One of the reasons I've waited so long to write this post is because I wanted our house to be fully decorated before I took photos of everything. Although that happened within six months of us moving in, I kept forgetting to take photos when the house was clean. I would remember little by little to take photos, so these pictures were taken anywhere from two years ago to just a few weeks ago. Within the past couple of weeks, I've updated some of our decor and we've repainted and redecorated the kids' bedrooms. The photos I'm posting here are all from before those updates took place, and I'll do a separate post with the changes we've made later on.
I'm not sure why, but I feel really vulnerable sharing pictures of my house. It's not the biggest, fanciest, or most perfectly decorated, but it is our home. It's comfortable, cozy, and a haven where we're making wonderful memories as a family. We are learning, growing, loving, and living in this space. We are so happy to have the privilege of living here, and we thank God often for blessing us with the comfort of our home.
Before we get to the photos, there's one more thing I want to address. All the walls and ceilings in our entire house (with the exception of the Book Nook) are painted the same color (Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter). Depending on the lighting, the color looks very different in some photos. I can assure you, though, it's all the same color! I don't claim to be a photographer, and I realize that many of these photos aren't great. It's difficult to take photos of rooms, and many of them were taken with my phone! Please forgive my lack of photographing ability that is so obvious in these photos.
Okay, so let's get started!
In my posts where I wrote about the process of building our house, I posted photos of the exterior of our house (here), as well as the floor plan (here). As a reminder, here is the original floor plan (before our modifications):
Main Floor
Second Floor
And here is the exterior of our house:
The house sits on three quarters of an acre and is a little over 2500 square feet. As you walk through the front door into the main entryway, this is what you see:
Immediately to the right is the door to Bren's room. The door next to that on the right (that you can see in the photo above) is a small closet. We keep the leaf to our table, vacuum, photos albums, and some Legos in there.
My dad made the small shelf on the wall for me,
as well as the hope chest on the left side of the hallway.
This is a view of the entryway from the living room looking toward the front door. You can see the small closet (closed door) and Brenson's room (open door) on the left side, as well as an entrance to the kitchen/dining area on the right side of the photo.
This is the same view as above, just standing a little more in the living room.
After walking through the entryway, you come to the living room. As you can see in the floor plan, our living, kitchen, and dining are all open to each other. I love this for the most part, although some days it would be nice to have a bit more of a sound barrier!
Closer view of our fireplace:
This is the view standing at the stairway looking back toward the entryway:
A closer look at the table . . .
There is a built in shelf above our large picture windows. As you can see, it's full of small frames. These frames contain photos of the children we have taken each year for their birthdays. It's almost full!
This view is from my kitchen sink looking into the living room . . . you can definitely see how open the kitchen is to the living room!
This photo is standing at the fireplace looking toward the kitchen (opposite of the photo above).
The door you see in the photo below leads to our covered back patio and backyard. We love our outdoor space, but I forgot to take photos of it!
Close-up of our collage wall:
If you walk from the living room into the kitchen area, you can see we have a long, high counter top that runs the length of the separation between the living room and the kitchen. This is wonderful for hosting a crowd, and the children often sit at the chairs and do homework in the afternoons while I fix dinner.
Walking further into the kitchen, you see a better view of our island (one of my favorite things about our kitchen!) and the sink area.
It doesn't always look like this, but I love a clean sink!
The kitchen flows directly into our dining area. The door you see in the photo below is our pantry.
A peek inside the pantry . . .
A few details of the things above our cabinets . . . most of these things have special meaning to me.
Dining area (the lighting in this pic is terrible . . . sorry about that!):
This little desk area next to our refrigerator is something I originally wanted removed from our floor plan. However, Chris really wanted it to stay, and I'm so thankful we left it in! We don't leave a chair there for now (because we don't want the kids to have easy access to the cabinet above it where we keep meds and scissors), but it's a very useful area!
The next couple photos were taken from the front door looking left into the kitchen.
