Progress

We have been working, working, working on the house! Fortunately we had three days off together this week and made a lot of progress. We are so thankful for the contractor we hired, as his crew works very hard all day long!

We spent the majority of the week painting (the ceilings mostly) and have started on the walls. We needed a break from painting on Thursday, so we went and picked out our appliances. It feels so good to check things off of our list and be done making decisions!

The kitchen with the smooth ceiling. We had Jay (our contractor) install six can lights and they are just beautiful!

Jay also routed the gas line from the garage into the kitchen so that we can have a gas stove. We have an electric stove in our rental and we hate it, so getting the gas line installed was a priority for us. Jay also updated the water line behind the fridge so that we can have water and ice in the door.


We removed the wet bar and had the wall re-textured. I'm pretty sure that we are going to have a built-in bookcase in this space.

We've decided to paint the beams in the den to match the wall color, thus still making them noticeable, but not bringing the room down with their darkness.

THE PIT IS GONE!

It really opens the room up and makes it more useful having the floor one level and having the half-wall taken out.

Another view of our level living room.

I painted the lower half of the wall in the master bedroom. We are going to stick to a neutral tan/coffee color. That way it will be easier to change the accessories in the room when someone changes *coughmycough* their mind about the decor, eventually. We are still trying to find the right coordinating color for the top portion of the wall.

Another view of the master.

Lynn came and helped us put another coat of blue paint on the bathroom and we are really liking how the color is coming out. I think that with new mirrors and towels, it will look really nice!

We were going to leave the existing tile in the bathroom and try to match it in the sink area, but after walking on it this week, we realized that it is extremely slippery, even when it is dry. We are going to re-tile the bathroom floor and hopefully we will get to go pick it out this week.

We decided to save a little money by using the existing closet doors and spray painting the trim white to update them (they are gold and don't match our decor). It is pretty easy, but we did learn that using primer is a good idea because the paint doesn't really stick without it.

It feels really good to be getting paint on the walls and seeing the house come together. There are days where I don't want to make another decision and feel overwhelmed, but overall we are really enjoying the process and progress we are making. We are looking forward to having some extra help next weekend and keeping our momentum going!

As always, if you want to throw on some old clothes and come paint, we would love to have you over! Have a wonderful weekend!!!

P.S. Our moving announcements came in the mail this week and I am very excited to be sending them out shortly (I'm going to wait until we are closer to moving in, but I am excited to get them to you!).

After week 1:

We were so excited to have my parents come down this last weekend to help us get moving on house projects! I was so excited for them to come down and see the house empty and the potential that it has. We are so blesses to have such wonderful family members who came over to help us make the house ours.

Sunday was the day that we had the most help. Dad, Mom, Lynn (my mother-in-law), Elizabeth (sister-in-law), Mike (father-in-law), Debbie (Mike's girlfriend), my cousin Pauline, and her boyfriend Jake all came to help...and help they did!

When we arrived at the house, the contractors had already scraped the ceilings, removed the padding from the pit, and took down the wall. We had a lot of work to do, so we got started right away.

The pile from the contractor's work.

Dad moving the chandelier so that we didn't hit our heads on it. Fortunately, no one got electrocuted either!

The ugly, dark brown carpet is gone! So is the brick around the fireplace.

Ryan cutting metal left over from the half wall.

View of the pit (soon to be filled-in) and fireplace before it is drywalled.

After much debate, we opened the doorway from the living room into the kitchen. We had many opinions about this and I am VERY glad with the result (it still looks narrow in the picture, but trust me, it is much better)!

The kitchen without the fluorescent lights.

Ugh...removing wallpaper! We spent at least two days removing wallpaper and there was some that refused to be taken off, so we will have to paint over it. We are SO thankful that we had so much help removing wallpaper!

The kitchen without cupboard doors and with the ceiling fan removed. The cupboards will be painted and it is so much better without the fan.

Wallpaper removed and can light put into the ceiling.

Our helpers: Pauline and Jake removing wallpaper in the den.

The fireplace in the den without the brick and carpet. Notice our paint samples above?

The den without carpet.

The laundry room before we removed the wallpaper and painted it an oatmeal color.

