this is bennett I WANT YOU ALL TO KNOW THAT I HAVE A LOOSE TOOTH I AM 6

Before and After- Living Room

The living room is right off the entryway of the house. We went with a darker color on the walls than the entryway. I think it makes it look a little more formal. We put in a darker color hand scraped laminate wood floor. We debated hardwood, but we had it in our last house and our kids destroyed it. Hopefully the laminate will be a little more durable. The darker color wood and the shine it has to it was probably a big mistake. I am a mad woman with the Swiffer constantly trying to eradicate the dust the floor shows, but they look good :)

BEFORE
The original room had wallpaper, popcorn ceilings, parquet floors, and no overhead light. It does have a nice big picture window which was hard to enjoy with such heavy curtains.



Bennett scraping the ceilings


That is a hole in the wall that it shares with the laundry room. They had had a leak that we didn't know about until Jeromy found biological growth (mold!) on the drywall.



Some of the flooring was damaged in the living room from the moisture, so we decided to replace it. Jeromy didn't appreciate the parquet floors anyway. At this point, we decided just to replace the family room flooring too, so that it would all match. What's another 300 square feet anyway ;P



After
Some friends gave us a piano when we moved, and Bennett has really been enjoying playing it. We are going to start him with lessons soon. We also put in recessed lighting which has made a huge difference. I love light!

Before and After- Entryway

Jeromy finished the baseboards and wood work around the dining room and living room openings this weekend, so he's going to kill me for posting pictures of the unfinished work, but I had already taken the pictures last week because the house was clean :)

We retiled the entryway mainly because we wanted to tile the kitchen, and we didn't like the current tile. Our original plan was to remove the wood laminate flooring in the kitchen and move it to the dining room, but we ended up wanting to match the flooring in the dining, family and living rooms. I had a rough time finding a tile we liked. Jeromy really likes modern decor, and I don't. He wanted dark, slate grey rectangular tile, and fortunately we couldn't afford that, so I went on a hunt to find a tile that looked more modern than the normal marble-look. I had a love at first sight moment with a tile that had a pattern on it that almost looked like fabric. It was a mixture of grey and blue and green with black lines on it. Jeromy wasn't too sure about it in the beginning and after it went in, I wasn't too sure about it, but I really am happy with it now.

One of the main problems with the house when we bought it was that it was soooooooo dark. The lighting was bad and the wall colors were really dark. It reminded me of a cave, and I am a person that needs alot of light. My mood depends on it!

I thought I was going to go with a color match of Restoration Hardware's Silver Sage, but it looked too dark for us. I ended up going with Sherwin Williams Sea Salt in the entryway, hallway, kitchen and family room, one shade darker in the dining room and two shades darker in the living room. I was so worried it would look too minty, like a bad 90s mint green, but it turned out how I had hoped. It looks green sometimes, blue others, and more grey in the evenings. I am very happy with it.


BEFORE




DURING



AFTER




The baby kept following me around the house as I was taking pictures, so you'll see her pop in the pics here and there.

Long Time No Blog

I can't believe it has been two and a half months since I have blogged, but that's what it says! Most of you know that we sold our house, bought a new one and spent 5 weeks renovating it before we moved in. Life has been going at warp speed! For those of you that didn't know that, i'll give you a little background information. We had been living in a little 1200 square foot house for over a year that we bought to keep as a rental. The market in starter homes went up so much here that we decided to sell it to help us get into a bigger house more quickly. We searched for several months for a new home to fit our needs but had a hard time finding anything. We wanted over an acre with a 2400 square foot home that was either a rambler or a tri-level. We finally found one that we couldn't afford, but it had been on the market for almost a year, so we gave them a VERY low offer. They were slow in responding because they were hoping another offer would come in, and it did in the 11th hour. We got to looking again and decided to put an offer on a house that was a short sale (the owners owed the bank more than the house is worth.) It is a 6 bedroom 3 1/2 bathroom, 3200 square foot rambler (yay, no stairs!) on .68 of an acre. We knew this would be a long process, but we were in no hurry and weren't going to put our house on the market until we went into escrow on the new one (houses on our street were getting contracts within a week so we didn't want it to sell until we were ready).

It was really hard to go for several months without getting "attached" to the house because there were no guarantees that the house was ours. We didn't do much planning or anything. The house became a short sale because the owners took out a bunch of money on the house to renovate it. Unfortunately, the hubby didn't do a very good job and the house was quite a mess.

As far as short sales go, ours was pretty quick. We went under contract in mid-October and got the keys the very end of December. Jeromy took 2 weeks off of work and, with the help of some wonderful people from church, dedicated himself to some sweat equity. The house had a gutted hall bathroom when we bought it, so our plan was to re-texture and paint the interior, tile the entry and kitchen, re-carpet the bedrooms and put in the new hall bathroom. What we ended up doing is a whole other story. I don't know how many times we said, "Well, a is already ripped out, so we might as well replace b as well." The process of scraping all the walls, retexturing, and painting the house took my dad (he's a painting contractor) and a boy from church we hired, 3 weeks. We ended up replacing all the flooring in the house, re-doing the 1/2 bathroom, buying new appliances, putting in all new baseboards, replaced all the doors with trim, garage door openers, recessed lighting in 4 rooms, some window coverings, fixed the leaky roof etc. etc. etc. We basically did everything but a few things we have to save up for next. We still want to replace a few old windows, redo the master bathroom, and paint the exterior. All of the trim work and doors need to have the nail holes filled, be caulked and painted, but that has to wait until we go out of town. Our kitchen island is going from brown to black too, but oil based paint is stinky!

It is amazing how much the house has changed in such a short time. I plan on posting some before and after pictures, so check back soon.