Okay, so I have mentioned once or twice that our house was bought as a foreclosure…  This has left us with a list of cosmetic projects so long that we now have a whole alphabet of categorized lists.  I want you to see what we started with in each room so you know exactly where we are coming from.  The picture quality isn’t great so I apologize in advance, but you can still get a sense of what the space was like. I know it’s definitely not as bad as some foreclosures and the house has “good bones” as people say… Also, it does have some architectural detail (crown molding for example) but to me, it just seems very blah as I look over these photos.  Like a shaggy dog, it really needs some grooming. 😉  I just have to keep making it our “home” rather than a “house”. We continue to tackle things one room at a time and since we purchased the home 1 year ago we have done quite a bit.  Unpacking alone took us four months, lol.  Like any house though, I  have found that you really must live in a space for a while before you know exactly what you want to do with it…even people like me who want to run and do all things at once, can figure out that ideas and perceptions change as you live there.  *lesson to myself* 🙂  In each space we tackle I will re-post these pictures as appropriate, but I thought it would be nice to have them all in one spot. I hope you enjoy these before pictures and feel better about your own spaces looking at what we paid money for:

The location is terrific.  We aren’t on the lake but we can see it right across the street, which is less dangerous to me.  I can’t have an alligator eat my baby poodle Buddy! Yikes!!

Yeah, we ripped most of this out, lol.

My fiancé is a musician and teaches music so of course, we have to convert the dining room to a music room!