Category: HHI Condo

Monday Musings

Published on by Maggie EternoLeave a comment

Hi, friends!!

I hope y’all had an amazing weekend. Ours was busy, but good!

Friday night we went out with friends, Saturday we watched Mackenzie and Jojo in their last basketball games of the season. Yesterday we went to church, did loads of laundry and had everyone clean their rooms to get ready for the week.

Joseph and I left around 4:00 PM to head down to Hilton Head for a couple of days to work on the beach house.

Y’all, I can’t wait to see it. We came in late last night so we didn’t go by. But let me just show you a quick before and after of one of the bathrooms. You ready???

This is one of the smaller bathrooms off the living room.

And here’s a sneak peek!

Ahhh…isn’t it beautiful?!!

We still have to install the pedestal sink, glass door and mirror, but it’s still gorgeous!

I’m going to try and share more on my stories on Instagram so make sure you are following me there for more sneak peeks!

So you all know how I’ve been reading through the Bible this year. I’ve really enjoyed it. We finished Job and came back to Genesis.

God has been showing me so much through stories that’s I’ve read all of my life. But one of the biggest things is that all of these people we read about in the Bible. They are just like you and I.

They are all human. They fail, mess up, do the very thing God tells them not to do. Hello Adam and Eve. Yet God still fulfills His purpose through them. God doesn’t turn His back on them. He’s patient and still sees them as worthy.

And y’all, He feels the same way about us. The same way. He loves us more than we can even imagine. He forgives us before we even mess up. He sees us as worthy.

So many times, we get stuck in our past. We keep looking back when God has already forgiven us. We allow mistakes and failures to weigh us down and keep us from moving forward.

We are so stuck in our past. We walk around with our heads down, ashamed and embarrassed. When God says this in Psalm 103:6-12

The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

Did you read how great his steadfast love is for you??? Did you read how far He removes our transgressions from us?

Yes, there are sins and mistakes that we make where we will experience consequences. But you know what, those experiences, those lessons we learn will only help us. They will propel us forward.

These mistakes will be used by God. Isn’t that amazing? Even our sins, our failures and mistakes will be used by God. Goodness will come from those bad things.

This just fires me up! And if you follow me on Instagram, you can go to my highlights under musings and hear me talk more about this.

Y’all. If you are living in your past. Move on. I’ll say it again. Move. On. Girlfriend.

Ask for forgiveness and receive that forgiveness and don’t look back.

God wants to use your past to not only help you but to help others. Quit walking around with your head down and walk upright in God’s promise to you.

If you’ve never confessed your sin, do it now. Proverbs 28:14 says,

Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

And Psalm 32:5 says,

Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

And 1 John 1:9,

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Acknowledge, confess, repent. He is faithful and just.

And once you do that, move on. Walk forward with your head high because you are forgiven. You are a new creation. Nothing you can do will separate you from His love. Walk in that freedom, today.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

2 Corinthians 5:17

I love y’all! I hope you have a GREAT day!

xoxo

Tuesday Talk: Random Thoughts

Published on by Maggie Eterno2 Comments

Good morning!

It’s Tuesday talk in blog world and I am linking up with Erika and Ashley.

I didn’t have a specific subject so I thought I’d dump a couple of randomness on you🤪.

We were up bright and early this morning to head towards Hilton Head for a couple of days. We are closing on the sale of our condo and purchase of the new house tomorrow.

It’s definitely bittersweet to think about. We’ve put so much love and time into our condo and have made many wonderful memories. But I’m also super excited about this upcoming project and can’t wait to see it all become a reality.

Our partners, Wes and Jackie are teaming up with us on this project and that makes me so happy!

If you’re curious to see our condo transformation you can read all about it here:

HHI Condo Transformation: Kitchen and Dining Room.

HHI Condo Transformation: Entryway and Living Room.

HHI Condo Transformation: Bedrooms and Bathrooms.

And I can’t wait to share our new project with you! Here’s a sneak peek:

Y’all. This house has such great bones. I am so excited to see our vision come to life!

And that’s my randomness for today! I hope y’all have a GREAT Tuesday!

XO

Monday Musings

Published on by Maggie EternoLeave a comment

Happy Monday, babes! I hope you’re week is starting off great. We were up bright and early this morning and headed to Hilton Head for the day. I shared last week how we decided to test the market and put our condo up for sale and it sold within 30 minutes! You can read the full post here.

So we are headed down to look at a property that we put under contract without seeing in person (eeeek!!). Thankfully, we put in the contract that if it’s not something we definitely want, we can back out today. Y’all this property has huge potential!! I can’t wait to share it with you. Follow me on Instagram for some live updates today!

