OUR HOUSE

We'd love to show you our house "cribs style", but we should probably wait until our house is a little more 'done'.  But we can tell you a bit about our house and show you a few before and afters here.  First of all, how we found good ole 306!  It was a Sunday afternoon in April in Petoskey and I was getting ready to pack up and head back down to Okemos for the week.  Jon was looking through MLS listings (something we did ALL THE TIME) and spotted a new house on the same street as my big bro and S-I-L.  I told him no, it was the same house that we had seen in there before and it was NOT a house we'd be living in.  Turns out, I was wrong.  Yep, I admit it.  After all, it doesn't happen that often ;)

So, we immediately called our realtor who called us back about an hour later and said we could go see the house.  We drove over to 306 and were excited to find that even in this foreclosed house, things weren't quite as bad as other foreclosures we had walked through.  And as an added bonus, the kitchen had just been remodeled -- granite, cherry colored cabinets and fancy-dancy dishwasher 'drawers'.  As we continued to walk (on the stone that was once inside and is now our outdoor patio), we felt like we could envision ourselves living here.  We knew there would be changes to make and painting to do, but it was do-able. So, I stayed up north one extra day and that Monday we made an offer.  Because it was a foreclosure we weren't the only ones who made an offer and then were asked by the bank to give them our best offer...we did and a found out we got the house!



Without further ado, here's a few before pictures so you can see what we had to work with!  So, here is our breakfast nook.  You can notice in the right side of the photo, there used to be a very small opening between the nook and the living room.  The next photo will show you how we opened that up to provide a little more flow...


This is the mudroom -- it needed lots of drywall patching, we removed the chair rail and we re-tiled.  Though we still haven't finished this project yet, we plan on building some cubbies and shelves for maximum use!
 Another shot with our lil camera ham, Whit. 
 Our dining room -- at this point, we had already torn up the carpet and removed the chair rail...

 But, check out these great windows and an awesome view!
Hallway down to the bedrooms -- but check out the railing -- brings a touch of contemporary and modern into our house.
 And last, but not least, our living room.  You can see we were already playing with paint colors thanks to Sherwin Williams paint samples!  As for the fireplace, we tore out the white tile, replacing it with slate and then Jon spray painted the gold trim on the fireplace black.  It's definitely given it quite the sleek new look!
So now you see what we've had to work with...we agree the house had a lot of great structure and flow before we moved in.  We continue to fall more and more in love with this house...