Project house redecoration on a two-month timeline

We were really, really lucky to buy a house in late July that’s in great condition. The only problems we’ve had are pretty minor, considering: a ridiculously unreliable and expensive to service dishwasher (it’s a Miele, and if you’re considering buying one, please talk to me about our experiences first), some track lighting designed to highlight art on the walls that we don’t have but the previous owners did, and lots of holes in the walls from the aforementioned art.

Oh, and the house was empty. After we moved everything in from our oh-so-cramped large 1BR apartment into this 3BR house, there were huge unfilled spaces. It’s something like 1800 square feet (I think…), but it feels even more spacious. To give a rough idea, the enormous master bedroom seems like it’s nearly the same size as my single-girl apartment.

But after we moved in our stuff and scoured the local antiques shops and fairs for more furniture to fill the big gaping holes, the house still didn’t feel quite like us. It still felt very much like the very nice older couple who had been living here. I made lists of projects to get to that I never got to. So much so, that at our housewarming party, a tall friend of Dave’s tied a cloth napkin to a hanging lamp that should be above our kitchen table so that he — and others — wouldn’t bump their heads on it. That was in November. We’d been living here for 4 months. Compare that to my friends Val and Jim who were in their house for about 4 days before their housewarming, and every wall was painted, every piece of art was hung, furniture was thoughtfully laid out, etc.

So, now that the baby is coming in early April and I am working part-time, it’s time to knock out some quick house upgrades before our dreams of fixing up our dream house are dashed by the realities of first-time parenthood. Here are the top-priority projects on the list:

Kitchen

• Paint our new kitchen chairs red
• Paint the walls
• Make curtains for the windows
• Center the hanging lamp above the table (and maybe replace it with one that’s more us)

Nursery

• Paint the walls
• Make crib sheets, changing pad cover, and curtains
• Replace light fixture

Bedroom

• Paint the walls
• Get a bedframe and new bed
• Figure out what to do with all the extra space

And here are the extra credit projects, which we may or may not get to in time for the baby to come:

My closet

• Wallpaper the backs of the shelves
• Paint the trim
• Make a seat cushion for bench
• Buy a runner for the floor

Living room

• Paint the walls
• Buy a new couch
• Figure out a way to add some color

Art

• Find lots of things to hang on the walls in our home. The couple who owned the house before us had a lot of really tasteful art. We have movie and concert posters. Time to upgrade.

I’ll post updates as we go. In the meantime, here are some photos of our house from before we bought it to give you the before shots before the before shots (plus, it’s kind of fun to see what someone else would do with your house — I’m so glad I kept these photos). See if you can guess which ones the realtor took and which ones I took…

The kitchen was more like a den before, with a seating area and then a smaller dining table.

As you can see, there’s a lot of space to fill in the eat-in part of the kitchen, and the cooking part is pretty spacious too.

The master bedroom and kitchen were an addition, and are HUGE. This is how the previous owner had it laid out.

Another view of the master bedroom.

This view shows how there were something like 4 different places to sit (besides the bed) in the bedroom the way the former owner had it laid out. Pretty, but it seemed a bit excessive to us.

Before we bought the house, the nursery was an office/guest room.