On Friday morning, I shared a little bit of my heart on my Instagram stories. I had so many of you message and text me about how you are going through similar situations. It definitely made me thankful that I shared! Sometimes when I share I feel silly and a little scared to be so real and raw with my followers because of fear of what they may think. But when God presses on my heart to share and I am obedient, He always confirms it. And He did that this weekend through so many of your messages and texts.

Joseph and I have been talking about sharing more of our story and what we did to move forward after suffering through years of financial crisis. We’ve gone through foreclosure, we’ve lost our cars, we’ve lived paycheck to paycheck and eventually had to file bankruptcy just to be able to move forward. We’ve never shared our whole story and honestly it’s a little scary. But if it can help one person move forward then it’s worth sharing. As our pastor says, when you share your story…it helps somebody!

Our story begins 16 years ago when anxiety, depression and severe panic attacks took over my life. I shared some of my story on the You’re Not Alone Podcast a little while back, but I wanted to share it here for those of you who don’t know me or haven’t heard my story before. It’ll give you a little background on me and hopefully encourage you today. You can listen to it here.

Joseph and I will work on some upcoming posts with the rest of our story. But until then, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate in reaching out. We are an open book. We’ve learned that when you keep your story hidden it gives the enemy power to torture you. Believe me, we experienced so much shame, embarrassment and fear of people knowing for years. Telling our story equals freedom. And like I said, if it helps one person move forward then it’s totally worth it.

Thank you for visiting my blog today! I hope you have an amazing Monday.

XO

Friday Favorites {10.16.20}

Published on by Maggie Eterno2 Comments

Happy Friday, friends! Can you believe it’s the end of another week? I feel like these weeks are just flying by!

On Fridays I love to link up with Erika and Andrea for their Friday Favorites. It’s a fun post where we all share some of our favorite things from the week.

Let’s get started!

Have you guys heard of the Make Up Eraser?! Oh. My. Goodness.

I was telling my sister in law how I struggle to get all the make up off my face at night and she told me about it. It’s amazing how you don’t need any cleanser. All you need is hot water and this towel and it literally “erases” the make up off your face! I bought one for Mary to use for her mascara and she’s loved using it, too.

I love a dress with pockets! Don’t you?

Y’all, I love this dress that I bought at Target a couple of weeks ago. Love the color, material and the fact that it has pockets just makes it better!

I love white pumpkins and was so excited when I spotted these at Kroger.

I love mums on my front porch in the fall. I postponed buying them because I knew we would be out of town a lot and I didn’t want them to die while we were gone. But now that we are home for a little while, I was excited to finally buy some.

I was a little let down with the ones at our local Kroger so Joseph and I went to Athens and found these at Home Depot. They are beautiful! And they are only $9.99!

I decided to go simple this year. We may add a pumpkin or two once we carve or paint them. I’m trying to convince my kids to paint our pumpkins instead of carving them this year. It’s not going in my favor. What do y’all do? Do you carve or paint your pumpkins? And how do you keep them from rotting?

It’s no secret that I LOVE coffee mugs. I had a sweet surprise in our boo basket from one of our neighbors.

Oh my gosh. I love it so mmmuch!!

This girl right here 😍.

She’s been asking for more blonde in her hair so more blonde she got! Thank you Aunt Beth!! I can’t believe how grown she looks these days. It seems like just yesterday she was the little girl in the next picture….

Oh mommas with littles. I hated the moms who told me to enjoy every moment because one day I would miss the younger years. So I promised myself I’d never tell a mom that, but gosh they were so right. So I’m going back on my word and I’m going to tell you: enjoy every moment!! The days may be long but the years are short.

And that concludes my Friday favorites for this week! I can’t believe it’s Friday!

One more thing before I go! Yesterday I shared our final Beach Condo Renovation pictures. If you missed it, go back and read it. I share some super exciting news. Here’s are the links to all three posts:

HHI Condo Transformation: Kitchen and Dining Room

HHI Condo Transformation: Entryway and Living Room

HHI Condo Transformation: Bedrooms and Bathrooms

I hope y’all have a fantastic Friday and an amazing weekend!

XO

PS – this post contained an affiliate link… thank you so much for reading and supporting my blog!

HHI Condo Transformation: Bedrooms and Bathrooms

Published on by Maggie Eterno4 Comments

I am so excited to finally show you the rest of our condo remodel! Are you ready?!

Grab your coffee or drink of choice and let’s get started!

The following pictures show the downstairs bedroom and bathroom before we started the remodel. We decided to keep the furniture in here, bought a new mattress and bedding.

In the bathroom we took down the wallpaper and painted the walls, sanded down the cabinets and had them painted, replaced the mirror, countertops and floors. We used the same flooring in all three bathrooms.

