Watching The Wolfpack: Little by Little

It has been exactly a year since we moved into our house in Greenville, SC so I thought it would be nice to share some before and after photos of the changes we've made in the last year. We just do things little by little and it seems like something is always a work in progress, but we've really gotten a lot done when you look at it like this!

This was our house when we first moved in. We took out three huge gum trees in the front, pressure washed, repaired the window trim and painted it, added carriage detailing to the garage, expanded the beds on the lot line, and got the landscaping started in the front yard. It got too hot to finish completely so come September we will be adding a few more plants. The new plants are little but hopefully by next summer most of them will be a decent size and not look so puny.

August 2012


March 2013

July 2013

The kitchen has seen the most drastic improvement so far. It started out with emerald green walls, white counter tops, chrome door knobs, yellow brass hardware on all the doors, really bad yellow brass light fixtures, and a mismatch of hardwood/cheap laminate. Now the entire downstairs is Benjamin Moore Gray Cashmere, we painted all the door hardware and electrical sockets with Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze, put in granite counter tops, took out the mini blinds and put in wood blinds, and updated the lighting.

Breakfast nook before

Breakfast nook after

Whew, all that white.

The den attaches to the kitchen, which we love. Since we have no houses behind us, we took down all the blinds on the back of the house so we can enjoy the trees. My philosophy is that if someone is back there looking in at me in my underwear we have bigger problems than "what if someone sees in".

Our painter always tries to get us to paint the shelves black. So far we are not on board with that suggestion.

Clearly rubber gloves were the best choice for the job.


Hello light!

We haven't really done much to the dining room other than paint. The material for curtains has been sitting on the buffet for ohhhhhh, probably 11 months. Maybe one of these days. The chandelier kills me. I try not to notice it. We haven't actually ever used the dining room (who does???) so it is pretty low on the totem pole. Not as low as the formal living room, which is still empty a year later and I'm not even putting on the blog this time around.

The other major renovation downstairs was the guest bathroom. It had some lovely ruby red wall paper with a very bold floral border and an ivory pedestal sink. Honestly it wasn't thaaaat bad but it definitely wasn't our style. Learned a valuable lesson on this one- a neutral wallpaper with a big pattern is really hard to put up when you've never wall papered before. It turned out alright but Matt has officially announced that if we ever want to wall paper again someone else is doing it or I'll have to get a new husband to help.