Still working at it...

I know it has been a few weeks since my last post. We have still been working on the house though. A lot of the work on the house that has been done recently was cleaning up inside and out. Trying to get the house ready for the holidays, company, and cleaning up and setting up bedrooms for company. We also have trees for the first time ever so we are in a heated battle with them over this whole leaf issue. We will win, but it is going to be a long battle. :) Here are few of the most recent projects. I will try to get pictures of the rest up soon and some more Christmas decor.
master bedroom...so we had already done the floor in the master, picked out paint and such a while back, got started and then never finished. We have now finished painting, although there will be some touch up once we scrape the ceiling. The drapes that match our set are up and make the room feel so nice and warm. And please excuse the bed not being made! But here are the final pics of the master. Some before pics in case you forgot what it looked like too...





Upstairs Guest Bathroom...so the upstairs bathroom was one of the biggest projects we have done since moving in and we finished it months ago, but as i was showing someone pictures on the blog I realized I had never posted pictures of it. This bathroom was a complete overhaul, well not complete, but close. We ripped out all the built ins and painted them and gave them new life, mom helped paint. While they were out we ripped up all the flooring, the center wall and door (a hideaway door), reframed, put up green board, re-mudded, scraped the ceiling and textured and painted the whole bathroom. Then Bryan laid new sub floor, new concrete floorboard and new tile. The bathroom has new life and looks beautiful. Down the road we are going to redo the tub and take the tile all the way up the walls of the shower to the ceiling, but that will be a future project. I am so proud of the hard work that Bryan put into this bathroom and it looks so good.







Dining room...so now that we have finished a majority of the BIG projects and the house is presentable and liveable we have decided to go room by room and concentrate on them one at a time. The first room we went back to was the dining room. This room didn't need a ton of work, but could have a beautiful facelift with little effort. I say little effort...it took a week or two of the 4 of us working on it to finish, but turned out beautiful. We had new tile laid when we first moved in. So when we started working on the dining room Bryan and Daddy took the blinds down and we thought we need to paint them, but turned out they were just super dirty so they did some major cleaning to them in the garage and they look great now. Mom and I spent that time painting. We wanted very rich warm colors that matched our dining set and the colors of our house. I also really wanted a chair rail...I've been wanting a chair rail for a long time. :) Now i have one. Bryan and Daddy also built a cornice board for over the windows and Mom, Bryan and I worked to cut the fabric, cover it and have it ready for the boys to hang. Bryan had already changed out the lighting fixture so once the paint was dry, they hung the cornice board and chair rail, some touch up paint and moved the furniture back in. I love it...it is beautiful and we were done with it and had it decorated for Thanksgiving before family arrived. As you can see below it is now set for Christmas dinner. Oh, and one last thing, we frosted the glass windows and door that lead into the craft room from the dining room. Giving the craft room some privacy and hiding our crafty mess, while also keeping the dining room elegant.










Christmas Decor...so this will be our first Christmas in the new house. We have the dining room decorated and Bryan, Daddy and I have worked very hard at decorating outside. Bryan even wrapped some of those large, leafless, trees in Christmas lights and they look beautiful. I had to find a new place for my town so the mantel is its new home and it looks beautiful. We also put the tree up in the living room. The tree is a funny story. Originally my parents it was a 9 ft tree for their two story living room 2 houses back. My dad hated it cause it was so big, but i always loved it so they gave it to me when Bryan and I moved into our last house. We had to cut it down a little to get it to fit and just didn't put the bottom rows of branches on, but the ceilings were 9ft so it was close enough and looked good. This house has 8ft ceilings so we cut the tree down more! There is probably 5 rows of branches not being put on the tree now, but it still looks gorgeous and we were even able to squeeze an angel on top.

6 Months Progress

So, we bought our new house and moved in the first week of May. We had a long, very long, list of projects we wanted to do to the house. We knew this house would be a work in progress for months and years to come. But we set a goal for October 16th, our first party at the new house! We wanted to have a good portion of the projects to the main floor and gameroom done for this party and give a good representation of what the house would be transformed into when we were done. We accomplished our goal and the house looked great for our first party. The below pictures are the house as of October 16th. Keep in mind that not every room is done and completed with ever project we want to accomplish, but considering where we started 5 1/2 months ago, we are very proud of where we have come. Now that the party is over we are on leave...vacation...siesta for a few weeks. We will begin working on the house again after a few days of rest. When we do begin to work on the house again, we will focus on one room at a time and slowly move through the house. Once the weather changes, the outside and attic projects will begin. A huge thank you also goes out to Mom and Dad. They worked their tails off helping us get everything done and did a fantastic job. Thank you both.

New sod in the front yard. Bryan spent most of Saturday morning tearing out an abundance of jasmine vine that was not only growing up and around the trees in the front yard, but it was grown across the yard. The jasmine was taking over. We had already ripped out all of the overgrown cedar, but the jasmine had to go as well. Bryan pulled roots that were huge out of the ground. He did a lot of work. Then he cut every piece of sod and he and daddy sodded the front yard where there was no grass and about half the backyard. We will need one more pallet of sod to complete the backyard.





The Entry...
This entry has had all the wallpaper stripped off and the walls completely remudded. This project...the remudding took a few weeks. It was not as easy as we had thought it would be and it took three of us to do it. Mom and Dad scraped the popcorn off the ceiling as well. We painted the walls a warm beige for the base coat and will add the 2nd and 3rd coats now that the party is over. The room will have 2 additional, darker shades of brown hues.

