It's amazing what a few walls and red carpet can do.

We are officially out of Demo phase and now into crap we have to put this all back together phase. Okay I have to do a before and after comparison because I'm tripping out with our progress. So far we have gotten all the walls out, cabinets and sofit removed in kitchen, all the popcorn ceiling scrapped (even the painted ones in the living room), all old carpet removed and new carpet in the back rooms, french door created in office, electricity is 85% complete and our new hvac system is scheduled out. We are making choices on the fireplace (deciding what we are doing still) but everything else is ordered and waiting completion. Okay now for the pictures!

Before                                                      After

 The office/playroom off to the left. 

 The rubble which is finally cleaned up (it took me forever to get it all up and I even hired out my nephew to help)

 

Before

 

 After

 

Opposite view 

Before:

After: (I of course took this photo before I cleaned the kitchen - which ended up being my last task yesterday)

And just because I am in love with my new carpet.

Still need to paint the bedrooms (sigh) but its amazing what you can do in a day.

That's it folks!

Our to do's for phase 1

I have the biggest list ever for our to do's on this house. And I will probably even post a 'complete' list of my ideas one of these days but here is phase one - what we are doing right now.

We are fixing somethings that were found in the inspections report: Flooring, painting, depopcorning ceilings, some minor electrical work, a new water pump (I know, sexy right?) fix a gutter, and other minor issues.

Now to the funner things!

We are blowing out some walls. The entry way (below) has 4 standard doors and a hall way off of it. We are taking the entire right wall except for a small portion. The door to the left is being widen for a double door (Future barn door?) and the wall directly in front is being taken out (at least the view you can see.

The living room looks completely different. The stone was completely removed from the fireplace, the wall leading to the dining room is now gone, and the wall to the hall has been taken back pretty much to the yellow chair.

 

In the kitchen the cabinet and the overhead soffit connected to it has been taken out to allow for more light. Down the line (but in the near future) I will be resurfacing the counter tops and painting the cabinets.

I'll do a better update of photos later but for now you'll have to be happy with my camera phone shots as I have left my camera at the job.

Ah, the rubble in my life...

That second photo I cleaned up a lot before I took that photo. As a matter of fact it was a victory picture.

February

Not really sure how I survived February...Of course I'm starting to think that about March as well. Well the month started out pretty well. We were moving forward with our new house. We had meetings and paperwork out the wazoo but it was completely manageable. We even got to visit cousins. Addie and Barrett got to meet cousins that they hadn't gotten to before (at least in their memory) and I just loved seeing them having a blast together. And then we got sick. Oh boy did we get sick.

Barrett went down first, then me, and then Addie. By some miracle Jer didn't get sick but it still took about 3 weeks out of our lives

When we finally recovered. We had a couple days and then Jeremy and I ran away to St. George for a much needed break. It was 4 days of no children, the parade of homes, and some quality time with the love of my life.

 

When we got back we spent some good quality time with the kids. We did a FHE with cupcakes and another night did a family movie night (Big Hero 6), we rode bikes once it was warmer, and finally closed on our new house!

Oh, somewhere in there we found these fun little kits at home depot. Barrett got a race car and Addie got a pirate ship. Jeremy built them with them and I painted them with the kids a couple days later. It was a fun project :)

And that was it - February.

Our new* House - Before

Since this blog is here to catalog our adventures I have to include our new house. I am so excited about this! It's something we have been wanting since we first got married but we were never in one place long enough for it to make sense. But it's finally happen!

Here is our view of the front. It's an all brick exterior except for the entry which has siding (It need some repair but it's fairly minor)

There is a little courtyard off the front. You can't really see it because of the overgrown bushes. To me it seems a little odd because it's a little incomplete but I think it will be my favorite feature when it's all said and done.

Before I take you inside here is a layout of our house as it currently stands.The items in the pictures are not perfectly to scale, but the rooms are all the right size. Also, the house is a little maze-y (it's a word) and I don't want you to get lost.
 

When you first walk in there is this hallway that is very dark except when you open the front door. See that light far off in the distance? It's the only light for the hallway.

To the left is the office (future playroom/office)

And to the right is the Living room. There is a giant - oh no, sorry, GIANT fireplace and on the opposite wall is a large sliding glass door (leading to that courtyard I was telling you about earlier.) Fun fact, apparently in 1978 it was super cool to get dried mold and put it on the fireplace before you seal the rock. So we got that.

Don't you just love those drapes? Think I might need to make a dress.

If you go through those french doors beside the fireplace (being moved) you are in the dining room. I should really get a close up of that chandelier - it's my favorite. Then sliding doors go to our backyard.

 

And this part of the reason we bought this house. It's pretty beaten up right now, I don't think they ever had grass back there or maybe they did but a long time ago. It is so spacious, though, plenty of room for the kids to run and play. 

 

Back inside. The kitchen is to the left and pretty dark. We are planning on taking down the cabinets separating the two spaces immediately in order to brighten it up.There is also another fireplace in the kitchen. I'm not really sure what to do with that right now.

Beside the fridge there is a doorway that leads to the hallway (you could see it in the entryway pictures.) Turning right you go down the maze of a hallway. There are two closets to the left followed our spiral staircase. Across from the spiral staircase is the kids bathroom complete with a yellow tub, toilet, and sinks. (By the way, Papa that painting is for you! It's a bull fighter.)

There's a giant closet. Actually all the closets are super sized, but this one is on a whole new level. If I remember right it's 4'7"x 4' 7" anyways, then you turn, and turn again and you are finally in the hall with the bedrooms.

         

The master is to the right has an en suite with a blue tub! (toilet, sinks) I grew up having a blue tub so it puts a smile on my face having one again.

Across from the master are two bedrooms

Backing up to our spiral staircase it take us down to the unfinished basement (which is very uncommon for our area.) The guys was some kind of welder or concrete guy or something because the evidence is all over the place.

The fireplace cuts this space in half. On one side there is a creepy bathroom that's walls don't go all the way up and what will eventually be 2 bedrooms (Yes, those are bars on the windows.)

The other side will be a family room and whatever else we decided.

Oh, the other half of the basement is the garage. It's not very glamorous.

 

But that is our new house tour! I will do another post too of all the fun things we have planned (It's a rather long to do list with several phases.) If you made it through all that, congratulations, I almost didn't :)