*This post contains affiliate links.
I’ve lived with Carl in the mountains of Colorado for just about a year now and WOOF has it been a journey. We live on a dirt road about ten minutes from the nearest little mountain town and about a half an hour from the closest city- which is Boulder. We have bears and moose and hummingbirds and foxes all.the.time. It’s dreamy and cold and very different from the suburbia I’d lived in forever.
We’ve made big changes over the past year- like going from having three-four roommates depending on the month to just having one that lives in a tiny house in our backyard. It was reaaaaally cozy here for a while, and I cried a lot because I’m not good at sharing. We turned the master bedroom that was previously our roommates’ into a workshop for Sugar Mountain Catering, where I will host classes when we get to be around people again! Carl built the beginnings of our Treehaus, which was initially intended to be an Airbnb but after a brief stint hosting Hipcampers last summer we have different plans for now (on top of it being a sick guest house). Carl and Peter (the one that lives in the tiny house) also nearly finished building out the tiny house and it now has a functional kitchen!
Since we’ve found ourselves with so much time on our hands, we decided to tack a few new projects onto the pile and I thought I’d document them here! We still have a lot of stuff that has nowhere to go, so I recognize that a lot of these photos might look a bit chaotic. Please think of most of this as a heavy before.
FRONT PORCH
We’re mid a bunch of projects and this is where lots of stuff ends up living. The plan for this space is to build it into a ‘Conservatory’ which I will share all of the details for and a vision board later this week. It’ll function so much better for us as a rock climbing space and outdoor kitchen!! We are SOOO excited about this project, and will use a lot of the salvaged deck boards to build our Treehaus!
FRONT CLOSET
This area has already come a LONG way, from yellowed-wooden doors and dark brown 80’s paneling to this gorgeous green color with the prettiest coat hooks of all time. We still plan to build in a bench to hide the litter box, because nobody needs to see that right when they walk in the house. But overall, we’re really happy with how this looks right now!
THE WORKSHOP
Helloooooo, hot mess express of a closet. Eventually, I imagine this space as being super functional with shelving on both sides of the closet to house my various flatware/drinkware sets when this is actually being used as a food workshop. But for now, aside from the occasional IGTV video, this room is mostly serving us as a peaceful yoga room during our quarantine. We still have a few details to finish in here, like putting quarter round molding around the edges of the floorboards and hopefully one day some open shelves next to the fridge for dishes. I’d also like to paint the back door and window trim charcoal and do something fun on the gray door. We laid this vinyl flooring that they say is easy BUT I PROMISE YOU IT’S NOT! And painted the creamy dreamy Benjamin Moore Simply White since this is intended to be a food photo studio as well and we love it so much that I think we might paint the rest of the house the same color! How sweet is that little fireplace?!?! MY OFFICE HAS A FIREPLACE GUYS!
LIVING/DINING ROOM
Aside from an extremely crowded baker’s rack, I’d say we’re doing pretty good in this part of the house! I still love love these outdoor chairs I got when I moved into my place in Denver last year, and while they’re metal and cold to sit on sometimes (we just sit on blankets or pillows!), it’s so nice when we’re entertaining in the summer to have more seating that we can bring outside. It’s not rare for us to have 20+ people over for some sort of meal so flexible seating is really important to us! I love having the guitars hanging, both because it keeps the floor space a little more free and also because when Carl sees the guitars on the wall he’s way more apt to grab one and play a little CSNY in the morningtime. I’d eventually love a new light fixture, base molding, fresh paint and new blinds but otherwise this is pretty good!
I promise you, I will never cheap out on a couch again. I was desperate for a mid-range couch that we could train the cat to not scratch up before splurging on my dream couch and IT WAS NOT WORTH IT. We haaaaaate this couch and at this point I would’ve preferred the cat tearing apart a comfortable $2000 couch than sitting on this one any longer. We plan on upgrading to this one soon! The rug was a $20 find at Target that I’m not attached to but it’s a nice placeholder for now. I still have to dig some of my favorite artwork out from my storage unit to hang above the couch, maybe a picture ledge there too? The chairs by the fireplace, we love. They are SO comfortable and look good to boot! We’re not sure what to do about the TV, the room is too short to put it above the fireplace but it takes up lots of space being in the corner over there so it’s just weird. Ultimately I’d love to refinish the floors and fireplace and repaint.
KITCHEN
Yikes. This is definitely one of those spaces that feels like a blind spot- we’re using it so often that I didn’t realize how much there is to do until sitting to look at these pictures. We’ve done a few upgrades in here in the last year-replaced the fridge and range for much more functional versions that we love. Believe it or not the cabinets were WAY worse before, sort of a puke green with contrasting red trim?! Yikes. It was bad. We ripped down a cabinet above the sink on a whim and while we LOVE how much visual space it added, clearly we still need to do some kind’ve refinishing. Other things we’d love to do: new countertops, new single basin sink, new faucet, heated floors?!?!
LAUNDRY ROOM
Just through the kitchen is this laundry room space that could be…a lot better. Eventually we’d love a stacked washer/dryer next to a pantry situation here but the whole project doesn’t make sense until we’re ready to upgrade to an instant hot water heater which is $$$.
BATHROOM
Hello ~mountain~ bathroom. This is the bathroom. The one that handled 6 adults using it every day last year like a champ. There’s a lot to do. Like all of it. Probably not this year but we’ll see!
BEDROOM
Hey so we really live here. Is it obvious yet? Also, I really like clothes and especially clothes with stripes. Our bedroom is TEEEENY tiny. We considered making the ‘workshop’ our bedroom but decided it’s waaaay better as a room that would get used during the day because of the big beautiful windows there and you know what? I don’t mind having a tiny dark bedroom! I actually sleep really well in here! This room could still use a lot of love but it’s way far down the priority list.
So there you have it. The whole entire house. I’m sure I’ll share more about the tiny house and Treehaus one day soon too, but this is where we’ve spend 99% of our time for the last month. Far from how we want it but also far from where we started a year ago! I’m so excited about how it will look six months from now.