Kitchen/Living/Dining Transformation

I really disliked the way they separated the rooms with paint, there really wasn't a good place to break up the paint, so I decided to go ahead and make the colors in this room uniform. I chose a creamy tan. Here are the pictures of the main area painted!


The kitchen before!


The kitchen after!



Living room before


And After!


After we painted, we needed to rip up the carpets which were saturated with pet urine. We decided to put in laminate, with the kids because it's about as resistant as we could get against them! This picture is what the room looked like after we ripped the carpet up. Bare cement floors!



As Adam, Abum (Adam Q, my sister in law's boyfriend) and I were laying the floors. And in case you were wondering, YES, I help! In fact I laid all the flooring in the master by myself. But I'll get to that later!




The next pictures are when the floor was ALMOST done (in fact it's not quite done as of today, there is one piece left and I can't seem to get my tush moving to finish it!). We were moving in at this time, so please excuse the mess!


I did other things, in other orders--but the family room and kitchen are complete now! So, here are the finished products of both!


And a sneak peak into my pretty cabinet, because it's pretty!! :D

The Befores!

OK! So here are the before pictures I promised and I'll make sure to reference back to them so you can see the changes made! This was right after we got the keys.

Here are some before pictures of the living room. The color they had painted was some weird fleshy color in here. And then the carpet... don't get me started!

This is the dining area and you can see part of the living room and one of three colors they had in this general kitchen/living/hallway area. The hallway is a horrible green, you'll see shortly!

This is the kitchen. If there are two colors I HATE when decorating, it's maroon and forrest green. Apparently they thought it a good idea to combine the two! BLECH! Their backsplash was wallpaper trim. Adorable.
A view of the living room from the front door.

Here is the hallway. It was like pea green. Horrible.

This next room is what will become Brooklyn's room.

And here is Cayden's room!

The kids/main bathroom and the only room in the house I didn't change the paint color!
Our mini master!

"Master" bath, more like mini bath! :)


But the shower is worth noting!


The next posts will show you the work we've been doing! And there is LOTS! :D

It's a long time gone!

So, it's pretty obvious that it's been a few months since my last post. Right after we closed escrow on our new house, my sister got very sick and passed away. That chaos along with trying to get things moved in created an extremely hectic time. On top of that, we didn't choose to install internet at our new house until my next semester of school started (it's here!).

To sum things up, I've got a lot of catching up to do! So please bear with me while I try to do this as organized as I possibly can!

The Batter in the Bowl...aka The Beginning!

So, this journey is bound to be interesting. I LOVE decorating, I am a do-it-yourself'er but beginning at all of this. I really don't have a clue other than what I've watched on HGTV. But I am bound, set and determined to not only make my house at home but to take anyone that wants to come along for the battle!

To begin, you have to know what everything looked like when we started. These are pictures that have been taken by inspectors, appraisers and real estate agents. I'll get some better pictures taken when have an empty house, a blank slate so to speak! But for now, here they are!

This is obviously the front of the house. I have lots of plans for all parts of the house, but I think I'll spring them on you as I get the projects done. If you can see in this pic, there are some GREAT rose bushes, and I am really excited to bring them into my own plans. :)

This is the garage, these people pretty much use the garage as storage, we're hoping not to do that ourselves! Adam LOVES the basketball hoop above the garage... I need some coaxing.

Sorry for the itty bitty pictures, there will be a few of the throughout the post. This is the storage shed in the back yard. I don't expect a whole lot of changes to happen here except for the paint color!

These next two pictures are of the sides of the house. The side where the truck is is the side of the house where I plan on putting my vegetable garden. We've discovered Cayden is much more likely to eat veggies if he helps grow them. I don't believe there are any big plans for the other side of the house. Not yet at least, maybe we'll figure something out by the time we do the addition.

We're starting to get to one of the huge reasons we decided on this house. This is taken from the far right side of the property. The house is on the left side of this picture. As you can see, the lot is pretty big, which isn't easily accomplished in CA. The grass back here desperately needs replacing, but otherwise, we LOVE this yard. Location was the main reason we chose to move to this house, it is within walking distance from the elementary school and only about 10-15 minutes from pretty much anyone in our family that is still in the area. The other reason for sticking with a bitty house rather than something a little bigger was this gorgeous backyard. Here are some more pictures, to give you a better idea!

This is taken from the back left hand corner of the property (if you are facing the front of the house) it shows the back side of the living room as well as the master, and the awning that we think is probably sticking with the property. It also shows our BEAUTIFUL pool! I am going to stick in another picture of the pool that shows the shape and size of it a little bit better. My mind has been racing with possibilities with this pool!

I am thinking of fun things that can be done along the back side of the pool, a water fall perhaps? Who knows. That is going to be a ways in the future!

Sorry for the blurry pic but I had to give you the biggest view of the kitchen as I could. I am so excited that there is good work done on this kitchen, and that this isn't going to be one of my big overhaul projects. A little paint for now is probably all that we will do, eventually it will get a new back splash, and once that is done new appliances will be the only thing left to do...well, for now. ;)

This dark pic is of the living room--it's not the greatest depiction of it, but there are big plans for this little piece of the house. One thing I will mention is that there are like 3-4 different paint colors around this main living space (the kitchen, dining and living are all interconnected), so that is something that will be fixed ASAP! I like uniform colors!

This picture is of the kids' bathroom, it is doubling as the second bathroom, or the bathroom that guests will also be using. Updating is going to be the main thing we do in here, but nonetheless, I am excited! You'll see as the work progresses (and the funds are available!!)

Here we've got the master bath. Yes, the master. LOL. The entire master suite is pretty small, which is why our future plans involve knocking the back wall out to make more space, as you can see the bathroom is little! It is also outdated in the sink area, but the owners redid the shower area and I'm looking forward to showers in it! Again, these projects will come one at a time, I wish I had some free cash to just throw at this house (don't we all!!!). I am lacking actual pictures of the bedrooms, so I'll have to take pictures of them once we are actually in the house. Until then, however, I'll leave you with a rough floorplan of the actual house. I do know how tiny it makes it look! Haha! Here ya go!

The total SqFt on the house is: 1156.3. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a TON of potential. I hope you enjoy going through this process with me. I am totally excited! Eee!