And now for the after pictures of this space! I am amazed at the difference!! Even the furniture looks better with a coat of paint and new floors. I’ve said it in previous posts, but I love our floors!! We opted to keep the current showers/bathtubs and just changed out the shower head and valves.

The remaining two bedrooms and bathrooms are upstairs. The spare bedroom was set up with a king bed and bunk beds. If you notice beside the bunk beds, there’s a door. That was a huge closet that took up a lot of room. We wanted to bring the queen beds that were in the master bedroom in this room, but they did not fit. As we stood there, I asked Joseph if we could possibly make the closet smaller and open it up to give room for the two queen beds. Our contractor came over and looked at it and told us that could definitely be done. We changed out the carpet, painted and took the popcorn ceiling down.

In the bathroom we did the same as the previous one with new floors, shower head and valve, countertops and painted the cabinets. The bathroom had a long counter and one sink so we decided to add another sink.

Doesn’t the extra sink even up the space? I’m so glad we did that. This tile is my absolute favorite to use for our bathroom remodels. We did a flip a couple of years ago in Athens and got so many compliments on the floors. I also love the round mirrors we found at TJ Maxx and Homegoods. I think they compliment the floors perfectly.

In the bedroom you will see how we opened up the space by making the closet smaller. The two queen beds fit perfectly in there and made this the perfect “kids room.” I found the bedding at Homegoods.

And finally, here is the master bedroom. It originally had two queen beds and a twin in the corner. We wanted to make this a true master so we took the king bed from the spare and brought it in here. We had the walls painted, new carpet and did the same in this bathroom as we did with the others.

I took the nightstands from another room and spray painted them white to match the bed and dresser better. We also took the twin bed and put it in storage and replaced it with a chair and side table for a nice reading nook.

  • O

I seriously love looking at the before and afters. Transforming a space in your mind is exciting, but watching it all come to life is so much fun. When we flip houses, we only renovate the house. With our beach condo, we had to furnish and decorate it which was so much fun!

Putting our personal touch on the condo made it really hard to choose to sell it. We knew this would be a flip, but as we got going on it, we didn’t want to sell it. We have so many memories in this space and it made us sad to think about getting rid of it. But because of the way the market is moving and because we bought it at such a good deal (it was a foreclosure), we decided to test the market and see what would happen.

Y’all… within minutes of listing it we had two showing requests and within 30 minutes we had a cash offer!! We were under contract that same day and are set to close in a couple of weeks. I’m hesitant to share because so much could still happen, but we are praying that all goes smoothly and quickly.

With selling, we knew we had to find something new quick. We are in the process of something very exciting, but I’m going to wait to share the news because there are a couple of things we are still hashing out. But Lord-willing if all goes as planned, I will share soon!

Thank you for sticking with me and reading along! I have loved showing you our transformation pictures and sharing our journey with you. If you didn’t see the other two posts you can see them here:

HHI Condo Transformation: Kitchen and Dining Room

HHI Condo Transformation: Entryway and Living Room

I hope you all have a terrific Thursday!!

XO

HHI Condo Transformation: Entryway and Living Room

Published on by Maggie Eterno6 Comments

Happy Monday!! I hope you had a great weekend. We are in HHI for Fall Break and have had the best time. It’s our first time coming to our condo for “fun” verses “work” so we are soaking it up.

My kiddos are loving having their cousins here for a few days. They’ve had the best time hanging out, riding their bikes around the plantation and going on the golf course after it’s closed for the day. Joseph took all of them to play a couple of holes and he sent us this picture. The sky was beautiful!

I wanted to share a little more of our condo renovation today. Here are a couple of the before pictures of the foyer and living room.

In this next picture you can see the wall and the wet bar that we had taken out.

And now for the after pictures!

When Joseph and I began to look for decor we hit every store possible. We stopped by World Market and decided to walk into the Big Lots next door. We had not gone into a Big Lots in forever! I found the clock in the previous picture there and love the way it looks on the wall. If you are looking for a clock, check them out! This one was only $34!

I seriously love our new floors! They are water and scratch proof which makes it perfect for these two…

I love how taking out the wet bar opened up this space. We were a little bummed that the city made us add that column but now I think it helps define the space.

I decided to keep the sofa and loveseat. We looked and looked for new furniture for the living room and couldn’t find anything we liked. I also felt bad getting rid of these couches. They are from Havertys and for the most part were in great condition. The sofa is a sleeper sofa and those can be expensive! So instead of replacing them, I found a rug that would go with the space and replaced the throw pillows to match. I love how it turned out!

We found the TV console at Hobby Lobby for $180. It fits perfectly in our space. The center table and accent chairs, we bought from our clients and the two canvases are from Big Lots. The floor lamp is from Target.

