Hey y’all. Moving to our new house seriously kicked my butt. But much thanks to Moving Company Calgary for their ideas. I am neck deep in the “oh-crap-I-just-downsized-and-have-way-too-much-stuff” phase. Like, seriously. Waaaay too much stuff. I guess knocking off more than 800 sq ft of livable space will do that to you. I am not complaining, I am merely stating that I have been in Operation Create-a-new-garage-sale-pile the past few weeks, but there’s so much crap to sift through that the Operation is moving very slowly.
I also realized that I haven’t shown you the whole house with all our crap in it. Be forewarned, the pictures are not pretty. They are messy and cluttered. This disaster is what happens when you move just before the end of the school year (and are required to devote extra time to your children and their classes) and when you downsize. I dream about the day my life gets a little calmer. Four more days of school!
First off, here are a few pictures from moving day. We moved ourselves and drafted a few family members to help us load and unload. The boys got creative and literally backed the truck directly into the house. Sure made unloading easier.
Okay, so now for the house tour. We have our stuff inside the house, but we are not “moved in” by any stretch of the imagination. Most boxes are finally unpacked, but all their contents within are now piled on the floor, in corners, on counters, and in closets.
When you walk in the front door you see the family room directly in front of you.
I’m pleasantly surprised how well the furniture fits in here. The white chairs are debatable though.
And a view of the family room from behind the couch.
The piano room is to the left when you walk in the front door.
I had hopes of carving out a little office for me in here, but the kids computer desk and my son’s drum set won out. The curtains will be replaced by my orange aviary curtains from my old dining room, but the windows don’t have blinds so I am leaving the old curtains up until I can get the blinds ordered (they are extra tall so regular blinds from our local hardware store are too short).
From the front door, directly to the right is the kitchen. This view is standing in the family room.
The kitchen is my least favorite space in the entire house. The cabinets seem to be piecemealed together and half the doors open the wrong direction. The island is awkward. And the worst part of the kitchen? The breakfast area. It just isn’t big enough for a normal sized table. I will have to figure out a new configuration for the cabinets and breakfast area. We plan on gutting this space and completely starting over.
Off the kitchen is the mud room/laundry room that leads to the garage. In contrast to the kitchen, this is probably one of my most favorite spaces of the house! It is oozing with potential.
When you walk into this area, the pantry is on the left. It is HUGE which I love. I’m not digging the wire shelving, but I have big plans for a nice overhaul of this space too.
On the right is the door that leads to the garage and a little area that I call the mud room. I envision lots of built-ins like I did in my previous laundry room.
And then in the far back corner is the laundry room. It’s a nice sized area and once I rework the shelving in there I will have tons of storage.
Now lets talk about the Master Bedroom for a sec. I just shouldn’t even show you these pictures. They are bad. Really bad. But, we just moved in so I hope you’ll understand. The room is actually pretty large, but it is so full of crap at the moment that it’s hard to tell. In one corner I have piled high to the ceiling all my craft stuff that was in my office at the old house. When we downsized I lost my office. I need to figure out where to set up shop, then unpack all this stuff, and get rid of at least half of it.
In the corner next to the bed there is another pile… the growing garage sale pile. I didn’t know what I wanted to keep before we moved in, so now as I unpack and move things around I’m starting to realize I have way too much decor. Hopefully I’ll be able to unload all this stuff within a few months.
I want to put it all in the garage, but now that we live on some land we have some serious bugs out here (welcome to Texas!). Like, big gross beetles that seem to be everywhere, scorpions, and spiders. I don’t really want to risk bugs getting into my stuff if I put it in the garage.
Okay, now on to the rest of the house…
Our son’s room. Painting the rooms is first on our agenda. Promise. I will not live with walls like this for much longer.
Our daughter’s room. Everything in the entire house is set up, but totally not organized. We have been living in controlled chaos for a month. I’m losing my mind!
Ben’s office. No words for this mess. Nothing to see here… move along.
And last but not least, the gameroom. Here’s the view from the door.
Again, boxes are unpacked, a few things are set up, but still a whole lotta chaos going on. And this is a view from the couch looking towards the french doors that lead to the back yard.
Keepin’ it real, folks. I took these pictures this afternoon. Obviously I was way too tired/overwhelmed/busy being a mom to even bother trying to clean up for you guys. Hopefully this gives you a better idea of where all the furniture ended up and how everything is fitting (it’s not).
I am super backlogged with posts to share, I just haven’t had 2 free seconds to even edit the photos and write up posts for y’all. Once school ends this Friday I really feel like life will slow down a little bit more and I can get you guys all caught up on everything. Being so behind with posts is driving me batty. Stay with me, my friends. I promise, I’m still here!
It is all good! You just moved in and your kiddos are still in school. You will get there. 🙂 Love your new home and know that you will astound and amaze us with future projects / makeovers.
By the way, we have land too and had LOTS of insects, spiders, bettles and ants coming into our garage. What worked very well and safe around our family was the Ecosmart brand. Home Depot carries their line. Maybe it will help?
Have a beautiful week. 🙂
Looking awesome! I’d offer to come unpack. I’m an expert packer/unpacker, generally doing it myself and in record time. 🙂 Enjoy the honeymoon period of your new house.
I love seeing these kinds of photos! These make it even better when we see the during and after pics! Can’t wait to see what you do with this house. 🙂
Allison, thanks for taking the time to give an update – I for one appreciate you ‘keeping it real’! So often bloggers make us feel they have the world by the tail and then I feel so inadequate. You just moved and your blog is REALITY, which means stuff piled in corners until it finds a home!
