House Tour

It has always been hard for me to share my home with others when it doesn't feel "done" or decorated to my liking. I know that nobody expects it to be perfect and in fact, anyone who's ever moved understands how long it takes to get settled. But for some reason, I have such a hang-up about this and just don't feel comfortable having people over or sharing pics of our home.

The first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have one (just did) and I've decided the second step will be to just get it over with and post house pictures, ha! So here goes, our house tour in all its (undecorated) glory. And to be fair, I admit that I took these pics right after the cleaning lady visited, in case you were wondering about the vacuumed carpets and dust-free interior -- which is the exception and not the rule. Baby steps.

So let's start with the exterior.

Our home on Hidden Timbers Lane.

And here's the back. The yard is a pretty decent size. I had (still have) visions of a sparkling pool to go here one day. Hopefully while we still live here, ha! Also, our yard overlooks a big retention pond with a fountain. So let's just call it a lake, OK? :-)

Looking at the back of the house.

This is looking out from our back patio to the left.

And this is looking out our back patio to the right. That long building in the distance is a storage facilty, and they are just now putting in new roads in front of it for a new section of our neighborhood. So soon our view will be new homes instead of the storage facility.

This is the view when you step to the fence. That long building on the left side of the pic is Connor's elementary school.

OK, so now for the inside of the house. We converted the formal living room into a study by adding the wall and french doors. It would be my favorite room in the house because of the color, but for now it's kind of a junk room with random furniture and things that we don't know what to do with.

The study, before we moved all our junk in there.

And opposite from the study is the dining room, which is being used as the kids' playroom for now. You gotta love how the first thing people see when they walk in our house is piles and piles of kids' toys and books. It's like a flashing neon sign, "Kids Live Here!" Ha!

Walking further into the house is the stairwell and living room. My favorite thing here is, of course, the awesome built-in cabinets that my brother built for us despite all the measurement errors that I made. And Jeff recently finished tiling the fireplace area, so it finally looks like a finished room.

Looking up the stairs.

Living room.

Another angle of living room.

Close-up of living room cabinets and fireplace.

Last shot of living room overlooking kitchen.

The kitchen is right off the living room. It's a very similar layout to our former house.

View of kitchen looking into living room.

Off the kitchen is our 4th bedroom with attached bathroom. Kevin has been using it but since he'll be off to college soon, it will probably just be called the guest room. This is the first/only "finished" room in the house.

Downstairs guest bedroom.

Opposite angle of guest room, the closed door leads to the bathroom. That door wasn't there when we moved in, but we added it so that it gave the bedroom an on-suite bath.

On the other side of the living room is a hallway with a guest 1/2 bath on one end and our master bed/bath on the other end. It's hard to tell from the pics, but the master is quite large and looks pretty empty these days with just a bed in there. Still trying to figure out how to decorate!

Master bedroom and lots of empty space.

Opposite angle of master bedroom opening into master bath.

Here's the master bath.

It's a good size and we are really enjoying the large tub and shower (bigger than our last).

Back to the stairs, when you first walk up you see a landing with steps up to the gameroom. It's a nice size and perfect for the kids to watch their shows or play.



View of gameroom, of course with a Houston Texans theme :-)

Opposite angle of gameroom.

On one side of the gameroom is Connor's bedroom and a separate full bath, and on the other side is Kaitlynn's bedroom with another separate full bath. Oddly, the bathrooms aren't connected to the bedrooms so we really aren't using them much yet.

Connor's Houston Texans bedroom (what did you expect, ha?!)

Opposite view of Connor's room.

Walking into Kaitlynn's bedroom.

Opposite view of Kaitlynn's room.

Even though most of the rooms are still pretty bare and not much is happening in the way of decorating, we have done a LOT of work to the house. We replaced the downstairs carpet with wood, repainted the entire house, added some doors/walls, added the cabinets, and changed the fireplace. Here are some pictures of the house before we moved in (with the former owner's furniture).

Living room (before).

Living room (before).

Dining room and formal living (before).

Master bedroom (before).

Guest bedroom (before).

So even though I feel like there is so much work to be done to our house, it makes me feel good to look back and see how far we've come in a few short months.