Tag Archives: home renovations

A new fixer upper (life update)

If you follow me over on Instagram, you already know this, but we moved! We’re finally, somewhat, settling in, so now I can share more about it here on the blog.

If you have never lived 3 hours from your spouse while prepping and selling a house, while also homeschooling a large family, well – I don’t really recommend it. Whew. It was an adventure. We survived though, and are all so glad to be on this side of it now.

We closed the sale of our previous home in early March, but a few weeks before that we bought our new (really old) house. We aren’t certain how old it is, or what kind of house it started as, but currently our home is a 4 bedroom, 1 bathroom, with an office type space and a (extra large!) laundry room, ranch-ish style.

*Yes, we downsized. Yes, it was intentional! More on that later.*

We have lots of work to do, and I can’t wait to share it all with you! However, just like everyone else building or remodeling right now, a big part of the project is just waiting on supplies. At this point, most of what we have done has been the necessary, but less exciting stuff (like a new breaker panel and putting up electric fencing for our animals), but we have big plans for our new space.

I’ll share more about those in another post, along with some before pictures. Be sure to sign up for the email updates to see the progress!

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Filed under home, home improvement

Projects #1 & #2 – stair wall and handrail & baby gate

farmhouse stairs

Project #1

Our first order of business was to tackle the problem with the stairs. While the open staircase was beautiful, it certainly was not practical for all our little ones running around. Every time we looked at this house before we signed, I was a nervous wreck the whole time the kids were in the house! To make matters worse, my husband had to go out of town for a week right after we moved in! Thankfully, he got part of this project done before he left. 🙂 This one is still technically in-progress. My awesome guy got all the woodwork done and then a few of the steps got broken, so we put off painting until he can replace those since part of this will have to be removed to change the steps out.

IMG_7055    stair wall

stairwall

Eventually all of it will be painted white. We decided to go with a slatted wall to not completely close off the stairs.

I’m pretty proud of the handrail on the landing. That’s not a purchased, prefab handrail. My sweetie made it himself. 🙂

IMG_7181   IMG_7178  IMG_7177

IMG_7182  IMG_7185

  IMG_7183

Project #2

I actually posted about this project last year, not long after he finished it.
We chose to put the latch on the inside of the gate to make it more difficult for little ones to open it and to keep from having a big ugly latch on the outside.The hinges allow the door to swing all the way back against the wall when it isn’t needed, and we have a small bench that sits in front of it most of the time now that our three bigger kiddos can all maneuver the stairs.
IMG_7057

baby gate

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Filed under Making Our House Our Home, our lovely little farmhouse