before/after

Here is a little display of before and afters. I need to take more after pictures of the backyard etc but at least these pictures below will give you some idea of what we did to the house. We haven't worked on the house (except for organizing) for like two weeks. I still can not believe what a little (or a lot of) elbow grease and paint can do for a room. Happy Viewing!

upstairs/main bathroom before

what we did:
gutted everything...all new walls, new ceiling, new ceiling light/fan, new high efficiency toilet, new vanity, new mirror, new wall at end of tub, new tile on floor and in bath/shower, refinished green tub to make it white, new faucets, new baseboards/trim. The only thing we didn't change was the door and the window. :)

the bathroom today! (still need to put the window trim back on and paint it)

old toilet (was leaking)

old bath/shower and vanity...are you sad we got rid of the green?

view of new mirror, vanity and toilet.

old guest bedroom (keep in mind the ceiling and all the walls were wallpapered...about 7 layers. What we did with ALL of the bedrooms and hallway up stairs was have the wall paper sealed with glue and then two layers of a skim plaster was applied to get us nice clean new walls!)

what we did:
prime and paint the walls/ceiling and door/floor trim.

guest bedroom today (still needs some finishing touches)

the study before (notice how yellowed the trim and door frames are)

what we did:
prime and paint the walls/ceiling and floor/door trim.

study today! we still need to put a second layer of paint on the trim and doors but what an improvement.

study before

study today!!!

dining room before

what we did:
painted the popcorn ceiling, painted over the cool textured wallpaper, painted the chair rail and under the chair rail, put bamboo blinds in both windows, scrubbed the floor multiple times.

dining room today!

the view of the fireplace in the living room before.

the fireplace today!

the view from the living room into the dining room before

what we did:
paint the popcorn ceiling, primed all surfaces with Kilz primer, painted every wall, put bamboo blinds in one of the windows and scrubbed the floors multiple times.

the beautiful living room/dining room today!!!!

almost livable...

Ok, so these pictures are from a couple of weeks ago. As of today (8.10.09) the house is livable and we are now going to stop doing major renovations on the house and start focusing on our wedding (which is just a month away!). I will post before/after pictures soon so you can see the (mostly) finished product.

Scott, Sarah, Zach and Erin came over one Saturday to help us prime every inch of the second floor. What a boring job, but what great friends! Thanks guys!

we are pretty sure this door used to be white. gross huh?

still priming the second floor.

bathroom with the tile finished

brad refinished our lovely green bathtube one weekend while I was in Chicago. We now have a beautiful white tube. Thanks Brad!

another wall DOWN.

This past Sunday, my project was to uncover a brick wall (our last one!!!) in the stairway. I recruited my good friend Mary to come help with the dirty dirty job. Thanks Mary!
Brad had to work Sunday so I got started at 12pm and Brad and I finished up at 12am Sunday night. I'm super glad that we aren't uncovering any more walls.

(sorry about Maya's spooky eyes)

exhausted.

I think Brad will echo my sentiment when I say that I'm EXHAUSTED.

We have been pulling a lot of late nighters this week to prepare the second floor for Mauricio (a guy that we have hired to help us tape and plaster the bathroom and smooth out all our wall paper walls). At first I wasn't too sure to get help...now that I am exhausted...I can't wait for him to finish the walls so I can paint.

So, in preparation for Mauricio's arrival...Brad and I got out the spray paint gun again and sprayed Kilz primer all throughout the master bedroom this past Tuesday night.

WARNING: the pictures you are about to see are us during the height of our delirious state in full painting gear.

sorry about those...but as you can see, we made sure this time that we were completely covered from head to toe so that we wouldn't get the Kilz on our hair and skin. We were covered in Kilz last time we used the spray paint gun which resulted in us taking a paint thinner sponge bath.


The next night, Wednesday, Brad and I focused on removing the remaining two feet of plaster that was left on the brick wall in the bedroom. We also spent many hours taking down MORE wallpaper.

