Before

It dawned on me that I've actually never posted most of our "before" pictures of the house. And you can't very well judge how wonderfully we renovate our house without the before pictures!

So here goes:

So this is the stairwell to the upstairs bedrooms. It kind of reminds of Home Alone when Macaulay Culkin gets banished upstairs for the night and subsequently gets left home alone! The plan is at some point to open up the right side of the stairwell to overlook the dining room. But that's like project number 1,987!

Ok, apparently this yellowish mantle was originally blue, like bright blue...yeah thank goodness the seller's realtor has enough sense to repaint that before listing it! Can you imagine those burgundy bookshelves with a blue mantle?

You can't see it too well in this picture but the burgundy is actually painted on top of that wood paneling stuff that was popular in the 60's-70's. Wood paneling is a big pet peeve for me, I don't know why I despise it so much but I do! Therefore the plan here it to tear that out and sheetrock the bookcases and mantle. We'll then need to paint the mantle so it doesn't look so unfinished. I really thought this area was going to drive me nuts but I have to say since we put pictures on the bookshelves and the TV on the mantle, it's not really that bad.

Here's the dining room and formal living room. There's not much to say about these rooms, they are a light rose color and there's nothing I really want to change here!

The best part about the dining room, the built in China cabinet. I seriously love this thing, it makes me feel fancy! But see that green paint on the walls of the cabinet, the whole room use to be that color....wow! Does it make anyone else feel like eating a sour apple jolly rancher?! Again, thank goodness the seller's realtor has enough sense to repaint that before listing it!

I really like this chandelier in the dining room but not really the green thing! That will be repainted, I promise! That will be the only change to the dining room.

The front door - one would think there wouldn't be anything to change, but alas the handle and lock were incorrectly installed. Oh yeah, upside down to be exact! We discovered this little problem when we bought new hardware and tried to change the locks. Good news, my awesome husband is a jack of all trades and made it work! And those pink post its are all the outlets that Brett has to ground because only about 5 outlets in this house are grounded. That electrical engineering degree Brett has is looking better and better! Seriously, he's the best!

Our formal living room, or the fancy room as I call it. And more outlets for Brett to ground.

Here is the view from the front door.

Here is the random hallway to the kitchen. The master bedroom and downstairs bathroom are off this hallway.

Side note, I love the detail work around the edges of the hardwood floors! Classy, right?

This is where things get weird. See that open door on the left, that's the bathroom with slate flooring. Don't worry things will get weirder in a minute...

And the "master bathroom," I know you're laughing! Ok, no natural light - not great, dark painted bathroom - that's BAD! Y'all some days I put make up on in here and get to work and realize I look like a china doll, no seriously it's bad! Back to the bathroom, white tile with black border and slate floors...not really sure what the plan was here but I'm going to assume it wasn't this. It's like a hodge podge of various styles. The plan here is to gut it and start over!

Hey - DIY network if you want a great episode of Bath Crashers, PLEASE call me!!! No, Seriously!

Did I mention they painted over wall paper?

The sink, cleaning this is the bain of my existence! And the bowl is so small. If you run the water for more than 15 seconds it's almost over flowing!

This is the master bedroom closet. It's not ideal but we have more than enough space for all our clothes - well, actually my clothes, shoes, and purses.

This is a cute little area at the top of the stairs - there is a bedroom on each side of this little playroom/sitting room area. The whole upstairs is wood paneling, acoustic ceiling tiles, and paster. The upstairs remodel is going to be serious undertaking. We are doing to tear down all the paneling, ceiling tiles, and plaster and then sheet rock. Don't worry there will be LOTS of posts about this project!

I love this little cubby area!

Here is one of the upstairs bedrooms. The rooms are actually quite big! Right now we have a queen size bed in one room and a king in the other and there's still tons of room.

More pictures of the bedrooms. I'm not sure how I feel about these angled ceilings but I'm sure I'll get use to them.

The back of the house. Look at those lovely awnings covered in mold - Brett has already taken on that project. A ladder, bleach, water, a hose and about 3 hours later they look as good as new!

The outside of the house needs a little TLC. Residing is one the top projects on our list.

The kitchen is in pretty good condition, of course I would LOVE new counter tops but these will suffice! And the tile backsplash is not my fave but it's definitely not bad to look at.

 More of the kitchen, it's so spacious. I love it!

The laundry area leaves a little to be desired but it's functional. The plan here is to take out the accordion doors, sheet rock the laundry area, and install better doors.

Our little dining nook area. We never use that door to the right of the nook area so we are contemplating tearing our the door and extending the wall and making a nice big bay window.

And we are back to the living room! I love that bay window that overlooks the backyard, it's probably one of my top 5 favorite things about this house. The french doors are beautiful too, however they have rotted on the bottom due to a water intrusion issue we are trying to resolve so they'll have to be replaced soon.

And that's the Before! Stay tuned for the After!

One Year

A year ago I woke up a married woman, it's crazy to think it's already been a year! I woke up and thought about the previous day, our wedding day. Every was perfect, even better than I could have ever imagined!

