Home Tours – Sprucing Up a Rancher

Don’t you just LOVE Home Tours?!  Allison blogs at The Golden Sycamore and is an amazing furniture renovator and DIYer…you’re going to love her home!  Allison, husband, and daughter moved into our 1950′s ranch a year and a half ago.  Thanks for having us over Allison….

My husband had to convince me to buy our home, it was definitely a fixer-upper and I wasn’t sure it had the potential he saw in it, but in the end, I caved and decided to trust his vision.  While it’s not my ideal house and it certainly isn’t our forever home, we’ve been able to make it work for us and it feels more like home everyday. We have gotten most of the main floor painted and are really loving how it’s turning out. We still have a lot of personality to add to the house in the form of accessories and special design touches, but we wanted to get the trim and walls painted first to spruce it up a bit.

One of the first areas we tackled in our home was the basement. When we moved in, the basement had dark, old paneling and it was such an eyesore. At the time, I wasn’t refinishing and painting furniture yet, so we thought we’d use the space as an extra living area/play place. We painted the walls of the main area and totally gutted the basement bathroom. Since we don’t have a garage, we mostly use the basement as a space for me to paint furniture and my husband to do woodworking projects now, so it’s kind of back to being a disaster area, unfortunately.

Here are a couple shots of what we were able to complete. This is the guest bed. You can see the painted paneling here along with the nightstand which was my very first furniture painting project.

And this is the half bath. I’m really happy with how it turned out! It has come a long way from where it started. I honestly wouldn’t even use it before we renovated it, it was so gross. It was so scary and dark. I’m so glad we decided to update it right away.

One of my favorite areas in our house is the kitchen. It was really in decent condition when we bought the house, but the new cabinets were already fading and discoloring. I couldn’t stand it for long, so we decided to paint the cabinets to give the room a fresh look. I LOVE painted cabinets and am really happy we decided to go this route for our own house.

We used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in French Linen for the cabinets. We did our best to choose a color that went with the countertop and backsplash since we don’t have money to replace those yet.

And we replaced all the appliances since none of them matched. It really makes the room feel updated and more cohesive with new, matching appliances.

The dining room had a fan above the table instead of a light fixture. It was old and outdated, so the weekend we moved in, we ran to IKEA (now only 10 minutes from our house) and picked up this chandelier for $40. Can’t get much of a better price than that! (The shades were bought later from Lowe’s.)

Our living room is definitely still a work in progress. It’s still quite plain, but we’ve got the “bones” down, so we’ve at least started on it! I can’t wait to add more personality to the room. We have been discussing doing a gallery wall of some sort, but haven’t been able to agree on anything so far. Hopefully we’ll figure something out soon!

The furniture has been fun to incorporate into this room. The secretary is a piece I found for $40 at an estate sale that I repainted. And the industrial side table is something my husband and I just built a couple weeks ago. It was a bit labor intensive, but we really like the personality it adds to the room.

Our daughter’s room is one that we also started on right away. As in, we pulled up the nasty carpet the day we closed on the house! We weren’t about to let her cute little feet touch the nasty shag carpet. It was just gross! Since then we’ve also painted the walls and trim and replaced the blinds. Again, it’s another room that needs a bit more personality, but we’re getting there!

The headboard came from an antique bed a friend gave us. I painted it in a teal color (ASCP Provence) which gives a fun touch to the room. The nightstand was a Craigslist find at $10 that I also repainted. I used ASCP Cream and Old White to give it an updated look.

We also built the bookshelves for our daughter’s large book collection. They were fun to put together (actually were inspired by Aimee’s Pottery Barn knock off bookshelves!) and I love that they give us some storage while letting her see what books she wants to read.

We’re having our second baby in just a couple weeks and finally got the nursery done a few days ago. We haven’t found out the gender of the baby, so we did our best at designing a gender neutral space for the new little one. I feel like this is the most “done” room in our house. It’s the only room that we have fully designed (well, other than the basement bath). I think part of it was due to the fact that we had a deadline, so we had to get it done.

I made the crib skirt since I couldn’t find one that I liked in any stores. It was really quite easy to make!

These shelves came from the same bed that we pulled the headboard from for our daughter’s room. They are made from one of the bed rails of the bed. We just cut a bed rail in half, wiped a coat of stain on the boards, and installed them as shelves. I love reusing old things, especially in ways you wouldn’t expect. And I love that they were free!

We installed the planked wood wall as the first project in the room. It was so easy to install and paint and gives the room some fun character. The changing table is another piece we got for free from a friend and totally stripped down and repainted to use as a chaining table / storage dresser.

So, you haven’t seen our master bath or bedroom, have you? Nope, that’s because they’re still kind of distasters! We are hoping to start on the bedroom within the next week or so (I know we’re crazy to do it with a baby on the way so soon!) and the bathroom will probably wait until next summer. We want to totally gut it, so we’re trying to save money so that we can finally get that done.

In the meantime, here’s a little peek at our bedroom. I recently styled the end of the bed with this bench and it kind of sets the tone for how I want to design the rest of the room. I’m really excited about how it will look when it’s all done!

If you’d like to keep up with what we’re up to next (and find out the gender of our newest little addition – coming soon!) feel free to follow my blog {here}, my facebook page {here}, or my instagram feed {here}.

Home tours are the BEST!  Watching Allison make her house a beautiful on The Golden Sycamore is totally inspiring!  For more fabulous Dreamy Dwelling Home Tours (here) there is a link right under my title. And…if you have a house tour you’d like to share on It’s Overflowing, send me a line at itsoverflowing {at} gmail {dot} com. XO, Aimee

Linking up at: Savvy Southern Style, Between Naps on the Porch

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