urban rehab: our soon-to-be home {part 1}

this has been the craziest year of my life, hands down. 

shortly after getting out of the NICU in May, Andrew asks out of the blue, if i'm up for moving to midtown this year.

if you know us personally, you probably know we've wanted to move for several years now, but the timing hasn't been right. we've come up with about 87 different plans for when we're going to move and where - the most recent being that we would move as early as June 2014.

after my crazy pregnancy and our stressful NICU stay, i seriously don't remember what a normal life feels like anymore. so why not move and continue on with the roller coaster life?

we toured 3 houses and quickly knew which one we preferred. we hit a few obstacles, but seriously, doors were flying open for us to proceed. We would think we ran into a problem and were ready to sit back and wait on God's timing again, but then someone would approach us, saying, "did you know about such and such organization?" "have you heard of such and such new program?" 

we're being very cautious, but so far it seems like this is the right time and the right place for our family.

a few random facts:

• the home was built in 1905
• a company called Ribbon Cutters bought the house and is remodeling it for us, to our specific standards.
• We will be involved in as much of the process as we can. We will be doing all the painting, building a new fence, sanding the hardwood floors, painting all the trim, etc.
• we are in the beginning stages of the process. We meet with the company to do our final walk through this friday, October 11th and then the work should begin shortly after that!
• we are tentatively moving in on Dec 2013
• we are under no obligation to buy the house when they are done, even though they're rehabbing it to our standards. if something unexpected comes up, we can choose not to buy the house from them.

without further ado, here is the first floor of our new abode, pre-rehab. i'll share the 2nd and 3rd floors in the next few days so this isn't an annoyingly long post ;-)

Exterior - 1st Floor:

{exterior}
clearly we have a lot of yard work to do. we plan to cut down the pine tree and plant a fruit tree in its place. we need to rebuild the retaining wall and eventually we'll repaint. The Ribbon Cutters will be repairing all the damaged wood. I CAN'T WAIT to put a rocking chair on that killer porch.

{entry.way}
we will be keeping the windows with character, but all other windows will be replaced.

{living.room}

{dining.room}

{kitchen}
we plan to knock out the awkward wall in the middle and have the only entrance be the opening on the right. the space on the left will become a large counter work space with a stove, to keep the space open. In my perfect world, we would be continuing the counter tops/cabinets to go all the way to the wall {under the window, where that step ladder is}, but i'm pretty positive it wont fit in the budget. it's such wasted space though! hopefully we can finish it in the future.

{playroom+bathroom}
this is on the other side of the dining room. the photo on the bottom right is taken while standing in the kitchen. i'm excited for emery's play space to be right next to the kitchen, for the times she doesn't want to help me cook :-) i love having her nearby!

can't wait to post the progress and end result photos! i'm soooo excited to own our home, despite all the grumbling i hear from home owners about the bummers of responsibility ;-)

love and new adventures, 

amber,

burlap bean bag door stop tutorial.

my door was driving me crazy. 

 

i love to have it open when we're expecting guests, so they can just come right in, but i always had to move our ottoman to prop it open.

i wanted a small, simple door stop but didn't feel like shelling out much cash. i searched on pinterest {like always} for different ideas and came across a few super cute burlap ones on etsy. they had basic silhouettes painted on them, but were $10 plus shipping and handling. i have burlap (only a dollar or 2 per yard, with coupon), i have black paint, i have a bag of beans, and i have a hot glue gun. how hard can this be?

crazy easy.

first, i found the images i wanted through a google image search for clip art silhouettes {i did 2 different pictures, one on each side.}

second, i cut out and traced the images on the burlap.

third, i filled in the images with black paint, 3 times because it was hard to fill in all the holes.

fourth, i cut out the images in a square shape {i wish i had left more room around the edges :-( allow space for glue!!}

fifth, i layed the burlap pieces on top of each other with the pictures facing each other. then i hot glued 3 of the 4 sides together IN BETWEEN the burlap pieces. {sry, i was so focused i forgot to take pics}

sixth, once cooled off, turn the burlap right side out, fill with beans half way. fold the edges of the opening and hot glue HALF of the last side.

seventh, fill bag rest of the way. finish gluing  {if you try to fill it all the way with beans and then glue the whole thing all at once, the beans pull the sides too far away from each other to glue easily. and if you, on step 5, glue 3 and a half sides, when you flip it right side out, the burlap rips apart because the hole is too small. trust me, i speak from experience.}

love and a welcoming door, 

amber.