One Year In Our Texas House | Part 1

We are celebrating one year in our Texas House with lots of before, after, and progress photos of our downstairs main living area.

Hi Friends! We can’t believe it’s been one year since we moved into our new home in Austin, TX, and we want to celebrate by sharing lots of before and now photos with you. We are happy with everything we have accomplished in our new home in our first year. We want to welcome you to part one of a home tour after One Year In our Texas house!

The photos you see here are photos that were taken at random times and during random seasons. But it gives you a great idea of how we are progressing with making this house our home.

This photo was taken on the same day we took ownership of our house! I nicknamed it my Yellow Prairie House for blog and Instagram purposes. I am excited to share where we are with our downstairs with you today. Some spaces are finished, some are partially finished, and some aren’t finished at all.

Front Porch Before|Progress

One of my first DIY projects in our house was to paint the front door. I mean, is the house really yours if you don’t paint the front door?! I used front door and shutter paint by Deco Art called Americana Decor Curb Appeal, in the color Nantucket Grey.

We added a comfy wicker chair, a small side table, and the bench that used to be in our old dining room out on our small front porch, and I just think it feels cozy! We also added a custom made planter to our front porch rail. This was made by my talented father-in-law. He also made us a front window box, but we haven’t been able to install it yet.

Lastly, we changed out the ceiling light on the front porch. If you look closely, you will see that we need to touch up the ceiling from the old light being removed.

Back Patio Before|Progress

This patio spans the entire length of the back of our house, which we love. The things we don’t love are the rust stained concrete and the stairs that strangely lead to a doggy door in the side of the house. In the future, we also would love to add a large pergola, some lush greenery back here, and a grilling area .

As you can see, I painted the back door in the same Nantucket Grey paint as the front. Back in the Spring, my son visited, and he power washed as much of the stain off of the patio as possible. And we have lived with it like this ever since. Honestly, we both agreed we like it before, although it’s quite rough and need attention. We are currently awaiting a phonecall to get started with having this patio painted.

We pulled out those steps to that doggy door and placed our cooler in front of that, since it is not something we will ever want to use. We purchased a little conversation set and an area rug. This center area is where we would like to have a pergola built in the future. We bought a large storage box which you can see to the left to hold all of our outdoor cushions for when it rains. But with the weather in Austin, that isn’t very often.

We also want to add a cute grilling area and a dining table out here, and we have plans to slowly landscape the back yard and give us a little more privacy and shade. We started this year with planting about 6 crepe myrtle bushes going up our fence line. They really aren’t big enough yet to get a good photo of them, but most of them did bloom this summer, which is a sign that they are healthy.

Front Room Before|Progress

This is a very bad before photo taken with my iPhone and poor lighting. One thing I noticed immediately about this house that I wanted to change was the color of the ceilings. You can see in the below photo that they were the same brown color of the walls. It felt like a cave to me, and it was something that we quickly changed.

We had all of the ceilings and crown moulding downstairs (except the sunroom) painted in a fresh white. I think it cost us about $300 dollars to hire this job out, and it was well worth it. This job was done while we were both at work during the day, and we were amazed upon returning home after it was finished to see how much the white painted lightened and brightened the entire downstairs. It truly made me love the house even more!

We do plan to change the wall color at some point, but once the ceilings were white, I decided I could live with this for a bit while we focused on other things, one being to furnish the downstairs. You see, we left most of our furniture behind in West Virginia before we headed to Texas.

You will see that we painted all but one door in our downstairs black, and I love the look of black doors. The paint color we used is called Plum Martini by Benjamin Moore. The floors were here when we moved in, and I can’t wait for the day we can replace them with a higher quality of flooring. These are a cheap laminate, and they actually look better in photos than in person.

