A Months Worth of Progress

Well we have made some serious progress over the last month!!!  In the last month we have decorated the living room and dining room completely!  Somehow I only got a picture of the dining room prior to plastic covering the whole house for the kitchen remodel.  Here is a picture of the dining room!

We used sort of the blue brown color scheme throughout the living and dining room

Now that picture leads in to the kitchen project.  We have removed that wall that leads into the kitchen and we will be doing a total kitchen remodel.  Like the bathroom we will completely change everything!!!!  We are flipping the appliances and ripping down the wall to create an open kitchen to dining room and adding a bar!  Here are some before pictures and they show how rough it looked!!!!!







Now in one day they have it all pulled out! 



And off it all goes!!!!



In a few weeks it will all be new and nice!!!!!  I will keep updating pictures!!!

We Have Windows!!!

Well haven't posted in awhile!  We have been out of town on an anniversary / Spring Break trip to Panama City to see Dodd (Brandon Dodd).  It was really really cold so not too much beach time but we were able to go deep sea fishing, eat some good seafood and do some shopping! 

Here was Brent's big catch fishing (disclaimer:  I am on the deck above so it doesn't look like a huge fish but it really was pretty big!).

Here is all the fish caught for the day!

In house news before we left our windows were installed!  Hullco did an awesome job and while I haven't seen the next power bill to see a lower cost I can tell a difference in the house of temperature.  Also they just look better and they are easy to clean....all exciting things!

Here are some pictures!

 

 

I used this picture of the front of the house to show the IMMEDIATE need for landscaping help :)

We will be working on this ASAP but a few things we hope to have done by the end of the week:

- Tile / Paint / Purchase shelves and clean laundry room

- Paint master bedroom

My goal is to have these done by the end of the upcoming weekend! 

6 Feet Of Glory!!!!!!

It's amazing how exciting you can be about a closet!  We have officially completed the closet in the master bedroom and it has really made a great difference!  It is 6 feet of glorious space compared to two feet before!   We have been able to remove the clothes rack we had in the bedroom and have (basically) all our clothes in our room.  I am going to give Brent some big credit here because he pretty much did it all and it saved us a ton of money from having to use a contractor!!!  Any thoughts in the crown molding?  We are doing it around the master bedroom but 8 feet is about $12 so we can't decide if it is worth it to do around the whole house.


Here is the after pictures of the closet  The doors and wall need to be painted but you get the idea.

Now we have to paint the room because 1) it is some ridiculous blue color I thought I liked and 2) the whole room needs a makeover.  Haha prior to this post I have shyed away from before pictures because well they were embarrassing but have decided to just show to whole truth and it will make after pictures more exciting.  So next weekend we are painting and we want to update the master by moving the furniture, adding crown molding and some new decorations.  Here is what it looks like now.

Haha you might notice the picture frame with the pictures in it from the store.  Maybe we should do something about that???  Also I hear adults have bed skirts on their beds.....

Looking forward to updating it a bit!!!!  I really don't know which way I want to go in here in terms of cutesy, trendy, plain, etc.  I tend to like a bedroom that is pretty boring and can't stand throw pillows but if somehow the room could look like this it would be great.  Here is my inspiration picture.

I showed Brent some of my "Pinterest" pins and got really excited because he agreed to attempt wainscoting somewhere in the house.  We are thinking the dining room.

In other fun project news we found cabinets and storage shelves for the laundry room.  Hopefully this week we will hear from Neal's brother to come do the tile in the laundry and room and we will totally remodel that room.  Here is the inspiration pic but we actually have a much larger space so we will have many more cabinets / storage units.

Also we should hear from Hullco this week about when our windows will be in and I expect we will have them installed sometime in the next two weeks!!!!

Hope everyone had a great St. Patty's Day!!!!

Projects, Projects, Projects

We seem to have a bunch of projects going on at the same time lately!  We are sort of all over the place doing a little in each room of the house.  It's weird I have felt lately like we haven't accomplished much because everything has sort of been chaotic, messy and some of the typical remodeling bumps have occurred along the way but we keep charging through!

The one project I wanted more than anything else was to create a larger closet in the master bedroom.  Anyone that knows old houses knows that they typically come with very small closets.  Ours was no different.  It had a two foot door but the closet was six feet wide so I needed to take adavantage of every square inch I could. 

Here is a before picture of the closet:

It was aggravating because you couldn't get anything in the back left and right of the closet.  This has sort of become a larger project than we thought in that we removed the whole wall and had to replace sheet rock and do a little more carpentry work than we first thought but honestly when it is done it will be totally worth it!  My contribution to this project was ensuring a closet organizer was purchased and Brent has been teaching me along the way!!!

Even before we were complete (considering we aren't even done as of now) I was so excited and I wanted to put the clothes in to see what it looked like and here is the glory of Brent and my clothes in the same closet!!!

They still don't all fit but it is SO much better now!!!! We are still not 100% done but getting closer!

