Before and Durings

OK, I know I promised you "before and after" pictures nearly two months ago. So I lied. I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for something--even just one room--to be "done" so I could have a really dramatic, HGTV-style reveal. Unfortunately, this process is just going to be long and drawn-out, and if we waited for that, you probably wouldn't see pictures until next summer.

So consider these to be "before-and-durings."


Here's the before of our living room. Note the carpet--once brownish, now blackish with filth--dingy walls and popcorn ceiling.


These pictures are dim (we still don't have overhead lighting in there), but they show our new paint job (which members the -dub and O. families helped immensely with), crown molding (which N.O. did all by himself) and scraped, painted ceiling (thanks again, -dub family!).



Here you can see the new carpet. N.O. loves it when I take his picture without warning.


Maybe he's just embarrassed because I caught him watching Bill O'Reilly. Ick.

Another view of the living room. Please pay no attention to the ugly kitchen behind it! We are planning to paint all the cabinetry, redo the countertops, and replace the floors in there, and we haven't done any of these things yet, so I haven't included any kitchen pics!




Moving on to the master bedroom--what was once the most disgusting room in the house. The carpet filth seemed more concentrated in here, and there were gross black marks on the ceiling. We couldn't figure these marks out until someone told us there had been a big fire next door and our house had incurred some smoke damage. Thanks for the non-disclosure, seller!


Here's the bedroom now. Please don't remark on what a lousy bed-maker I am--I already know. We haven't yet put up the crown molding or painted the doors in here, and we're in the middle of a headboard-building project, but otherwise, I think we're close to done in here. There's also a bathroom off this room, but I don't have any pics of it. We haven't done much to it yet anyway.



Here's another view of the bedroom, with my vintage reading chair, which N.O. hates, I think. Also note the original artwork by my nephew Zachary! Isn't it beautiful?! When he was "helping" paint this room, my mom painted a big "Z" on the wall for his amusement. He was a bit crestfallen when he learned we would have to paint over the "Z," so I asked him to paint me a special picture to hang on the wall. It's a horse drinking out of a river by some mountains, and I think it's great.


This is the second bedroom. It was only marginally less disgusting than the first.


Here it is now: our guest bedroom/office/workout room. E-dub accompanied me to IKEA (on Labor Day weekend, which I would NOT recommend) to pick up the day-bed and underbed, so now if any of you come to visit us, you will have someplace to sleep! That big white thing in the front of the picture is an entertainment center where we keep our other TV.



Here's another view of the same room. It's a bit crammed, and the Designed to Sell folks would definitely say this room needs to find one identity and stick with it, but it's working for us for now.


Hall bathroom before. Note the lovely peach countertops which are prevalent throughout the house. The other two units have, respectively, turquoise and kelly green countertops. Delightful! We also couldn't figure out the gross marks on the ceiling until we learned about the fire. That would explain it--soot settled on the lightbulbs, then eventually burned off and left soot/smoke on the ceiling. And nobody ever bothered to clean it. Nice.


My girly bathroom now. It still has the gross pink countertops--for now--but the rest is a bit better. Not sure if you can tell in the picture, but the walls are light blue.

And back to the dining room. It probably would have made more sense to show you these right after the living room, since they're attached, but I am not moving these pictures around in here any more! Here is a picture of N.O. during the great ceiling scrape of aught-six. Seriously, I know it makes for prettier ceilings, but I'm not sure I would recommend scraping your popcorn ceiling. It is a huge, horrible job.


Another "during" of the dining room. I don't have a real "before" of the dining room, but you can see what we were dealing with with the gorgeous upside-down fruit basket they were using for a light fixture.


And here it is now. We still have the elementary-school style floors, but hope to tackle a tiling project in the near future. And the new light fixture is a bit more modern!

Well, there they are. Obviously, still a lot of work to do, but now that we're moved in, we'll have a bit more time and space to get to the bigger projects.

The scary part: we still have two other units to do before we sell this thing in 2008. And, of course, there's the whole "grad school" thing we're supposed to be focused on. It's going to be a busy couple of years!