We have a small entry area, so I added a little mail drop spot behind the front door. And I found the white shelf you see to the left of the door at a local Goodwill. I am on the hunt for a small bench or something to add beneath it where we can store shoes

This is a first peek at the furniture we finally have in our front room! I first saw these chairs from Kirkland’s while watching someone’s Instagram stories. She happened to be doing a tour of her local Kirkland’s, and she skimmed across these chairs. She didn’t really even mention them, but my eyes lit up, and I was instantly in love! I waited for nine long months before my husband finally gave me the green light to buy them. They were a little higher priced than we wanted to pay, but we got a Memorial Day sale and we took the plunge and bought them. Stay tuned for a post coming that will share more details and photos of this front room.

We added the glass coffee table that had been living in our bonus room upstairs. We actually brought it with us when we moved, but it wasn’t jiving in the bonus room. I eventually want to add a large round ottoman here instead. But this is a decent place holder.

The area rug was a Christmas gift for me last year, in preparation for these chairs, lol! I just recently painted the little side table you see in between the chairs using a chalked spray paint in the color Linen White. I am still debating on what I want to do with my grandfather clock you see behind the chair. Ultimately, I want to move it to a better spot, but unfortunately, I haven’t found one yet.

Powder Room Before|Progress

We have a little powder room right off of the front entry. It was pretty plain and simple when we moved in. And it pretty much stayed just like you see it below, until I decided to liven things up in here during the quarantine.

I gave this powder room a little makeover using some bold wallpaper. You can read all of the details about this powder room here. I love the bold pattern of this wallpaper, and the fact that it is still neutral colors makes it easy to change up the rest of the decor whenever I tire of it.

I still need to address the flooring and the sink in this room, but for now, it is a whole lot more pleasant of a space. And it’s the bathroom that guests use when they come to visit, so it was nice to partially check this off of the list.

Kitchen Before|After

The kitchen is the main room that we focused on doing a major update on when we first moved in. When we bought the house, it looked just the way you see it in the photo below. Oak cabinetry, formica counters, outdated lighting, not enough lighting, a small sink, and a sad kitchen island.

Renovating this kitchen completely changed the downstairs in our home. We are still just thrilled with the results! You can read all about this kitchen update because we shared all of the details back in the Fall as part of the One Room Challenge.

As you can see, we painted the existing cabinetry white, and then we had some custom cabinetry built to go above the existing ones. These cabinets have glass doors, and they are the start of the show in this space! We also changed up the kitchen island significantly, added a beautiful farmhouse sink, changed out the lighting over the island, bought a new refrigerator, and had recessed lighting added throughout the kitchen. The new Kitchen Aid white refrigerator we bought is exactly what I had pictured for this room. We hope to eventually replace the rest of the appliances to match the refrigerator.

I had initially planned to add a pop of color on the pantry door, but in the end I settled on Gray Owl by Benjamin Moore. I still may go for a bright pop of color here one day though.

Breakfast Room Before|After

We tackled this breakfast room at the same time as the kitchen for the One Room Challenge. Here you can see what it looked like before we moved in, with the brown ceilings and all. I do love the plantation shutters on the windows, and the chandelier stayed, because I felt I could make it work in this room.

You can obviously see that these photos were taken last Fall. You can read all of the details about this space here. The ceilings are now white, and we painted the walls a color called Sentimental Beige by Behr. I also painted the two doors and window ledge in this space in the Plum Martini color, by Benjamin Moore. The furniture and the rug we brought with us from our previous home.

Living Room Before|Progress

This living room is a room I don’t believe I have shared before on the blog. I just never have really felt like it was photo worthy yet, but here is the before with the matching brown walls and ceilings.

The room to the right of that little half wall will house a dining table one day, but in the meantime, I added a bookcase and some decor, and this is what the little corner looked like last Christmas.

And here are a few shots I took of our living room from last Christmas, that I never ended up sharing on the blog. But this will give you an idea of how our living room looks. I do have plans to paint the walls, and maybe add some shiplap on the wall where we have our TV hanging, one day down the road. Don’t laugh at our small TV. We have never been the type to spend an exorbitant amount of money for a giant obnoxious TV. But I do dream of getting a Frame TV in here eventually.

These matching sofas we our first furniture purchase for our new home. We bought them at a local store called Home Zone, but honestly, we are not happy with them. Both of them have broken, and we had to send both of them back for repair. The frames broke.

