feels like home..

Welcome to our new/old home. York and Finn will be your tour guides today. We hope you enjoy the show!




(without window treatments us 'dales have a perfect view of the Centrennial neighborhood! And we get really excited when we see Midas coming!!)


You probably thought our mom and dad forgot about all of you nosey neighbors and your numerous requests for a new blog post!! Didn't forget...just took us a...long...time to get this blog updated. We've been having fun breaking in our new home---actually we're a little rougher than mom likes and sometimes we get in trouble for scratching up the wood floors or snagging the new rug...but it's still a really fun place to live! We're pretty settled for the most part, still have some bare walls and some random spaces where furniture should be...so mom and dad are always keeping their eyes out for new additions to our decor! As you will see through these pictures, our style is kind of farm house meets cottage living. We have enjoyed mixing old treasures with new twists along the way! Ultimately we're all pretty happy. All four of us! Taylor. Abby. York! and Finn.


We hope you enjoy this virtual tour!


THE PARLOR (of sorts):
This is the little room that will greet you when you walk in the front door. We're still contemplating how to make the best use of this space. Hoping to fill it up someday with additional seating so it can become a little reading nook or cozy gossip corner! ;) Right now it's pretty much just an Airedale play room...and at any given moment you will probably find about a dozen tennis balls or chew toys scattered across the floor. (mom made us clean up before we took the pictures.)




(don't mind the bright yellow ottoman! it was a $5 thrift store find and mom having it recovered to coordinate with the rest of the room!) But boy, you should have seen us when she brought it home...we were climbing on it and smelling it like crazy. We think the previous owner must have had a dog too because we sure did like smelling it!

THE LIVING ROOM:
Here's a glimpse at our main living room. It's the place we gather and entertain. And behold the antique couch we had recovered! Mom & dad picked up this little hunny at an antique shop in GR and had it recovered to suit our liking. Mom says it's a fun conversational piece...(we can't talk so we wouldn't know) and has been the center for a lot of our inspiration. No dogs allowed on this couch! Bummer.

THE OFFICE:

this snazzy little green room has yet to be used. Actually, we're beginning to wonder if it ever will be? Well, at least we have a good spot to wrap Christmas presents!

THE DINING ROOM:
Wow, that's some table! THANK YOU Ken Boeve for custom building us a table for our new dining room. If you'll recall from past blog posts, the dining room was originally a screened in porch that we ripped off, rebuilt, insulated and added a deck on top... So now we have a formal dining room with a table fit for the Last Supper itself! The longer the table = the more guests we can invite over for dinner = more crumbs for us to find on the floor! This is like a win-win for everyone!!

These pictures don't do the room justice because currently the table if filled with mom's boring decorating projects---but we couldn't not include pictures. So, you'll just have to stay tuned to another day when we can post pictures of the "cleaned up" version of this room. Besides, mom has a whole stack of window treatments that need to be hung...but she can't find curtain rods long enough!

THE LAUNDRY ROOM:

If you enter off the back of the house you will walk right into the laundry room. It also doubles as Finn's bedroom, although our mad photography skills strategically omitted the gigantic dog cage from view!

The built in wall cabinet is original to the house--which we love! And our dad found the farm sink from some old geezer on "Talk of the Town" (the radio show.) We had legs made for it (at Zeeland Wood Turning) and mounted the sucker to our wall. That thing weighs about a million lbs! Doesn't it Kyle? Our neighbor helped dad carry the sink inside since mom's small muscles were just about useless!

THE KITCHEN:

I once read a saying that said "I only have a kitchen because it came with the house." Well, that about sums it up for mom!! Kidding....mom and dad are TRYING to improve their cooking skills and the frequency at which you can find them in the kitchen. Once in a while when their not looking, we jump up and snag something off the counter...might be a loaf of bread or a cup full of trail mix. We usually get in trouble...but it's worth it for a taste of people food!

