Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Meet the AO House

Have you seen this ideabook over on houzz.com? It's actually a little giveaway too - just post a comment about how you met your house-to-be and you could win a Lowe's gift card.

Back in August 2008, Carter and I met our house in Alexandria, Virginia. By March 2009, we were homeowners [long story as to why it took 7 months].

When we met our house, we had seen plenty of other choices, but nothing we loved. We walked into this place and both knew right away this was it, which may be hard to believe when you see the pictures. As most first-time buyers, we were very flexible on the stuff we could fix. In fact, we WANTED something to fix to create a space with our own personal stamp. This house had a great location, wonderful layout and solid bones - we were in.

Since April, the house has become our life. We work (often with the help of dads), we fix, we design, we fix again because the first time didn't work, etc., etc. It has become one of the best learning experiences of my life.

Not to mention that I now have my very own design laboratory. I'm constantly updating my plan for it, changing my mind, making adjustments...but I think we're getting it right. I have the vision and Carter executes - we make a great team.

These are some before pictures of the main living area of our house - they are by no means glamorous. They lay the foundation for the many blog posts to come about changes we are making.


Living Room



Living Room (We loved the fireplace)



Kitchen



 Kitchen



Dining Room


And a sneak peek of where we are today...



Living Room with view into Dining Room



Kitchen

I will eventually blog about each room and what we've done, but no room is quite finished yet (although the kitchen is very close). Stay tuned...

4 comments:

  1. Aunt Phyllis10/01/2009

    I love this. I already want to know the color of your wonderful green paint. I would like to do a room in that color. Can't wait to see more.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Happy to oblige! Sherwin Williams' paint card #60 has single-handedly painted our first floor. The living room walls are a lovely shade called Hearts of Palm (SW 6415). The shade in the kitchen is a lighter tone called Rice Paddy (SW 6414). And the dining room stripe is a combination of both.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love the changes you made! Just inviting! I really like your kitchen. Our kitchen has white cabinetry and appliances, and I want to keep it that way when we redo it. I like the cottage feel and the clean lines white brings. I'm a little tired of the maple stainless steel look. Where did you get your cabinetry? Keep writing, thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tara - we did lots of research on our cabinets and ended up going with the Thomasville line from Home Depot. Our particular cabinets are the Linden line in painted white...we are quite happy with them! I like that you share my love of a white kitchen - we too opted against stainless (on purpose) and we're happy with the results. Makes our little kitchen feel bigger.

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