House Tour: Part 3 (Main Level)

I should probably be more embarrassed by these photos than I am. On the day these pictures were taken, the house was still decorated for Christmas and we had just begun our basement renovation.  We had been living in the house for about 10 weeks at this point, so the boxes of stuff that belonged in the basement are moved into the living room. (Confession: four of those boxes contain piano music are STILL not unpacked...)

View from Front Door

 This is the view from the front door.

The walls in the living room and dining room are beige and boring builder off-white. I'm pretty sure they haven't painted the stairwells and halls since the house was built. In 1986. Blah. The floors are hardwood that could use a refinish at some point. There are some patches where rugs or furniture have worn right through the finish down to the bare wood but, being solid wood, it's definitely one of the better floor coverings in the house!

Immediately when you walk in, there is a half-bath to the right. It has the original linoleum floor, sink/counter, and toilet. The walls are a deep eggplant color.

Living Room

The living room and dining room are one large open space, divided only by a beam in the ceiling. Yikes, just looking at these pictures with all the mess makes me anxious. I'm so glad we're done with the unpacking phase now!

Dining Room

Yes, dear reader, that is indeed a mirrored wall. Only the 80's best for this house! I dread the day we take those down...

We didn't have a dining room in our old house and we sold our kitchen table when we moved so we've been dressing up the card table with a tablecloth.

These stairs take you up to the bedroom level (photo on L) and down to the basement (photo on R).

The kitchen is at the back of the house. We love the original Euro-style cabinets. Well, sort of. More specifically, we love that an outdated kitchen gives us a functional house to live in while still having opportunities to add some sweat equity!


Does linoleum ever die?!?! It's held up way too well. I have a hard time replacing things just because they're outdated, ya know? If they're damaged, it's not so hard, but these floors are in great shape. The same cannot be said for the off-white Formica counter tops, however. They sort of dip down above the dishwasher and they stain horribly!! I was cooking dried black beans one day and the water that dripped off the spoon stained the counter. Ridonculous, I know. That's not the only stain we've added since living here.


The backsplash and kitchen accent wall are painted in the same eggplant shade as the bathroom. I love dark colors, so I actually don't mind this one so much, I just don't think it's right for this particular house. We'll use one of the lighter shades from our color palette when we repaint. Everything else in the kitchen is beige, but - to keep things interesting - it's not the same beige as the adjoining living/dining rooms. Oh and the ceiling - that is light blue. All of that will be remedied in time. :)


Thanks for joining me again! Next time I'll wrap up the house tour with the bedrooms and loft. If you missed the first part of the tour, you can check out those posts here: House Tour: Part 1 (Layout) and House Tour Part 2 (Basement).