Other projects we are working on now is cleaning out the carport.  Yes I said carport and yes I hate having a carport but it is much worse having a very very full carport of junk!  Basically the carport was a holding spot for things we didn't need and we had a back deck (many people wouldn't even know we had this because no one ever goes back there) that was full of just junk.  Most of this was stuff Brent had from before I even knew him and we just never touched because we never had anywhere to throw it all away but thank you city of Chattanooga for bringing us a dump truck. 

We had a dumpster delivered today and were able to get rid of a ton of JUNK!!!! 

Here is a few shots of how much junk needed to go!!!!

We also ripped out a bunch in the laundry room because we will have Neal's brother come put tile down and we will build new shelves out there to maximize space and storage needs.

We also completed some outside projects including cleaning out the gutters and pressure washing the front of the house but we still need to redo all the landscaping and somehow make a carport look acceptable.

This weekend I would like to work outside a bit and finish the closet in the master bedroom!

Keep on Keeping On

Well I haven't blogged over the last week because I spent a few days in Nashville for a Student Council conference followed by a few days in Murfreesboro for a School Counselor conference.  Had lots of fun and while I was away Brent also took some time away from home improvements!

So I have nothing new to show so I thought I would catch you up on some projects we had previously done!

We painted and flipped the living room.  Before we had a large sectional sofa and we had it positioned in a way we had to very separate rooms now we have one large room.  Here is the living room with no decorations.

As I have mentioned I am not a decorator so I am sort of waiting for divine inspiration to hit (translation - Cindy, Brent's Mom to come to the rescue).

Here are some things I have seen out I like but not sure how we can pull this room together.

I sort of want to go trendy with chevron like patterns in bold colors:
:

Brent tends to like more natural like patterns:

Currently it is just looks open and empty in here but our next project of all new windows is ordered / measured and waiting for installation!

We have original 1952 windows and they are awful, drafty and make for a large power bill!  We ordered them through Hullco and estimated installation is  mid March!  So excited about this and can't wait for them!  Here is a embarrassing picture of exactly why we are so excited for new windows!!!  Who has air conditioning units in their windows stilll!!!!

Next weekends project - We ordered a dumpster and will be organizing, cleaning, removing, trashing, etc!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Can't wait!!!

Second Bedroom

Our second project was completing our second bedroom.  In the past the second bedroom has been used as a storage room and has never really had a purpose.  Our house is pretty small so we used it for anything we didn't know where else to put so basically it was a MESS!!!!

 

I don't have a before picture but this is how it felt to me.....

 

 

 

We knew we wanted it to be a bedroom so we could have visitors so we started with a fresh coat of paint.  For basically the whole house we are going with biscuit (plain, bland, generic and hides imperfections in 1952 plastered walls like a pro!!!).  One thing to admit is prior to all these home renovations I have done 0 home repairs in my life so this was the first room I have ever painted!  Since this time I have become a pro!!! 

 

Another point to admit is I can't decorate to save my life.  I do enjoy Pinterest and pretending I know how to decorate but honestly everything I see I like in a store is adolescent girl chic so Cindy, Brent's mom came to the rescue and made this room look HGTV!

 

She found this one picture on sale at Hobby Lobby and planned the whole room around it.

 

 

The picture doesn't do it justice but it is sort of a yellow color with gray as well.

 

From there she basically found things and put this room together which is perfect and excited for anyone to come visit!

 

Finished Product

 

 

 

We still want to add something to the corners by the head of the bed but haven't found exactly what we want yet. 

 

Lynn and Kelly came to visit the weekend after we finished this project and it was great to have a place for visitors to sleep.  Previously they were sleeping on the couch so bet a new, warm, cozy bed was better!!!

 

Next project:  Living Room!!!!

 



Trying out this blogging thing......

One of my secrets joys of life has always been reading blogs and I thought it would be fun to document all of the changes we are making to the house in a blog!

 

Brent has owned his home since 2004 and in 2012 it became our home (well it became our home last week when our lazy butts finally put me on the deed).  As many of you know Brent has not done many "home improvements" over the years so we are taking on basically redoing, redecorating, or remodeling every room in the whole house!

All of this remodeling business started when we did the bathroom.  Most of y'all know but when Brent rented out the house when he lived in Maryville a dog was kept in the bathroom and basically ate the walls, base boards and door.  It was huge to get this done and once we felt accomplished we have been Lowe's weekend warriors ever since!!!!

Bathroom before - well mid rip out by the contractors - didn't get a before shot probably because I never want to remember how bad it was!!

Bathroom in the middle of being ripped out completely

Here are the after shots of the bathroom

It was awesome to get this done....even though with only having one bathroom having it out of commission while the contractors worked was NOT fun at all!!!! 

For this project we basically hired contractors to do the whole project.  They completed ripped out the whole bathroom and basically did everything from scratch!!  This project ended with new light fixtures, storage baskets, wall decorations, mirror and vanity!!

Now onto the second bedroom!!!