The little kid kitchen was built by my dad, and I was thankful we had the perfect place for it in this house. The little girls love to cook and work right along side me, and this helps keep them out of my way when I'm at the stove. Brianna and Brenson both loved it when they were younger, too.
Closer view of the kid kitchen:
The color on the wall is Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams.
This space is another favorite in our house. It's great for the kids if they need some alone time, a place to calm down, or just somewhere to snuggle up with a good book.
The little cabinet was my nightstand growing up and now it's FULL of books!
I love to choose a few books to "display" each week for the children :-).
The light fixture that was originally in this area didn't give off much light, so we switched it out almost immediately for a much brighter alternative.
On the other side of the arch from the Book Nook are three doors.
The door to the right is our master bedroom (it shares a wall with the Book Nook and you can just barely see the light from the room in the photo above), the door to the left is our laundry room, and the door in the middle is a coat closet.
The laundry room also leads to the garage, and this is the way we typically come in and out of our house.
I love that we have a sink in this room. That has been so convenient for us!
This photo is taken from the door that leads to the garage looking back toward the little hallway with the coat closet and doorway to the master bedroom. I'll show photos of that next.
One of the things that appealed to us about this floor plan is that it is "split", meaning the master bedroom is on the opposite side of the house as the other bedrooms. As you walk into the master bedroom from the small hallway, this is what you see:
The double doors in the photo above lead to our master bathroom, while the door in the photo below leads to our closet. I don't personally like having the closet inside the master bath, so this feature also appealed to me a lot!
This is "my" side of the room, complete with the cradle my dad built for me when I was a baby and Cabbage Patch Kids from my childhood.
Chris's side of the room:
One corner of the room holds the rocker that was in all our kids' nurseries. I've spent many hours rocking my babies in this chair! Now, it mostly serves as a place to throw the clean laundry until I fold it!
My dresser is a large piece of furniture, so it takes up a big part of the wall. The door you can see is where you walk in and out of the bedroom.
In the photo below, you can easily see how the door leads to the main part of the house.
Chris's chest of drawers:
Next, I'm going to be really brave and show you the inside of our master bedroom closet! This is a great space complete with built-in shelving and a built-in dresser. The kids often sleep in here when there is a storm, they've had a nightmare, they're sick, or we have overnight company. They can all four fit on the floor, although we've never done that!
Chris's side . . . His name is something his grandma made for his nursery when he was born!
My side:
I know I posted this photo above, but I wanted to post it again to show where you enter the master bathroom from our bedroom.
When you first enter the bathroom from the bedroom, you see our huge vanity with my sink on the left and Chris's sink straight ahead.
This plant was given to us when Chris's grandpa passed away and helps the room feel fresh.
This is the view from Chris's sink of my sink and the doors that lead to our bedroom.
To the right of Chris's sink is our shower. In the original floor plan, this room had a huge jacuzzi tub in the corner instead of the giant vanity, and the shower was much smaller. We don't do baths at all, so we had the tub removed and the shower expanded. We don't regret that!
This is the inside of our shower. You can't see it in this photo, but we had two shower heads installed and we love that!
Across from the shower is the toilet room.
I appreciate that this room is separate from the rest of the bathroom!
It's very small and simple, though!
This is the view of the bathroom from the wall where the shelf is.
Next to the toilet room is a closet.
Yep, I'm showing the inside of this one, too!
And then, we're back around to the doors that lead to the bedroom again.
From here, I'm going to show you the kids' rooms. We'll start with Brenson's. His bedroom is located immediately to the right as soon as you enter the house from the front door. In the photo below looking from the living room towards our front door, it's the door on the left that's open.
This room is generally built out as an office in this floor plan, but we needed it as a bedroom. This didn't mean much except it has a normal door instead of an "office" door.
This photo is obviously pretty old . . . look at how small Bren is!
Bren has large picture windows in his room that take up a big part of one wall. His cute workbench is more handiwork of my dad's.
