June 12, 2008

Finally have some photos to share. Was burning a disk of some to get printed and put some on there of various events.

First photos to share are of the living room/hallway progress. . . and the "little" side project I started on a whim. Tehehe . . .I serously need to get to work on finishing that project!

This one is as close to a "before" picture that I have of the living room. I forgot to take it before we moved out the big pieces of furniture. Tehehe. . . however, that does mean you can see the "clean" rectangle of carpet that was under the sofa (you can see it by the ladder). Shows how gross and dirty the carpet had gotten.


The first step in our renovating process was to scrape the popcorn ceilings. UGH, I hate those things! If you'll spray the ceiling with water before scraping, it keeps the dust to a minimum, and the ceilings are really easy to scrape. I did most of the family room ceiling in about a 3-4 hour period. Me, the non-worker! This picture shows that carpet can go from bad to worse -- just add a little popcorn!


This photo shows the scraped and unscraped area of the kitchen.


After the ceilings were scraped, Andy put a light texture on them and painted them (I'll have to get a photo of the ceiling paint). We used Behr Malted Milk for the ceilings. Then Andy got to painting the walls. For those we used Behr Pecan Sandie. Could make you hungry, all this painting! Here's a picture that shows the original wall color on the left and the new wall color on the right.


Sometime during the painting process, Andy pulled up the hallway and family room carpet. We've been living with concrete floors for a few weeks. Hoping to have that remedied this weekend!


Of course, while painting, I wanted to get all of the trim repainted. It definitely needed a fresh coat. This is the mantel area prepped. Andy planned on spraying it, but had a problem with the sprayer and ended up brush painting it instead.


Here's my "little" spur of the moment kitchen project. I wanted to paint the cabinets white and wanted to check out and see how priming and painting them would work. So I did the little fridge nook while he had it pulled out to paint behind it. Works well -- used Behr Decorator White for it and all the trim. We realized later that I probably should've waited until we got the new granite countertops I'm hoping for in the future before painting. I have all the top doors off the hinges and sanded, so I guess we'll go ahead and paint and hope we don't have to wait TOO long for the granite countertop!


This is the fireplace area after the mantel was painted. Since then, Andy has pulled out that faux marble surround and has put up new drywall. We've picked out some granite tile that will be going up -- hopefully tomorrow


In the middle of all of this, Andy's also tackled the lighting. We now have gotten rid of the florescent lightbox in the kitchen for a flush mounted light (not what I wanted, but the ceilings are not high!) and a new ceiling fan in the family room. He still has 2 more kitchen lights to replace (one over the table, one over the sink).