As you know, we bought the house mid-way through the renovation process. We were fortunate enough to catch it in time to make most of the design decisions but a few things had already been installed (two bathtubs and the kitchen cabinets.) However, we still found a way to make the kitchen our own. We hand painted the cabinets a rich dark brown. We had our butcher block counter tops made at Zeeland Architectural. (and our appliances are from Brummel's. Local! Local! Local!) We're still searching for the perfect kitchen island to fill in some of the extra space.

A view from the bar. We knocked out a good portion of this wall to have a peninsula bar added. And here's a little picture of me, York!

FIRST FLOOR BATHROOM:

This little loo is off of the living room. It's 1 of 3 full bathrooms in this house. (Tub was here when we bought the house but we added the toilet and vanity.) The original plan was to include the washer and dryer in this room--the previous owner was not going to use the back room at all! That's crazy talk! We LOVE having laundry in the back room, which allowed us to spread out a bit and have a nice sized full bathroom on the first floor? Love our vanity? It's a Roxanne original! Roxanne is a genius when it comes to refinishing/painting furniture. We found this little dresser at an antique shop and Rox painted and distressed it for us. Jerry, our builder (remember him?) cut a whole to 'sink' the sink inside!

Once in a great while our dad will leave the toilet seat up and we can get a quick drink. The neighbors all think we are 'boutique dogs' and only drink bottled water. What they don't know is that we have dirty mouths just like all of the other dogs on the Centrennial block! Needless to say, mom doesn't like it when we drink from the toilet.

THE STAIRS:

Welcome to our family photo wall. Our intention is to have this series of frames continue to wrap all the way around the upstairs hallway. Someday.

UPSTAIRS HALLWAY:

Bye Finner bo binner!

THE LOFT:

When you get to the to of the stairs you will find our favorite hidden gem! This loft had never been finished off so it was completely unusable space when we bought the house. As you can see we had it drywalled and had a storage closet added along one wall. This is the perfect little getaway and has certainly become our little TV nook. We have a feeling this room is going to see a lot of Gilmore Girls, Law & Order and the Food Network!

THE MASTER BEDROOM:

Getting sleepy? This is my (York's) favorite room of the house. I can't wait for mom and dad to leave for work in the morning so I can have the bed all to myself! My brother Finn still sleeps in his crate during the day, so I stretch out on the bed and get total peace and quiet all day long. It's beautiful.

Off of the master bedroom there was already a little room---without shelving.... we can only imagine that it was once a nursery or a dressing room. But it offered us the perfect invitation to create a walk-in closet. The east side of the master bedroom (same side as the closet) butts up to the guest bathroom off of the hallway. So, our master builder came up with the idea to steal a little space from the closet and a little space from the guest bathroom to create a master bathroom off of our bedroom.

We added the barn door track system, as seen below to cover the entry to both the closet and bathroom.

THE MASTER BATHROOM:

(sorry, mom said you don't get to see inside the closet!)
Here you will find our cozy little master bathroom...without an inch to spare this little space is perfect for us. And we anticipate that it will only become more and more convenient our family continues to grow. (that was not a hint people!)

Set your sights on the most beautiful subway tile job you have ever seen. Thanks Jeremy!

THE GUEST ROOM:

Found this bed at an antique show, had new legs made for it @ Zeeland Wood Turning to give it extra height and had it painted to perfection by Roxanne.

If you ever come to visit, this is where you will stay. We have one more guest room (the room with the balcony off of it) but there is no furniture yet so we didn't include pictures. Someday.

THE GUEST BATHROOM:

here is the second floor guest bathroom. The wood counter top in the vanity is original wood that was salvaged when we tore off the screen porch downstairs. We tried to save as much of the history of the original house as we could.

Well, we hope you enjoyed your tour. We don't have any exterior pictures to post at this time. We just start growing our grass...so hopefully in another week or so we will be picture perfect on the outside too.

You're welcome to stop by and see our little nest in person any time! We love visitors! The only requirement is that you like big dogs!! Because it's pretty much gaurenteed that we will sniff you to death when you walk in the door. But, it's all part of the deRoo experience, right? :)

You can stop begging now....

