Living Room

Before:


As you can tell, along with every room in the house, the formal living room needed some work too. That wood paneling... gross, the nasty carpet... disgusting, and that COLOR! Don't even get me started.

My husband is a history major, so we decided to give the room a regal and historical theme. We wanted it to resemble the Green Room in the White House, but maybe not that extreme. So we picked a soft and soothing green, and we LOVE how it turned out.

Then we got the carpet ripped out. There were HUGE piles of dust because the previous owners weren't big on cleaning, so there was a LOT of dust in the air when I took the picture below.



After we got carpet in, we went and picked out a nice leather couch, and put some of our furniture in there. Mind you, it's still a work in progress and the room is still looking pretty empty, but I couldn't be happier with how it's looking.



You may notice that large bookcase on the right side of the picture above, and let me tell you, that thing weighs a TON. It took the two of us a good hour to move it from the garage to that spot right there, and in the process I broke all the blood vessels in my hand and I looked like I had a lobster hand for a week. That bookshelf now holds trinkets and treasures from our travels. Vases and mosaics from Africa, treasures from Italy, France, and Spain, and a stuffed turtle we fondly call Rowdy that belonged to his Great Aunt. The shelfs also hold books on American History and Presidents.

The room really is a lot of fun. Above the fireplace we want to hang a Betsy Ross flag, with pictures of our favorite presidents on each side. On the walls we are going to hang fun prints of historical documents, and different Americana paintings. I also want to get awesome red armchairs in there. I can't wait for it to be done!

And here's another angle.



I'm really happy with the paint and how happy and cheerful the house looks. It's a BIG difference from where we were living before, and I can't wait to show more pictures as we get more stuff up on the walls.

Guest

I'm a sucker for before and after pictures. Biggest Loser, Extreme Makeover, and Hoarders before and after pictures get me going every time. So when we bought this house and I saw the work that had to go in it, my heart started to flutter and I got that camera charged real quick.

The room that got the biggest makeover is probably our guest room because of the extreme change it got. And now here it is....

BEFORE:


AFTER:


Hooray!!! I love a transformation! We had a bit of a struggle with the paint color, because a tiny paint sample looks different on a 2 inch by 2 inch square than it does on a wall. We fixed that by leaving a wall white, and it will eventually be covered with awesome pictures. Now when it comes to the rooms in the house, we are going with themes, and we decided that the guest rooms shouldn't be left out. We thought long and hard about what theme to give the room, and we decided to give it a Moby Dick Theme. Now if you know me well, you know I'm afraid of fish, but I'm ok with this whole idea because it's not REAL fish, it more Nautical than anything. So stop asking me.

Now bare with me, because the room isn't grand... yet, but it will be when it gets to it's full potential. We just need a little more time, and a lot more money. Anyhow, here's a cute little end table and mirror we picked up. (If you look closely our puppies are photo bombing this picture.)



Yeah yeah yeah... "Welcome to the Beach" isn't very "Moby Dick," but we opted out of pictures of skinned whale carcasses and hooks, and decided to go with a more kid friendly approach. And if you look on the little table, you'll notice a book. I don't own Moby Dick, yet, so True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is acting as a stand in.

And now for the grand master himself, Moby Dick. Isn't he cute?!?!?!



No nautical room is complete without a good knot board, and we found one! (But ours is blue, not green.)



So there's our guest room! I'm quite fond of the way it's looking, and I know it will be awesome when it's finished. I've been looking online for paintings of whaling ships, and pictures of Herman Melville, and I'm finding some awesome stuff. I also need to invest in sheets for that room that don't have the Eiffel Tower all over them. But when our vision of the room is all put together, it's going to be great.

Timmmmmberrrr!

Here it is again. Our new home. But in this picture, I want to draw your attention to the huge palm tree on the left of the front door. That simple beautiful palm tree (or I guess I should say Palm TREES because there are two), has given us SO much trouble.



Admire it's beauty. The branches sway gently in the breeze, and below it the roots grow into our main sewer pipe, and cause human poop to come up and out of our shower drain.

Not to mention, the first week of home ownership, my husband's family formed a small army to tackle the house and help get it ready for us to live in. Now I wasn't home when this happened, but they thought it would be nice to cut the bundles of berries off the trees. (You can see one of the bundles in the picture below.) The tallest member of the group went up the ladder, clipped the stem of the berry bundle, and when it came crashing down, six rats came running out.

The trees MUST go. But money is tight, so we need to deal with them for just a bit longer.



Cut to today. I'm very fortunate to marry a guy with a great family. Everyone is always so willing to help out when we've needed it, and today was no exception. We are currently dealing with a clogged kitchen sink (Are you surprised? I'm not.), and my husband's older brother offered to help us fix it. Well, we weren't so lucky with that, but on his way out he looked at our demonic palm trees and offered to come back and trim them up a bit. And he did! He did an AWESOME job. I love this action shot I got of him throwing the fond from the roof onto the ground.



And here is all the crap that got cut down. Can you believe it? Now, I was hoping to see a rat today because I certainly see their poop every morning when I water the plants around the base of the tree, but all we found was an empty nest. That rat sure is going to be surprised when it comes home to find nothing tonight. Then again, I'll probably be surprised to come home and see that a rat has made it's new home in our garage.

Crash

Remember that scene in the Money Pit where Tom Hanks pours a bucket of water in the bathtub and it crashes through the floor and he just starts laughing hysterically? We just had that moment.

Here we are hanging out in our room with the dogs and AC on relaxing, and suddenly we hear a cracking sound. Slowly we turn our heads and glance at the closet, and CRASH. Everything ripped out of the wall. I guess we're moving "new closet" to the top of our to do list.

