Hi there! We've had an overwhelming amount of requests to see before and afters pics of our house. Unfortunately, I was in such a hurry to get started working, that we didn't take any before pics. I KNOW I KNOW...shame on me. But I'll give you a verbal walk through of what it looked like before...and you can just see the afters. I didn't prep any of the rooms for photography, so you have to take them as they are. Here goes:
The outside of our lovely brick home.
The living room used to be painted a very very dark midnight blue, with brown trim. We've repainted the walls (taupe), trim and door jams (white), fireplace insert (black), and started decorating. Notice Sunny (our dog). She had to run with me to every room to be in the pictures. Cracked me up!!
The master bedroom used to be painted a sports theme with black and green walls. There was a soccer field on one wall, different balls painted everywhere, and the words 'score' on another wall (which I think Lee secretly wanted to keep up there...but we didn't). It, too, is now a nice neutral taupe color with white trim. We added wood floors where particle board resided before. We barely made our new bed squeeze in the room.
The girls room was a dark red barn-room. It really was cute, but not for us. So out with the barn and in with the pink and green, accented with flower wallpaper border. They share this canopy bed that was my mothers bed growing up. Oh yeah..."Hi Sunny".
The playroom gives lots of room for play and adventure. We painted and added the carpet.
The girls each have their own shelves for toys, and lots of community ones too. I also created 5 canvas artworks for the walls and sewed some non-functioning curtains together.
"Domestic I am." (said in a Yoda voice.)
The dining room is the same old taupe with white trim. They left this HUGE table, so we're using it. I painted the top black to help it look better. A family of 11 lived here before us, so there's lots of room to eat. (We can really entertain now. )
We've painted the kitchen (walls and woodwork), replaced the pull knobs, and added extra shelving ... but it could still use some work.
The schoolroom is a great little place we can go and do school, finger-paint, draw, read, etc.
Lee's office. He built that desk up high so he can stand up and work. It's really pretty cool. I also conned him into letting me set up a scrapbooking table in there (should I ever get around to scrapbooking. I'm running out of excuses. )
The guest room/exercise room. And, the ONLY room we haven't painted yet. You get a feel for how the rest of the house looked by this paint color choice. "hi Sunny...again"
So there's a run down on a lot of the cosmetic work we've done. We've also had the house re-wired, built a fence, had the joy of learning drywall (after we flushed the toilet upstairs and had the ceiling fall in downstairs), figured out and trenched a new drainage plan so that our basement would NOT flood every time it rained, replaced windows, put in a new garage door, etc.etc. Really...the list is long... but it's been rather fun (and educational).
An extra bonus to the house is that it's built like a bomb shelter. Literally. All the interior walls are made of cinder block. That's great in case of natural disaster...but a real bummer when hanging pictures! Lee has to drill a 1/4" hole and put in a lead anchor anywhere I think I want a picture. Needless to say, we won't be re-arranging much in this house.
That's all I have to report today. Hope you enjoyed the tour. For real life pictures...come visit!!!