Well, I was planning to hold out until the end before I posted a new blog. We accomplished a lot since the last time you saw us...but I don't feel like all of the projects photograph that well so I was going to wait until the end to show you our glamour shots. But I didn't realize that by me not posting a new blog update I would be upsetting so many of you. So, due to your constant begging (you know who you are!) I am giving in and giving you a recent glimpse of the construction. Get ready for a long blog! (I am hoping that this will satisfy your cravings until the rest of the project is complete!)

Just kidding, I love that so many of you are interested in our progress and so supportive as this has been a huge undertaking and this deRoo clan can't wait to be moved in and a permanent fixture in the Central Avenue neighborhood. More specifically, we're looking forward to becoming Centrennialites!

First things first...we have a new driveway! If you'll recall we had two driveways before. One on the east side and one on the west side of the house. This was because the house was a two family rental. We pulled up both driveways and re poured a new driveway on the west side of the house. Our plan is to line both sides of the driveway with brick pavers. (but this won't happen until later this summer.)

Leave your boots at the door! Here's a glimpse at our laundry room/mud room. The color on the wall is called Cowboy Boot. Cute, huh?? You can see the floors have been finished in here. The legs on the sink have been removed so they can be painted and the built in cabinet is getting a little makeover this week. Before I know it this will be a full fledged laundry room with a pile of laundry waist high (I am sure the excitement of a brand new laundry room will wear off pretty quickly as I am sorting through Taylor's dirty socks! (argyle socks, mind you!) :)

And here is our new kitchen sink, making it's first debut! This sink might be one of my favorite things! It's big and beautiful and all mine! (oops, I mean ours. All ours!) And let me tell you this thing is heavy!! You can also see in this picture that our butcher block counter tops have been installed! On Tuesday the plumber comes to hook up the kitchen faucet and the dishwasher. I would say that sometime this week we will be putting the cabinet doors back on to complete the look. Still holding out for the perfect kitchen island.

Here's the crew installing the counter tops. Nice guys!

Want to talk bathrooms? Pick one, we have three. Two full bathrooms were existing when we bought the house so we kept them but put in new fixtures (since they didn't have fixtures before) and we added a full bathroom off the master bedroom.

Downstairs vanity waiting to be installed.

downstairs bathroom checkerboard tile floor.

Upstairs vanity waiting to be installed.

Upstairs shower & checkerboard tile floor

Master vanity waiting to be installed. You may recognize a pattern. The plumber has his work cut out for him on Tuesday. :)

Remember Jeremy, our tile guy? You met him a few blogs ago. Well, we think he does great work! Check out our new master bathroom shower!!

And check out the wood floors. This is all the original wood from the house. 1865! Those are some old trees!! Our amazing floor crew cleaned them up beautifully! Don't mind the trail of paper on the floor....just a path so we don't scratch them up as we finish the house!

Living Room. Old Wood.

The office. Old Wood.

Guest bedroom #1. Old Wood.

Guest bedroom #2. Old Wood.

The only areas in the house where we had to lay new wood are the dining room and the staircase & upstairs hallway. Everything else is the original wood from the house.

Dining Room. New Wood.

Upstairs hallway. New Wood.

So, there ya have it. That's a pretty current update. A few things didn't make into this blog, such as the kitchen appliances were delivered last Friday and the garage is completely sided now (just waiting on the garage door to show up!) Only a few things left to do this week and then hopefully we can officially move in this weekend!

Once we're in we will start concentrating on finishing the landscaping, etc: install & paint our front door, put up the shutters & touch up some exterior window paint, install a fence for the dog run on the east side of the house, plant box woods out front, etc, etc, etc. Some how this list just doesn't seem to be getting shorter!!!! The backyard might have to wait until next year!!

Ok, well we will keep you posted. Now stop pestering us and let us get back to work or we're never going to get moved in!!