Home Remodel

OUR HOUSE BEFORE & AFTER
Adrian and I bought a fixer-upper house last May. I was very skeptical about it because it was smelly and dirty when I first looked at it. But since my wonderful husband has much more vision than I do, he talked me into it and we took the plunge. We spent most of the Summer working on it and had it functioning by August when we moved in (although we lived without kitchen counters and a sink for six weeks!). Here are a few pictures of before and after. Take note that I use the word "we" very liberally, since we had a handyman do most of the work for us! It was a lot of fun. We are going to do the upstairs sometime in the next year. If our basement stops flooding sometime, we might even finish that off. We love our new house!

So I know the yard looks much more lush in the first picture, but ignore that part...just check out the roof. That is all there is to show off on the outside thus far.

We don't have sprinklers - apprently it is supposed to rain a lot here, so we don't need them. So our grass was looking pretty sad by the end of the summer. But back to the roof...Adrian spent a week straight putting on the new one to save us money. It was a huge accomplishment! Thanks to all the guys in our ward who spent a Saturday here working on it. I was really nervous because I didn't want anyone to fall of and get hurt, but in the end it was a success!

THE KITCHEN

We took out all the cabinets, floor, and appliances and completely re-did the kitchen.

We knocked out the wall that you see in this picture, and then built a wall where it is open (where the hardwood floor is). That is now Taylor's bedroom. The last kitchen picture is what we did to the wall that previously had nothing on it. Since we knocked out the wall we were able to use this space. Our favorite part of the kitchen is the tile backsplash we put in (again, that was a liberal "we" since we didn't install any of it).

The Family Room

All we had to do in the front room was repaint the walls and re-do the hardwood floor. Also, you can see that we had to fix the ceiling in the top right corner because of water damage. We also added lighting to one side, since there was not any (you can see the fan).

Dining Room

This picture is taken from the Family Room.

Bedroom

Our bedroom was repainted and carpeted. I didn't take any before pictures, but the walls were an ugly mint green on bottom and yellow on top. Taylor's room was carpeted and is still a work-in-progress. I am always trying to think of ways to make it cuter.... The red curtains also need some help - they aren't very masculine. My wonderful mother made a sailboat quilt for me and she had some leftover sailboats she sewed together. I am trying to figure out how to put them on the curtains to help them match the room. Adrian's gramps made our changing table. Isn't it perfect?

Bathroom

I don't have a before picture of the bathroom either, but we didn't do a lot. We just put in a new countertop and painted the bathroom blue. We tried two other colors before we decided on blue. We started with a bright green that looked flourescent on the walls. We darkened that green and then it looked an ugly olive green. So we went to Home Depot to pick out one last green, with a washcloth to match it to, and on a whim decided to do something completely different - blue. We have gotten a mixed response on it, but we like it! We put it with bright colors (red and yellow), but I am now considering taking out the other colors and doing navy blue with it. Adrian asked me if I thought money grows on trees since I already want to change things up, and I told him I think it does.

Hopefully this summer I will have even more updates of our home. We feel so blessed to have such a nice place to live.