Well, after about 3 months, we have a habitable room again… sans furniture!  Many months of planning and preparation allowed us to get here, and David and I trucking through the final touches after the contractors were finished have finally given us the big, beautiful room that we had always hoped and planned for when we bought this house.

Wanna see?

Here’s a reminder of what we were looking at before. From standing in the kitchen  we used to see this:

And now, we see this:

And from standing in the adjacent room to this (old formal living room), looking towards the kitchen, we would see this (if we had ever actually stood in this room):

And now we see this:

SUCH A BIG CHANGE.  It’s like the room finally has some room to breathe and allow people to walk around without feeling too crowded.  Now, instead of welcoming guests into a dark foyer:

They walk into a brightly lit, and happy room:

And instead of sitting in this tight squeeze of a family room:

We’ll be able to have family over and spread out nicely (once we get some furniture in here):

The wall between them blocked off so much light in the family room, especially in the mornings.

We just love the light that pours in between the rooms:

We are just so in love with it all!

We spent a ton of time on the flooring and some other efforts that we’ll be talking about soon, too. But, if you look closely, you can see a lot of the detail work we still have to do – finish the baseboard and shoe molding, make a decision on the closet door, eventually redo the stairs, try to find/make some curtains that I want, built-ins (!!) and of course, furnishing it all.  I’ll be detailing out those plans in a later post (as soon as I come up with them haha).  But for now, we’re enjoying this amazing open space again, and that we don’t have to keep a curious toddler away from it any more 🙂

What do you think??