three for $5 from Aldi believe it or not. 🙂

And there you have it. A room I enjoy being in now. Hooray!

ENTRY WAY

We haven’t done too much with it because we’re planning on knocking down a couple of walls to open up the kitchen to our upstairs living room and dining room. We don’t want to paint the walls until it’s all opened up, so we’re living with the beige for now.We plan on painting the dark ceiling beams white to match all of the white ceiling detail in the other rooms. That’ll brighten it up a bit.

As you might have seen, I painted the front door a bright aqua (and updated our front porch), which really funned things up a bit.

Then to add in even more color, I took a free wood frame my mom gave me, and spray painted it white leaving the brass lining (look for a future post on how I paint my gallery wall frames in the future).

I printed one of my free succulent printables at my local drugstore in a 16×20 size, and popped it into the frame.

There’s a “thank you for not smoking” sign to the left of the light switch that has to go, ha!

We’re going to remove the existing pendant light, and try to sell it on Craigslist. I want to replace it with the c ool retro light that hung in Vivi’s old room.

The walls were definitely in need of some fun color and life.

If you know me at all, you know I love a gallery wall. I have them throughout the house, and they just make me smile. Well this one is one of my faves, and it features three of my gorgeous Minted prints.

Click here to see the living room to the right in more detail. That red stair carpet HAS to go. The kitchen is to the left, and that will be it’s own blog post later. Lots to do there.


SHOP: “Day Breaking” Prin t (left) and “Best Thing” print (right).

SHOP: “Interlude” Print.

I decided to paint the light aqua entry way table a dark charcoal color. Even though I love me some turquoise, I just don’t want a house full of it, ha. I think it went too dark, so I’ll probably do a lighter grey paint soon.

Right now the table showcases some of my fave Halloween decor, and I love the mood it evokes at night.

And here’s a view of the entryway and gallery wall from the main living room.

We’re going to remove and replace the tan hand rail. Of course it’s in the Victorian style too—just not our thing.

We’re also planning on removing all of the parquet wood flooring (and entryway tile), and replacing it with wide planked darker wood flooring throughout the entire house. That will be a big DIY in our future.

THE DREADED KITCHEN

Today
I’m being brave and taking you on a tour of our fixer upper’s kitchen.
It’s my most hated spot in the house, and will be getting completely
remodeled here pretty soon. We’re planning on knocking down a few walls,
rearranging the counters and appliances, and building a large custom
island.

The
biggest hurdle right now is knocking down a couple of walls so we can
get started on the big remodel (on a budget, of course). We’re going to
have my dad and Ted check out the walls for structural integrity before
we do anything just to be safe. Hopefully that happens soon.So here we go.

This
is the view from the entry way and adjoining living room. We’re hoping to remove the wall (behind the shelf with the globes), and open up the kitchen to
the main floor living room. We also are planning on removing the wall leading from the kitchen to the dining room (more on that soon).

PS. We’re painting the entry way beams white to match the character in the living room ceilings.
We’re also going to replace all of the parquet and tile flooring
throughout the house ourselves to be wide plank, darker stained wood.
That’s going to help a lot, and will be pretty affordable since we’re
doing it ourselves.

We turn the corner into the “pantry” and microwave/coffee bar. The lack of a real walk n pantry has been a bit annoying. At our last house we had a huge walk in pantry that even turned a corner in the back of it, but in time shall have a better pantry. 🙂

You
also get a glimpse of our dining room, which is painted way too dark,
and is next on my list to paint. The paint I’ve chosen will really
brighten the place up quite a bit.

Now
we turn to the breakfast table with a view of the skylight windowed
area that we’re currently using as extra counter
space/trash/recycling/dog food area. We removed an old light and sold it
on Craigslist, and are waiting until we redo the kitchen to replace the
light above the table area.

We’re
going to remove/replace all of the chair rails. We aren’t into the
Victorian era details, and want to keep it simple and classic.

And here is a better view of the skylight (we have four of them throughout the house, and they do help brighten things up quite a bit).

Now we turn to the gorgeous kitchen work area. Sigh. I HATE this space. I realize it could be much worse, but dayyyum it’s just bad.

Do
you like the 1972 stove, ha? It works great, but obviously needs to be
updated. We’re going to run a gas line and switch to a gas range. We
brought the fridge from the last house, and bought a clearance Thermador dishwasher for a steal of a deal. That helped a bit.

Here’s another view.

I hate storing stuff a top the fridge, but that’s what we’ve had to do of late.

I
DESPISE the tile counter top, and can’t wait to switch it out with a
nice stone. We also plan on extending the counter top around the wall to
the window area for extra counter space. We’ll also change the layout
of the fridge/stove/etc. It’ll all basically change, and that makes me
happy. 🙂

We’ll
be using classic white subway tile for the back splash, and either
replacing or refinishing the cabinets, and adding new pulls.

And some of the ceiling detail.

And here’s the view back to the “pantry.” Hopefully this will all be gone soon (as well as the walls).

And on a lighter note, let’s have a look at the gorgeous Minted print hanging near the pantry. I love terrariums and succulents, so I obviously love this print.

It brings a bit of life to this dead kitchen. 🙂