Home Tour: Day 3

Matthew's room, the spare room and the main bathroom



Before the move, all three boys shared one room. The new house has a total of 6 bedrooms, three up and three in the basement. It is so nice for each of them to have their own room!

Of all the rooms, Matthew's is the smallest, but it is also in a strategic area (more on that later). We bought him a "big boy" bed for his new room. A great craigslist find. I follow a blog of a little girl that has special needs and her mom bought her this exact bed from IKEA, because it had three solid sides, and her little girl then could not roll out of bed with the side rail attached. I had put the idea in the back of my head for when he outgrew his crib. But when I saw it on Craigslist 1 week later with a matching dressor for only $100, I couldn't pass it up! Even though we could've gotten more time out of his crib, we decided to move him up now. The drawers underneith are great for storage, and it also pulls out to make a trundle bed. I think this will be nice for when Matthew may not be feeling well, and I want to be close, but not actually in bed with him.
The built in storage to the right is great for his books, and I have all of his medical supplies stored below in the cabinet. It's so nice to hide it, and make his room look like a typical boys room and not a sterile medical room.

A view from the other end of the room. We are planning on painting his room (tonight in fact!) a real pretty green and then hanging some vinyl wall decals I found on etsy.com of monkeys in a tree. I've found some other really cute monkey themed things for his room, so he will have a cute monkey room. I will post after pictures, hopefully next week. We also plan on hanging brown tab curtains, to match his soft brown comforter.

Oh and on the the strategic placement of the room. If that bookcase were taken out of the room, you could walk right in the master bathroom. We plan on (down the road) expanding our master bathroom a bit and making our shower a roll in shower for Matthew. We will most likely at that point take out the bookcase and make this a door in which to easily get Matthew into the shower. This is in our 5-10 year plan. We don't need this now, but as Matthew gets bigger, we do foresee needing something like this.

This is the spare bedroom. There is not much in here right now. I am planning on this being my sewing room and also a guest bedroom. I will put in a desk and a nice bed for so we can have a nice place for company.
Also the carpet will be replaced. It is a pretty peach color. (Yick) I believe it's original to the home (circa 1980)

Sandwiched between the two bedrooms is the hall bathroom.

Ah, the hall bathroom. What can I say. Who puts carpet in the bathroom???? That carpet's days are numbered. It's heading out soon along with the spare bedroom carpet. Steve will probably lay a nice linoleum in here that looks like tile. We put it in our old home, and really liked it. We will also replace the green toilet, the green sink, the countertop and the funky light fixture (that you can't see. It's pretty interesting. It starts in the wall, has two chains that come out of it, are hooked in the ceiling and then hang down to the mirror. I'm guessing another 1980's dream). We are leaving the green (sage colored) tub for now. I found a shower curtain to complement it, and this room will also get a fresh coat of paint. I'll change the drawer pulls and the towel racks. The kids shower in here, so I'll probably just put in hooks. That works well for the kids towels, they haven't mastered folding them back up anyway :)

Up Tomorrow:

The Master bedroom, the Master bathroom, and the laundry room

Home Tour: Day 2

Kitchen, informal dining room, and 2nd living room

The kitchen will be one of the rooms that will need a solid dose of "makeover" when it's turn comes up.

For some reason, the people who lived here before took out (and put in storage in the basement) a floor to ceiling cabinet that housed a wall oven, and in it's place put a OLD, I mean OLD gas range with microwave in it's place. I believe it was probably the first microwave EVER made. It's attached to the range and it's U.G.L.Y. We will be bringing that floor to ceiling cabinet out of storage, putting in a new wall oven (because no one needs both a cook top and and a range) and also putting a microwave above it. The ancient stove/microwave that is in it's place will be retired. A portion of this beautiful beast can be seen in the left of the above picture.
We also plan on replacing the faux butcher block countertops, the sink and the cooktop. We'll put in a new ceiling and andalso replace the hardware on the cabinets.

Above is a picture of the cabinet (downstairs currently) that we'll bring upstairs and put the new oven and microwave in.

This kitchen has a TON of cabinets which I love. They extend way over into the informal dining and there is also a pantry next to the fridge. The countertop between the dining and living room extends out so you can put bar stools under it for a breakfast bar. Perfect for the kiddos in the morning.

The informal dining room. Small and sweet. The light fixture and curtains will be replaced with this part of the makeover.

And this is the 2nd living room. We are currently hunting for a sectional to put in here. The recliner is just hanging out here, because we haven't found a good home for it yet. It's Matthew's favorite lounging spot too. Nothing planned for this room, other than fresh paint...but that'll be a while. The door in the center left goes back to 2 of the bedrooms (Matthew's and the spare room) and there is also a bathroom, and a very large hall closet back there. The whole house has 6 panel solid oak doors (which I love!) and you can see part of the hall closet from the above picture.
Another view of the 2nd living room. The door to the left of the fireplace is the master bedroom, and the door to the right goes out to a sun room. To the right of the door is the informal dining room.


Up Tomorrow:

Matthew's room, the spare bedroom, and the main bathroom

Home tour: Day 1

What a busy 2 weeks we've had. I had all intentions of getting the picture tour going earlier; but alas, here we are two weeks later.

We love our new house!! It has a ton of room compared to our old home. Our old home was a multi-level (some call it tri-level) with about 1200 sq. ft. upstairs and 500 in the basement. Our new home is a ranch with 1750 sq. ft upstairs and the same in the basement. We've doubled our living space and OH is it nice! I tell people that the new house just needs a "makeover". The space is wonderful, but some parts of the house are still stuck in the early '80's. But for the money we spent and the space we got, we couldn't beat it. The "makeover" can come as we live here.

