Austin and I recently purchased our first home…well, a fixer upper! We both knew we wanted to live in a small town. We grew up in the same small town and ended up choosing that exact town to buy our first home and start our family in. An extra bonus is that his family and mine live close by! Since family is extremely important to us, this made choosing our small hometown the perfect fit.

Decisions!

We spent quite a bit of time deciding what type of house we wanted. After a lot of discussion and house hunting we decided on a fixer upper. My parents have done tons of flips and rentals and I share in their love of breathing new life into something old. It took Austin a little bit longer to get on the fixer upper train! 🙂 When we walked into the house we ended up purchasing, it spoke to both of us. This was the house we were meant to buy, we knew it immediately! So finally, after what seemed like forever, we closed on our new home and it is officially ours. Yay! Now, what to do with it?

We knew one option was to do a total rehab. Start with a clean slate and make it into exactly what we wanted. The biggest downside of this is the amount of extra time it would take to gut the whole house versus a partial rehab.

Renovation Time

We ended up deciding to basically gut the entire downstairs area. For me, the kitchen is the most important room in the house. I am a foodie at heart and spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking and baking. Growing up, whenever we had family and friends over we always ended up hanging out in the kitchen.

Besides the fact that I wanted an awesome kitchen, this house needed major work and I mean major. After all, what is a fixer upper without needing work? 🙂 It needed a complete new HVAC system and all new duct work ran. The electrical and plumbing needed a complete overhaul. The upstairs bathroom needed gutted and reconfigured. We are talking a major renovation for our new house and I couldn’t be more excited about it! Fortunately for us, my dad lives and breathes construction projects. By day he works for a major hospital system, but come evening and weekend he turns into Mr. Construction Extraordinaire! 🙂

Our Super Small Kitchen

The kitchen is very old and super tiny! Not at all workable for the room we will spend a lot of time in. We ended up deciding to remove a couple of walls and the kitchen up.

The Fireplace

The fireplace needs a Chip and Jo makeover! 🙂 I have been researching ideas on how to go about this. I would love some insight from you readers if you have any! Right now, I think I am leaning towards painting it pure white and then adding a wooden mantle.

Staircase

The staircase needs some serious attention also! Thinking about painting the banister white and adding new steps that we will stain. Still pondering this idea.

Upstairs Bath

The upstairs bath is getting a complete gut job. As with many older houses, there is no bathroom storage. The bathroom is a decent size, but desperately needs an update and storage added!

Enclosed Side Porch

The side porch is enclosed and we eventually want to open it back up to an outside porch. Haven’t decided yet if we want to leave the porch on the side or wrap it around to the front of the house. Decisions, decisions!!

Here are a couple of pictures of the outside of our 100 year old fixer upper. We are renovating and decorating it in the popular farmhouse style. I love farmhouse style and it suits this house perfectly! Can’t wait to implement Mom’s 3-tier stand in our kitchen!

Fixer Upper Time!

Currently, we are in demolition mode. Austin says this is his favorite part. He loves the tearing and ripping out! We have started knocking walls out and opening things up.

We have a ton of work ahead of us, but when it is all done the blood, sweat and tears will be worth it!

Keep an eye out, we will keep you updated with blog articles and lots of pictures of our progress along the way. We are hoping to be moved in by summer. Let’s see how close we come to hitting this goal. 🙂