House Tour 2020

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone has been at home and staying safe during this pandemic. It truly is a crazy time to be alive. No one could have predicted that we would experience this level of pandemic in our time, but it's here and it's happening. All we can do is listen, follow the rules, and enjoy the quality time with our fellow prisoners. Blake and I have been trying to keep busy, but it has definitely started to take a toll on us. We are essential workers that are still required to work throughout the week and the only thing that keeps me sane during the weekends are cleaning the house. Thus, brings me to this blog post. Since my house ... at least the main floor of my house, is the cleanest that it has ever been, I decided to finally give everyone a tour! So ... welcome to my crib!

We begin this tour as we enter through the front door, into the main foyer.

Blake just put in new flooring so it now flows seamlessly with the floors in our main living space that Blake installed when we first moved in. This might be hard to believe, but the floors were black and white and the walls were dark green. Our house is still a work in progress, you will notice if you look very carefully that we don't have trimming and the hallway still needs a final coat of paint, but it's getting there. The hallway looks so much better now! As you walk in, to your right is our front hall closet (we don't have doors on it ... told you ... work in progress) and to the left is the entry into the living room/dining room.

Here we are in the living room. We have a large window that brings in a ton of natural lighting and a beautiful brick fireplace that, unfortunately, doesn't work since the previous owner had the chimney removed when she got the roof redone. We plan on replacing the fireplace with a gas or electric one later this year, but we love the brick look. Above the fireplace is the largest mirror I had ever seen prior to buying this house. I initially hated it, but have grown to love it when I'm home alone with the front curtains closed and I can practice being a popstar. Yes, I still do that at 26 years old.

We have 3 couches in this room, the two smaller ones you see in the picture and then the full couch, that I am currently sitting on while writing this, that faces the window and sits on the other side of the glass coffee table you see. Behind the couch is the dining room.

The window on the far right of the picture faces out to our backyard and has a patio door to our deck. This table gets tons of use, from eating family dinners together to ... previously... having game nights with friends. It's one of my favourite areas in the house because it's where people come together the most.

Off to the right is the entry into the kitchen.

To say our kitchen is small and poorly laid out would be an understatement. You are currently looking at the only workable counter space and the minimal shelving that we have. It was definitely a change to not have any upper cabinets to work with, but we are managing. Remember when I said that the hallway was green? ... Yes, you don't have to adjust the picture quality on your computer or phone or whatever you're reading this on. Those cupboards are yellow. And the floor, although you can't see it, just imagine the most stereotypical Sims World kitchen/bathroom flooring you could put in (black and white checkerboard) ... that's what we have. Let's be honest, you're looking at all of the storage in our kitchen, besides our fridge, because behind me in this picture is a utility shelf that Blake and I put together so that we'd have some sort of storage space in the kitchen. That utility shelf, my friends, has been a game-changer.

Okay! Where to next? Let's head down the main hallway of our petite little bungalow. The first stop is the spare bedroom.

All of our bedrooms are on the smaller scale. Side note: when we first moved in, this bedroom was painted a muted white, however the ceiling was pink...PINK! Anyways, Blake and I recently got this new bedroom set and it is top notch for storage space. It comes with under-bed drawers, hidden shelves on the headboard, and side tables that pop-out when you have guests! Honestly, this is one of my favourite rooms because it's the only room that barely gets used, so it stays clean! As well, I love the pictures above the bed. I've collected those three pictures over the years and I just love them so much! Also, don't hate on my stuffed animals on the bed, we recently did a complete closest clean out and they spent almost a full year in the closest ... they needed fresh air!

Continuing down the hall, we get to the bathroom.

You might be surprised to know, the one and only bathroom in the house usually looks this clean. I have meticulously organized this bathroom so that it is functional and easy to maintain cleanliness. I highly recommend lots of baskets and labels if you're trying to better organize your bathroom. I have also done this to our hallway linen closet; it helps to make things 100% easier when putting items away.

Also, you got to love the blue floors ... this was, and still remains, quite the psychedelic house. I do love the retro "robin egg blue" of the cabinet though, very 50's.

On the same side of the hallway as the bathroom, but at the end of the hall is the second bedroom that is currently being used as Blake's computer room/"office".

It is lime green and no, we didn't paint that big white wall with the green border, for whatever reason the house came this way. Also, the previous owner got most of the windows replaced prior to moving, however she was obviously too cheap to buy a window that actually fit because part of the original (non-insulated) window remains - hence the tin foil insulator at the top. There isn't much in this room, it's mostly empty except for what you see and then a bit of random storage on the other side of the room which I will show you now.

We are currently struggling with this room because it was previously a second laundry room for the previous owner. She took the stacked washer/dryer, but left the pipes - which we have come to the realization are hooked up to our sewage, so this room has developed a pungent odor recently. We have to deal with it soon because I can barely go in there when the stench is at it's peak.

Onward and across the hall is the master bedroom!

This picture is from July 2019. I'm not sure why I didn't take a newer picture of our bedroom, but, honestly, it probably wasn't clean at the time of the photoshoot. We have since changed our striped curtains to match the ones behind the dressers and we have swapped our bed comforter since, as you previously saw, it is now in our spare bedroom. Also, from this picture you get an inside look at one of Blake's bad habits, which is leaving his drawers open. My favourite part of this room is the vanity in the back corner. I bought it at a local market from a seller that replenishes vintage furniture. I had been looking for a while and the moment I laid my eyes on it I knew that I was taking it home. Even better was that it came with the stool! My mom and I had a heck of a time getting it home since the mirror swings and it was just us, but we managed and now it sits beautifully in our bedroom. I love it!

Here's a picture of Blake, so you can see that this is definitely an old picture since he's wearing shorts. I'm posting this picture because you can also see what our hallway floors looked like before we replaced them. The parquet floors you see were what was underneath the sticky black and white flooring that my mom and I spontaneously peeled up while Blake was out one afternoon.

The final room I'm putting in this post is our main basement room. Our basement is very large. We have a TON of storage space, our laundry room is hot pink AND has floral wallpaper in it ... I actually like the way it looks ... plus we have two more rooms down there. So much potential down there, however it would require so much work that it is not even on our brain registry right now. Anyways, here's the main room!

Our furniture really starts at the far end this room. This room is very long, so we attempted to make a cozy little corner here with our La-Z-Boy and our pull-out couch. This is also where all of our (retro) gaming systems are. Our most recent gaming system is an original Wii, followed by a Playstation 2 and an O.G. Playstation. This is also the only television in the house and, yes, it's as small as it looks and has a scratch through the middle.

Well, I hope you liked the tour! I'll leave you with this adorable picture of my photography assistant that insisted on following me around the house during this photo session.

What have you been doing to keep busy during this time of isolation? Is there anything you want to see or hear about with regards to our time in isolation? Maybe I'll do an isolation shopping haul reveal or maybe a full demonstration of how I'm Blake's new preferred hair dresser. Who knows what sort of crazy stuff we'll do as we start to go stir-crazy in our cages! Happy Isolating Everyone!