myMCMlife.com

While the exterior architecture is spot on mid-century modern, the inside of our house doesn’t have a lot of exciting mcm details. We do have a few, some which are staying and some that will go…

Doorbell:

Living room lights:

Stair rail:

Shower light:

Kitchen cabinet handles:

Boys’ bathroom light and mirror:

Dining room buffet handles:

Girls’ bathroom lights and wallpaper:

Here’s a tour of our house in the state it was the day we bought it, with a few more recent pictures, too.

The formal living room we’re going to use as a dining room. It will get a new chandelier (Ali is begging for this one to go in her room) and new hardwood flooring. The buffet in the background in the original dining room will be updated to match the kitchen.

We’re going to completely reconfigure and remodel the kitchen.

We’re calling this room the living room. It’ll get fresh white walls, new hardwood flooring and new lighting. We’re hoping to vault the ceilings in the living room, kitchen and dining room.

The room below with the red carpet we’re calling the den. It’s a converted garage and it’s huge. We’re going to make it a tad smaller by adding a walk-in storage closet and converting the current walk-in storage closet (behind that solid door) into Jason’s office/studio.

The storage room is approx 6′ x 13′ now with two windows.

The half bath will be remodeled. Actually, the remodel is currently underway. All the original fixtures are out and it’s ready to be tiled as soon as Jason has time.

There’s a huge pantry and laundry room. These shelves will be replaced with more practical pantry shelving and we’ll redo the floors in tile. Across from the washer and dryer we’ll have a second refrigerator/freezer. (Hello food storage for a family of 6!)

The next two bedrooms will be combined into one larger master bedroom.

This full bathroom will be incorporated into the master suite and totally remodeled.

This room will be for the boys, Isaiah and Noah. It will get new hardwood floors and blue paint on the walls. It has it’s own full bathroom. It was probably the original master bedroom.

The upstairs has two bedrooms with a bathroom in between. This one will be a guest room for now.

The bedroom across the hall is the girls’ room for Ali and JoJo. It’s huge! Both of these bedrooms have two huge walk-in closets.

So you can see how big it is… Ali, Zay and JoJo are currently sharing this room until we finish the downstairs.

The bathroom in between is pretty fabulous. It’ll be the girls’ bathroom. Right now we’re all sharing it.

So that’s it! Just a couple weeks until we can start the major renovations!

This won’t make sense to many people but I want to document it as part of our moving process. During a particularly stressful day when we thought the bottom might drop out of our plans, God gave me the verse Mark 2:22. At the time it puzzled me a little bit but it’s come to mean so much to me.

^“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

I found this song shortly after and it’s become the soundtrack to this transition for us:

On May 30, our family of six began our adventure in our new house. Well, old house, technically. It’s 49 years old. And we’re going to live in it while we renovate it (minus some demo days we’ll need to evacuate for). It might get pretty interesting so I thought it was a good time to reopen my blog. I started this blog back in 2007 when we lived in a 1952 brick ranch that we modernized with lots of DIY projects and documented them here. Now that we’re starting over with another renovation—this time a 1969 A-frame ranch—my MCM life is back. Follow along if you’re curious to see what we’re up to.

This is us: Jason, Martina, Alianna (6), Isaiah (3) Josephine (1) and Noah (3 months).

This is our house:

We plan to move some walls around, redo the kitchen, update the flooring, convert the den (converted garage) into two rooms (den and office/studio) each with big storage closets, turn two bedrooms and a full bathroom into one master suite, remodel all four bathrooms, and revamp the landscape design. Phew! Let’s get started…

Follow along on Instagram, too, @mymcmlife. I update just daily there.

Nearly six years ago, on June 14, 2012 we broke ground on this property to start the construction of our dream home. I remember the date specifically because it was also our 9th wedding anniversary. In December 2012 we moved in with 1.5 year old Ali. It was a beautiful home thoughtfully designed by architect Ryan Thewes who took all our requests and considerations to heart. It was a blank slate, especially the outside, but we made it into a home. Jason spent countless thousands of hours and dollars on the landscape design. We cared for four foster babies here and then brought three babies home from the hospital here. We moved in as a family of three and two weeks ago we moved out as a family of six. It’s bittersweet. We love this house and put so much blood, sweat and tears into making it what it is now.

Jason is a Realtor and a few months ago he came across a listing for a house that caught his eye. He sent me the link and a few hours later I met him there to check it out. It’s not the first time we’ve done that… we both love looking at real estate and dreaming big dreams. Typically after these visits, we go back home and look around and say “nah…” But this time was different. The house offered a lot more space than our current home, both inside and out. The mid-century architecture outside was the biggest draw, followed closely by the community. If we could just make the numbers work…

We talked about it for a week or two before we made any decisions. We knew it was going to be hard to leave this house. We ultimately decided to take a leap of faith and see if we could make it happen. Jason wrote up an offer with a contingency that we had to sell our current home first, even though it wasn’t on the market yet. After some back and forth, he negotiated us a great deal and the seller kindly agreed to work with us while we got our house listed for sale. Thanks to Jason’s real estate expertise, we had our house show-ready and beautifully photographed in just a few days. It hit the market and exploded with interest. We had three solid offers before he even planted a FOR SALE sign in the front yard. As hard as it is to say goodbye to this house, I’m excited for the new owners who have expressed how much they love the house and appreciate all the thought and work that went into the design.

And now the new adventure begins…