Remodel - The exterior

I have to share this because it made me laugh so much and continues to do so.  Yesterday, we had some friends and family over for a cookout for hubby's birthday. I took a few of the kids inside to see our cats. These kids freaking LOVED our cats. While some of them are playing with one of our cats one little girl says to me "you know sometimes houses are ugly on the outside, but they can be pretty on the inside."  I'm not dumb and I'm not delusional, our house is UGLY on the outside! I say to her "you mean, like this house" and she shook her head yes. I have chuckled to myself a lot over that statement. I have worked with kids for so many years that I know they tell the unfiltered truth. In all honesty, I'm thinking "awe the house is actually pretty inside" because you know a kid tells no lies!

Meet our ugly house!

This was taken before we even did any renovations inside.
I will try to take another soon because I have done a little,
very little landscaping to try to give it some curb appeal!

Remodel - Our short little hall

We have the smallest little hall/walkway that goes from the living room to two of the bedrooms as well as the bathroom and kitchen. My dad did a lot of fixing areas above doorways that looked bad from the house settling.

Muddin'

Domino looks a bit creepy here!
I just love my little rug, that I had to get due to the cats
flying around corners at turbo speed.
One day I noticed claw marks in the floor and
about lost a gasket because of all the work we did!
They're just playing so we got something for
them to dig into instead of the floor!

My dad in Lowe's. I don't know if you can see it but
he's holding a short piece of 2x4, that had our list of things
to get on it! He always cracks me up.

I guess if I put all those pictures up of my dad it's only
fair to post one of myself. Glamour shot, I know!

Remodel - Our one and only bathroom

We have only one bathroom! Oh well, I guess they made do in the 50's and we can now.

Yowzers!

Much better. Although, it's almost too matchy matchy for me.

I spray painted these cheap plastic things that I
found, there is also a bird in the shower curtain.
Hence the reason it may be too matchy matchy. 

I painted it the same light gray as the kitchen.
Obviously, I'm loving some gray this year!

And my beautiful burlap curtain that I made.
I wanted something cheap and easy.
All I had to do was cut the burlap out and wha-la, use
those little clip rings and done!
Bazinga thought I left the window open.

Remodel - "Master Bedroom"

All of the rooms in our house are roughly the same size, relatively small! Ha. I thought one may be a bit larger than the others and claimed it as the Master bedroom.

"Master Bedroom" Before, during and after

Lots of work to do!

Paint is done. It's supposed to be gray, but my dad
kept laughing and saying "that's green."  It depends on the light
as to whether it looks gray or green throughout the day. 

Now onto the floors. Ugh...

The floors were very pretty before we put the stain down.
I knew they wouldn't stay that light though once the polyurethane went on
and I don't care for the yellowish tint that using just poly leaves.

We kept his grandma's bedroom furniture, which I love, but it will eventually
need to be refinished due to scratches and dings. It's also missing quite a bit of hardware.

When I added colorful curtains to the room it made the walls appear
more gray, well at least I think so!

Remodel - Brian's movie room

Unfortunately, I'm not going to post any pics with Brian's actual furniture and stuff in there. It's a bit of a disaster area and has been since we moved in. It's better than what it was but still needs a lot of work!

Before

Notice how dark the areas are in between the ceiling tiles, yeah
yours truly hand painted some of the ceilings! 

Painted, plain white.

Sanded! Sorry guys that's all the pics of this room I will share for now!

Remodel - Guest Bedroom/Megan's craft/work space

One thing I love is that we have a guest room now! Friends and family can come stay with us if they want to (hint hint). It's pretty but I'm not thrilled with it, I have a little more work to do.

The guest room used to be his grandma's fabric/sewing room.
I think anytime a furniture company was going to get rid of fabric
samples she was there to save them!  We loved her but this was a bit
 much. Bordering on hoarding.  

Walls painted, once again the gray that my dad says looks green.
Original flooring in this picture.

Sanded. This room had the most wax on the floor.
Our floor now has a bit of a haze to it, only in this room, which I think is due to us
not getting all the wax off.

The wood furniture in this picture was all his grandma's, I'm not sure yet
if I'm going to refinish it or not. I love my L shaped desk that I found on craigslist for $60.
I think we need a rug in here and the curtains need to be changed,
 they are almost the same color as the paint!

The side table was my grandma's which I plan on refinishing.
The cross stitch pieces were also done by my grandma.
I'm planning on painting the bed just not sure what color yet.

