We've been spending a lot of time at our new house, getting some things fixed up on it.
Correction: WILL has been spending a lot of time at our new house fixing stuff. He "lives" there now and comes home on Sundays for church. We miss him tons, and it only adds to the motivation to hurry and get this home renovation project sped up so we can be together as a family again soon.
The boys and I have taken two extended weekend trips down to the house to paint and hang out with Will. Our most recent trip was the day after Christmas, and we stayed from Monday through Thursday. Preston got a plastic tool set in his stocking and was excited to get to help Papa "fix" the house.
Several friends have mentioned wanting to see before/after photos, however, to be honest there is not a whole lot to show you yet. Our "fixing it up" financing will finally be going through this week, which means our contractor will finally be starting work this week as well. So everything we've done up to this point has mostly been prep-work.
Will has:
- Pressure washed the roof and removed years worth of moss and gunk, as well as from the gutters.
- Pressure washed the siding of the house - as we won't be able to actually paint until the summer. But at least we'll look clean now.
- Replaced all of the heaters with new units and new thermostats.
- Replaced all of the gross old toilet seats with brand new seats (which means we can all pee in peace now).
- Replaced all of the bathroom fan units.
- Installed our new dining room chandelier.
Fireplace
The most recent fixes we've done, is we got the new fireplace installed. When we bought the house, there was no fireplace. Well, I mean, the space was there, but the actual fireplace unit had been removed. I'm not sure how many of you have had to purchase a new fireplace unit before - but it's not cheap. But we did it, and are very excited to have future cozy fires in it. We got one with a built-in fan in the hopes that it will be able to heat most of the house and save us on our electrical bill.
Here is a before/after photo of the fireplace.
We plan to eventually replace the tile around the fireplace with granite to match the granite in the kitchen. We will also be painting the current mantle white, and adding new white matching pieces that extend up to the ceiling with a arch. The walls will eventually be painted a rustic light green color.
A project that I have tackled is getting some of the painting done. Whoever owned this home before, I can honestly say that they never touched this house with new paint (and probably didn't clean either? Yuck). The walls are all very gross and dingy, and so splatting some new paint on has given the home some new life, not to mention make it feel a lot cleaner.
Living Room/ Dining Room Progress
I have been wanting a red dining room for years, but have never been able to do it since we've been renters. Well now I have finally been able to do that. It took a while to find the right shade of red though. I tried 4 different shades of red, but the one I ended up choosing I had gotten from a neighbor's house who had red walls. I ended up going over and asking her if I could steal her paint color, and she gave me her can of paint so I could color match. It's sort of a "barn red" color.
As you can see from the picture above, I didn't take the red paint all the way up to the ceiling because we will eventually be adding white crown molding around the ceiling. I'm going to have fun decorating this room. I love very traditional styles, and while we are going for more of a "Craftsman" look for the rest of the house, this room in particular will be more chabby-chic/French provincial. Or as I would like to call it, my Versaille (Marie Antoinette's palace in France).
Will installed his first chandelier ever. We were excited when we flipped the switch and it turned on. :) Success. I found that chandelier for an amazing deal at Home Depot - it was going out of stock. It is regularly around $200, and we got it for $49.99. As you can see from the old 1990's chandelier Will is holding in his hand, the new chandelier is quite a huge improvement, not to mention a more updated look. You can click to view it larger.
The funny part, is after we installed the new chandelier, we were finally able to actually have enough light to see in that room better, and I saw all the spots I had missed painting. Next week will be coat #3 of the red paint. Ugh.
We will eventually be adding similar-style wall sconces, and nice white baseboards. I hope to either eventually sew my own curtains for the room, or better yet find some at an amazing deal. Any curtain makers out there have ideas, let me know.
The Kitchen Mess
So, being that the kitchen is going to be the most centralized and well-used area of the house, it will be one of the bigger and more expensive renovations we are doing.
We are COMPLETELY re-doing it.
As you can see, we've got our work cut out for us. Not sure if you can follow my little drawing, but that is the basics of what we're doing. We will have hard wood flooring all through the kitchen to the family room (where the fireplace is).
We're still trying to figure out if we want to order completely new cabinetry, or try sanding these ones down and restain them. We would really like a dark cherry wood floor/kitchen with dark grey granite. That is something Will is still doing some number-crunching on.
What's next...
This week our contractor is starting work on the back exterior. One of the problems with the house is rain had gotten underneath the back siding and started seeping into the wall and going into the downstairs bathroom. There is a mold issue. So is stripping the siding, fixing the issue, and then tear down the sheetrock/mold out of the downstairs bathroom. We will also be adding the additional wall in the kitchen and then putting in the new back glass door.
Getting the water damage issue under control is the first priority, and then after that is done they will start on the kitchen.
Wanna see the rest?
I haven't really posted pics of the rest of the house, because I've been wanting to wait until we had more progress so you could see before/after. However, now that you've already seen how dirty/dingy the home currently is, I guess I don't mind just going ahead and showing you the rest of it. So here is your little tour....make sure to wash your hands afterwards. Ha.
So there you have it. Our "new" home. Haha. It definitely has a lot of fixing up to be done, but hey, we got an amazing steal on the home as it was a foreclosure. We ended up paying only $117,000 for it - which for the eastside in Seattle is really amazing. Once we are finished fixing it up all cute, we hope to have raised the value to between $250K - $300K. We are putting so great sweat equity into it. Literally.
Tomorrow morning I'll say goodbye to Will again for the next 2 weeks, and it's back life as a single parent for me. I won't say it's easy. It's definitely hard, and I'm exhausted from it. We will be so excited to finally be back together as a family. We will be moving at the end of January. Obviously we won't have the house done by then, but we're hoping to at least have the kitchen done, the flooring, and carpets. The rest will happen after we move in (baseboards, etc.). We will also be replacing any and all doors in the house, not sure if we're doing that before or after we move in though.
I have Christmas photos to post, but will have to save that for another day. Until then, enjoy a few sneak peeks from our Christmas below...
