Project: Stairway to...

I was going to title this post "Project: Stairway to Heaven Our Bedroom" but then I decided that was maybe a little weird.

ANYWAY - As I've mentioned before, one of the first projects that we took on after we bought this house was ripping out all of the carpet and redoing the floors.  Most of the time we were giddy with excitement at how beautiful the floors were underneath the carpet... until we got to the stairs.  As you can see below, the stair reveal was a major disappointment.

Project: Photo Safari

Last year my awesome aunts bought me a TravelZoo deal for a photo safari with a professional photographer, since they know my secret favorite pastime is photography.  This past weekend I finally got around to using it!  The original deal was actually for a walking tour of the memorials and monuments in the DC area - but those were all booked (probably because of the close proximity to the highly anticipated cherry blossom season.  No worries though! I was able to take tour with the same photographer, only inside the Museum of American History.  This actually worked out perfectly because the lessons were all focused on taking pictures in low light - which I hadn't mastered yet.

It was really a fantastic time - I spent the whole afternoon touring around in the Museum of American History looking at some of the exhibits like I really hadn't before.  I really enjoyed getting home and downloading the pictures... I was pleasantly surprised to see a major improvement from the first few shots through the last couple!  I can definitely say I'm a lot more confident in my ability to take good pictures in low light situations now!

Here are a couple of my favorite shots from the day.

Project: Living Room Fast Forward

I figured since the last post focused on the dining room, that I should do a 180 and focus on the other half of our large front room area - the living room!  I do have a proper "before" shot for this one. Note the window boxes - also made from paneling! This guy LOVED paneling!

Note the high-traffic area from the previous owners?

One of the projects that I didn't mention in the last post was the floor.  When we moved in, the entire house was carpeted. Actually, every room (besides the kitchen and bathroom) was carpeted in the same carpet.

Project: Dining Room Fast Forward

I haven't posted in a long time - probably because we've been so busy working on the house and planning a wedding... and probably a little bit because I'm not a very committed blogger.  I'll have to work on that.

This post is dedicated to updating the progress we've made on the dining room.  Sadly, I don't have a nice "before" picture from the living room perspective.  Probably because it was so awful. Seriously - awful.  The living and dining area is one big, long room, and the previous owners made the distinction between the two areas by putting up dark wood paneling on the walls in the dining area, and lighter wood paneling on the ceiling.  And, come to find out, those pretty beams that you see in the next picture are also just pieces of paneling. Yeesh.   This was the very first project that we took on as new homeowners.

Project: Dining Room Ceiling/Mold sucks

So in my last post I talked about tearing down the paneling that was so liberally applied in our living and dining room areas.  Sadly, when we tore it down we discovered why paneling was so popular in the first place - it certainly covers up the drywall problems! One of the major problems that we discovered was mold. Yuck!

There was obviously a time when there had been some water leakage - thankfully the previous owners had had a new roof put on before they put it up for sale, so wherever the leak was, it should be fixed by now.

Unfortunately - we still had mold. And severe drywall damage in that area.  Ew.

Project: That Paneling has GOT to go.

As soon as the keys to this baby were in our hands, the first order of business was to get that particularly awful paneling off the walls and ceiling in the living room and dining room (well actually the first order of business was to move in, but that would make for a boring blog post... kind of. Move-in actually happened during a rainstorm!).

Back in the day the original owners tore down a wall to a front bedroom and created one large room for the living and dining areas.  In order to differentiate between the living area and the dining area, they apparently decided that sticking some dark wood paneling up to create that divide... which left us with one long room with a seemingly random application of paneling at one end which you would be able to see here if we hadn't been so gung-ho to get started and actually taken a before shot. Whoops.  Here is another shot of the ceiling paneling for your viewing pleasure instead:

Sweet chandelier too, right?

And a shot of the random wall of paneling in the living room. I'm guessing they thought it would balance the space out? Or maybe they were just hoping it would?

The window boxes are also made out of... wait for it... paneling!

Yep. You can probably see the problem here.  So J and I went to town thinking all we would need to do is pop a few small nails, peel that paneling away, repaint, and voila new dining room and living room!  Easy peesy, right?

Homeowner Extraordinaires

We're completely consumed with making improvements to the new house. No seriously. More posts on the projects to come, but before we can do that - I have to present the before pictures. Just know that while these are scary - there was a lot of potential under all that carpet and paneling!

Living room - before

Turn around from the living room and you're staring at the dining room. All paneled. Even the ceiling. Yeesh.

Kitchen - like the dark, shiny cabinets? Yeah, me neither.

More kitchen before. This gives you a great view of the floor.  Installed back when lime green laminate was considered a "good" idea.

The shining star in the basement! Yes - that is a Zenith TV in the wall! Sweet!

The one and only bathroom. There are swans on those glass doors. We're all about the classy here.

The rest of the itty, bitty, teeny-weeny bathroom.

The soon-to-be Master Bedroom.

So now that you've seen some of the before pictures you'll be able to appreciate the "in progress" and "after" posts a little more!