chaos ensues...

i know i have mentioned multiple times that the propose of my little blog endeavor is to document the renovations on our new home....yet i have yet to share one picture! shame on me as we have really started the renos off with a bang! to give a little background on how this all came to be, some back story might be helpful. my husband m & i were not actively looking for a new home but we always kept an eye on new properties for sale in our desired neighborhood. one sunday in october we were out & about popping into a few open houses. i was getting pretty exhausted & ready to call it a day. of course m was just getting started & talked me into "one last house"....by the way, i attribute his energy to the fact that he always wears comfortable shoes & i'm notorious for my completely impractial sunday wardrobe of 3.5 inch heels. we popped into a final house that day & by sheer luck met our fabulous realtors, shannon & patty. we just clicked with these ladies & i ended up spending 20 minutes chatting with them in the kitchen while m toured the house. we exchanged contact info & the next day shannon reached out to me via email to see if we wanted to check out some more houses next weekend. this got m & i talking in more depth about the thought of possibly really going through with this. we figured that it would be nice to have the new house before any kiddos as we both love the idea of getting things done ahead of time. we both travel a lot for our jobs & the thought of moving + business travel + kids was simply overwhelming...especially since i was almost insistent on a fixer-upper! i have a severe obsession with design & all things design related & have always dreamed of fixing up a house with my hubs to our specifications. we spent some time looking with shannon & patty but nothing really was catching our eye. sure their were some properties that fit our specifications, but they were close to the top of our budget & still needed a lot of work (in my eyes at least!). with the way the real estate market has been, we decided to go ahead & list our house and continue our search at the same time, fully expecting our selling process to take some time, especially considering the time of year & thanksgiving was just a week away. imagine our surprise when, within a matter of hours of listing our home, we had tons of interest & an offer. we ended up selling our house that day (within 5 hours!) and realized we really had to get to work on the buying side. m & i keep talking about how everything happens for a reason & in our case it truly worked out for the best. a house we had seen once, that needed a ton of work but was right in the heart of the area we wanted to be in, suddenly came back on the market. it had had a contract pending but the buyers fell through. thank goodness our awesome realtor, shannon, was all over it. within a matter of weeks after selling our home we had a contract on our new house. we took possession december 22nd of last year & it's been total chaos ever since! the current state of our new home is complete "hot mess" but i thought i would start by sharing some pics of what it looked like "before".....i apologize in advance for the picture overload.  all of these screen-shots are from the reece & nichols website, obviously taken while the previous owners still lived there....enjoy!

{view from the front...LOVE all the established trees}

{front entry}

{stairs...front entry}

you can't tell from any of these pictures, but the stair case is double-sided with another staircase that leads into the kitchen...this charming feature was definitely one of the things that sold me on our home!

{dining room...check the wallpaper...YIKES!}

{front office, main floor}

{front office, leading into living room}

{living room}

{view of the kitchen}

{breakfast nook}

{opposite side of kitchen - hearth room area}

{laundry room...yay!}

{master bedroom}

{master bedroom view into master bath}

{master bath...circa 1994, obvi}

{master closet!}

the other compelling selling point for me!

so, there you have it! finally...a glimpse into our new home & potential projects that have virtually taken over our lives.  this is exactly what the house looked like on december 22nd (minus the furniture) when we took possession.  can't wait to share some of the progress we've made since then!