I intend on posting different parts of the house each day this week along with telling you our plans for each room.

Hope you enjoy!

Here is the front of the house. The garage is on the side of the house. There are a lot of established trees in the yard, and the grass looks pretty good. We plan on eventually getting some mulch under the pine trees (no grass grows there) and sprucing up the landscaping. I have some fun ideas. I'm guessing the mulch will happen in the late summer/early fall and my other landscaping endeavors will have to wait till next spring.

This is the front entry. Nothing special, but also not much we plan to do with it. Probably remove the curtains on the door and eventually put a prettier door in, but that is very low on my list of things to do. The spindles to the left are, however, higher on the list of things to do. I will be removing them when I redo the formal dining,which is just to the left of the picture. I am NOT a fan of spindles. I'm not sure if we'll completely open that room up or just leave the half wall. I'm guessing just leave it as a half wall.

Here is the formal dining room. As you can see, no table yet. We are working on it. This home has an informal and a formal dining room, so we put our only table in the informal dining room and are looking for just the right table to go in this room. Until then, it makes a great place to house Matthew's stander and indoor base for his wheelchair.
The only section of wallpaper in this house in on that one wall in the dining room. When I redo this room, it will be gone. Some new curtains in this room and the new table will suit this room well.

This is the built in hutch in the formal dining room. I love it, although I don't have any fancy dishes to put in it, maybe someday :)
The door opening behind the formal dining room goes into the kitchen if you go straight, to the garage and laundry room if you go right or down the stairs to the basement if you turn an immediate left.

If you take yourself back to the entry way and look right, you will find yourself in one of the two living rooms that are upstairs. This is the room we have our only couches in right now and the one we will watch TV in. I haven't fallen in love with the diamond wooden shapes in the windows, but I haven't had time to remove them.
Other than a coat of paint and some different window coverings, there is nothing we will do to this room for a long time.

Another angle of this living room. Note the popcorn ceiling and a tray ceiling at that. Not a big fan of popcorn ceilings, but the people in the '80's loved them.

This is taken from standing at the bay window. The door leaning up against the wall (on the right) belongs to the door to the basement (haven't gotten that rehung yet) To the right in this picture is the entryway, to the left is 2 of the bedrooms and bathroom and right behind the wall that has the armoire is the other living room. We have visions of one day removing that wall and making the two living areas into one and laying wood floors throughout. This would make for a nice open floor plan and also for easier access for Matthew, but for right now, we are very happy with the layout. All of the main doorways are nice and wide and easily fit his chair through.



Tomorrow:

The kitchen, informal dining room and 2nd living area.

Goodbye....

We have decided to take the summer off of all additional therapies except for our EI therapy. We stopped OT and speech right before Matthew's surgery. We got to see our PT, Kilee, one more time this week. And she is taking a new position at her job next week and so we won't be able to see her in the fall.

Matthew LOVES Kilee. I have never seen Matthew work as hard as he does for Kilee. She definitely has a way with him. She has the sweetest voice and is slow and gentle in her movements with him. Because of Matthew's lack of good vision, abrupt movements or loud voices really scare him. And with all of his negative experiences with illness, any time he is taken out of the home, or hears a new voice he immediately checks out. He closes his eyes and "plays opossum." Kilee could easily pull him out of his shell.

Well, yesterday we had to say goodbye to Kilee. We were both sad. And that boy has his momma in him, because he wanted NOTHING to do with it. When change that I don't particularly like comes to me, I dig my heels in, protest and do my best to avoid the change. Matthew followed in suit today. He insisted on sleeping through therapy, throwing a FIT when we tried to do anything with him; almost as if he slept through it, maybe it wouldn't really happen. At the end of the session, I gave him to Kilee for a hug and he nestled in right on her shoulder. I think he would've stayed there forever too, if we would have let him.

We'll miss Kilee, alot. We're hoping to keep in contact with her though, and maybe even hit her up for a coffee shop date.

Good luck with your new job Kilee!

One week from today...

This will be our new home!!

We have a lot of work to do as it needs ALOT of updating, but we will have SO much more room and Matthew's wheelchair moves very nicely throughout it. SO much better than our current multi-level home.

Back in the saddle Stander again

This week Matthew has been feeling well enought that we were able to put him back in his stander. Yesterday, he was not quite as happy about it and only lasted 10-15 minutes, but tonight was much better and we got lots of smiles!

He loves this little switch toy and was playing with it so nicely tonight

I've been on the hunt lately for cute shoes that will go over Matthew's AFO's. Let me tell you, there are not many choices for special shoes that go over AFO's and they are down right UGLY; and you have to buy "normal" shoes 2 sizes big to get them over AFO's and they look big and clumpy, and the ones we've found we still have to fight to get them on and tied. So I had a date with Google, and searched "cute shoes for AFO's" and found one message board out there in cyber land that a poster mentioned "Etnies" worked for her child. Now I'd never heard of them before, so I googled them and they are basically what I call "skater shoes". But they are also cute, darn cute. They make little infant sizes too. So I ordered a pair, one size bigger than his normal shoe. They came this week, and let me tell you they are a BREEZE to put on. They literally slip on. And they are "normal" shoes. NOT special shoes. I'm hooked. They weren't even expensive. This pair below was on sale on their website and I paid 20 bucks for them. I will be buying these from now on. No more ugly shoes. No more Sketchers (that is what the AFO rep gives us) that I have to fight to put on. Just cuteness!

Oh and P.S. if you decide to buy a pair...use the code "Saveetnies" and you'll get an extra 15% off :)---I'm not recieving anything from this...just wanted you all to know about a great deal!