Cupboards in the hallway with the doors removed waiting to be painted.

The office. The closet doors and walls will be painted. (another before picture)

The guest bathroom after taking down the wallpaper...

...and after it was painted blue. We are still working on getting the color right so this may change a bit again.

Aaahhh...no popcorn on the ceiling!

Our new textured ceiling. We spent hours and hours the last two days priming and painting them. A word of advice: pay someone to do this! Our arms and necks are sore from looking at the ceiling and holding up paint rollers, not to mention getting covered in paint splatters!

After a long day of ceiling painting!

A hard days work deserves a reward and we all agreed that margaritas were the best way to reward ourselves!

Thank you to everyone who came to help, we are so very blessed to have such wonderful family members! We will be having a painting party soon but we will be at the house every free chance we have, so if you are in the mood to paint, come on over!

Home sweet home..the before pictures!

We are so glad to be starting on our house and making it our own! Our contractor starts tomorrow: scraping ceilings, routing the gas line into the kitchen for the stove, filling in the pit {see below}, removing a half-wall, taking texture off of a wall, removing bricks, etc. etc. etc!

Today we scheduled when our flooring would be put in, patched holes in walls, made a Home Depot shopping list and a to-do list for this weekend when we will have some wonderful people helping us!

Here is the front entryway, looking at the front doors from the living room.Looking into the living room from the front doors.

Here is the dining room, pit in front of the fireplace (more on that later), and the half-wall that we are going to take down to open the room up. Yes, that is carpet on the wall!

Here is the infamous pit. It was covered in carpet and had four carpet pads on top of the red tile that is visible. It's about 4x4 and felt like it had memory foam under the carpet. The only other one I had ever seen was in my Pawpaw's friends' home.

We debated leaving it in, it is a unique feature, but we decided that it would be more useful filled in and level with the other floor.

The half-wall we are going to take down to open the room.

The dining room off of the kitchen.

Looking towards the front door and laundry room.

On the landing looking towards the backyard.

The kitchen (obviously). We are going to paint the cupboards and get new appliances. We are going to keep with our red and white theme and I am ready for it to be fresh and clean.

The view from the kitchen sink: the white door on the left goes to the den and the shelving and cupboard is the bar area.

The fireplace in the den (it goes into both living rooms), we are still trying to decide what to do with it...we welcome ideas!

Looking from the corner, there are also wood beams in the ceiling of the den.

There is a wet bar in the den, which we decided was unnecessary since it is next to the kitchen. We were eager to get started on a project and we jumped in and took down the mirrors and shelving that adorned the wall above the bar. (My handsome husband excited to be working on the house!)

We got the mirrors off pretty easily (and no bad luck for us, hopefully, as we kept them in one piece), and we will take out the cupboard this weekend.

We decided to keep the mirrors and I'm sure we can find a use for them!

The guest bathroom. We will be taking down the ivy wallpaper (oh joy!) and eventually changing out the counter top.

Looking in from the hallway. this bathroom is situated between the two guest rooms (or guest room and office), I think it's called a Jack-n-Jill bathroom.

The bathtub in the guest bath. I don't like shower doors, and the previous owners had taken the doors off and left the frame, so we decided to take the frame off as one of our first projects. It wasn't too difficult, but we aren't sure what type of glue/grout they used on the bottom part of the frame and most of it is still on the tub.

The room we are going to use as a guest room. It currently has a race car wallpaper border along the top of the wall.

The master bedroom! It is two-tone green color and I am excited to freshen it up!

MY closet! It's a walk-in and Chris even has his own in the room! (One of the selling points for sure!).

The vanity in the master. My closet is on the right and the bathroom is on the left.

The master only has a shower, which was a negative for me since I LOVE taking baths, but the shower is huge (I think it's 42 inches deep) and as long as there is one tub in the house, I'm happy!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of our house "before"! I'm sure that for the next few months, most of the posts will be about updating the house. We welcome any ideas/suggestions/helpful tips you may have! Hopefully we will be moving in about a month, so check your mailbox for our updated info (email me your address if I might not have it).

We are looking forward to having you come visit us in our updated home!