A Fresh Coat

Of Paint!

Hi! Sorry, kind of fell off the map for a while.

We've been hard at work with home renovations and life happenings in general. After struggling to find a local painter, we finally signed a contract with someone and got the mint green beast prettied up a bit!

What a difference a coat of paint (that's NOT mint green) and some new shutters will make!

We had a painter do the siding and trim, and then my husband put up the new shutters. It's like a whole new house! The mailbox also got a new home (a different post about that later) and all of the old, dead, overgrown landscaping was ripped out - which was a HUGE pain by the way. New landscaping will happen in spring, and I can not wait!

So, here it is!

The Playroom Transformation

The room with the cat poo yellow carpet went from, well, ugly...

... to toy paradise!

Once that nasty carpet was gone, it really made a huge difference! New laminate wood flooring, paint and some bright, fun curtains made the space new and just perfect for the (way too many) toys.

Bonus of having a toy room? I don't NEED to clean it up, I can just close the door and deal with it later :)

The Return of the Bathroom

*peeks out from behind rock* Uh, hi? I've really sucked at keeping up with all this new house transformation business.

But anyway, the bathroom is DONE! (mostly)

You may remember that it looked like this when we bought the house:

Well, now it looks like this!

  It took a bit longer than anticipated and it's still not 100% complete - the above toilet cabinet we bought we previously purchased and returned by someone else, therefore missing parts when we bought it (nice job with your product inspection, "big orange box store"), so that's not up yet.

I also need to purchase some decor for the bare walls and some coordinating towels. I could easily use towels we already own - but they are green and brown, the matchy-matchy color freak in me would go absolutely bonkers about the green towel hanging in the blue and grey bathroom! Darn OCD tendencies!

We got our first experience laying tile floor. It went ok, considering we had no idea what we were doing! It's certainly not perfect, but it's functional and looks pretty nice.

We had a vanity purchased, but then there was a plumbing placement problem and we had to return the one we already bought and get a different (and more expensive.. *sigh*) one. But it's in now and looks great! Design standards have apparently changed since our last bathroom remodel, because the vanity is now at kitchen cabinet height. That seemed REALLY tall at first, but the more I stand by it, the more I like it.

  ANOTHER snag we ran into was the mirror. We purchased a mirror that ended up to be too large, so we returned that (are you sensing a theme here?). Bonus is that I snagged a nice decorative mirror from Target on clearance and I like it was better than what we originally bought anyway!

  Pretty much the only thing we did NOT return was the toilet. Hence the probably not so clever title of this post, "The Return of the Bathroom"... get it? Huh? Not funny? Oh well, I tried.

Bathroom Progress

The bathroom is moving right along. This bathroom before was just a toilet, vanity and a closet. So it seemed like a good place to put a bath tub! It was decided that we should flip-flop the vanity and toilet positions (the toilet was nearest the door before), so that added a little more work. But I think that layout change makes the most sense for the space.

This is pretty much what it looks like right now:

As I type this, my husband is there framing in the area for the tub and putting OSB down on the floor. The electrician should be there tomorrow to move the wiring for the vanity light and install a new vent fan.

We have a vanity:

A vanity top and tile (we went with the darker tile):

I'm unsure of the wall color, but I'm going to try to use paint we already have because I don't want to buy another gallon of paint for one small room!

We're really aiming to have this bathroom done before we move in - otherwise we'll be field tripping to Grandmas house for bath time! Although, I'm sure Charlie wouldn't mind that one bit!

Bye Gross Carpet! Hello Pretty Walls!

The bedrooms are a work in progress at this point, but are coming along nicely!

We need to have all of the painting done and old carpet removed by March 26th, since that is when the new carpet will be installed.

Painting is all taken care of and carpet isn't far behind!

Here is Charlie's room painted, but with the red carpet still intact:

And without the red carpet:

Walls are Dutch Boy 'Big Sky Blue'

Here's the master - this photo was taken before the carpet was ripped out:

Walls are Dutch Boy 'Head for the Hills' and Dutch Boy 'Basketweave'

And good riddance to the cat-poop yellow carpet in the playroom!

Walls are Dutch Boy 'Honey Bear'

Just in case you were wondering, painting is messy. At least it is when I do it.

The Setback & The Fireplace

I'd been planning on keeping up with post about the house, but life happened. And it happened hard.

My older brother was involved in a freak accident on March 5th. He was hit with a falling tree and suffered a traumatic brain injury. For a full week he was in a medically induced coma, then this past Wednesday they decided to move him to a hospital 3+ hours from where we live.

He has made leaps and bounds in improvements since the accident, but he has a long road ahead. We're all pretty confident at this point that he'll make a recovery. Now, how he is after said recovery remains to be seen.

All I know is that if I never hear "I'm honestly shocked he's alive" from another Doctor or Nurse again, that will be just fine with me.

SO. With that happening, I haven't been working on the house stuff as much as originally planned. We're still on a deadline though, and since sleep is over-rated anyway, the show must go on.

On to the fireplace... you may remember this ugly wood paneling:

*POOF* no more wood paneling. I ripped it off myself, it was oddly therapeutic!

Jamie took care of the drywall:

And they we FINALLY got to paint the living room! I've been looking forward the getting my perfect blue-gray (Dutch Boy 'Boardwalk Blue') wall painted since we bought the house :)

The paint is wet in that photo - but once it dried... gah.. I LOVE IT. It really makes the fireplace pop out. I'm fairly certain it will look even better once the green carpet is gone!

I don't think I've posted a photo of this yet. There is a built-in next to the fireplace - I'm not really sure what to do with it...

What would you use this for?
Books? Photos? Booze? Something else?

Well, Hey There...

Hello strangers! Long time no blog!

I've admittedly been horrible about blogging over the last year. Beyond horrible actually. Life happened, work happened - blah, blah, blah, right?

Anyways.

Guess what? My husband and I bought a new home! A gigantic, probably way-more-space-than-we-can-fill HOME!!

We had been working on this process since early September, and just closed on the place on February 28th. Our current home is for sale and we're hoping to get that taken care of soon - I can't go into too much detail on that though.

Those who know me or have followed this blog for a while are probably wondering --- "Didn't you JUST remodel your house? Kitchen? Bathroom? All those things?"

Answer: Yes.

... now we get to do it ALL OVER AGAIN. *somewhat sarcastic yay*

You may also be wondering... "Why on Earth would you want to do that?"

Answer: While we love the home we created, it's small. We were simply out of space. The new place was such a great deal that we literally only spent about $3,000 to double our square footage.

Here's the new house from the outside - a more picture heavy post and plan of attack to follow.

Photo Courtesy of Town & Country Real Estate

(Think the green is ugly? Wait until you see the straight up 70's interior...)

I'd like to chronicle the progress of the new house here, so be on the look out for some semi-regular blog posts :) We're DIY'ing the majority of everything again - actually we've already started, so there should be a lot to show!

Stay tuned folks - I'm calling this the "What The Heck Did We Get Ourselves Into" project.