Alabama Home Tour

Welcome to the Home Tour for our newly purchased home in Alabama. When we bought our house last year we knew that we wanted a fixer upper but we also needed something that 6 people (and one on the way) could comfortably lived in while we worked on it. We wanted something that we could put our own personality into without having to remodel a whole entire house.

Excuse the terrible photos, they were the one that were on Realtor.com when our home was listed. Enjoy the tour of our new home.

We plan on painting the outside of the house. I want to paint the brick white and the stucco gray. I’m still not sure what color I want to paint the shutters and front door. We also are planning on removing some trees and cutting off some of those lower hanging branches so that the house song look like its hiding in the shadows.

 

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The house needs to be power washed in the worst way and I have finally started calling and get estimates on that. You can see the mildew and it is just blah!

My dream has always been to have a big front porch so we plan on adding one that goes the length of the front section on the front of the house. I would LOVE for there to be a gazebo at one end of the front porch and the front door to be double doors, but alas we will already be throwing money at building a front porch so we well see how tapped out our budget is after adding that on.

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We plan on tearing out all the trees in that back section of the yard, right behind the driveway and adding in a pool because goodness knows with this Southern heat and humidity we need one in the worst way. We love to entertain so one of the things that really drew me into the house was the huge drive way with lots of parking spaces. We have had 2 different families with 3 different cars in addition to our 2 cars, parked in this driveway without anyone having to move for someone else to get out… now that’s what I call roomy. You should have seen the look on the realtors face when I gave her my wish list. Epic!!

This back area is where we want to put the pool and add in some more concrete to make the kids a bit of a basketball court type area. We also want to paint the big back porch white. The porch is also in need of a power wash and a good sanding. We have big plans to screen in the porch area so the bugs don’t eat us alive when we want to go outside to eat.

The outdoor grill is wonderful but it needs al little bit of maintenance and elbow grease to get to be working again. We have almost an acre of land but hardly any grass. The previous owners had the house empty for a while so the yard needs work in the worst way. We have been working on tackling that and have spent at LEAST 100 hours out there working so far. I kid you not, the leaves were over a foot deep all over the property and disgustingly moldy underneath, let me tell you how fun that was raking and shoveling 8 months pregnant….. never again!

I love how big our entry way is when you first walk into the house, that was a wish list item. I love the tall ceilings but the paint color and chandelier NEED TO GO. I have been on the hunt for the perfect fixture for this space. I am also working on painting the front door. The ceilings are so tall Im still trying to figure out how to decorate that space.

Our dining room is to the left when you walk in the front door. I love the little window seat area and the tiered ceiling. I plan on removing the chandelier and adding in planks to the tiered part of the ceiling. I have also purchased a new paint color for the area and plan on creating a wall papered accent wall.

The back wall where that door to the hall way is, is where I want to put a patterned walk paper, or paint a design on. I am also debating about what to do with the window seat area. Any ideas?

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Our living room is wide and long and leads out to the back sunroom. I plan on painting the walls gray, re-tiling the fireplace and adding planking to the back of it going up the wall. We also took down the pillars that separated the rooms and I am toying with the idea of putting up barn doors to separate the space from the kitchen.

We plan on opening up the stairs which are behind that back wall in this picture. I LOVE the look of open stairs and want the room to be more light and airy and I think that opening up the staircase will really help to achieve that look.

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Aside from the great, quiet location (we are on a cul-de-sac off a cul-de-sac) and the large yard, the kitchen and keeping room are what sold me on the house. This space is perfect for entertaining and I absolutely love it!! I want to update the kitchen cabinets to be more farmhouse by adding trim and turning them into shaker cabinets. We will take out the microwave above the stove and change out the counter tops for quartz. (I really really hate the ugly 90’s tiled counter, cleaning them is a huge pain) I also plan on removing all the knobs and changing them to silver as well as removing the light fixture above the island and adding in something with a more farm-house flair. I will be  painting the island a darker gray to give it more of a pop. We have already painted the kitchen a light french gray which has made a HUGE difference, that yellow HAD to go.

Those tile counters with the green 90s color KILL me!! What were we thinking in the 90’s? I hate them so much and can’t wait to remove them. That will be our next big project. I also want to add in a farmhouse sink. LOVE!! The window behind the sink was also a “must have” item on my wish list.

Before you wonder where the fridge is…. we have gotten a fridge and I LOVE it.

This is the one we have and its fantastic for all our needs. I really love the middle pull out drawer which is where we keep all the kids snacks.

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The keeping room concept is fantastic. I have slowly been collecting furniture to go in here. I have painted the wall behind the desk in chalk board paint as well as the hallway walls. I plan on adding board and batten the hallway to the garage with some hooks for the kids to hang up their backpacks and I have been debating on painting the garage door red… what d0 you think?

I also want to re-tile the fireplace in here (it’s the other side of the one in the living room).

Those book shelves make my heart pitter patter…. they were also a wish list item. Book and I go together like peas and carrots.

