House pics!

B and I bought our first house two years ago this month. Built sometime in the 1930-40s, it's an older home with plenty of projects to keep us busy. Sadly, my ideas are many and our funds are few, so we're learning to pace ourselves and not feel like everything has to be perfect right now.

Some projects involve little more than a can of paint, and it's amazing to see what a great change a fresh bright color can bring.

First up, the kitchen - originally with white walls and only one window, it was a dark and somewhat dreary room:

I looooooove this blue color!

Also awesome is this frame (below) that I scored at a garage sale for $10. It had a hideous (and I think homemade) painting in it, which I spray painted over with black chalkboard paint, and we now use it as a calendar/organizer.

But even before painting the kitchen, we knew we had to deal with the front entrance way.

You might have never seen carpet that was as disgusting as what lived in our front entrance. Old, stained, ripped up and smelly, the carpet has been through a lot and we were very happy to say goodbye to it.

You see, the trick is inviting your parents over for a fun, relaxing weekend and then putting them to work laying tiles. It took a day and a half and the results are amazing. I'm not sure how we'll ever convince them to visit again, but hey it's a small price to pay.


And lastly the stairs. They are pretty self explanatory. Same dirty, disgusting carpet and an overall grossness. So we yanked up the carpet dreaming of the beautiful hardwood staircase that was waiting for us underneath.

We held our breath, and found:



Hmph. Not quite what we were hoping for. But to be honest, I kind of dig the ridiculous barnlike feel they have. B spent an entire day sanding and discovered about 6 layers of different colored paint throughout and we realized that this was a much bigger job than we had anticipated.


But I have the perfect solution. "Hey Dad, wanna come visit in September?"


I'll post more pics as we continue to fix up the house - next up will be the master bedroom!

I really do like our house.