First Room Renovation in the New House Complete

I can’t even belive that we have been in the new house for 10 months already!! Time has FLOWN by! Although things have been busy since we moved… being big preggers, getting settled, and then having a newborn, our family is getting in the groove of life and LOVING our new place. I have to say that I was not exactly a fan of Mason when we first went on the hunt. I felt like it was too crowded and there always seemed to be crazy traffic on Mason- Montgomery. It was the hubs that was pulling for it. I must say that I literally thank Steve a couple of times of week for talking me into it. I have never been happier in a place. This area, my house and my neighborhood has everything I was looking for.

Every place I need to be (other than downtown which is a bit of a drag) is 10 minutes away. I am in between both highways so I can get to those within less than 10 minutes, my neighborhood is SO kid-friendly and the neighbors are all wonderful, and my house has plenty of room for us to grow. I really do feel like the luckiest girl in the world and when all the kids and neighbors hang in the culdesac on a nice afternoon, I sometimes feel like I need to pinch myself because it all ended up working out just like I had dreamed it up in my head.

With this being said, when we were looking for houses, it was not so sweet. If you are in that stage, I KNOW how much you second guess yourself and how much you are unsure of what you think you want and want you think you must have, which SD will be the best fit for your family etc. I guess my whole point in saying all of this is to say to you that, although there are a ton of great houses out there, you will know when you have found the right one and which place is right for you. There are so many great places to live in Cincinnati and I just kept thinking I would make the wrong choice, but that is the beauty of it…. I think you end up where you belong. What is right for one family maybe be wrong for another so try to enjoy the house hunting process (because I know I didn’t)!!!! Also, if you are in the market, I HIGHLY recommend my realtor, Jessica Bauer (she really is wonderful)!

SO anyway, onto the post- I know, sometimes I get off track here :) Now that we are in the house and the fog is starting to lift from having a NB, the hubs and I realized we need to start making this house our own. We hadn’t painted anything, hung any pics or done anything really to make it our house other than unload all of our boxes and put our “stuff” out when we got here. Now, I know this can take your whole life, but we figured we would just start and do a room at a time.

First room: THE OFFICE. I had always wanted an office, since I am crazy about being organized. I thought if I had an office I would make it the hub of our house. SO, the hubs and I went to Ikea (which I LOVE), we started with some ideas and he drew out a plan for the room. We tweaked things here and there, but it ended up amazing. Although it isn’t completely organized yet (all paper work is behind closed doors!), I at least have it all in one area! I have to say that thanks to Ikea, we were able to get some quality furniture for a great price! If you haven’t been, you really need to check it out. I did some price checking and I feel like we really saved a fortune going that route. And of course, thank you my handy man hubby, because although you drive me CRAZY because you want to do everything yourself, you really are great with the tools and save us a TON of money in the process!

This was our room before, with our tiny little office desk we have had for 7 years maybe... a long time!

Before Office Renovation

The hubs and father-in-law (who I love and thank for helping!!!) working on the room.

As you can see, I have an electrician for a husband so we have lights upon lights in this room... with dimmers! Seriously?!

The unit under the picture is from Ikea and you can get a ton of different inserts for it. We bought the file inserts for this one.

This is the desk. You can buy several different doors for the cabinets. Very customizable. I wanted to desk to be long enough for several kids to be working on homework at the same time and I really wanted to be able to walk in the room and see the computer screen as I walk in so they can't hide anything from me :) lol

I have wanted a bench seat all my life. We used a bench from Ikea (with pull out drawers underneath) and had a cushion made. Now I just need to find pillows!

O.k. so I did organize it a TON, but there still is a lot that I want to do :)