What a difference a coat of paint makes

This weekend was another busy weekend at the house. My father-in-law has been in town for almost 2 weeks, and he has helped out with the painting. Ok, who am I kidding, he has done the majority of the painting. Painting in general is not a small task, but when you are painting the entire house, it's a HUGE task. We did have a bit of a hiccup with the paint, so lets just say that we all will be happy when it's all finished.


This is what the kitchen looked like when we bought the house. After this week, this is what it looks like now....


Sorry I didn't get the same picture of it, but you get the jist of it. The blue goes all the way around the kitchen behind the appliances and to the ceiling. The color combination turned out better than we thought it would.

Here's the other side of the kitchen. Notice the stack of hard wood that is sitting in it?? That project will hopefully start sometime this week.




This was the upstairs sitting room when we bought the house. After some love and a little bit of color, this is what it looks like now...

Amazing what a little color will do to lighten up an area isn't it? This color is really bright, but it offsets the two kitchen colors and the entry way color very nicely. Speaking of entry way...


Remember this awful looking entry way?? Well you should see it now....


This is what it looks like after one coat of paint. We still need to put on the second coat. Remember that paint hiccup I mentioned earlier...well that is pretty much what we have been dealing with through out this entire process. Oh well, what's one going to do about it???

See how nicely the colors set each other off. Like my mom always said, it's amazing what a new coat of paint can do for a room. Looks totally different doesn't it???

Of course we couldn't forget about the bathrooms that were upstairs. This is the secondary bathroom. For those of you who have been following all this progress, you will remember that we couldn't see to get this toilet to stop leaking. Well as of today, I have good news. It is FINALLY fixed!! I was afraid that we were going to have to buy a whole new toilet, especially since I had head the rumblings of taking it out back and blowing it up a few times. But this is what it looked like originally. Here's the new and updated look....


I do believe that trading the pinky color for this purple was the right thing to do.

Here's the master bathroom, before we signed the deed for the house....

Here is what it looks like today. We decided that since our room was so dark, it would be a good idea to go with a lighter color for the bathroom. I know gray can be dark, but it sets off the green very nicely.

So this has been a very busy week and weekend. We owe most of the progress to family and friends that have been so generous with their time to come out and lend a hand where ever they were needed. It's because of them that we have made as much progress as we have. Life is good and we are blessed. So to all of those who have helped, we say thank you. If it weren't for you, not all of this would be done.

We have color!!!

So this weekend was all about color. We finally got things together and started to get some colors on the wall. We at first we started with the primer, not that it's alot of color, but it's a start...


Now painting an entire house is no small task. We were fortunate enough to have some professional help come to assist us. Of course, he is all business and is very task oriented. He keeps mumbling something about his union, but I'm not entire sure what that is all about.

Here is hard at work. He's got one room done at this point, and only 7 more till he's finished.

We had a tremendous amount of help today. It's times like this that we really feel the love of our family and friends. It was because of their help in putting in a long work day, that we got everything done that we did today.







What a great weekend it was. As you can see we made some huge progress in making this house our home. It's amazing what a little coat of paint, and some color can do for a house.

On Friday while the weather was nice, I finished cleaning up the back yard, so we could put some grass seed down.

Now it looks like a yard instead of one huge mess. The ivy still has to be dealt with, but that will all come in time.

Yard waste anybody??

One of the biggest concerns was the trees in the back yard. They were so covered with ivy when we bought the house, that we weren't sure they were going to make it this spring, even if we did get all the ivy off of them.

Yea!! We have buds on our trees!! This makes me so happy. We really wanted this trees to make it through this remodel process. That way our backyard can be enjoyed to it's fullest!

All in all we had another great weekend, and even though we worked hard, at times we were goofing off just as hard. We had to follow our professional's example that he set for us.


It was a great weekend filled with hard work, fun, family and friends. Man life is good. We are sooo blessed!!

Prep work, prep work.

Oh how I love prep work....its the type of work that is a necessity for the real work to get done, but most of the time it's work that no one really wants to do, or no one really notices when it is done. That's what this weekend was, a prep work weekend. We were really hoping to have all the prep work done, but it hasn't been that way. So this is what we spent most of the weekend doing.


Yup, we were patching drywall. I went through and removed what hardware was left, and then Mike came behind me and patched drywall. I even learned how to do it as well.

Pretty exciting stuff, I know. While we were eating lunch on Saturday, I made the comment that it didn't seem like we were making any progress on the house, even though I know we are, but it's because we are doing all the prep work, that things just don't seem to be moving along.

We had a little bit of a surprise on Friday night. After spending the evening working on the house, I was in the middle of doing laundry when the dryer in the house we are renting decided to go out. Of course that is when it happens, when there is a load in there, and one in the washer. So after realizing that the one we bought wouldn't fit in the house we are renting, we decided that we would move both the washer and dryer out to our house, since we are spending all weekend out there, and that is when we do most of our laundry. So I finally got to use the brand new dryer that my sweet husband bought for me before we owned a house to put it in. Good thing we did things like that.



