Before and After

I was recently talking to my friend Jewel and she brought to my attention that I haven't put up any pictures of our new house. So, I figured it was about time to throw some of those up. We moved into this house last May, and the last eight months have been filled with renovations. After our last house I swore that I was not going to do a fixer upper again. Well, when we found this house, it was only 15 years old and not a fixer-upper but it was definitely not decorated according to my taste. It had so many positives that we were looking for, perfect neighborhood, 4 bedrooms, good layout, etc that we decided that the pros outweighed the cons and we went for it. I figured a little painting/wallpaper removal wouldn't be that big of a deal. Hmm, well the pictures speak for themselves :) It was definitely not as much work as our last house, but it was certainly a lofty endeavor. However, my love for a good before and after will never change! We still have a bunch of projects ahead of us, but have came a long way in 8 months.
One of our first projects was the lovely dining room. The maroon drapes, and wallpaper had to go asap. This room actually wasn't a terrible project, we got the wallpaper and chair rail off in a day. Then had to wash the walls and paint the next day. I ended up using the same paint that we used in our old dining room. I really love the sunny yellow, and the room was instantly 100 times brighter! I love the room now, I would eventually like to tear the carpet out and put in hardwood or tile, but that can wait.
When we bought the house I said, "Oh we can spread these projects out over a couple years." Poor Chris had no idea what he was in for, I think we overhauled 5 rooms in 3 months... However, the Dining room really is one of my favorite "afters".




One of my other favorite diy's was the main floor half bathroom. It was wallpapered in a nice tropical theme and had a wooden toilet seat. This project started by me deciding to remove the wallpaper and just paint the walls. Well my dear husband was going to have to take out the toilet so I could get that paper off. So, we decided maybe we should just buy a new toilet. Then we decided, if we take the toilet off we might as well tile the floor. And finally, if the floor is tiled the only thing that wouldn't be new was the vanity, so we might as well replace that too. Things spiraled right out of control. This project ended up taking more work from Chris's end with the tiling and plumbing. Thank goodness for his bff Gilson who taught him how to tile and helped with a lot of the project. Once again the end product is amazing.



The last project for this post is the living room. Once again the drapes these people left us were just out of control. I don't know if they thought they were doing us a favor by leaving them, but really they were just hideous! The fireplace was of course hunter green tile. Before: We had a hard time deciding what to do about this tile. We thought about just replacing it, but then I read some diy article about painting brick fireplaces. Well this wasn't brick, but I talked to my dear dad about spraying it white. He thought I was a little crazy at first, but we decided if it didn't turn out then we could just re-tile it. Miraculously it turned out just the way I wanted it too! Of course we painted the walls too. It took three coats to over over more maroon around the fireplace!
During:

After:


Well I think thats enough for now. We've only done a couple projects since I've been preggers. Chris won't let me paint right now, which is very sweet. But we did paint nudger's room a couple weeks ago with eco friendly paint and I've been working on designing that. The crib is ordered, we have the glider and a shelf, now I'm on the lookout for a dresser!!! Hopefully I'll be able to post nursery pictures soon.