New House Tour

Remember how before we left Louisiana, we said that every move we’ve done has been dramatic in some way, and we wondered what this one would bring? Well this last week has beaten down our souls, and if you follow along on our Instagram you’d have seen a little bit about it, but because it’s STILL ongoing we’ll tell that whole story soon.

Anyway, because we officially own our Florida panhandle house as of Friday, we thought we’d celebrate with a few before photos/a new house tour! Don’t mind the piles of boxes and trash stacked up into the corners, we’re kind of playing a chicken-and-the-egg game of do we unpack the boxes or build the storage areas for that junk first?

So, check it out, our new fixer upper! We’re so excited about it and can’t wait to get started. (We’ll share the exterior ideas soon but since we’ve still got storm debris to clean up outside it’s a bit of a dumpster fire.)

For background, this little home is about 1,100 square feet and in a really cute neighborhood, kind of a worst-house-on-the-best-street situation, so be prepared that some of it is rough but you’ve got to keep the end vision in mind!

Living room

Also known as the cave. For some reason whoever had this house before thought it was appropriate to install a ceiling fan that didn’t have a light and I suppose relied on lamps and other lighting. I mean, we’d prefer that type of lighting anyway but I feel like you need both, especially because the front porch outside and some trees along the side of the house also block a lot of light coming in the windows.

This room is an awkward shape, but our sectional fits perfectly so that’s the win we needed this week. We’ve got grand plans in here of some type of built-ins or maybe even a faux fireplace where the TV is (once we fix the important stuff like not having an oven).

We aren’t sure yet what we’ll do with the dead space between the living room and the kitchen, but are hoping to widen out that entrance to make it all feel a little more open (and again help with the lighting issue).

Kitchen

This kitchen is massive. It’s a small house, but clearly what’s lacking in bedroom size is made up for in living space. It’s very open so we plan to build a little island in the middle, and one of our very first projects will be a built-in dining bench (with storage, of course) on the other side of the room that’s previously been used as a dining room.

There’s also a giant microwave and wall oven sitting on the side of the room that’s apparently new but has never been installed because it didn’t fit anywhere. I don’t know why you would buy a major appliance without busting out a measuring tape, but here we are, so we plan to sell it and install a normal one under the stovetop hopefully.

Pantry/Laundry

This is possibly the scariest room. Actually, no, wait for the bathroom. Still, there’s some mold on the drywall we need to remove, and I’m not sure how a washer/dryer ever fit where the hookups are with that water heater in the way. Our plan is to get one of those much smaller tankless versions mounted there instead, then get a stackable washer/dryer.

The vision is to make this room mostly storage. That’s one thing we learned a lot in the last house – add storage wherever you can!

So, the plan is to close off that second door into this room (that leads out to the living room) and make a big, U-shaped pantry shelving unit, then on the other side next to the washer/dryer, add more storage for things like cleaning supplies, air filters, boring adult homeowner stuff that needs a place to live.

Main bedroom

This is the biggest bedroom, which is saying a lot. We held our breath and made some high pitched grunting noises as we tried to squeeze a king bed into that little room, but luckily it just fits! Alex needs to do a bit of an awkward shuffle to get around to his side, but I’ve notoriously had the shitty side of the bed so I’m glad to finally have the good side (even if it means I get murdered first).

As you can see in the photos, the flooring in here is beautiful. It’s for some reason the one room that appears to have been sanded and finished and someone unfortunately gave zero fucks about continuing it on through the rest of the house.

The plan is to one day finish that job, but it seems messy and tedious so I think we’ll live with it for a while.

The bedroom plan is to make a moody green accent wall with some board and batten behind the headboard, and to possibly open out the closet to make it bigger. The other side of the closet wall is the baby’s room, and we’re thinking she probably doesn’t need one for the foreseeable future.

Guest bedroom

This little room is cute and has lots of natural light from the direction the windows face, but this monstrosity has to go. A friend made a good assumption that this room was probably someone’s closet/dressing room and that’s why Monstrosity was built, but we can’t assemble the Queen-sized bed in here without it gone, so it will give me great joy to be rid of it.

Nursery

This room is so small, so luckily we only need it as the baby’s room. Like, her old rug literally touches both ends of the room, so it must be about 10-foot wide. I’ve got a few plans in here to make her a little reading area and some shelves (because we just sold the DIY book bin I made), but that’s another down-the-line kind of project.

I’m still mourning the loss of the cute nursery closet makeover I did only a few weeks before we decided to sell, but I’ll make some new nursery plans soon.

Bathroom

Okay, I saved the scariest for last. This dingy little bathroom needs a lot of love, but it’s also the only bathroom in the house so we’ll need to be strategic about what we tackle and when.

Aside from the Hollywood lights, the creepy wall of mirrors and the haphazard patching job on the walls and ceiling, the tiling is gross.

It’s all the same around the walls, on the floor and on the tub, which makes the dirty grout on the floor much more noticeable. What’s weird is that I found a tin of Tub & Tile (that we used in our quick bathroom makeover in the old house) and it looks like they used it along just a strip of tile going around the room, which makes me wonder what the hell is under there that was so bad they decided to cover it up to sell when they appear to have made zero other upgrades. Probably clowns or something.

There’s so much we want to do in here I won’t even list it out, but immediately I think we’ll give the vanity a coat of paint, add some towel hooks and shelves, and switch out the mirror for a budget upgrade.

So, what do you think?? Do you see the potential? Make sure to sign up to our newsletter to read the story of our move in the next few days. It was a lot to handle. Spoiler: It involved a hurricane, being homeless and a nightmare seller.