I know we haven't posted anything on this in forever because after we mostly finished the kitchen we just stopped working on the house. I think we needed a real break after everything. We of course have had to finish the job we started since the house is now on the market as of almost 2 weeks ago. So we did all the finishing touches, re-did the bathroom and painted the outside.

On to the before and after shots!!

Come on in and see



Outside:( Read more... )

Date:	2006-05-06 01:01
Subject:	Finally the kitchen
Security:	Public
Mood:	content

We ordered our cabinets from Ikea. They were about $2000 less than every where else I looked. The only down side is that you have to build them and install them yourself. But for $2000 we were more than happy to do it. It was really easy to install them. Even easier than I imagined which was great!






We are still waiting on our kitchen counter top if you can believe it!! We were supposed to get it weeks ago but when they were delivering it they ran over the rail road tracks too hard and it broke in half. They had to order the new material and now they are supposed to be here tomorrow to finally install it. They did leave us the patched up broken one so we would at least have a sink. So you will all have to wait till next post to get all the final pretty photos. :-)

Date:	2006-04-21 17:03
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	better after having coffee

We decided (erroneously) that it would be best to fix up the bedrooms first so that we could move right in and work on the kitchen after we were staying there. We thought that it would be easier to get things done being there. Plus we have 3 cats and we really wanted to get them out of my mom and dad's house because they were starting to tear things up. We couldn't put them in the house until the patches on the walls were done or they would have taken up residence in the walls.

So we patched the walls and painted right away ignoring (erroneously again) kitchen. I knew exactly what color i wanted to paint L's room, I was thinking of a deep red or burnt umber for our bedroom, and I had no idea what to do with the living room. After living in apartments for so long though we knew that we wanted to be VERY colorful since we were sick of white walls.

On a whim I picked this grey for our bedroom and i found this awesome bedroom furniture at World Market...

We have since changed the light fixture and it really looks cool.

Here is L's room color


The color we (mostly T) finally picked for the livingroom (his sister painting)


A better view of our new bedroom furniture


Look at the mess of our livingroom. I had to clean and L wouldn't leave me alone so I did the unthinkable and babysat her in front of the tv. she sat there with her snacks and water and watch the whole Big Big World show. She would laugh ever so often. i thought she was the cutest little person ever and had to take a photo of it.

Date:	2006-04-20 16:25
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	busy

Arrrgh! It has taken us forever to get the house up and running and even now it isn't in the best shape. We still don't even have a counter top and kitchen sink!

Anyway... I'm so far behind in my updates I will not jump ahead but start from where I left off...

So last we left off the electrician was horrible. It only got worse. He "finished" on the day he was suppose to be done. We ended up having to stop payment on the last check we gave him because 1/2 of the stuff didn't work. It was a total mess. We learned a lot of lessons about dealing with people you hire to work on your house. #1 being that David Thomas is horrible electrician and no one should ever hire him again. The whole time he was working he went on and on about how he and his wife were splitting up. Then the last day he was working he was shouting at someone on the phone to leave his house and stop messing around with his wife. Then later in the day he was on the phone because his wife had been arrested for attacking and biting people. *rolling eyes* DRAMA!

The electrical stuff finally was completed and double checked. Next we moved on to patching up the walls since they tore massive big holes all through the house for no apparent reason. It turns out that I'm an excellent drywall mudder. I totally rocked. You couldn't even tell there was a hole before I did such a good job. Except on the ceiling. I did it last, it was hard, and at the point I was in a I don't care about anything mood. *shrug* Oh well.

Photos of holes, patching, etc...

Excessive holes...


more under cut...( Read more... )

more updates to come!!

T and his brother J put up the wall between the kitchen and the living room before T had to go back to NJ. Here is a photo of it...



It doesn't have drywall up yet because we are still waiting on the the electrician to do his job. He was supposed to start on Tuesday and here is Thursday and we haven't seen him at all. I've talked to him every day and he has excuse after excuse. He says now he is starting on tomorrow. I guess we will see. It actually works out better for me I think that he is a slacker because now I get to not stress over moving every thing out of his way so he can get the job done. At any rate, T had written up in the contract that if he isn't finished by next friday that he looses like $250 for every day? week? (I don't remember) that he isn't done.

Date:	2006-02-14 19:54
Subject:	First post: 3 days till move date!
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished

So I've decided to start another journal and chronicle our work on our new house. We will be in the new house in 3 days!! yay!! I got a call from the Ikea driver today and he is delivering the cabinets tomorrow. T's brother talked to the electrician today and he will start work on Monday. It seems like everything is coming together. Now on to the photos...

When we first started looking for houses this was the first we looked at. The owner was at work and the realtor is a friend and we all just walked in the house and started taking photos of ourselves in the house as if we already lived there. LOL! Of course I can't find those photos at the moment but here are the ones the realtor had...


( Read more... )

About a month after we closed we discovered there was a leak in the kitchen. Because we were not living there it went undetected. Here are photos of the damage
( Read more... )

and after we ripped all the kitchen out. You can see we removed the wall between the kitchen and the tiny dining area. We are going to make it all one kitchen and build an archway between that and the livingroom.
( Read more... )

There is so much work we want to do and we hope to turn it around and sell it after about 5 years. So stay tuned...