Underfoot

As you may have noticed from the last couple posts, the floors in the house were pretty dated and kind of gross. To top it all off, the living room carpet was blue.

  

 

Since we'd already been exposed to all kinds of gross stuff and cleaning chemicals. For our own sanity, we opted not to do the removal ourselves. Also, prior to the floor installs, we painted as much trimwork as we possibly could...with three coats. Using Floetrol to avoid brush strokes, but I think that equaled out another coat. We definitely should have bought a paint sprayer.

  

After getting a few quotes, we decided to do hardwoods in the main traffic areas and carpet in the bedrooms. Honestly, I hate having cold feet when I wake up in the morning sooooo carpet in the bedrooms won out. Eventually we'll go back with hardwood, but for now carpet was a more rea$onable choice. We went with a dark brown bamboo (yes, they're brown; we just have a severe lack of natural light), and we LOVE them. BUT, they are the hardest thing to keep clean. 

Verchota did the install, and they did an amazing job. The carpet & pad we picked out are also super soft and easy to clean (from ProSource and installed in half a day by a guy named Roger). Apparently elephants can live on the carpet for weeks and after a good cleaning it's just like brand new (per their marketing dept). 

Oooohhh so pretty

Mmm squishy, soft, new carpet = LOVE.

The floors went down the week before we moved, since we were trying to get as much done as we could prior to moving in. We also painted my office since, ya know, I had to work. My desk is huge and we didn't want to have to move it around to paint.

the wall with windows is painted (I swear) pink with glitter  

Hallelujah for some color on the walls!

We Bought A House! Now, Where Do We Start?

So, after our offer was accepted, we kept waiting for something to snag and delay closing. But, by some miracle everything went smoothly! On February 28 around 1pm, we signed all the paperwork were homeowners! Then, we headed to the house to get organized and started.

We were instantly overwhelmed.

Luckily we have amazing friends + family who came over that first weekend and helped take down blinds, doors and pull up carpet. Oh, and CLEAN.

Literally the first thing to come down were all the thick, room-darkening blinds. Literally: the night we closed on the house they were down.

Let there be LIGHT!

You can see our saving grace's box in the bottom-left corner - the Shop Vac. I don't know what we would have done without him. I guess we knew what we were getting into. 

The guys pulled up the carpet in the Sunroom, took down the wonky, unsafe banister, and removed the duct-taped plastic from the windows. 

Smell-B-Gone

The amount of cleaning that went down was unheard of. The kitchen and bathrooms were tackled by my amazing Mom, MIL and sister. They touched things you don't want to know about, I promise.

Other notable things from that first weekend:

Hall bath fixture came down --
Mmmm hot pink walls + wallpaper

Brass shower doors came down and those huge
TP and towel racks were pulled off (= huge holes)

Teenage girls, 'nuff said.

And one more that we had a ton of help with, but was a BIG step in the right direction:

Foyer wallpaper DOWN!

To this day if I smell Downy I get anxious and nauseous. Oh, and someone stole the basketball goal. We rolled up Sunday morning and noticed. Oh well, no biggie. By the end of Sunday we were exhausted, but HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY! And extremely thankful for everyone's help. Then, we went home and slept like rocks.

So we've been a little MIA lately...

Why? Because...

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!

This pic was taken right after we closed; not actually how it looks now

She's fixer-upper, that's for sure. We've been doing projects left and right for the past four months. And when I say "we," I mean all of our friends, family, me and P. The yard looks beautiful and green, the beds are mulched, bushes are trimmed, light fixtures changed out and oh yeah - someone stole the basketball goal literally the next day after this pic was snapped. That's just a short list. 

Here are a few pics of the inside pre-everything. Notice how dark the rooms are...that's because they hung 2" thick vertical blinds on every. single. window. in. the. house. Ugh. These pics were taken during our first walk-through:

Dining Room into Living Room and Foyer
Or "3 different types of floor in one shot"

Dining Room (yes, a ceiling fan
and it was g-r-o-s-s)

The Foyer's swanky floor & wallpaper!

Hall Bathroom

Kitchen was still totally 70s

Master Bath 

Living Room (door opens into Sunroom)

Living Room

Master Bedroom (no, not our stuff)

Sunroom; was used as extra living space

Mudroom cabinet area (sadly, the pumpkin
didn't come with the house)

Nowadays, the house looks nothing like these old pics. Almost everything in the house has been replaced and/or has a fresh coat of paint (or three). I'm excited to show everything to you! More posts to come!

xo,

C