Before  &  After

Before

This is the before picture of our house. Neither Adam nor I saw the house in person before arriving in Wisconsin and basically purchased the home sight unseen--we did have relatives check it out and tour it for us but relied completely on their opinions! While I certainly admit it isn't the smartest way to go, it did make for quite an exciting trip up--wondering about what it looked like, etc...I am happy to report we both were pleasantly surprised upon pulling into the driveway for the first time! 

The picture isn't the greatest quality, and you may not be able to tell, but the exterior boasted 4 different colors! Taupe aluminum siding, tan colored brick, white for the shutters and trim and the dark color you see was actually purple! My incessant nagging soon drove Adam to relent and he agreed to hire my brother to paint the entire exterior of the home.  Our "new" house is below.

After

Again, not the greatest quality, but the house is now shades of gray and a very dark blue. It looks MUCH better, is more uniform and many of our friendly neighbors have come by to say how much they like what we've done and that they were hoping the new people would change those colors! The homeowners before us did not do too much landscaping previously, so that is our next thing to tackle. All in good time...

The next three pictures to follow are various views from the backyard.

Picture #1    I am standing in the left back corner of our yard. Samson is getting ready to pee on the bush and Brutus is in the distance.

Picture #2    I am standing in the center of the backyard. There are 2 doors leading to the outside. One from the mud room/porch (right side of pic where Brutus is standing) and the other from the lower level (family room) that is accessed from some stairs.

Picture #3    This is taken from the left side of the yard looking towards the detached garage. We had a chain link fence installed (that's a story in itself) and you can see they had to drill through our concrete patio in order to make the yard totally enclosed which was a must to keep our babies safe (kids and dogs).

The next picture is the view from our front yard if you were to look to your left (east). Our street has gorgeous mature trees and I cannot wait to see how beautiful the neighborhood looks in the fall!

Come on inside!

The most impressive room is first--just kidding! We refer to this room as the "dog's room." It is the mud room/porch you saw in the previous pictures with access to the backyard and garage. We usually always enter the home from this room because it is so close to the garage instead of walking all the way around to the front of the house to use the front door. This room holds the leash and key holders and Samson & Brutus's crates. There is also a closet for coats and boots and then glass patio doors to get into the dining room. The room has windows on two of the walls that look out into the backyard. 

Upon leaving the "dog room" you see the dining room. You can't tell from the picture, but we painted the walls a dark eggplant type color for Boxer dog reasons. Dark walls=you can't see their slobber as easily! The room is carpeted currently. That will change ASAP and we need to install a new lighting fixture too.

The next room you'd see is the living room. Those of you visiting this page who also have Boxers, know that Brutus is just doing his duty and following me from room to room as I'm taking pictures--it's his way of "helping," so he'll appear in many of the pictures. The window on the left looks out into the front yard. This room is the same dark color and the carpeting will be coming out as soon as we can manage it. We rarely use this room at all, but it's my favorite because it houses most of my Boxer stuff!

This is Max & Mike's room. They like sharing a room and are doing a great job of helping mom keep it clean.  All the bedrooms are located on the third level. As you can see we have a sports theme going on--the walls are painted a kelly green color with one wall of pin stripe wallpaper which was already in place when we moved in. It matches fine so we left it.  I like the nice hardwood floors in all the bedrooms as it's less to vacuum, but we'll see how we like a cold hard floor come winter!!

Here you see the playroom section of the family room (lower level). Our home is a tri-level  (technically there is no basement). Half of the family room is for the kids. It has their train set and most of their books and toys. 

This area has a futon couch and the television and stereo and the kids have a little table to the right that didn't fit in the picture.

Brutus claimed the futon for his own very quickly.

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