After owning our new house for exactly one week here’s where we are at:
I sold this recliner sofa that came with the house for a whopping $25. It was stained and sagged badly.
I also made $25 off of this bad boy we inherited in the basement. Thankfully the buyers hauled it out of there.
After getting rid of the sofa it was time to attack the wood floors. Our goal is to eventually redo the floors throughout the house, but these were in bad shape. I used the same stuff Young House Love recommended called “rejuvenate” and it really did rejuvinate the floors! Now I just need to find a nice big rug I like.
My next job was to take care of the disgusting carpets. Like I mentioned we would like to re-do all the floors, but that’s not in the budget for now, so I had to settle for shampooing the carpet. I learned an important lesson. NEVER shampoo your carpets. I rented the cleaner, and bought the shampoo for $80. Then I spent 10 hours on shampooing the entire house, only to find out that the professionals would have only charged $120 and they probably would have gotten more stains out than I did. And I wouldn’t have sore wrists and have wasted 10 hours that I could have spent painting. Lesson Learned.
Next up was painting the ceilings. They were an ugly yellow color and you can see here what a difference it made to paint them white.
Next up came the crown molding. You can see here that when they put up the crown in this house they pretty much cut it and stuck it up there and called it quits after that. So we caulked and painted it and now it looks like it is meant to be there.
Once the crown and ceilings were taken care of it was time to lighten up all the walls from the tan/brown color they were to a nice neutral greyish beige. Here you can see the contrast of the two colors. I LOVE how much brighter the walls are with the new color.
Here’s the living room all painted with my $30 of thrift store end table finds! Of course I snuck in a quick trip to the thrift store during my paint-a-thon. Three awesome mid-century wood end tables for $10 a piece! I can’t wait to see how they look with the rest of our furniture.
Along with the living room the kitchen really needed a lighter brighter color. The red was dark and dingy, even though the rest of the kitchen is beautiful.
This is what the kitchen currently looks like, but it’s on it’s way to being bright and neutral. I’m waiting on Matt to paint the upper red portions. Also don’t mind the mis-matched stools. Those are temporary.
My next goal was to get the boys room ready. First was the ceilings.
Then I got to work on two dressers and a bed that I had picked up for a total of $13 at auctions. The boys have a tiny closet so I needed to get these taken care of before we moved so that I had somewhere to put their clothes. I painted them with Annie Sloan’s Aubusson Blue Chalk Paint and I LOVE them!
I also got the boys room painted the same color as the living room and just today moved their beds. We’re actually sleeping here tonight and their room is the most put together in the whole house. Which isn’t saying much.
Then came the master bedroom. Away went all of the curtains throughout the house. Possibly prematurely because now we’re living in a fishbowl.
Every inch of the master got a coat of paint It was scratched up, dingy and brown along with multiple holes that required patching. Now it’s a nice airy gray and I got all the holes patched.
Matt was busy trying to eliminate the huge evergreen bush and the foot of the driveway.
He’s made a lot of progress, but we’ve still got even more roots to get out. After battling evergreens at two houses now, I don’t think we’ll ever plant an evergreen bush.
So one week later we have done a TON of work, and we still have a TON left to do. I absolutely couldn’t have accomplished so much without the help of great friends. Sarah who took the boys to the park while I scrambled to get the house showing ready. Bri who came and painted the boys furniture with me. Maria who came to paint the master with me. Lisa who picked Jack up from school and had him over for a whole afternoon. And Tara who took the boys for the whole afternoon today while I painted and shuffled stuff. Seriously God has given us such good and supportive friends here in Dickinson and they are what makes this place great.
Tonight we hauled our mattress over here and we are “camping out”. The boys are sleeping and Matt and I are sitting on camp chairs on our computers. The internet did get disconnected at the old house today, and hooked up here, which made “camping out” much more enticing!
