The Lakehouse

We've been busy getting settled in at The Lakehouse, so I thought I'd show you our progress! We've been unpacking my boxes that have been packed up for two years, Brent's stuff either from his townhouse or things he had had in boxes for a while, and then of course all the wonderful wedding presents we were blessed with. We have more to sort, but here's a little tour of what we've done so far.

This is our kitchen, with a wonderful counter where we also have two chairs to sit at. You can see my Kitchenaid mixer in the back, a Cuisinart food processor we bought with gift cards, and other fun wedding presents as well.

Here's the other angle, and the white door you see leads to our one-car garage where I am the blessed one to park there, and we put together our storage shelves and set up one of them at the right height for Brent to have a work-bench. The double door is a closet/pantry.
Our dining room, opposite the kitchen (the long counter separates them). I haven't finished unpacking all my stuff that will go in my hutch, so I'll do some creative rearranging once that happens. My dining room table expands to 104" so when we had Brent's boss' family over for dinner last night (hence the clean-enough house for pictures!!) there was plenty of space. I'm SO thankful for that! Hosting dinner's will be a breeze!
From the dining room, there's a long hallway that has doors to the basement, guest room and bathroom, with our bedroom on the end. On the opposite side of that, is our living room. Here are a few pictures of it. You can see some of our wedding gifts like candle holders, Swedish vases from the Nordic Galleri, and picture frames that are waiting to be filled! The cool wooden chair was Brent's great-grandmother's, and she got it from a neighbor who once hosted Billy the Kid at their home. We like to think he probably sat in the very chair that's in our living room! It got chopped a bit by a shorter person, and now fits my mom perfectly! :)
I wish we were able to paint the walls, but the landlord said 'no' when I asked. It looks especially stark in this picture, and seems a little better in real life.
The bookshelves are from Ikea, and you can maybe guess that I'm going to paint the TV stand eventually, recover the mauve wing back chair sometime, get a different coffee table. I do like the chest we're currently using, just might use it for a different purpose.
The two windows go out to our front yard, which is still pretty private as it sits back far from the road. It would be nice to have the living room off the lake, but it also means that the dining room goes right to the deck, and our bedrooms face the lake instead. The couch is a fun story.... We bought it when I first moved into my apartment, as I had no couch and Brent didn't have one for me to use either. We searched and searched for just the right thing, but couldn't find something that we both "fit" well, and that I liked the looks of. We ended up buying a cheap couch at Goodwill to just tide us over until we found the right thing. We quickly learned that we actually really enjoyed it, just found it to be terribly ugly. After many months, we decided that instead of getting something new, because we really did like the feel of it and it fit us well, we would recover it instead. I was able to find some great fabric at an incredible deal and with the original purchase price, the cost of the fabric, and the cost of recovering it, we have an amazing couch for a fraction of the price we would normally pay for it!
Behind the couch we made a good "hallway" that leads to our hallway, and then our office space. It's maybe hard to tell exactly from this picture, but I've got this little desk for my laptop, as that's really all the space I need. Then Brent's got this bigger desk and printer stand and file cabinet for his area. Sometimes I laugh when I really look at the proportions of the two areas! By the way, in the picture, the door you see in the hallway is our bathroom, then our bedroom is to the left, and the guestroom to the right, followed by the dining room and kitchen.
Another angle of the office space so you can see where we put my Grandmother's secretary (which I just realized I haven't decorated the top of yet) and then that's our front door. The picture is one I had already framed and there's a nail there. I can see all this white-wall space and can hardly wait to get more things on the wall!
Brent's desk and printer stand are also from Ikea.
Our bathroom has a long counter and almost a "second" room for the toilet and tub. Just an opening, though, no actual door.
Our guestroom is ready and waiting for you!
And finally, our bedroom. We just got a different bed this past weekend. We both came to the marriage with a double bed but are now blessed to have a queen. We rearranged a bit, and now I know what and where I want things on the wall. I also need to find my queen-sized dust ruffle that I have in a box somewhere....
So, there you have it! There is still more to unpack and sort, but I'll keep making progress on that, and decide what else can come upstairs and have a home, what will stay in storage until we have a bigger place someday, and what will go into the garage sale pile!

We'd love to have you come visit anytime, and see it all in person!