This "Charlie" belonged to my Grandpa Charlie. I thought it was perfect for Bren's room since one of his middle names is Charles.
There are a few items from his nursery on this shelf, along with a baby book and his tooth fairy pillow.
Here's another view of that huge window!
This is the wall opposite the window. The door is his closet.
Bren has the largest kid room, but we did it that way because we wanted his to be a little bit separated from the girls' rooms. Brenson and Brianna's closets actually share a wall, but the doors to their rooms are very removed from each other.
To get to the girls' rooms, there is a small hallway off of the living room. In the photo below, you can see the arch leading to the hallway and the door to Brianna's room.
This little hallway has several doors. The one to the right is Bri's room, the one straight ahead is a bathroom,
It's built out with shelves, and we keep linens in it.
This is the view from Brianna's doorway toward the twins' room:
When you walk into Brianna's room, her bed is to the left, and the wall with her dresser and closet door is straight ahead.
This is a view of the wall opposite her dresser and closet (where her doorway is):
On the wall opposite her window (to the right when you enter the room), is her desk:
Cute shelving to decorate her room:
The wall opposite the window:
Next to Brianna's room is the "kid" bathroom. This bathroom is fairly small, and I personally think this floor plan could be greatly improved by expanding this bathroom!
The sink and toilet are to the right when you enter the room.
The view from the shower toward the entrance of the bathroom:
To the left of the entrance is a towel rack. Definitely not much to it, but it serves it's purpose!
The final room on the main level is the twins' bedroom. We chose this room for them because it has a double closet compared to the other bedrooms. This is what you see when you enter the room from the hallway (and obviously these are old photos since the twins were still in cribs . . . they've been in toddler beds since May 2017!)
This is how it looks with their toddler beds . . . pretty much exactly the same just with different beds!
Brecklyn's bed and dresser:
When we first moved into our house, the twins were only 18 months old and Brooke's dresser was set up as a diaper changing station.
This room is set up pretty much exactly like their nursery in our old house, only this room is quite a bit larger!
This is the wall opposite of the cribs, with their closet, bookshelf, and entrance to their room.
Now that we've covered the entire main level, let's go upstairs :-). The staircase is located in the living room.
In the photo below, you can see that we had a baby gate blocking the stairs. This was because I didn't want the twins to have access to the second level when we first moved in. Now that they're older, we've taken the gate down.
I love the details in the railing.
Our second level is a "bonus room", and is one big open area. We love this space and do a lot of our relaxing and spending time as a family here. When you first reach the upper level after climbing the stairs, this is what you see:
We have one part of the room set up with a TV, couch, and comfy chair. The door you can see in the photo below is walk-out attic access (with very little attic and mostly HVAC).
Next to the shelf is a small closet where we keep games, puzzles, Legos, Play-doh, etc. It's our closet of fun!
In the opposite corner is Barbie's dream house. You can just barely see the top of the stairs in the photo below, as well. The door you can see leads to the bathroom.
The other part of the room is set up as a craft/ project area. The doors you see in this photo are walk-out attic access (with tons of attic space) and a bathroom.
The bathroom on the second level was another larger modification we made to the original floor plan. We had it expanded from just a toilet and sink to include a shower and closet, as well.
My dad made this sign and frame as a gift for my grandparents many years ago. It hung in their house for about as long as I can remember, and when they passed away I ended up with it. It has found its perfect home in this bathroom!
while the sink and toilet are on the left.
The shelf in the photo below also came from my grandparents' house. I love having special things in my home that remind me of people I love!
Most of the things on the shelf are also very special to me.
On the way down the stairs, there are a couple of photo collages. The one of the left is photos of Chris's side of the family,
while the collage on the right is my side of the family.
And, at the bottom of the stairs is the door that leads to our back patio and back yard.
I know this post was super long, but I'm happy to finally share many details of our house with you! These are also memories I hope the children will really appreciate some day, as I'm sure our house will morph and change over the years. Thanks for coming along on my tour of our house!
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