Home Renovations- Episode 1

I've had several requests from friends and family for an update on how the renovations are going. I don't have a lot of time to talk about it in detail, so I figured pictures would do a much better job of it!

After finding out we had fleas in the carpet, which happened to cover about 80% of the house, we tore out the stuff upstairs and are down to subfloor in the living room and 3 upstairs bedrooms. We recently purchased hardwood flooring for those rooms and will start installing it in a couple of weeks. 

The house has been extremely disorganized lately, mostly because we decided to paint the wee beastie's room first, and so we had to move most of the stuff out, and move her into the guest bedroom (which is really small).

I kind of snapped one day because I couldn't handle it anymore (if you didn't see my previous post- it goes into my obsession with my things to do list and how I can't handle disorganization). I finally determined I would get in under control. I started in the Living Room (shown to the left) mostly because her bed was in there, standing up on its side and blocking the rest of the carpet that needed tearing out. I should've known better because I pulled something in my back and paid for it for two days, but it's clean now!

(Well, it was before she pulled the puzzles out again.)

Since the previous tenants were some not-so-careful renters, we will have to do some work on the trim and baseboards...and fix the entire structure of the doorway, and maybe even get new hinges on most of the bedrooms. Don't ask. 

Her room got completely stripped in order to paint so we could do it right. Mike Holmes would be proud.

We put the first coat on and it looks great, it just needs one more to cover the weird peach color on the walls. After which, we will be adding some vinyl wall decals to make a garden theme. It's going to be really cute.


And while I'm thinking about it, I don't care how "Low VOC, Low Odor" Olympic Premium bills itself, their ONE paint certainly can't fit that bill. Not only does it stink, but it certainly didn't save us from a second coat. Thanks boys, we're going with Valspar Ultra Premium next time.

The best part was this moment....I'm so glad I caught it.

          Our bedroom is worse than a red-headed stepchild (no offense if you are one). We neglect that thing like crazy. But, we decided on the paint color, so I just need to get in there and clean and prep the walls.
Just (please!)  ignore the fact that bins are our side tables, and our bed has no frame. 

Yes, we are painting the walls brown. Hubs likes dark colors only, so I agreed if he would let me accent the room in white to break up the cave dweller feel he's going for. We'll be adding some crown molding around the ceiling and I'm planning on building a wall hanging jewelry organization system that will probably use some of the leftover trimwork that's getting torn out due to rough-housing by the formers.

We have a tiled counter top in the kitchen...

And I've discovered matching the paint to this thing sucks. 

We tried to go with green but I'm thinking we don't like any of these shades. So, we may try grey next.

The first one is the wall next to the sliding glass doors to the deck.

The second one is the other wall with direct light, the floating wall in the Kitchen.




The third wall is the wall that gets no direct sunlight, so you can see why the paint is an issue. The colors change depending on time of day.

We aren't doing much downstairs right now because we want the upstairs taken care of first.

I am trying a paint sample in the craft room and downstairs bathroom. A bright sunny yellow that should make me happy! These pictures show the bathroom.

Now, here's the family room. I'm pondering painting the top half emerald green and covering the bottom half in beadboard. 

What do you think?

(THE END)