I love all of the extra can lights we added. It helped brighten up the space along with the white walls. When my sister suggested doing white, Joseph wasn’t really feeling it. But after some convincing, he finally let us do white and now he loves it. Thank you Gabs for your suggestion!

And that’s our foyer and living room. I am working on a final post with all of the bedrooms and bathrooms. I can’t wait for you to see how they turned out.

As always, thank you for reading! I hope you all have a wonderful Monday. XO

HHI Condo Transformation: Kitchen and Dining Room

Published on by Maggie Eterno5 Comments

In August, a 10 year dream became a reality as Joseph and I closed on our very first beach condo on Hilton Head Island. For years, Joseph and I have dreamt about this. We’ve planned, worked hard, studied the island and searched properties daily.

When Joseph mentioned this unit to me, I was hesitant. It was a bit further from the beach than I wanted and I was overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done. We LOVE a remodel so that didn’t scare us, but being almost five hours away definitely did. We prayed about it and asked God to guide us and give us wisdom. As we felt that this was an amazing opportunity, we decided to make an offer. It was definitely a scary thing because we had only seen the unit through facetime with our friend John. Thankfully he is also a real estate agent and lives in HHI. But still… putting a contract on something we had not walked ourselves was scary for me.

This unit was a foreclosure so negotiating with the bank took time, but in the end we were able to come to an amazing price. I am so thankful for my husband and the wisdom that God has given him. He is good at what he does. He studies the market more than anyone I know and truly knows the island like the back of his hand. He always says there are two markets he studies daily; our market at home and HHI.

Once the bank approved our offer, we needed to figure out how we would go about remodeling. This was something else that lined up so well and confirmed that this was the condo for us. One of our friends in Jefferson referred us to her father and he helped us with the entire renovation. Y’all. He was a Godsend. He was incredible and we could not have done this without him. I am also super thankful for our friend, John who was a huge help from FaceTiming us and taking pictures for us and letting people into the condo. What a blessing all of these people were to us. I am so grateful.

After a couple of weeks of renovating and going back and forth to furnish and decorate, we are done! So much love and work has gone into this and I am so excited to finally see the final product. Now, for the huge debate. Do we flip the property or do we keep it?

We haven’t made the final decision, but until then we are definitely going to enjoy it. We had professional pictures made for us to either list it or put it on the rental market. The photographer did an amazing job capturing our little piece of heaven.

Today, I want to share the kitchen and dining room transformation with you. I have so many pictures, so I thought it would be easier to break it up in different posts. So stay tuned for the ones to follow!

Don’t you just love the wall paper?
These two had the best time taking it down!
We got rid of this wall and opened it up to give more of an open concept.
We painted and put in new floors.

As I mentioned earlier, we toured this unit through facetime with our friend for the first time. We finally came down and walked it before the financial contingency was up to make sure this was the one we wanted. When we walked in, we were surprised at the furniture that was left. We even had a washer and dryer! We kept most of the furniture in the bedrooms, but also got rid of a lot. There were really nice mattresses in there as well. Originally we were going to replace them all, but after walking the condo, we noticed they were practically unused. We’ve learned from our neighbors that this unit has been vacant for a long time. I had a company come out and sanitize all the couches and mattresses so that saved us a lot of money on our furniture budget and allowed us to use some of that to make upgrades in other places.

In the dining room, we painted, replaced the floors and changed out the light fixture. We bought this table from some friends of ours, the chairs are from Marshalls and the rug is from World Market. I think this space came together so good. We used navy, yellows and lots of greenery throughout the entire condo.

We opened up the wall. We were bummed that the city inspector made us keep that beem, but the construction workers did an amazing job making it look good.
I LOVE this angle. I will show you in an upcoming post what we did over by the staircase to open the space up.

With the money we saved in furniture, we decided to upgrade the counter option and go with quartz instead of granite. Isn’t it beautiful?! We kept the original cabinets, had them sanded down and painted. We also added lots of can lighting throughout the condo that you will notice in the pictures. It really helped brighten up the space. We chose a white subway tile backsplash and replaced all the old hardware on the cabinets along with paint, flooring and new appliances.

Love my wooden map of the island on our counter. We found that at a local gift shop on the island.
I am still waiting on a rug to be delivered, but it will help add in a pop of color.
Here’s a closer look of the quartz countertops.
I loved the detailed pictures from our photographer.
Coffee station.
We bought the table and chairs from our friends. It worked perfectly in here. I love a round table!

And there it is! Isn’t it beautiful? We couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. Thank you for stopping by and reading. I can’t wait to continue to show you more of our little piece of heaven! I hope you have a great Tuesday! XO