Yes, that is a rolled rug standing up there. We bought it from some
friends before we moved and need to get it cleaned. They probably
don't know it but I always eyed that rug, not sure why, probably because
 it has simple pattern and it's a pretty color. 

Remodel - Kitchen

We removed wallpaper to find........peach colored paint. SCORE.
And, if you haven't noticed I think my dad is wearing the same clothes
in most of the pictures. We had about a month to do all this work
and we did it on the weekends (usually 12 hours a day, Saturday and Sunday)
after a full week of work! Needless to say, I was beat.
It always amazes me how my dad, who is 61, will work and not complain about
a thing -- well, sometimes he does, but it's not often.

I accidentally cut myself with the putty knife I was using to get the wallpaper off the walls.
Makeshift band-aid, paper towels and painters tape!

We covered the cabinets to paint the ceiling. All the ceilings had to be painted -- fun stuff!
Goodbye, peach paint and blue beadboard!

I still need to paint the cabinets, but that's for later.
I'm thinking white (I like very bright kitchens).
I'm not sure what the big brown thing is technically called,
but it was Brian's grandma's and we kept it because nobody wanted it.
I think it will be beautiful with a new paint job and maybe
glass pains instead of the mirrored ones!

I picked a lighter shade of gray for the kitchen beadboard.
I actually painted this part of the kitchen after we moved and settled in.
The blue counter tops will do for now however, we got really lazy, because we were TIRED,
while painting the ceiling and there are white paint spots on the counter tops.
Meh, when we have the money I think I may
 use RUST-OLEUM'S Countertop transformation kit
to make due until we can afford nice countertops.

Please ignore the leftover cookout stuff on our table!
The dishwasher and fridge were already here and we were not
about to buy new ones! Not right now!

Remodel - Living Room

In July of 2013, my hubby and I moved to the house that his grandparents bought when they got married and where they raised their family.  She passed away March of 2013, leaving the little house empty and with the possibility of it being sold. We both value family a lot, and we knew we weren't going to be able to afford to have our own family in the tourist town that we lived in because, at least to me, housing prices there were astronomical. So, we moved 2.5 hours from where we were back to his hometown.

My dad helped us do some updating before we settled in for good.  I've helped my dad remodel houses from the time I was in elementary school all the way up to high school. In the beginning, I did a lot of falling asleep while sitting on five gallon buckets because I was bored and couldn't do very much. As I got older he trusted me to do more and more. My dad has had a few not so great moments with power tools, particularly saws, and I think that's why he didn't want me to use them too much growing up (he wanted me to grow up with all ten fingers).

I think I will have to do this in phases because it involves a lot of uploading pictures!

Living room: Before, during and after.

The polyurethane was completely gone in the center of the floor!
And the wood paneling had to go.

When we took the wood paneling down this was one of several things we found in the drywall.
Needless to say, my dad and I were not amused!
And if you're not sure why we were not amused it's because someone punched two holes into the drywall
and then drew a smiley face!

The walls are looking good, but we still have to do something about that floor.

The floors were not nice to us at all!
The house has settled since it was built in 1956 (I think I have the date right) and the floors were uneven.
Someone had used mop and glo on them and there was a coat of wax we had to get off before we could sand.
That was a fun day of being on our hands and knees using acetone to strip off the wax.
I'm not as cool as my dad; I had to hang my head out the window a lot because I was dry heaving from the fumes!

My dad putting down stain.
He was not happy about my choice to stain or the stain color. LOL
I kind of learned why he was not happy about staining when we came back and had to spend
another day on our hands and knees wiping up the excess stain.   :(
We both learned a valuable lesson in all of this, we will NEVER refinish a hardwood floor ourselves again.

Ahhhh, all done.
I still have some decorating to do, but that always takes me a while because I
like to collect certain pieces, and then I'll eventually figure out where I want them to go.
And, we did not update any lighting yet, just FYI.
I thought bright white would be a nice color since the rooms are so small,
but now I'm thinking maybe a light beige would have been nice.
I may change that sometime. And, my dad will kill me when I do!

Ignore that contraption in the corner, that's a cat house Brian made for Eliot.
And, I left a piece of burlap on top of it, whoops.
I still need to kilz all the moulding because there is floor stain on it.
Once that is done we will put quarter round down throughout the house. 

The arm chair was his grandma's. It was the only one that was not totally
destroyed by the cats that lived with her (I say it like that because they were not her cats).
I like the chair, but I want to reupholster it sometime down the road.
And, I still need to paint that ugly door!