Stephen and I are not motivated workers. I've always wanted to have a house I can decorate how I want. And I've had one now for at least six years now. But there have always been things that HAD to be done that were not fun, pretty things. You know? Air conditioners, septic tanks, roofs, old carpets that cause asthma being pulled up. Much of this was given to us for free by Mom and Paul. And generally we do things like carpet pulling and painting ourselves, because we have more time than money. That's changing...our time is DEFINITELY decreasing as our homeschooled kids get older!!
Anyway, I used to update our mass changes, so I'm going to pick up where I left off 3 years ago. *sigh* We had finished painting the floors to avoid having to buy flooring. We finished the kids rooms. We patched the holes in the ceilings we had to cut to find our missing ferret. We had already pulled up wooden floors after water leaks (which we still haven't replaced.)
And then Mom and Paul offered us an interest free, no-due-date loan to get our showers replaced, because something was bothering our asthma and we thought it could be mold. I WISH I had a picture of our old nasty shower in mine and Stephen's old room, but I don't. It was tiny and NASTY.
The first picture shows the old shower/tub in the green family bathroom. It became VERY hard to clean and the previous owners had PAINTED the bottom of the tub white to make it look nicer :( The green bathroom we still haven't painted, but you can see the green tile.
after shower was removed....
Here it is now.
The blue one with the new brown shower was the master bath and it used to be beige, uncleanable and hideous. It had a pasted-to-the-wall single corner shower. And now....
We've also scraped the popcorn from the ceilings in the kitchen, living room, hallway and entryway, and painted the living room, hallway and entryway. Scraped ceiling pics are funky, because of all the dust it created. The kids were enthralled with the process and begged to help :)
The new paint job inspired the purchase of a red couch.
And recently, Stephen put up a rail. We tried to get multiple people to give us an estimate over the years, but when each person told us how much it was, by the time we saved up the money, they wouldn't show up or return our calls. We tried at least five people :( We went without a rail for several years, and I'm sure it was quite unsafe. This before pic is also before we painted living room and got the red couch. The after picture, I'm afraid, is still accurate since we have not painted the rail. But Stephen did a GREAT job putting it in! I'm so glad to have it!!
Also, as soon as Emilia's wedding was over, we buckled down and turned the old craft room into our bedroom and our old bedroom into Stephen's mom's bedroom, as she would be moving in within a few weeks!! This is what the craft room looked like several years ago after we thoroughly cleaned it. I didn't get a good recent before pic. It was MUCH worse than this and no longer had room for the bed. You see it has a huge door way, and behind those stacked blue baskets was a big wooden, tacky entertainment center installed in the wall. So that needed to be removed, turned into a closet door, and the room entry door needed to be narrowed.
So he pulled the entertainment center out of the wall.
Extended part of the hole to make a doorway for a closet under the stairs.
Closed in the rest of the hole.
Framed in the huge doorway to our room so he could make it a wall. And you see that big window in our wall that has no purpose? He ended up framing it in and putting a mirror on one side, with framed in plywood on the other side that we painted into a chalkboard for the playroom.
Now we have a regular doorway for a regular door into our bedroom.
Amy and Matt came over and helped us paint and hang doors. We also painted the bare concrete closet floor.
This is our room now. Though we're still working on stripping furniture and hanging wall decor. ( I grew up in a house with pale blue walls and bright purple doors, so this is nostalgic for me. ) I ADORE our new room!
So try your best to see past the pretty girl. This is what our old bedroom looked like, that we've fixed up for Nana. No matter where we've lived, I've never been able to have a pretty bedroom, because it always becomes the junk room. So this is the before pic for Nana's room. The beige walls had many gross mysterious stains.
This is after. We painted it green, it's her favorite color. She has changed it A LOT since she has come and bought her own furniture, so I will update soon.
The above are just SOME of the changes that have been happening at our house. One day, maybe we'll actually get to work on the OUTSIDE! But we feel very blessed that God has enabled us to fix things up. We know that a not-pretty house is merely a first world problem!
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