Timber!

As part of our home renovations, we have been tearing out all the sad looking 60-ish brush that until recently has been passed off as trees and bushes. This rather large, unsightly object met its demise this month and our view of the mountains to the east has never been better. Our lack of a very obvious landmark to distinguish our driveway from the neighbors, though, has caused a few embarrassing moments.

And here is Daddy's little helper. Thomas was enamored of the tree cutting, but watched from a very far, very safe distance. (He has a rather funny and peculiar dislike of loud noises.) Mary Alice on the other hand, is drawn to loud motorized objects... and the tasting of other outdoor manly utensils.

More of the house

Here are some more views of the updates we have made on the house.

The kid's bathroom.

Before:
After:
Before:

After: The changes in the bathroom are harder to see, but it was previously pink (ick!) and had a really cheap linoleum floor that looked like someone had run over it with lawn aerator. John's mom was our saving grace - she repainted it an antique white, picked out new hardware, a new floor, and some new matching towels. (I am not that good at coordinating colors!) Thanks Mom!

The Hallway

Before:
After:

And once again - that is not white you see in the "before" picture, but PINK (with a blue accent wall and orange stained doors... go figure!) And several of those old doors had cat doors installed in the bottom. Mary Alice got stuck in one of them - since she inevitably saw an opening that was at her level and just had to try it out. That was end of those doors, lemme tell you!
We peeled the wallpaper trim off the walls and repainted them. John took the popcorn off the ceiling, re-textured it and repainted it, installed new light fixtures, refinished the floors, added a neat new baseboard trim, and installed new doors. Did I mention yet that I absolutely LOVE that man?

House pics - Kid's room

Here is the kid's room... a.k.a. the toy room, play room, or presidentially declared disaster zone (when not being photographed, that is.)

Before:

(Note my previous statement that every wall in the house was a different color... and sometimes, more than one color.)


After:

We stripped the horrific wall paper, painted the 54-tone room, and carpeted it - to keep the sounds of torture and what-not from wafting over to the neighbors house at the bedtime hour.

From the opposite side of the room.
Before:

After:

Same side of the room, but different angle (The kid's room was originally two different rooms, but some previous owner took out the wall in between. So there are two doors to the room.)

Before:

After:

House pics - Front Room and Dining Room

After six months of work, we can finally post some of the remodel pictures. Most of the work was done last November, but there have been so many little last minute bits and pieces to do (and we lost our will to do them for quite a while) that we haven't had the house in a state to actually photograph until now. So, here is the first post in our "Home Remodel" series.

There are a couple of things that should be known first about the house. The first thing that is that every wall (and I do mean EVERY wall) was a different color. Mostly different shades of red or purple with a maddenly light pink trim on everything. The other thing is that all the carpets had to be removed from the house because the previous tenants had a veritable zoo of animals that roamed the house UNCHECKED. Hygiene did not seem to be an issue. So, needless to say, all the carpets were discarded and the house had to air out for about a week, followed by a good cleansing with bleach. But the walls and floors had a multitude of issues from water damage to holes and scratches. Luckily none of it was so bad that it exceeded our limited capacity to repair.

That said, here is the front room and dining room. We pretty much refinished every surface - removed the popcorn ceiling and replaced it with wallpaper (more on that one later), repainted the walls, and refinished the floor in a different shade. John even tore out and moved the wall by the entry way so that it lined up properly with the rest of the room. We haven't finished the entry way itself, nor put up the molding around the doors - but just about everything else is done for this area of the house.

Front room - before remodel :

And afterwards :

Other side of the room, before:

And after:

Same side, different angle. Before:

And after:

This is the dining area just off the front room.

Before:

After:

(Some day, this sliding door will go... it isn't our favorite. We are hoping to replace it with french doors. You know - when we win the lottery and all.)



And last, but certainly not LEAST (as far as difficulty level goes), is our ceiling. Some crazy idea infested our minds to paper our ceiling with anaglypta wallpaper to simulate tin ceiling tiles. We like the overall effect, but HATE... let me repeat... HATE wallpaper. If papering walls is hard, then papering ceilings is downright hellish. It took both John and I plus three other people to actually get the blasted stuff up on the ceiling. But we finally got it up there and John put up the crown molding.



Next installment.... the kid's room!