On December 1, Erin and I celebrated 1 year in our house! To celebrate, I thought I’d do a before and after of some of the work we’ve put in the past year. We still have a lot we want to do – but I think we’ve gotten a pretty good start!

Starting from the outside…

Fall 2012 (3 months before purchase)

Summer 2013

Fall 2013

Before

After

Highlights:
– replaced front door
– replaced roof, and installed real Spanish tile
-added decorative Spanish tile
– painted metal railing black (to look more like rod iron)
– replaced porch light
– got rid of ugly metal mailbox

Moving inside…

Living room before:

Living room after:

Office before:
(Yes, that mirror really was there…)

Office after:

Dining area before:

Dining area after:

We’ve also done work in the bedrooms, and removed a wall separating two rooms in the basement. In the backyard we created a vegetable and herb garden which kept us up to our neck in okra, bell peppers, and chili peppers. In the next year we want to do a lot more: replace the shed, continue to develop the front and back yard, paint inside, and potentially outside, and fence in the backyard for increased privacy.

In other news…I headed home to Seattle for Thanksgiving, and Erin is headed to California this Sunday for Christmas. We’ve already had snow twice (much to my pleasure and excitement)! Erin is in school full-time, and I am still plugging away in my same job. Although we’ve had a lot of unexpected house related expenses this past year – things are good. We are happy, healthy, and finally settling in to our life on the East Coast!