Renovation Vacation

Well it's 2017 and I already know it's going to be a much bigger year of accomplishments than last year. The first reason is the fact that we are officially home owners, which is probably the most rewarding, and equally scary, thing that I personally have ever done. Especially when you're only 21 and you know for a fact that your knew house needs an abundance of care, most of which you have no clue how to go about, in order to even move into. I think most people call this "adulting". 

If you haven't already read how we got out house you can do so here.

We knew going into this process that buying a fixer upper would take a lot of time and patients. But let me just tell you that it takes even more focus just to remember to be patient than anything else. I'm constantly reminding myself that we would have never gotten this house if previous owners had taken good care of it. And that the family who originally won the bidding on this property backed out because they didn't want to put the time into fixing all of its problems.

It doesn't help that we are constantly watching Fixer Upper(on Netflix of course because cable television isn't worth it just to watch Wheel Of Fortune) and the biggest projects get done in a matter of weeks because of a large team they have working on any given house. And to take that one step further, one episode is less than an hour. So basically you can watch a full season of Fixer Upper in the time it takes to pull the walls out of your kitchen(a task we still haven't completed). 

We want to have it all and have it all now.

It's nuts that we think this way, but in our fast(way too fast) paced culture we expect results immediately. And we barely give a moment to think about our actions before we throw a fit when things don't go as planned. 
I mean after two years of searching we are finally homeowners and my husband and I took an entire week off of our jobs to work on this house and we still aren't painting our walls yet?? I'll be honest, owning a home and not living in it is super annoying to think about you guys.
But we are a people who focus too hard on how we want to present ourselves and, even more frighteningly, presenting ourselves as someone we are not. 

So today we are not focusing on our highlight reel, like the 90% of all other social media you look at today will be. Today, and for a while, we will be updating you all on the current state our house is in. It's not going to be ideal, it will look gross, and there will be cockroaches(don't worry, I spared photos of those nasty little beasts). But it's our honest and present now. And I believe that living in the present will only help us to build a much stronger, safer and pleasant home in the long run.

Welcome to reality!

Our master bedroom had a sag in the ceiling so we ripped a section out to evaluate the water damage from the roof. It was worse than we thought so we had to take out even more ceiling.

And since it was only about 7 feet to begin with we decided to take out all of the ceiling! We are planning to vault the ceiling to try and make a little more headspace. If I can touch the ceiling with my feet flat on the floor something needs to be done.

This is obviously the damage that went down. But it's also where we met about a hundred little NASTY COCKROACHES. I say little but they were honestly some of the BIGGEST bugs I have ever seen. Yuck!!

Let's move onto the kitchen before I get sick!

Here I'm in the dining room looking into the kitchen. It's not terribly laid out at all! The cabinets are in great shape and the island adds a ton of storage and counter space. But everything seems really massive for the space it's in. Just taking down the cabinets made the room feel twice as big!

I would have taken more "before" photos but the day we closed we went over to our new place and got a little bit too hammer happy! We didn't have power at then so it was already dark by the time we got off work and headed to our brand new place. But you can't just close on your first home and not go give it a big ole hug, right? Well it got a little more than a hug. We started demolishing the kitchen wall that night with a flashlight as our guide. We took out a small section and decided during our "renovation vacation" that we would order a beam and knock the rest of the wall out!

Our living room is super cute and cozy. But we definitely want to make this home one for hosting game nights and get togethers. An open floor plan was definitely the way to go.

And that's where we are friends! It ain't pretty but it's our here and now! We are anxious to be able to move in and continue to work but we are fully enjoying ourselves in the meantime!

We'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas! What would you do with this space if it were your own??

Don't forget to follow the progress on Instagram!! #PierceHomeProject