The pic below is the difference between what the brick looked like after just taking down the plaster and after it is scrubbed with water and a wire brush.
What a difference!

All done scrubbing. Now we just have to seal it and it is finished!!!
I'm so proud.

So, this weekend, Mauricio is set to skim plaster up all the bedroom's walls and ceilings and in the hallway/stairwell. I am going to be working on exposing brick on part of the wall in the stairwell. We also are hoping to get the tile done in the bathroom so that we can finally shower at the house. We will see what all gets done. Send some energy our way. :)

seeing progress

So... Brad and I have had our house for three weeks now. I can't believe it has been that long, because I honestly thought (going into this project) that it wouldn't take this long to renovate. Boy, I was totally wrong. Everything we do takes three times as long as we think it will take. I guess these are the things you learn while renovating a house?
However, this past week, Brad's dad, Stan, came to help us with the house. We decided to focus on the main bathroom and do a total makeover. We are super glad that he was willing to come and help us because we definitely needed someone with experience. He has basically renovated his whole house and came to help with tons of tools, tips, and hard work. Thanks Stan!!!

the day Stan arrived-full of energy and ready to go.

Stan, tearing down the glue pieces on the ceiling.
Brad got to take a couple days off of work to help out his father.

Brad, under the kitchen sink.
Before, Brad and Stan got to work on the bathroom, Stan had the great idea of feeding 250 ft of electrical wiring from the basement, through the kitchen, through the demo'd bathroom wall and up to the attic crawl space so that when we want to add more electrical to the house we have enough power (and cord). What a smart idea, we would have never thought of that.

Stan, building the new wall.
We originally thought that we would keep the tile around the bathtub but since we are building a wall at the end of the tub the tile that we would have put on the new wall would differ from the old tile. Therefore, we decided to tear down all the original tile and put up all matching tile in the bathroom.

Brad (very excitedly) using his brand new power drill. :)

YAY!!!! I finally have finished painting the main floor- which included, the living room, dining room, half bath, and foyer. I will post before and after pics of the rooms after we get furniture in them.

During the day on the 4th of July (Saturday), my friends Brian and Mary came over and helped me tear down wall paper in the master bedroom. In the process, I think we saw at least 7 different layers of wallpaper. I guess that was everyone's solution....wallpaper over the old stuff. We are going to break the horrible cycle!

Then on Sunday, we decided, that it was now or never to expose brick on one wall in the master bedroom. So I went to town on the wall. It was a dirty dirty job but I think it will turn out to be a pretty cool accent wall in the end.

I still have the top two feet to do...but what do you think of it so far? It has to still be cleaned and sealed.

Brad's father left Sunday morning after helping us for a week. Brad had to finish putting up about 6 pieces of sheetrock all by himself on Sunday. It took a long time, but by midnight Sunday night, Brad was finally nailing in the last screws! Congrats Brad!!! Yay!!! We are so close to finally having a bathroom (which means, no more traveing to Brad's house to take showers!!!)

Success!!

Here it is, the last two pieces of sheetrock Brad finished last night. They def were difficult pieces because he had to measure and cut accurately all the spots where the faucets went. He measured accurately the very first time...I'm so proud of my guy!!! Good job Brad!!!

my lil project

So, after realizing how long it is going to take us to make this house a "livable" space, I decided for my own sanity to get at least one room finished. Therefore, I focused all my efforts on the smallest room in the house, the half bath. As you can see, it was once a dungeon of red and dark blue. I thought I would brighten up the small space and finally have something finished!

I painted primer on every surface and painted the trim and ceiling white twice.

All primed and ready to go...

Brad and I both decided that we needed a light/bright color for the tiny room to lighten it up esp bc there is no window. So we decided on a sage green, thank God that this green was decent bc I bought a gallon of it. ha.

Here is the final product...I still have some decorating to do bc I just threw things I already had into the bathroom but you get the idea! Yay! One room done. :)