apartment tour {first home}

If you follow me on instagram, you may have noticed that we moved last weekend! We've been kickin' it in a one-bedroom apartment for the first three years of our marriage, and we were ready for an upgrade :) Though it was a stressful process to actually find our dream house, we did, and I gotta say, so far we're loving it! :) 

But I also loved our apartment while we were there . . . it was, after all, our first real home together (I guess I don't count those first two months of marriage living in a mansion for $500/month. True story.) It's where we celebrated our first Christmas, hosted a Halloween party, and had birthday fun. It's also where we had nightly cuddling, ate way too much mac'n'cheese, and watched a lotttttt of Netflix :) 

And when the couple that will be taking over the apartment in August came through to check it out, you should have heard the girl; she thought our place was so adorable! Because really, it is. I believe in making a house a home, so even though apartments are temporary, we hung lots of pictures, installed curtain rods, and even painted a wall! (Actually, we painted all of the walls, but that's another story . . . ) We made this temporary apartment our first home :)

So now, the tour!

Kitchen

One of the hardest things about our kitchen was the lack of counter space, and really just space in general. We added a desk to the kitchen to give us more counter space, and we had to store a lot above the cupboards. We also added that black cabinet to serve as a cleaning supply cupboard--mop, broom, ironing board, etc. 

^^a very fun wedding present that i've loved :)

Family Room

The family room kind of went through a few evolutions. We started out with a grey futon that Russ hated, but eventually upgraded to not one, but two new couches. We also started with icky brown carpet (which can be seen here, along with some early shots of the not-so-furnished apartment) with zero carpet padding, but when my parents upgraded their carpet, we used their old carpet (and padding) to upgrade ours! It made a big difference in our apartment to change the carpet (especially since the landlord fixed the holes in the floor during that process!). Anyone from our complex who came over always commented on how "normal" our carpet looked . . . yes. Because it was not from the '80s.

this shelf is one of the newer additions. it housed any seasonal or holiday decor :)

see that printable? you can have it, too!

remember how i had a goal to sew two projects this last year? well those black/white pillows are project #2. they're removable pillowcases so that i can wash them or swap them! i also made some christmas ones, so keep your eye out for those ones come december :)

this "coat closet" is most certainly something i will not miss.

"hallway"

Haha if you can even call it that. 

other posts about these projects can be found here and here.

check out those eyesores!

Bedroom

There's our painted wall! We learned a lot about painting walls by doing that purple one. Namely, make sure you get a wall paintbrush, not a cabinet paintbrush :)

our closet . . . another of the things i will definitely not miss!

this picture shows me looking into the closet at a crazy angle.
if i looked straight at the closet, i couldn't see half my clothes.

Bathroom

The bathroom is definitely the worst feature of the apartment. I mean, I like our shower curtain and all, but wait till you see all of the bathroom's problems!

like this disguuuuusting tub.

or the peeling up floor

or perhaps the holes in the floor, through which water sometimes leaked. #totalfave

So despite some of the less-than-desirable features of our first home, I love it because I shared it with Russ :) But I am definitely excited about our new place! It's nice to have storage space for literally everything and to have a nice, new home that doesn't have holes in the floor or mildew on the tub. Keep your eye out for home tour posts in the nearish future :) (though let's be honest, near could be more than 6 months away. Who knows! :) )

And just so I don't end this post with that horrible picture above, here's one of our new house! :) It's from a few weeks ago, so it's not quite how it looks now, but it is definitely still just surrounded by dirt that we have to turn into a real YARD this summer! Wish us luck on that one ;)