Today I woke up and thought about our wedding day, our friends, our families, and all the big events that have unfolded over the past year. We celebrated our first Thanksgiving and Christmas as newlyweds, my brother got married (woot woot!), we bought a house, moved in and started renovating said house. Obviously, that's the drastically simplified version, there were so many other moments and events, highs and lows but overall definitely the best year of my life. People always tell you that the first year is marriage the toughest and I never really understood why. I guess it's probably one of those things that you just don't understand until you've been there, but let me say it was tougher than I expected. Having said that, I wouldn't change a minute of it. I've learned so much about Brett, myself, and us as a couple. Sure, we will probably still argue of stupid stuff but I know that at the end of day I know I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

Here's to one year of wedded bliss and many more to come!

October 9, 2010

Honeymooning!

Our first Christmas

Cruising on the Disney Dream

Austin and Aubrey's wedding!

Nich & Sarah's wedding!

Wine and Cheese tasting for Ashley's Birthday

My first Auburn game - Auburn won in dramatic fashion!

Rolling Toomer's Corner!

One room done, a few to go!

I've been feeling very accomplished this week. We finally finished decorating one room in our house and I have to say I think it looks pretty darn good! Honestly, it's been 90% done for some time but it took me about a month to finally hang up the pictures in the living room. 

So without further ado, here is our living room!

We already had the furniture, thanks to some hand me downs and the rug really pulled it all together. Brett has always loved the green velvet sofas, I was skeptical but they actually are pretty cool. I mean really, who has olive green velvet sofas?? And the rug, well it was a steal - to say we got a deal on it, is an understatement. It had been a special order item that was returned. When I first saw it I thought it was cool but I wasn't really sold. I mean I really liked it but I was definitely on the fence about "needing" it. Thank goodness for my amazing husband that told me just to buy it. I think he was trying to avoid what I call a non-buyer's remorse moment - you know when you see something you like and then you sit on it for too long...yeah that's non-buyer's remorse. And since we've already had a few of those moments he decided to preemptive move was needed.  

Here's a closer look at the rug, it's very different but it has a pretty cool color scheme!

 

Here was my previous non-buyer's remorse moment, an another awesome area rug. I fell in love with this one the minute I saw it but since it was a little out of my price range, I decided to stalk it on potterybarn.com until it went on sale. My plan failed, the rug sold out online before it went on sale. I was definitely bummed! Poor Brett had to hear about it for days! Then with a little luck our local store still had one in stock and thanks to a no sales tax weekend and 10% off coupon from Pottery Barn, I got my rug!

You'll notice Shelby has made the rug her personal toy and bone repository. I lost the battle of wills about this being a dog free rug. Yeah, who was I kidding with that idea?!

In other random news we finally got a flag pole for the front of the house. For some reason having a flag pole on the front of the house is one of Brett's favorite ideas. He even went to the trouble of finding this very fitting and festive flag for Halloween...

One Lazy Weekend

Last weekend started off slow. We took Shelby for a walk, I made a list of errands to run, washed windows, and Brett's only "big" project was to hang pictures inside the house and/or install outside motion sensor lights. I figured we'd divide and conquer the chores and have a nice relaxing afternoon.

After I got back from the grocery store Brett tells me he now owns a ladder. My response is the following string of questions: What happened? Did you go buy one? Did you break the one Wes let you borrow? Did Wes tell you to keep the ladder? Well you can imagine my confusion when the answer to all those questions is no! Brett being the resourceful/lucky individual he is actually found the ladder under our house. He then tells me, "You're really going to like this ladder it's an antique!" Not sure "antique" is really the key term one should use in describing a ladder. But he was right, the ladder looks surprisingly sturdy! 

After I admired Brett's newest toy, I headed inside to unpack groceries. About an hour later I head outside to find this...

Brett has decided to dig out the tree root that is under the driveway and thus forcing the corner of the driveway to be raised about 4.5 inches. I still really don't know why he decided to take this project on but nonetheless it has begun. I think it all really started with curiosity and then he just couldn't stop digging! The theory was dig out all the tree root and gravity would take care of the rest and we would have a level driveway. Brett spent all Saturday and Sunday afternoon digging out the tree root. The neighbors came over multiple times to check the progress and were pretty impressed with his dedication.

I feel like the pictures speak for themselves.

You can see a little progress is made, a very small piece of the root is missing

I TRIED to help, in a sundress and all! I get points for style, right?

More progress, this is hour 3 of operation - Level Driveway

I think he really just wanted to play in the mud all day...

I had to walk with this mess to the hardware store to buy a shovel....Yes I know we are home owners we should already own a shovel.

Shelby offering her assistance

4.5 hours into the project

Now THAT'S progress!

Shelby was very intrigued by all this bark that just kept appearing 

We don't even need to buy firewood!

No joke, that's one piece of bark that we/Brett pulled out from under the driveway!

Everyone notice that car jack in the lower right of this picture...no idea what Brett was planning to do with it!  Anyway, moving on...the next few pictures made me a little nervous mostly because I expected the driveway to slowly start sinking and leveling itself out. Thank god that didn't happen, Brett managed to dig out enough of the tree root that he was able to stick his entire arm under our driveway...

The driveway has now settled about 2 inches and has about another 2.5 to go in order to be truly "level" but it definitely looks better! We decided to speed up the settling process by using a hose and a pressure nozzle to force some of the dirt under the driveway to loosen up and level itself.

We estimated it would cost about $7,000 to jackhammer and haul away the old driveway and pour concrete for a new driveway. This project's grand total so far is $37.18; $27.18 for the shovel and $10 for the pressure nozzle (plus Brett's labor, but he says he loves this stuff so we won't consider that a cost!) Not bad for a lazy weekend, right?