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Hello! I'm Suzannah, a serious DIYer and mom of two little ones. Follow along with my DIY fixer upper house renovations, sewing and crafty projects, real food recipes, and de-stressing goals.
I believe you can love your home just the way it is, AND have the power to design and make big changes to make it better.
I'm also the author of DIY Wardrobe Makeovers!

We've come so far! #stanley90sreno "before" pictures

It's been more than 6 months since we bought our fixer upper house, and while we still have lots of ideas and projects to do, we've come SO far in making it functional, livable, even beautiful. I shared the  "before" video tour here, but I realized I haven't shared photos of the house yet and as we make over each of the rooms, it would be great to have them up to compare!

It was really fun to write this post and guide you through a photo tour of the crazy "before" of our house!!

Welcome!

Here's the living room. Reeeally tall vaulted ceiling, big window facing the street.




I am not about this wagon wheel front door. Can't wait to replace it but not sure if we'll be able to do a whole new front door with new sidelite as well, or just a wider opening.

Dining room. Another big window. Original light fixture. ;)

Ah, the kitchen. One of the dirtiest rooms I've ever been in. I don't think I ever touched those cabinets above the sink; we ripped them out pretty early on. Sweet Jason did an intense cleaning of this kitchen before I started sanding and painting. That pantry door was down for months until we painted it, bought replacement track hardware, and put the floors in.

We wanted to remove that wall between the kitchen and dining room, but it divides the 1-story part of the house with the 2-story part so we think it's structurally important. Plus, not sure how to handle the stove/ending the kitchen without it. And it keeps the kitchen clutter out of the dining room. I love open concept homes but retrofitting this space into one would have been tough.

The family room is a great space off the kitchen and is nice for guests to hang out in while I cook dinner (I know from the very limited dinner party experience we have here).

Off the family room is the 4th bedroom which we use as an office/sewing room. That left French door had a padlock at the top and no key. This house had a lot of people in it, with rooms rented to separate families/people, as we can tell.

And yet EVERY room had a crazy amount of holes in the walls. So I guess all the roommates liked hanging stuff?? This one had been patched but pretty poorly!!!!

Back out to the family room/hall, there's a laundry room on the way to the garage. That doorknob was screwed in and didn't actually turn. No latch, so you just pulled. We replaced that icky metal door!

We are planning some nice cabinets on this wall above the washer/dryer, have them ordered already.


Powder room off the entry hall. (See bathroom updates here!)

Back around to the entry.

Now, let's go upstairs.


Hall looking back toward the master bedroom. Gah, that oak trim kills me.

French doors into the master bedroom, so fancy!

Notice the two large holes in the corner? We don't know why.

More wall damage. Large room, we're still figuring out where the bed should go! No overhead light fixture, so we want to add a fan somewhere, which will define things a little more.

Master bathroom. I changed my mind, this is the most disgusting room I've ever been in. That carpet!!!! That shower!!!!! We found a black circle under the carpet where water had dripped after showers. Treated that subfloor with anti-mold stuff, don't worry. And Jason spent hours cleaning this bathroom cause we've had to use it pretty much as-is (minus flooring, and now with doors painted) until we redo it soon.

The master bedroom close it pretty large, though only has one light! We've painted all of this and done new flooring, but want to add another light down on the other side. And probably could do some cool closet storage in here, though with everything else we have to do that's a low priority.

Hallway facing the front of the house.

This is the spare bedroom. which we're currently planning to use as a yoga studio? I think. It has the best light in the whole house so I love going in there on dark days, and there's still light!


Guest bathroom. Run-down cheap 90's bathroom. Oh, boy. This place got a big makeover recently too, see bathroom updates!


The front bedroom is a cool space, future guest room. It has a bit of a hall leading into it after you enter the door.

Really tall ceilings in this room, big window, but kind of small areas for a bed on either side of the window.

This room had some of the worst drywall damage.

And a cord sticking out a hole in the wall.

It has a little "room" off the side of it, sloped ceiling. Would be a really cool kid's fort room! It had boogers on the walls so I imagine it was used that way before. (This house was gross--was that not clear already?)

It also has a closet. One of the hinges was unscrewed so the doors were sort of stuck open. Also, look close on the right side of this photo below--see the perfect doorknob-sized hole in the wall? Yeah, we patched that.

Those are the before pictures!! You can also see the "before" tour here, and weekly reno updates here, and design and projects here.

If you've been following along you can see what progress we've made, though we still have lots to do! And if you haven't... here's a photo I took the other day of the family room. It's one of our favorite cozy hangout spots!

If you want to see more progress, subscribe to my blog posts by email! Sign up in the sidebar to the right --> (under the photo of my book). Thanks for following along!!!

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