A Look Back on Our First Year in This House

I can’t believe that we are already to this point. One year in our house. I thought it would be fun to share a look back on our first year in this house, what we’ve accomplished, and our goals for the next year.

This time last year, we were bare knuckling it.

Holding on with the little bit that we had left after the whirlwind of a summer.

A job loss followed by a move to a new state and job change.

New schools for the boys – leaving our friends and church family behind us.

But here we are, one year later, and we have grown so much.

I thought it would be fun to share a few before and afters of the few projects we’ve tackled since moving to our Birmingham home.

A Look Back on Our
First Year in This House

Let’s start with the exterior! This past spring, we took our ho-hum exterior and updated it with a limewashing, increasing our curb appeal.

We also installed a glass insert to our front door, instantly brightening our entryway.

In this new home, I finally have a space of my own for a home office.

The wall color was already a beautiful Agreeable Gray so I haven’t changed that. Eventually, I plan to enclose the room with french doors and get rid of that popcorn ceiling.

There were two rooms that were big renovations. First, I’ll show you our kitchen.

From drab and dated to light and bright! We love how our kitchen looks now! Installing the apron front sink was the best decision we ever made!

And around the hall was our pantry – open and exposed and ugly. We build our own cabinetry and created this.

There was one other room that drastically changed. A major overhaul was done to our bathroom. It was so ugly before!

We took this bathroom down to the studs and made it into a dream en suite for me and Trent for less than $4500!

These are just a few highlights of the big changes we’ve made so far, but there are lots of other fun things we’ve done, like a custom Wall Mounted TV Cabinet and a Closet Makeover.

Our Goals for the Next Year

MUSIC ROOM: Trent is currently working on our music studio in our basement. If you are new here, Trent and I met at music school in college and have been professional musicians for many years. He hopes to wrap that up in the next few weeks.

We also have a kitchenette down there that we would love to turn into a backstage green room.

SUNROOM: I have been working on updating our sunroom and am putting the finishing touches on it. I hope to reveal that later this week!

You can read the plans for this makeover here, but be sure to come back to see the reveal!

BOYS ROOMS: Our boys have been asking for us to make over their rooms and we hope to tackle that this fall.

And their bathroom is in dire need of a redo. My son is 6’6″ and it’s almost like Buddy the Elf taking a shower.

I am not sure if I can handle another major bathroom renovation just yet, so that would have to wait until 2020.

Most importantly, we want to make this house feel like our home. There are many elements that are not our style or taste and it still feels like someone else’s home.

But each of those things takes time and being the penny pinchers we are, we have to save up for those items.

On this side of things – after the difficulties last year brought us, we have grown in areas that needed attention and are still struggling here and there, but we look to the future with hope and faith in each step forward.

Which is why I’m so grateful you come each week to see the projects we do. We love sharing this with our readers and enjoy hearing your feedback and sweet comments!

Thank you for taking the time to visit Noting Grace. We are certainly grateful you are here!