Master

Our Master Bedroom. ~sigh~ It's going to be the room we have to wake up to each morning, so it needed to be perfect. This is what we had to work with.



I have never designed a room before, so I had no idea where to being. In a dream world, it would be pink and white and super girly, but I'm married now, so I need to make sure the room caters to both of our likes. I began searching the internest for bedroom ideas, and this is what we came up with.



Sure our room isn't quite that big, and no we don't have the awesome ceiling... or bed... or nightstand... or budget to get hardwood floors... but at least we had a painter! Our last night in the old dirty room was spent on the old dirty carpet, on old dirty couch cushions, with an old dirty cat. See the cardboard box to the left? Yeah... we were living out of it. And you didn't believe me... (shakes fist)



Flash forward to a week later... and it's DONE!!! Our painter Scott is AMAZING! Do you like the chair rail that divides the white and the blue? We picked it out all on our own at Home Depot and learned how to cut it ourselves. It was a beautiful day. So now that our bedroom is all painted we can move back in right?!?! NOPE. See that nasty carpet? It HAD to go. (And please notice the ceiling and lack of ceiling fan.)



BAM! New carpet! Gotta love that new carpet smell.



Finally we were able to move in! Notice the new ceiling fan?



Eventually we want to get a new bed, and yes... new bedding. But the house is coming along great and we LOVE our room.

Work

There's our little money pit! It's the one right smack dab in the middle. (Second from the left.) As you can see, we live on a cul-de-sac and we are one of four houses on the street. Isn't that AWESOME?!?! Imagine the birthday parties our children will have!! Epic.

Now, I know I touched a bit on what repairs were needed to the house, but I thought I would go a little more in depth. (It's funnier that way too.) First of all... like a said before, we know the house needed a little TLC, and some electric work. What we DIDN'T know is that it was a ticking time bomb.



Now when you first walk in, you see these disgusting stairs (yes that's carpet), and what you can't see is four light swithches and a room off to the left. Only one of the swtiches worked, and the room to the left had no power at all. We called an electrician. All the main electric wires were run through PVC pipe on the roof of the house. It's supposed to be run through metal. (And there was something about too many negatives to one positive and a bunch of mumbo jumbo bad stuff.) As if the PVC wasn't bad enough, the pipes were broken, and full of water, and all the wires were exposed. NICE!! Our poor elecrtician worked for three days replacing burned up wires, fire hazards, and re-routing everything, and finally.... we had power.

Next, we hired a painter.





DON'T PANIC. These are BEFORE pictures with the previous homeowners stuff. But it gives you a good idea on what we were up against. The WHOLE house needed a fresh coat of paint, and some handy work here and there.

For the next two weeks, our painters were my best friends. We joked, we laughed, we told stories, one of them brought us avacados, and in return I held back my dog when she tried to kill them. It was a lot of fun. Then one day Scott (our amazing painter) said he smelled gas upstairs, and it had nothing to do with what we ate for lunch.

(Now, a week earlier we discovered that we had no hot water, and no pilot light lit. We had called the gas company out and they said there was no way to light it without blowing up the house because the water heater had a bad valve and we had to call a plumber. That was a mess. But the gas company checked for leaks everywhere else and said we were good.)

Soooo.. having full faith in Scott, I made yet another call to the gas company. The guy went in the attic and touched the gas line leading to our heater and it fell right off in his hand. NICE. One quick repair, and it was handled. Thanks Scott! You saved our lives!

Moving right along with house repairs, we discovered water damage and mold in our kitchen and den. Walls were ripped open, containments were set up and we were left with a huge mess.

Here's the den before the previous owner moved out:


And here it is after a little mold remediation.


Did I mention we were still sleeping on the floor and living out of cardboard boxes in the garage during all of this? As least we had hot water now.

House

Wow! SOOO much has happened since our wedding nine months ago, but the most exciting thing is.... WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!! YAY!!! Being a home owner has been so much fun, and every day is a new adventure. However, every adventure has a beginning, and that's where I will start.

We searched for the perfect home for a few months. We saw our fair share of s**tholes, and homes that were way too expensive for our budget. We saw homes that had been completely gutted, and homes that were stuck in the 1970's. We were just about to give up when I saw the house pictured above online. It had been on the market for three days when we went to check it out, and the very bitter and freshly divorced homeower was looking forward to getting it out of her hands. We put in our bid that day, and a couple months and boatloads of paperwork later... we got the keys on April 20th, Hitler's birthday. (I had to throw that in because I was born on Pearl Harbor (December 7th), and we were married on September 11th. All the important days in our life also happen to be the most offensive days in our Nation's History.)

Night one in our new house:

We spent the ENTIRE day moving our stuff into the garage. We couldn't move anything into the house yet until we got fresh paint and carpet. We knew going in that there was no electricity in half the house and we were able to work around it, and there were some problems with the water so we wouldn't be able to shower there for a while. No problem... the in-laws are a couple cities over, and they said we could shower there. I think the main thing we didn't anticipate is how freaked out the animals would be. The cats were NOT ok. They screamed and howled and hissed, and chased us with the intent to kill anytime we came near. We had to pen them up in a room to give them a chance to settle.

We grabbed some couch cushions and blankets and threw them in a corner to serve as our bed for the night, then we noticed that there was a very distinct smell of poop. After some investigation, we discovered that our younger dog Cherry had the runs, and she had it all over the carpet. And this went on ALL NIGHT. It was pretty brutal.

The next day we went to visit the in-laws for some serious shower time and breakfast, and when we went back home a couple hours later, there was a note on the door saying, "Your dog (or dogs) have been barking non stop for the past hour. Please take the time to train them as it is VERY annoying to your neighbors." And that was it. No name, no nothing.

Welcome to the neighborhood!