So during quarantine, when we were stuck at home, we had to send both of them back in for repairs, and being stuck at home with no sofas was not a fun experience. Since they were repaired, they have been holding up just fine, and I do like the look of them. Luckily, we had purchased a warranty on the sofas that covered the repairs

We purchased the coffee table from Home Zone as well, and I must say I am very happy with it. We ordered the TV table from Amazon last year, it was actually my birthday gift. You can see I added a gallery wall surrounding the TV, which is something I did in the living room of our previous home as well. We used a couple of pieces that are from our old living room gallery wall in here, but several things were added. I plan to add a couple of things to the wall as I find them.

The small side table you see next to the sofa is a piece we brought with us that I got for free. In this photo, you can see it was in need of a makeover, and I painted it over quarantine too. I also used this same paint color, called Mossy Bank by Behr, on a bathroom vanity upstairs and a bookshelf you will see a little further down in this post. I found the small wine box you see on the bottom shelf of the table at a thrift store.

Sunroom Before|Progress

The sunroom in this house is one of my most favorite features of the home, and one of the reasons we bought the house. I have always dreamed of having a sunroom. And although this one is small, I had big dreams for it. You can see that when we moved in the walls, ceilings, and ceiling fan were yellow, the same color as the exterior of the house. And the floor was the same rust colored stain as the outside patio, and it had a worn out stencil on it.

I decided to tackle this room during our quarantine. You can read all of the details of this renovation here. I started by painting the walls the same color I used in our guest room, Bistro White by Valspar. The walls are the same siding as the exterior, so I wanted it to sort of look like ship lap. I also painted the floor in the color cracked black pepper, using garage and floor paint.

I love the outdoor sectional we added here, and it brings me great joy now to see someone constantly sitting in our sunroom and enjoying the fruits of our labor. I do still need to purchase an area rug for this room, and I still need to address the ceiling and the ceiling fan.

Since I shared our sunroom makeover on the blog, we have actually made some more progress in our sunroom. I made some DIY cafe curtains using a drop cloth, and I need to share a tutorial with the details on them. But I wanted to share how they turned out. I just love them!

The details of the curtains along with the black door added the perfect touches that this room needed.

Dining Room Before|No Progress

We do have one room downstairs that we have made pretty much no progress on. This room is pretty much one big area with the front room you saw above. One day we will have a dining table with a bench and chairs in this spot next to the windows. The only thing that has changed here in this spot is that the ceilings are now white. We also plan to replace the light fixture here, but I want to wait until we buy a table before I choose a light.

I don’t have a new photo from the exact same angle, but you can see, the empty area in the forefront of this photo below is where the future dining table will go. We definitely plan to get a dining table in the next 6 months to a year. I really want to find something second hand, but just haven’t found the perfect table at the right size yet.

This bookshelf sits right between the front room and the future dining room. I gave it an update over the quarantine as well, using the same Mossy Bank paint color that I used on the bathroom vanity upstairs and the small side table in the living room. I like to sprinkle an accent color around in more than one room in our home. So I would consider this Mossy Banks color part of our whole house color scheme, and I plan to add touches of it in other rooms as well. I also added some bead board wallpaper to the back of this bookshelf. I have owned this shelf for years, but it no longer matched our style, so I was super happy to change this up and make it fit with our decor.

Here is a before photo of our bookshelf, just so you can see what it looked like. I had added the bead board wallpaper before we moved. I just hadn’t painted it yet.

I hope you enjoyed seeing the progression of our home after year one living here! We still plan to paint more of the walls downstairs, and possibly add some moulding or shiplap, or something to add some more character here. I also want to change out the stair railing at some point. But that is for the future. The flooring in the entire downstairs will eventually be replaced, but that will be an expensive endeavor, and we have other things we want to spend on before we get to that.

I will be back next week to share part two of our one year in Texas post. I will be taking you upstairs to the bedrooms and bathrooms, and the bonus room. So stay tuned for that! Thanks for stopping by sweetie pie!

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