I’ve also meant to tell you, I am enjoying your blog so much more now that you’ve returned to being YOU, and not having ads/sponsored posts.
I can’t wait to see everything that you do to the house. We have lived in our house for over 3 years and some rooms still aren’t fully decorated. My son is 15 months old and I still don’t have any pictures of him hanging up.
Woo-hoo! I’m so impressed that you have things hanging on the walls already – and I love that the game room looks the most organized. It’s important to have fun, and live a little!
As for the white chairs, they look very tiny. I think I have the same ones, Ikea right? If so, I tried to pair them with our leather furniture, looked so awkward. I switched the leather to our den and bought a white couch from Ikea for the living. Now, everything is cozy and cute. Can’t wait to see what you decide to do!
Hey, it’s really coming together.. but holy moly…what’s up with the colors man? Takes your breath away.
I sense a lotta time with the paint brushes coming soon.
A lotta progress in a short period of time, so hats off to you.
Allison, I have wire shelving in my pantry and I love it! Here’s why:
1) I never have to dust my pantry shelves.
2) The overhead light can shine all the way down through the shelves.
3) I can see items on the upper shelves from underneath, and I can use my fingers to wiggle items that are overhead out to the edge so that I can reach them.
4) For small items that don’t want to stand up on the wire shelves, I use wire or plastic baskets. You can also cut plastic placemats to fit to create a flat surface.
5) There are baskets made to hang on the ends of those shelves. You can buy them at HD or Lowe’s and they hold seasoning packets and other small things.
Just a few things to think about before making a major overhaul! After all, the purpose of having a pantry with a door that you can close, is so that you can make it functional without worrying about making it look pretty enough for company. 🙂
Lisa, I completely agree with you! I don’t know why everyone talks trash about wire shelving in the pantry. I think that’s the best place for it, to.
I have a closet-made-into-a-pantry that has wooden shelves. No way to change them, so I have several those little wire shelves that you can put stuff on and under. The shelves are also way too deep, which is not very convenient. But I love having a pantry and try to make it work for me.
So fun! We moved to the area two years ago and have already had 16 scorpions IN the house — that’s not counting the ones outside — and I can’t even count the spiders. It’s gotten to where my two year old twins squish them — one grabs a shoe and the other gets a wet wipe. 🙁
I just want to know…when’s the garage sale!? 😉 Though my hubs would frown upon me bringing more stuff home….
Oh moving… that is one thing that I definitely want to avoid as much as I possibly can. It’s worth it, but the packing, moving, unpacking and organizing stage drives me absolutely nuts.
My family of four is moving for the first time this Friday. Thank you for all the “real” moving posts, from emotions (totally cried with you) to the controlled chaos post move. I don’t feel so panicky or alone that things are going to be crazy for a while!!
I guess you and I have different definitions of “chaos”. You only have a mess-from-moving, which almost doesn’t count at all.
Re: your kitchen – I agree with your decision to gut it and start over. It looks like you can work with everything else, so one remodeling project is completely do-able. I’m loving your new house. As soon as my two dogs go to heaven, I’m going to rip out the living room carpet and replace it with laminate and put this house on the market. I can’t wait to get into a smaller place!
I can’t believe you’ve got just about everything unpacked already! I am feeling so excited for you as I looked from picture to picture…SO MUCH potential!! Ths really is a great house…and these photos will make great ‘before’ photos! Can’t wait to see more 🙂 thanks for taking us all along !
XO,
Christy
So exciting to be in a new house that you get to put your stamp all over!! But tons of work ahead… good luck! At least it is a good excuse to go through and get rid of things you don’t need and use!
Krista
Allison I am completely impressed! Seriously there had to be some staging going on…please tell me. When we moved in I felt like we were in some kind of hoarders horror show for at least a week or two. And that was will all the purging and donating before the move.
Boy, you got this one covered! So happy to see y’all are moved in and you can get to working your magic on your new abode…big beetles and all.lol
Cheers
You have SCORPIONS? Dang, and I was gonna come visit you. I shall be avoiding the entire state of Texas now *shivers*.
Your new place actually does not look that bad after having just moved in. Really. It’s probably worse for you because you all are living in it, but it if were my place, it’d be far messier. You’re doing really well, actually, so keep that in mind and try not to stress TOO much.
I like that you showed us the “real world” there. That is my problem….I forget to just take pictures because I want to clean it first and then the remodel happens and I don’t have a before. I haven’t done much remodeling but you know what I mean. Just take a day at a time. I have 5 school days before it becomes Teen Central at my house. At least till 4pm, when my daughter gets off the bus, I have a few days of P & Q. Today was my last day at my new job and I’m hoping to get a new one in the Fall. Crossing my fingers!!!
You have done a great job with the short time, end of school, daily living. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and you will eventually get there. You have only to please yourselves, We are all happy to hear from you. We will be here when you can take a deep breath and have time for us. Oh, and I have to agree with Lisa about the pantry shelves. I have these in my craftroom closet and love them. My son built the shelving in my pantry and used wooden shelving which I had on hand. Wish I had used the wire.
I have the same shelves in my pantry. It’s a love hate relationship. Love I don’t have to dust them, hate bottles and jars flop over more easily on them. Your house may not look perfect to you yet, but it looks great for just moving in! To make you feel better, here’s the Before of my craft room/guest room redo that has pretty much looked the same since we moved in 9 years ago http://www.condoblues.com/2013/06/craft-room-remodel-before.html