Renovations #2

The living room. Under the carpet in most of this house is wood. A real nice wood floor. Back in the day, it was common to put carpet over the top of wood. That made things a little easier for us. We ripped out the carpet and then had the wood floors underneath refinished. That was the biggest change to the living room. We also took down the 30 year old curtain rods that were stretched across the 12 foot windows. So we completed the crown modeling above the window and added some nice dark curtains to accent the rest of the room. The last things we did was paint. We decided to add an accent wall as well. All in all, this was one of the easier rooms that we worked on, but one of the rooms that underwent the biggest changes.

You can see we used to have 2 sets of blinds to cover the window. The walls were a light tan color. We had to put our entertainment center up on the fireplace while we worked on the floors, we couldn't get it out of the room.



The finished version. You can see the curtains we added for the windows. We also added a nice area rug and this is a good view of the accent wall.



Good view of what we did with the entertainment center, I do have to give the credit to Jeff, it was his idea. I was ready to destroy it just to get it out of the room.



Finished version. You can see the contrast of the wall colors, we were pretty happy with how they turned out.





Check out our previous Renovations posts to see other rooms.

Ellie gets her hair cut!

So Ellie has had plenty of trims, but it was definitely time for a cut so before church yesterday I chopped off her crazy locks. She looks so much older!
Before:
After:

Also funny...after church we asked the kids to change out of their Sunday clothes so that we could go to grandma & grandpas, and this is how they came out....Josh in mis-matched camo and church socks, Ellie in camo capris that were way too small, and 2 crazy mis-matched shirts with flowered sandals, and Sam in one of Josh's shirts and khakis!

PRAY4US

This past October we went to St George to watch Matt's brother run the St George Marathon. (Way to go Scott!) After the race we saw this driving instructor's car and loved the personalized license plate! I wonder if these poor kids realize why all the folks in the cars around them are laughing all the time...

Renovations

So here it is, Friday again, and we haven’t posted this week! What slackers! Quick recap for the week...Josh celebrated the 100th day of school this year - only 80 more. Mom is so sad! We have gotten more and more snow...can’t think of a time when we have had to shovel everyday. Why does the winter wonderland have to come after Christmas? I am still muddling through these issues with my health. Thanks for the prayers, they are much appreciated. And thanks for all of the birthday cards and calls – they were very sweet.

On to the renovations… the house we live in has been in Matt’s family for close to 50 years. His mom grew up here. It is a great house full of functional things like a special vacuum closet, and lots of great drawers/cabinets. Last fall we decided to spruce up these plaster walls with a new coat of paint, and the project grew from there. When it got to the point where we couldn’t live here anymore we moved in with Matt’s wonderful parents. Weeks turned into months, and we painted every wall / piece of trim in the house, ripped out the carpet in the living room, hall, and master bedroom, re-tiled 2 bathrooms, and so much more. We have decided that we’ll post pictures and descriptions room by room, and tonight I’ll start with the hall bathroom.
This room was a huge challenge, and in my opinion was the biggest transformation.
We started by ripping out the floorboards, the tile, and then the hardwood flooring underneath that. (The toilets were out in the living room for 3 weeks because we did both bathrooms at the same time.) We also ripped out the counter top, medicine cabinet, and smashed out mirrors that lined 3 walls.









The orange tabs on the walls are the adhesive that once held the mirrors, 12 of them to be exact! (This bathroom was once the domain of 4 teenage girls...they each had a 'station'!)
We are so happy with this bathroom now. It has new tile, paint, counter top, & mirror. We also added higher baseboards, a cute little towel rack that i stained, and pretty new curtains.