state of the house, part VII: done!

We moved into our home several weeks ago and have been starting and finishing small and large projects and organizing ever since. Over the past month or so a couple of friends, in particular, have been telling me that we NEED to have an open house party. NEED to have one, like, a party is mandatory. I've experienced many mandatory parties before, but the others all occured while I was in college, so it's been a while. So after thinking that over for a bit we decided to have a party this past sunday. I mean, who am I to violate mandates.

Other, farther away friends, have informed me that I NEED to post pictures of our finished home for them to see. NEED...again.

I suspected I would have no time for taking pictures during the party and I was right, but I really should have taken some pictures just before the party, when the house was the cleanest it's ever been or ever likely to be. Here are a few photos of our new home interior taken this morning.
The front door/entry way:

The entrance to the garage was moved from the kitchen to the entry way:


Erin's room, green per her instructions:



Twins' room, with hand-me-down bunk beds from Aunt Terri, which we will stack together once we figure that won't cause Kate to break her arm again. K&A each have their own closet:


The new girls' bathroom with a jacuzzi tub which does wonders with a little bubble bath soap:





The office/guest room (formerly space that was the twins' room). We have a queen size murphy bed in here which Grandma has used twice so far and proclaimed it quite comfortable. So all you far away family and friends should drop in, and stay a while. On the front of the murphy bed cabinet is a craft table which John designed:

Our room, larger than before with one wall pushed out, and wall-to-wall carpet gone:

The old hall bathroom was repainted, has new light fixtures, new toilet, and John re-tiled the floor in the 2 weeks before the open house:

Family room/former office space next to the kitchen had the wall-to-wall carpet removed and was repainted. That desk isn't being used now but when the girls are older we'll put another computer there and that will be a homework/computer work space for them:

Former living room is now the playroom with plenty of storage and a big craft table for the kids:

The new dining area is larger than before with the enclosing walls removed. This new table can expand to seat 10 people. John added more pantry cabinets and moved them to opposite wall, now that the garage entrance isn't there anymore:

3 skylights above the dining area:

Dining area continues into the new living room. Some of that space was previously Erin's room and there are 3 new skylights in here as well. John loves his new super-insane TV on his super-insane specially reinforced wall he had the architect design for that purpose. The surrounding cabinets were built for us by the same company that built the office/murphy bed cabinet system:

That's about it. The other rooms I didn't photograph (the kitchen and our master bathroom) were also repainted, and we have a new mirror in the bathroom, but overall these rooms are the same as they were before the construction.

Our party went well with many, many friends and neighbors dropping by, and our home, thankfully, looked much different afterwards than my house did after those mandatory college parties.

We are all enjoying the house and the substantial new space very much and it looks so nice inside that we are forced to start thinking about what to do with the front yard now, which remains a pile of dirt and some weeds. "Natural landscaping" I prefer to call it. I think our neighbors would prefer we called a gardener instead.