The Far East Baby: Our Cozy Cabin Before & After

I've been meaning to do a before an after for a while now of our little cabin. It would have been much easier to buy a house that didn't need a lot of work, but those kinds of houses weren't on a lake (and if they were, they weren't anywhere near our price range)!

There's not much lake front property available on the lake we chose. When we found a house that we could afford on Kurt's parents' lake... we jumped at the chance. We bought our first house without even seeing it in person! I'm sure people have done crazier things?! Lucky for us, it's turned out to be pretty great.

We've worked very hard on making it our own, even if we only live there for six weeks a year. It's really important that Sawyer and Eleanor have some "roots" in the states so making our cabin feel like ours has made such a difference!

We bought our house two years ago and the first changes we made was put in new floors and paint. We're so lucky to have my step-dad put the floors in for us while we were still in China. When we first got to our house two summers ago, we thought we could take on the painting ourselves. But, we were jet lagged with a baby.... and it was taking forever (a bit ambitious, I know). My mom ended up taking pity on us and hiring a painter to finish the job. You wouldn't believe how much paint the wood paneling just sucked up- it needed so many coats.

Last summer, we made small changes to the bathroom including a new floor tile, removing the shower door, changing out the lighting, and painting. This summer, we hope to have an outdoor patio that we can enjoy our meals on complete with outdoor furniture.

We're so proud of how far it's come and can't wait to keep making improvements. It's a really tricky balance figuring out what's worth DIYing or paying someone else to do since we have such a short amount of time to spend there each summer. We want to savor and enjoy each moment!

Hopefully we can add some more photos after this summer including the exterior and bedrooms.

Living room

Before