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The end of the keeping room has a cool little bay window, eat in kitchen nook, where we currently have our small dining room table. I have already painted this area a light gray and plan on changing out the chandelier, I have found a few options and will be purchasing that next. I have absolutely loved shopping for light fixtures. It has become a bit of an obsession.

The sunroom is my little office/painting area. This is where I will hold all my BB Frosch workshops and keep my supplies and items for sale. It is also where I am currently sitting to blog, right there under that window. Thankfully its been painted a really soft gray and is much less noisy then before. I also plan on white washing the brick wall in here to brighten the place up even more. I’m still debating on whether or not to put up curtains, what do you think?

I love how large our laundry room is and I have great plans to paint the cabinets to make the space more cheerful. I also am currently working on adding in cubbies and selves for each kid so that they can organize and wash their own laundry (my oldest already does his). I really love having things organized, everything has a place and everything in its place. I can’t wait for the room to be finished, I HATE doing laundry, and with a family of 7 there is a lot of laundry, so I’m hoping when its done I will enjoy being in there, wishful thinking.

I also plan on changing out the vinyl floor and replacing it with some Moroccan tiles. I haven’t decided what color scheme I want to go with in here yet but I’m leaning towards pink, navy and gray in this house full of boys I need something girly. I am currently working on a barn door to replace the current door, 1) because they are so darn cute and 2) so I can remove the current door and free up some space in there.

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The downstairs guest bathroom has already gotten a huge make over. I told my husband when I walked through this house for the second time that I needed a “sign”, something to show me that this house was meant to be ours… I walked in and all the red rooms (sunroom, guest bath, master bath) were all painted gray. It was my sign for sure and of course now the house is ours. The bathroom is now gray, the mirror is gone and I have ordered a farm-house light fixture to replace this old 90s one. I will also be changing out the faucet and painting the cabinet a dark gray as well as adding new hardware. Big things, big things.

Our Master bedroom is a long room with not a lot of light which I don’t love, but its a big space and I simply adore those ceilings. I plan on adding planks to the cut out in the ceiling as well as planking the wall behind the bed and changing out the fan.

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The master bathroom is now a light gray and the things over the windows are gone. We have also ripped out the shower and put in a new one. The old one was so moldy that nothing even came close to touching it, I was honestly afraid I was going to die of some kind of toxic mold disease when we were ripping it out. Gah!!!

We will be changing out the light fixtures, faucet and hardware and going for something more updated. I want to tile around the bathtub and I’m still trying to figure out what to do about the windows because I’m not a big fan of them. I have been tossing around the idea of adding a frame to the mirror to give a farm-house vibe but I’m not sure if I want to do that or if I want to add in two mirrors, one above each sink. What do you think?

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Our stairs are long and narrow not to mention really dark. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want to open the staircase up and make more of a statement piece. I simply love stair rails and the look and feel they give to a room. I know for sure I want to open the side with the railing so you can see it from the living room and I am debating on whether or not to open it up on the other side where the dining room can be seen from the living room and where the light from the front and back of the house pours through the whole downstairs, because we really don’t have a ton of natural light downstairs, basically the only thing that is standing in my way of this is the walls meeting up with the left side of the stairs, I will have to figure out if I can work around that.

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We have a neat little landing upstairs with a closet that currently houses all the kids toys. I have still not formulated a plan for this space as it is usually filled with toys.

The kids rooms are all upstairs and really just need light fixtures and paint to update them. I have been eyeing our door knobs and decided to change those out as well, that shiny gold has got to go.

This is my daughter’s room. I have painted the walls and created an accent all on the wall with the window. I also plan on changing out the light fixtures. 

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This is the babies room. I painted the walls Gray and I will be changing out the fan. (seriously, what is up with all that Tuscany Yellow?)

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The kids bathroom upstairs will get a makeover as well (just like every. single. room. in the house). I will be changing out the lights, faucets and hardware. I plan on painting the cabinets a greenish blue and removing the large mirror and adding two smaller ones above the sinks. We only have one bathroom upstairs with the 4 kids bedrooms so we plan on adding on a new bathroom upstairs in the future. Can you imagine being the one girl sharing a bathroom with 4 brothers? I won’t do that to my daughter. I means its bad enough having to smell that room after they have been in it, so I won’t subject her to having to share it when she gets older…. she is too cute for that.

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This is my oldest sons room. You can see his vision board for his room make over here. 

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This is my two middle boys room. It is actually a bonus room so it has no windows. We have big plans to bust a hole in that back wall and move into the space between the walls and the roof. There is actually a ton of space that didn’t get built into when they built our house so we are going to take advantage of that and turn that space into one that fits the needs of our growing family. We will add in 2 or 3 bedrooms with slanted roof like ceilings as well as a bathroom for the boys and then this room will be the kids hang out spot instead of a bedroom.

 

 

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You can see some of our plans on my Pinterest board for the attic renovations here.

You can also check out my other vision boards and ideas for our new house over at my Pinterest account.

I love the house and I LOVE that we have so many projects to do, however there are days when I want to scream “I WANT IT ALL DONE NOW!” but I have really been loving the process. It will be years before everything is done, and then we will probably move again, isn’t that the way it works?