One thing that should have been an easy fix when we bought the house, but has been everything but, is one of the toilets. It went from just needing to replace the guts of it, to pretty much replacing everything but the actual porcelain, which at this point looks like we've should have done in the first place.



Now all this prep work is for the fact that we need to get paint on the walls. I did get started with that today. I started in our bedroom, since the ceiling in it has been painted and is no longer white.


And here it is after one coat of paint. Turns out that I ended up putting it on a bit thin and had to go back and apply a second coat. Learn something new everyday.


Even with the first coat of paint on the ceiling, it looks like a totally different room, don't you think?

Now the color that we have picked out for our room requires a tinted primer to make sure that the color is as true as it can be. I started to cut in around the molding after I painted the ceiling, and Mike decided that he would help roll some of the room.

We didn't get the room finished, but we did get two of the four walls done, so that was a good stopping point. The nice thing about this room is that we are painting all the molding and trim, so it didn't matter if we got either the ceiling paint or the primer on anything, since we will just paint over it. Made things super easy!

Now it's nice to see that we are indeed making progress, even though we have been all along.

Stair Day Take Two

Today there was thing on our mind that needed to get done....the stairs. Micah came out today and finished up the stairs and rails. This a major step in the remodel process, since it's starting to look more like our home instead of the home that was bought.

We had be trying to decide if we wanted to have wooden balusters or iron ones. I always thought that the iron ones would look much nicer, especially against the colors we have chose, but they were quite a bit more expensive then what we wanted to spend. Then comes along deal maker Micah. He had found some iron balusters that he would sell to us for half price, so of course we jumped on the option to have iron balusters.

In order to help speed up the process Mike helped Micah cut the balusters.


Now cutting solid iron balusters is very very loud, and it's hard to be anywhere near the saw.


Taking a quick break to pose for the camera. Love the ears don't you?? He is such a goof at times, but he always can make me chuckle. Silliness!!

The rails are up!!

The finished product....well almost. We still have to sand and stain the oak, but that won't happen until we are ready to put in the floors, so for now, this is as good as it's gonna get.

The view once you walk into the house.


So pretty, don't you think?

It was a very productive day. We accomplished the major project that we wanted to, plus made head way on some of the smaller ones around the house. Things are coming along quite nicely.

Do you know Tread and Riser??

Until this today, we didn't either. But our good friend Micah introduced us to Tread and Riser. The main project for this weekend it to refinish the stairs and put in the balusters and railings that go with them.

Mike and Micah wasted no time before they got to work on the stairs. When I got there this morning, this is what I walked into.

Makes it kind of difficult to walk up the stairs when they look like this. It was bad enough without any railings or walls to hold on to, but this one takes the cake.


Here is the mid way finished project....all brand new treads and risers. The treads are unfinished red oak hard wood, which will match the floors perfectly.

A view from the front door.

Of course what you do to one set of stairs, you need to do to the other one. Here are the boys hard at work getting the second set of stairs prepped for their new treads and risers.


The downstairs at the halfway point in their remodeling process. Looking pretty good if I do say so myself.

For those of you who are wondering if I am actually taking part of this remodeling project, besides taking pictures and outside work, these next few pictures are for you.

See I can have fun with power tools as well.

While all this fun and cool stuff is happening inside the house, I was still picking a battle with the ivy in the back yard. Many of you will remember what it looked like when we bought the house, but in case you don't, here's a reminder of what it did.


This was the first day we started on the ivy project, and when I say project, that is what I mean. This is by no means a small task. It's going to take several weekends to get all this cleaned up. But I did make some progress today, so it helps with the massive task at hand, to know that I have one small area cleaned up.

Can we say yeah for progress?? I know it doesn't look like it should have taken that long to get to this point, but let me tell you, ivy is a force to be messed with. Some of the root balls that I pulled out of the ground were massive. One down, only two more tree areas left...

Before we called it a day, the guys made some more progress on the stairs. They got on the pieces that we will eventually attach the balusters and the railings to.

So far we've had a very productive weekend. Hopefully tomorrow will give the same results!

When the walls come tumblin' down....

Well, they didn't come tumbling down, but they sure did come down. Today was mostly a day of demo work inside the house. This is what things looked like when we started this morning....

Mike wasted no time, he was very eager to get this wall to come on down.

We even got Robert to get in on the demo fun. Here he is with some of his fine handy work in removing this half wall to open up the foyer.

It might not be the straightest lines, but when you are cutting dry wall to remove a wall, it doesn't really matter how straight the cuts are, especially when it's just preliminary cuts to remove the dry wall sheets.

No dry wall, and studs exposed..

Now that the studs are gone, and the dry wall is trimmed down, it's almost ready for the rails that are going to be going there.

A view from the kitchen

These two walls were also tackled today. We didn't get them finished like the other one, but we did make a good amount of progress on them....



Even though today was pretty much about demo, it's still a good idea to clean up after yourself, that way no one gets hurt when they walk through the construction area.






Even the girls are enjoying this time at the new house. The weather has been beautiful this weekend, and they are enjoying it to the fullest.

One weekend of home remodel in the books, only several left!!