October 18th? Seriously?! THAT was the last time I posted? Oops. Oh well. The kids are alive and well and I’m told that is all that matters. We’ve been moving right along at a snail’s pace on the kitchen (more on that at some point), but for now, let me show you the boys’ bathroom.

The before:

The “now”:

Short and sweet. At least I posted, right?

Bathroom before and after

When we moved into the house, there wasn’t a designated dining room. There was room in the kitchen for a small table, but with 6 in our family, we needed a bit more room. We could have put the table in the addition, but what would go in the rest of the room? Even when we put the wall up to create our master, there would have been a large space of roughly 250 square feet.

So, we put up another wall dividing what will become the en suite office (where the window bench and windows are) and our new dining room. There is still plenty of light because of where the large glass slider to the patio is located, right in the dining room!

Our bedroom is literally right off the dining room which at first I thought I would hate, but it really seems very natural now that we are living it. It is set up like the grownups have one section of the house and the boys have the other. Eventually, I plan to do some board and batten which is why the room is painted white on the bottom. This is your first glimpse of the wood floors! We have these throughout most of the house and I LOVE them. In our last place the floors were darker and they showed every.single.crumb. just like my sister-in-law told me they would, but I ignored her and did it anyway. These lighter floors are so much better for neat-freak-moms-of-boys like me. They also have a rustic beat up look so I’m not stressing about the boys playing with their cars and scratching them.

We have had the hutch since we were expecting Carter. In fact, we purchased it to use as his changing table and it worked great! It has since made its way throughout our home(s). The dining table has made two moves as well and the chairs came from our last house (an AWESOME craigslist find scoring Ballard Design dining chairs for 1/6 of the normal price). So, aside from the walls themselves, only the light fixture is new here.

Ignore that the transition piece is missing between the two rooms. If I waited to show you pictures until everything was perfect, you would never seen anything on this blog.

Before and After: Dining room

There is so much left to do in every room of the house, but I just couldn’t wait any longer to start showing off some of the progress. Before I begin, you have to promise to ignore the quality of the photos, the fact that I didn’t even pull the sheets nice and tight when I made the bed (heck, at least I made the bed before taking the picture) and the moving boxes and unhung mirror. Ok. I trust you..

Let’s start with the new master bedroom. Here is where we began:

Where it steps down is right where we build a wall to divide this large space. We also raised the floor up to the same level throughout. Where the windows with window seat are is now an ensuite office in our master.

We added new carpet, new paint and all new trim work

So, here is the new master bedroom (bathroom will be added to the unused room on the other side of the dark wall at a later date).

The only new furnishings in the room are the leather chairs from Craigslist and the makeshift curtain rod that I made from a wood rod and plumbing fixtures and spray painted gold. Everything else came with us in the move.

Sources:

Paint color: Sherwin Williams Peppercorn

Leather Chairs – craigslist

Cowhide pillow- World Market

Sheets – Target

Dresser – IKEA hack

Bed – Wayfair

Picture frames – Goodwill

Curtains – Target

Before & After: Master

We’ll take a break from the why and get into the what. WHAT is the house like? Luckily my mother-in-law stepped in to be our designated “before shot photographer”. Thanks, Joan! He it is, or WAS when we got the keys.

The view from the front door to the left:

From the kitchen nook to the front door:

Below: The… used-to-have-a-pool-table-and-TV-hangout-area space. Let’s call this “the addition” since it was added after the home was built (that opening to the kitchen used to be a slider to the backyard and the light was on the exterior of the house). This will later become three different rooms.

The kitchen:

The main bathroom:

Nap time is over.. to be continued…

Intermission

So, I was nuts. I mean, moving would be nuts. All agreed on that, but something in me kept thinking about a smaller house on acreage. The acreage would be different that what we had. There would be plenty of it for the kids to explore, but only a very small amount of it would be landscaped and needing maintenance. The house would be a fixer ’cause, aside from that being what we do, I added to the daydream the idea of not only downsizing our house, but downsizing our overall monthly expenses.  How much cheaper could we heat a house that was smaller?!  I could hear Dave Ramsey in my head telling me we should aim to pay off our mortgage!  This is one of the reasons my accountant husband married me. I LOVE to save money.

So I dreamed, but kept it to myself since, you know we had already established it was nuts and we would not be moving.

Then, Chris’ dad got sick.  We didn’t think it was anything serious, until it was.  I’m going to leave out all of the details about his dad at this point since it is not my story to tell, but suffice to say, it got really scary and stayed so for quite some time.

During this time, Chris was gone a lot going back and forth between home and the hospital and work. So when I was alone and unable to sleep, I continued scratching the itch and looking online at real estate knowing that I shouldn’t. Have you ever heard that when God talks to you he first whispers? He then gets a little louder and then he smacks you across the face? OK, maybe he won’t SMACK you, but you know, you ignore his signs and then he puts one there that you can’t ignore.

In my case, he gave me the stress of keeping up the house. Chris’ dad got very sick. Then, one of his dad’s employees who had worked at the company for 30 years gave notice that she was moving because of her husband’s job. This was the employee who did a lot of the back office book work. Are you seeing God’s work? Oh, you need more. OK. Chris comes home one night and says, ” you know, my parents still have that house I was born in.. It’s small, but it is on ten acres..”

to be continued…

Our big move to a small house Part III

Where were we? Oh, yes. We left our dream house. To understand how we got here from there, I probably need to explain where we were. Like, mental/emotion state location.

