Open Floor Plan

I realized, as I've been looking back over all the pictures we've taken during our building process, that I've never really showed you pictures of our open floor plan.  I've taken pictures of each room but not of the whole feel of our open kitchen, living room, dining room and sun room.  This has truly been one of my favorite parts about our house.  I love that it's all open, especially the kitchen.  As mothers we can end up spending a lot of time in this room and to have it open to the rest of our home is just wonderful.  I never feel blocked off from what's going on and thanks to our sink and island facing all our large windows I can always enjoy a stunning view. 

This is what you see from the top of our entry stairs.  Behind me is the hallway.  Dining Room is to the left.  Laundry Room is through the paneled door.  Kitchen, Sun Room and then the Living Room is on the right. 

Dining Room.

View from the Dining Room.

View from the Laundry Room door.

Living Room.

View from the Sun Room.

View of the kitchen from the Sun Room.

View of the Kitchen from our Living Room.

Back to where we started!

Mid-Way House Tour: Laundry/Mud Room

Welcome to our Laundry Room/ Mud Room, a room with many great purposes because anyone who knows anything about the North and our crazy winters and muddy springs knows you need a good mud room.  And with our growing family, the laundry room is a buzz of activity on a regular basis.  So this is an important room in our house.  We are slowly working on it and it's actually been one of the big projects that we've been working on these past few weeks.  We finally got upper cabinets for our laundry room which will add a good amount of storage.  I have a few pictures for ideas of what I'd like the room to look like, so like every other room we're moving slowly forward with progress.

Can I just say that I love my laundry room cabinets?!  The color is so yummie and the added storage is a great benefit.

More storage and our message center, eventually.

This is the view from our living room, we'll eventually put up a door that will have etched glass to let natural light into the laundry room.

And I think we might just go with this new and improved door trim, much prettier don't you think?!  Well at least it worked for the time being so Janessa could have a bouncer (that she doesn't use...)

Paint touch up, there's a bit of that to do around the house.

Thanks Paulsons for the dresser!  Extra storage and this will be our message center soon!

Already broken in.

And hopefully we'll get this bad boy set up soon so we can have some great tasting filtered water.

And we need to put up some molding.  And we'll add some hooks to hang up jackets and such.

Hopefully we'll get a bench in place of the ottoman for some seating.

And light fixture plates still need to be installed, don't worry its all safe.

And with the upper cabinets we fixed our side view a little, you can see the before picture here.

We'll eventually add a rod between the two cabinets to hang clothes to dry, not much room but enough for the few that we hang up.

And our stacked washer and dryer, have I ever mentioned that I love front loading washer and dryers.  Because I do.

And my newest tip to myself, get a timer and set it so I remember to get my clothes out of the dryer before they've gone through the whole cycle.  Let me just say this mommy brain gets distracted very easily!

And this maga cabinet over our washer and dryer that you need a ladder to get anything in and out of it.

And you can still see the side of the dryer and some little repairing needed to the wall.

And baseboard to the cabinet and the rest of the room.

Oh and the nic on the cabinet, boo, another one that came from the factory this way.

And one room in our house that actually has light fixtures!  Yay!

That's where the laundry room is at, still more that needs to be done but its on its way!

Previous Room                                                                        Next Room

The Laundry Room Mishap

When designing your own home for the first time there are bound to be some design issues.  One that, at the moment, I am totally bummed about is in our laundry room design.  And I really didn't want to share this, I just wanted it fixed and hidden but then that wouldn't be as fun and just maybe it would help someone else think of this and not make the same mistake.  When walking into our laundry room what do you see but all the wires and plumbing and vents behind the washer and dryer.  It's an awful sight to behold and will need to be covered with a temporary wall or a large decorative item such as a vase or something.  I had a picture of a laundry room as my inspiration for ours not considering the wall placement and view to where the back of their washer and dryer were hidden.  Oh well, we'll add that to the list of things to fix eventually (that list seems to be growing quite rapidly) and I'll try to ignore it in the meantime!

no this is not my laundry room.  this is the inspiration picture for the laundry room, notice the wall on the right (just barely in the picture)

my laundry room, the view is fine once you're in the laundry room but...

because our door opens directly at the side of the counter the view when you walk in is the 'behind the scenes view' of our washer and dryer!  ugh!  not pretty.