We also stained the closet doors a cherry wood stain rather than painting them. They look so rich and will be beautiful in the finished entry.

This is the landing on the main floor. We carried the mudding effect from the entry into this area and put the base coat on it as well.

No more brown panneling on the stairwell. We painted the brown paneling, the brown doors and the door frames. Mom and Dad get credit for most of this painting. I helped start the project, but white doesn't cover brown very easily so it took several coats. Mom and Dad kept painting till it was white. Except the gameroom door which is a nice brown. We will probably restain the door at some point. Daddy also couldn't let us show off the beautiful new stair well without touching up the paint ont he stair rail. It is iron, but most of the paint was chipping. He painted the entire stair railing both heading upstairs and downstairs and did a beautiful job.


The Living Room...
The 100 inch projector screen tv is up, mounted and fully functional. Bryan and Daddy even framed the screen with brown wood trim to match our furniture. It looks great and finished. We decorated some in the living room and until we begin further projects...the room is done. Further projects to include scraping ceiling, removing remainder of paneling, painting, and changing the lighting somewhat.



The Dining Room...
This room still has quite a bit of things we want to do. We plan to scrape the ceiling, paint, add a chair rail and define the ending of the dining room and the beginning of the living room, do some sort of stained art in the glass door way leadign to the scrap room, and add a cornice board/drapes to match the dining rom set. For now it is clean, functional and ready to entertain.



The Kitchen...
Well as you have seen the kitchen is probably our most dramatic rennovation so far. And it has been 90% complete for some time now. The last remaining projects were adding pantry doors, finishing trim/moulding and reinstalling a window sill. Below is my new window sill, trimmed to perfection, painted and ready for use. Bryan did all the cuts, measuring and installation himself.

Here are my new pantry doors and moulding to match the window sill. Instead of replacing the door with a full size walk in door to the pantry like what was there before, we decided to put two 1/2 doors in. This cuts down on the doors getting in the way of the oven while cooking and make it easy to get in and out of the pantry. Bryan had to custom make the door frame to fit the 1/2 size doors and then mounted the doors with a ball latch so they would stay closed and open easily. He then did the custom moulding around the door frame to hide the framing material and match the window sill. It looks gorgeous and very professional. Great job baby.


The Gameroom...
Well we didn't do a lot of changes to this room. Bryan wants to keep the effects of his man cave, but Daddy and I did install a shelf to showcase our footballs, he and I hung all the pictures on the wall and put the room back together after the flood. I even finished the Roy Williams jersey and it is now hung up on the wall. It looks great and is perfect for playing pool, and watching the game. Eventually this room will get a substantial makeover with a new bar area, but that is yet to come.



The final...last minute project...
This is our downstairs, longhorn decorated, guest bathroom. This bathroom has been finished for awhile except for the tile around our newly installed countertop. A friend of Bryan's cut beautiful tile with steel longhorns for our backsplash around the sink. He did a beautiful job with the cut outs and helped us envision a finshed "Longhorn" bathroom. Bryan picked up the tiles on Wednesday before the party and was so busy finishing other projects he didn't get to work on the tile in the bathroom. On Friday night, before the party, he installed the tile with thinset, put a fan on the bathroom and waited till morning. On Saturday, the day of the party, he grouted the tile, and Daddy and I painted around the tile/grout and finished the bathroom. A fan was on the tile until minutes before the guests started arriving at 2PM. He did a beautiful job and everyone loved the detailed tiles and custom look.



Party Time...the house was all decorated in orange and white for our first game watching party at our house. All four of us worked very hard cleaning up and finishing all the projects and the house looked great. It is amazing to look back at the original photos and see the changes that we have made. It is also starting to take shape and showing us signs of what the house will look like after our last project is done. The party was a huge success and Texas beat Nebraska. Overall a great day.

The Great Flood

Ok, so the race is still on...we have 4 days as of today to have the main areas of the house somewhat finished for the game watching party on Saturday. Not much time, but we are working around the clock and making huge progress. We set the date with plenty of time to get things done and then...the Great Flood. We got 12 inches of rain in one morning. There were rivers everywhere, lakes in the streets, roads closed, and our yard (being sloped) was running from one side to the other. And aparently we did not have the brick and patio sealed so it rushed into the house too.

It came in under the baseboards of our utility room, flooded the utility room, bottom floor landing, into the gameroom along the wall of the utility room and all the way down the wall where the sliding glass doors are. The bottom floor would have been standing in water if it weren't for my parents. They jumped into action and started sucking water out and drying it up as fast as they could. They managed to keep it localized to those three areas and away fromt he pool table, which is amazing and wonderful. We estimated that they sucked up around 100 gallons of water from downstairs. We hired a professional company to come out and suck up the rest, lay anti mold, and replace the carpet padding and dry everything out. It is all back to normal now, with a chunk out of our savings account and a chunk of time out of our work time, but at least the damage was minimal and easy to fix. The clean up crew we hired were very impressed the damage was so minimal...all thanks to my parents quick action and hard work. Thanks Mom and Dad. See pics below.








And this is the pool...filled to the brim and over flowing and brown from all the dirt and crap that the rain water rushed into the pool from the yard. It took some heavy duty cleaning and some shock, but we were able to get the pool back to normal by the next weekend. Bryan did a great job.