A remodeling tour

I figured I would take some time and show my readers some of the before and after work on my house. There is still a TON to do, but I will start with what is probably the nicest room in my house. It has probably always been the nicest room but I like it much much better now that when we got the place.

First, an overview of what it looks like now.


Before I continue, let me tell you what we have done.

The paint on the walls was done in 2006 or so. It needs to be retouched in places where it has chipped off, and I ran out of the red before the coverage was good enough in one area. Just FYI, 1 gallon of Apple a Day red is not enough to cover 2 walls. I had never worked with darker paint before so this was definitely an interesting experience. 2 walls are red, the others are taupe and the trim is white. It beats the hell out of the bright aqua nightmare it was. Blue is supposed to be soothing, but I promise you this color was not.

We ripped out the carpet in the summer of 2007. We didn't have much choice. My dog brought fleas in the house. That was a nightmare. None of the commercial flea products worked (in fact, Frontline gave my cat a nice big bald spot but he still had fleas) The bombs to get them out of the carpet failed. I was tired of coating our house in chemicals, so out it came. We were on subfloor for a few weeks before I found something I liked. The wood laminate planks here cost $.79/sq ft. It was an amazing deal and I managed to get enough flooring for the living room and hall for under $300.

The ceiling fan was a Salvation Army find for $8. It is much much nicer than the fug one that was in there before.

There is still some things that need to be done on top of the paint. My LR is not trimmed. We have the boards, the router, the paint and the nails but my husband has been a bit short on time. We had other remodeling projects that needed to be addressed first. So we lack baseboards. Not a biggie.

The back door is gross and leaky. We have one of those As Seen on TV things for under the door that helps, but it really is just an ugly crappy door. Not a priority at the moment.

The living room opens up to the dining room. You have to go up a step. The step needs to be redone with a wood that can be stained to match the floor. Right now it is a plywood.

You may notice on the one wall there is a bunch of outlets all in a line up the wall (see pics below) Only the top one works. That needs to be redone, and the extras removed.

We need new windows badly. That is going to be a project that will hopefully be done this summer.

All in all, I love my LR. So here are the before and after shots. The before shots were taken the day we moved in, October 2004. The after shots were taken yesterday.













I will get to other rooms at some point. It's a work in progress.

Project 365: Tonight, I am relaxing.