Chris had left his crazy corporate life to be able to slow down and spend more time with us and, it worked. Sort of. He was more available. He drove the kids to school in the morning, coached Carter’s T-ball team, was home for dinner majority of the nights, but he was still busy. We were still busy. He started juggling two jobs which promised to be flexible and to a great extent they were, but when he wasn’t working, he was working – on the yard. Our dream home came with five acres that seemed almost park-like to me. The front acre that we lived on was completely overgrown when we moved in, but over the course of our time there, Chris turned it into a beautiful retreat. It was a place meant for entertaining! Gorgeous patio with pergola for barbecues, huge yard of the kids to play in, it was perfect. But.. (you were expecting that, right?) it was a lot of work to keep it that perfect so, the yard perfect for entertaining saw no entertainment.

Our guests all promised that we were lucky to have four boys who would help with the yard SOMEDAY, but let me tell you, SOMEDAY is a heck of a long way away. Now, if the yard was the only thing that took time, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Turns out that four kids take a lot of time, as does keeping a house clean with four boys.  My mother swore that our house was great just the way it was, and really it was, but I saw the imperfections everywhere. There was nothing that would bother me in someone else’s home, but being a stay-at-home-mom who loves a good DIY, I saw projects EVERYWHERE. Again, not a problem except that with four kids, I couldn’t get the projects done. Oh, and I’m Type A so, when a project is incomplete, it drives me nuts. Messy houses also drive me nuts (well, only mine).

I became a cranky mom. I was a stressed out wife. I was not enjoying our dream home. I was not even enjoying my kids. I was spoiled rotten. To give myself a little credit, I did realize this and when I sat down to figure out why I was so unnecessarily grumpy, I realized that the house put a lot of extra stress on me. I started to blame it for being too big to keep clean. I blamed it for keeping my husband busy with the yard. I blamed it for our lack of time to take the boys to fun events going on in town. So, I started looking at smaller homes online when the kids would go to bed. Chris said I was nuts. There was no way we were moving again, and I agreed. Moving would be nuts.

To be continued…

Our big move to a small house Part II

Oh, hi there. Are you still here? C’mon. I’m not falling for the “I’m such a loyal follower I happened to stop by to see if after a year you had written anything”. We both know that the only reason you stopped by was because my Facebook told you to or some other automated blog reminder service. No worries. I totally understand why you stopped coming by. I mean, it has been over a year. Heck, I don’t think I even documented Keaton’s 1st birthday and he just turned 3. Ugh. The mom guilt!

Let’s just move past all that and pretend that I didn’t step away from blogging for so long. mmk?

Great. Then, let’s jump right in.

When we last left off, I lived in a fairytale home much like that from “The Father of the Bride.” Every time I entered the drive I couldn’t believe I lived there.

I mean.. This was THE house that I dreamed about living in when I grew up. It was beautiful and sat on 5 acres. It was also a lot of work. For two and a half years, Chris and I put so much time, effort and love into this house. So. much. At some point, I’ll have to give you a house tour of all the before and afters we were able to accomplish. Then, one day we moved….to this house in a small town outside of Salem, Oregon:

Calm down! Calm down! Not everyone at once. You’re questions will all be answered. Let’s start with, are we crazy? No, we don’t think so, but that is up for debate.  Any regrets? Not yet! Stay turned for interior photos and LOTS of before/after shots.

Our big move to a small house Part I

Halloween and spirit week behind us, it’s time for Harvest Day. Thank goodness there is only one that needs constant costume changes this year.

Harvest day

Twin day at school. Nailed it. Might be the only time so I had to share..

Spirit week

Chris and I have been married 7 years this March. We’ve been together the better part of 12 years. There have been so many changes in our lives with very few constants. One constant has been our family, not only our immediate family, but our extended work family (although, some of those people ARE actually immediate family).

Chris has been with Audigy Group for 9 years. We, along with many others, have grown from dating to married with multiple kids. I still remember when they moved to their current building and a then crawling Carter and I met Chris at the office for lunch on a Saturday. He took a break and let Carter crawl all over the 3rd floor as he shared Brandon’s vision for occupying the entire building at some point. Ha! They more than occupy it now.

Anyone who knows Chris knows that he is a give-it-110% type of guy. For the past 9 years he has done just that at work and at home, but for quite some time now he has struggled with feeling that he is falling short. His emails pile up when he spends time with the boys and he is lucky to make it home for dinner with us once each week. In then end, something had to give so, after 9 years, Chris is leaving Audigy Group’s daily operations.

This was a very hard decision for Chris. He loves the company, but even more, he loves the people. We consider so many of them family. The relationships built at this company are unparalleled and that is part of what makes Audigy Group so special.   One of the other special aspects of the company is their commitment to individuals’ personal goals so, it was not a surprise that Brandon and Mason were in full support of Chris’ need to make a change.

We are very fortunate that Brandon was able to secure an incredible replacement. Someone that Chris thinks very highly of who immediately lifted the weight of the unknown from his shoulders. He wants Audigy to be even more sucessful in his absence. I can’t imagine what it would be like to leave a position after 9 years of hard work and entrust it to someone else to build upon it. Chris is confident in the transition plan that has been put in place and can now look forward to this new step in our lives.

We are so blessed to have been a part of such an incredible group of people and companies, and we look forward to watching their future success.

A new chapter