The Last Tour of Our Second Home

Can you believe it? The time has come to take our very last walk through of our second home.

We close on both of our houses later this week, and our official move in is happening over the weekend.

I’m simultaneously feeling excited and nervous and a little sentimental about the big move. We’re thrilled about our new house and couldn’t be more in love with it, but this little house has been good to us in the last two years.

We added a member to our family in this home. We said goodbye to a beloved pet. We stretched ourselves creatively in ways I never thought possible, and we learned so so much from everything we took on here.

We didn’t do a great job of truly loving on our first home before we moved out (because we were so antsy to just be done with the move), so this time around we have really slowed down and taken the time to appreciate the little things in this house, and how much it means to us.

For example, every morning for the last few weeks I’ve taken a minute to appreciate the bay windows in the dining room and how lovely it is to work at the table with the light streaming in.

And I’ve noticed how cozy and welcoming the house feels in the evenings when the sun has gone down, the lamps are glowing, and we’ve just put the boys down for bed.

Every time I let Hadley outside, I try to take a moment to soak up our backyard and all of the hard work we put into it.

And when I walk through the door after running errands or being out for the day, I try to take just a second to soak up that “this is home” feeling before I move on to the next thing. Because this home has been so good to us, and I don’t want to look back at my last few weeks here and wish I had taken more time to appreciate it.

I want to show off a few notable before and afters in this post, but if you really want to get the full impact of how far this house has come, be sure to click here to go back and read our very first post introducing this home. It’s practically unrecognizable and I’m honestly not sure how we got so much done in just two short years.

I can assure you we’ll be moving at a slower pace in the next house!

One thing I wish I had been better about in this home is yearly video tours. I always love seeing other bloggers walk through their homes on video, and that was just not something we ever did here. I’m going to prioritize that in the new house (be on the lookout for the first official tour in the next couple of weeks!), but for now we’ll just appreciate some good ol’ photos.

First up, let’s do a refresher on the before of the main living area.

I remember feeling overwhelmed by how small this space was compared to what we were used to, and mourning the loss of our giant dining room from our first home. I worried we’d never be able to host, that we’d never find a layout we liked in the living room, and that we’d all just be uncomfortable our entire time here.

Of course, all of those fears were unfounded. We transformed our dining room and now it can easily sit 6-8 people (we’ve squeezed in 10!). We found a sweet spot in the living room and have had many wonderful family nights there in our time here.

Basically? We made it home.

The boys rooms were a space I was never really worried about – we had tiny secondary bedrooms in our first house as well, so I was well-versed in making a small space work. Of course, Jackson lived in utter chaos for the first few months until we got around to building his built-in bed.

We’re going to do another built-in at the new house, but this time I think we’re going to get him some temporary furniture as a hold-over, because kids are resilient, but I can’t bring myself to make him live in that chaos again!

Grant’s room was completely empty for the first 8 months or so that we lived here. We knew we wanted a second child and that this room would eventually be a nursery, but we hadn’t had a chance to come up with any “in the meantime” plans for the space when I found out I was pregnant just a month after moving in. We left the room pretty much full of moving boxes until I transformed it into his nursery and, in true second child fashion, I waited until just a couple of months before he arrived.

It was a blast to design (nurseries always are!), and it’s one of the spaces I’ll miss the most. It gets fantastic natural light, it’s so cozy and welcoming, and it’s the easiest room in the house to clean since all he does is pull the books off the shelves!

Our bedroom is a space that we declared we’d be focusing on first when we moved in and, as it tends to happen, that quickly fell by the wayside. We painted the walls and that’s about it.

Best laid plans, am I right?!

In the next house I truly want to spend a little more time focusing on our master bedroom early on in the process, and I think we may actually stick to it this time around since there are fewer pressing matters. I mean, it was hard to worry too much about making my bedroom pretty when Jackson’s room was in shambles.

We loved the color we painted the walls (Calligraphy by Behr), and are considering doing something similar in the new house. This space really taught us that we love deep, dark colors in the master bedroom and I have desperately missed the cave-like feel our room used to have ever since we painted it in preparation for moving.

Both bathrooms in this house went through pretty huge changes, and on both ends of the intensity spectrum. The boys’ bathroom got a down-to-the-studs complete overhaul, while our bathroom got an “almost nothing but paint” refresh. It’s interesting that despite the wildly different budgets and time commitments involved in the two spaces, they both have been dramatically transformed.

Just goes to show that you don’t have to completely renovate a space in order to make a huge impact, no?!

And, of course, we can’t talk about changes to this home without taking a moment to look at the exterior. I mean, when we moved in it had red brick, yellowed siding, a wild-looking backyard, and a big patch of dirt by the back fence that was mostly unusable.

Now?

Well, the photos really speak for themselves.

So, so good.

Thanks for indulging me on this little walk down memory lane! If you have specific questions about projects or products, click here to see our “shop our house” page. It has links to all of the projects for all of the spaces, along with every little product I could think to add.

Stay tuned for aaaaaaall of the fun and excitement with the big move! I’ll be sharing all sorts of details on Instagram stories, so you’ll want to make sure you’re following if you want to see the move happen in real time.