Welcome to our blog!

So here we are, creating a blog to share our trials and tribulations as first time home owners. In an effort to keep friends and family updated on our progress and share pictures of projects along the way, we've decided to start Casa de Kooch! (yeah, yeah, go ahead- snicker).

We closed on our home exactly two weeks ago, and have already made great progress! We'll share our adventures in updating our cabinets with paint and new hardware, purchasing new appliances, tearing up carpet, deciding between about 15 different shades of beige, and much, much more!

Let's start with a guided tour through our house. We'll call these the "before" pictures:

Our house is technically a Dutch Colonial, though we lovingly refer to it as a barn.

source

Our first look at the house is the garage, just what we need- STORAGE!!

As we walk through the garage into the house, we enter the eat-in kitchen:

 source

Pick your jaw up off the floor! I know, I know, there's a lot going on here. I'm not sure what we were most impressed by- Was it those updated cabinets? Was it the state-of-the-art appliances? The beautiful striped wallpaper perfectly bordered by a line of lighthouses around the world? I'm still not sure... 

Let's get out of there! On to the living room:

You can see the kitchen through the door to the right in the above picture. 

The best news about the living room? The house comes furnished! We are the proud owners of all of this gorgeous furniture!!!

Let's keep moving! It's hard to tell from the pictures, but there is a hallway behind the staircase that leads to a full bath and two bedrooms. Let's start with the bathroom!

This is no joke people. We have herons on our shower doors. Make that hand-painted herons.... hand-painted love herons. Being a math teacher, I can truly appreciate the figure eight/infinity sign the birds create when the doors are open.  The funny thing is, many people voiced their jealousy of these doors. I'm not sure where these people were when we offered them up?!?

Once again, notice the lovely striped wallpaper bordered by a soft beachy theme. And look up! A drop ceiling...

Moving on! Next you'll find both downstairs bedrooms. We're thinking an office and a guest bedroom:

Let's go upstairs...

I really wish I'd thought to take a picture at the top of the steps where the teal carpet meets the dark blue carpet. A professional clearly chose the colors!

Upstairs we have two more bedrooms and a full bath. We're thinking master suite...

source

The photo of the bathroom is from the listing. I don't have a single shot of the upstairs bathroom, probably because it's a clean slate. 

Let's go back downstairs, through the living room and kitchen and out back through the laundry room, cedar sun room and into the back yard:

Our gigantic laundry room:

One of our favorite parts of the house:

And into the backyard:

source 

I'm not sure if you're aware, but this backyard is huuuuge for Brigantine!!! Bill's already envisioning a pool, hot tub, bar, outdoor fireplace, etc.

And that's all folks! Follow along as we refinish floors, release herons from the bathroom and everything else along the way!