Before and After

I am feeling nostalgic tonight after looking through the pictures of our house that we just sold.  

Rumor has it that the power company has plans to tear it down.

I have mixed emotions. This house was never my dream house, but we have put our blood, sweat, and tears into fixing it up...one dollar at a time.  We had so many more plans that will never be realized.  

Going through these pictures has helped me to see that even though we lost all the money we put into it (due to the current situation of our local economy), we have learned a lot, and you can't put a price on life experience.

Taken the week we moved in.  July 2006

When we were getting ready to move here, we had a tough time finding a place to live.  I remember sitting in our Honda CR-V across the street, knowing that this was the house that Heavenly Father had prepared for us, but not being overly thrilled about it.

This is how our house looked after Todd pressure washed it to get it ready to paint.

This isn't a very good picture (taken with an old cell phone), but it shows the new paint, the new front door(s), and the window boxes that Todd made. 

 Although our new front door was a huge improvement over the metal, diarrhea brown door that the house came with, I've always regretted it.  I went into Home Depot knowing that I did not want a window in my front door.  I wanted a plain door so I could hang a wreath from it (centered in the window of the screen door).

Instead, I let the weird employee with velcro shoes talk me into a door with a window. 

 
Never listen to decorating advice from a middle-aged man wearing velcro shoes.

Living room

Before:

I was so excited about the hutch that came with our house.

After(s):

This is what the living room looks like now. The wood-burning stove came from the house I grew up in.  I negotiated with the power company to keep it when we move.  They were hesitant until I told them that the other heat source for the house is electric.

This is how the room looked for most of our time here:

This old steamer trunk came with the house as well.

Dining room

I made these pictures extra large for my mom's sake.  She likes when the pictures are big.

The dining room before:

And after.  I got a wild hair one day and decided I could not live with that wood paneling for another minute.  I carefully pulled one of the panels and discovered it was nailed to a completely finished wall!  All I would have to do is fill nail holes.  Unfortunately, after the first panel, the rest were glued to the wall and when I pulled them off they took big chunks of drywall with them.  That is the weekend I learned how to repair drywall.

The countertop was and still is in excellent condition...unfortunately.

We took the carpet out of the dining room, put in laminate flooring, replaced the appliances when they died, and started painting the cabinets. We also ended up inheriting a new table/chairs when Vanessa moved.

Oh, and we got rid of that obnoxious half-wall in the background of this picture.  I haven't regretted it for a second.

It was a good thing I already knew a little bit about mudding and taping.

Todd and I made this cornice for our dining room window and filled the shelf with orange things to go with the countertop.  I got these dwarf lemon, lime, and orange trees free from Gurneys.  The lemon tree actually flowered and grew two tiny lemons the size of a penny (SO CUTE!).  I think I may try this again when I move to a warmer climate.

Kitchen

I really have no words for these.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

I wish I would've gotten around to finishing the cabinets, but since the house is being torn down I guess I'm glad I didn't waste the time.  Painting cabinets is a huge pain.

Bathroom

We painted the cabinets, replaced the floor (twice), updated the fixtures, and put in a new window.  The "after" picture doesn't show it, but we replaced the baseboards also.  Oh, how I want to fix the towels in this picture!  My boys don't seem care about whether the towels look nice. I, on the other hand, sometimes do fancy "hotel folds" just for fun.

Boys bedroom

I wish I had a picture of the ugly wallpaper border that went around the top of this room.  I peeled it off bit by bit with my own two hands. Don't forget to notice the original gold carpet.

Todd built the shelves I designed and I have LOVED them.  I will miss this closet.

I have also loved the pegs around the room.  I'm tempted to take them with me...

We never did completely finish the closet "barn door".  We had planned to put trim around the opening, and I wanted to make a distressed sign that said "Rabbit Valley Farm and Seed Co."  We also had plans to make a chicken coop cornice for the window treatment.  It was going to have chicken wire across the front with stuffed chickens and raffia inside.

Master bedroom

This is the one room we never painted.  I was actually in the process of picking paint colors when we found out that Todd was going to lose his job.

Our bedding has improved, but we still have the brown shag carpet.  We got the bench at the end of our bed from our neighbor's yard.  They put it outside with a sign that said "FREE" and I made Todd snag it.

Family room

We used this room for four years in this condition.  There wasn't even power.  We had to run an extension cord to plug in the TV/lamp, and the computer (not shown).  So many of our friends and family came to stay with us and had to stay in this "dungeon".  

Before Justin was born, we finished it (sort of).  We never finished the tile and mantle around the stove, and we never bought blinds for the window.  Todd made our computer/sewing desk out of two old doors, a filing cabinet, and an old bathroom cabinet that came with the house.

Quilting room

The quilting room was next on our list to be finished.  Todd and I were both excited about doing it, and now we never will.  I guess I'm glad we didn't spend the money on it.  

My mom and I stapled fabric to the ceiling, painted the cement (with some free paint that I had on hand), and organized my fabric into containers.  Oh, and that bulletin board?  It's a piece of foam insulation that we covered with fabric and glued to the wall with liquid nails.

Downstairs Bathroom

You can't tell from this picture, but there weren't any walls in this room when we moved in.  There was a toilet and that was it.  We hung curtains and used the bathroom in an emergency, but there was no sink so you still had to go upstairs to wash your hands.

Finishing this bathroom probably taught us the most. Todd framed the room, put in a shower and sink, filled cracks in the foundation, wired the room for the fan and a future heater/thermostat, installed the vinyl flooring, and built shelves.

Downstairs bedroom

It's hard to tell from this picture, but this is the room that is now Brayden and Caleb's room.  When we moved into this house, it had all the previous owner's stuff (this was his vacation home).  We moved all his stuff into this room until he could come down and look through it to see what he wanted.  

It turned out he only wanted three things.

Todd framed the room and closet, and even though we said we'd never do it again, we did the drywall ourselves because we couldn't afford to pay someone to do it.

I never finished decorating their "science" room.  I started making throw quilts for the end of their beds that had navy, orange, lime green and white stripes.  They were also supposed to get coordinating throw pillows, tin can robots, and their own artwork framed on the wall.

My dad came up with the idea for the corner closet, and it allowed us room for a built-in computer desk (there is no internet access in this room--the computer is for typing practice and CD-ROM games only).  We used vinyl rain gutters for the book shelves on the right.  I made the clock into a giant magnifying glass and printed some "real looking" bugs to crawl across the face.

We've learned...

Other random things that this house has taught us:

Todd actually learned to enjoy cutting/chopping wood to heat our house.  When we first moved in I wasn't very happy at the idea of having a wood-burning stove, but now I would prefer to never live without one!  Hauling wood was a perfect chore for our boys, and we moved our woodpile several times just so they could have a job!  (Shh, don't tell them)

We learned a few things about plumbing along the way.  We now know what we can do ourselves, and when we should call a plumber.

When our bathroom flooded, Todd had to replace the floorboards before installing the new floor.

We learned that it's not a good idea to build a metal shed in the wind.  There were many times that we truly believed the whole shed was going to collapse.  There was lots of swearing, yelling, and finally...a prayer.  Once we got it together it was fine, but Todd still framed the inside with 2x4's.

I don't have a before picture of this wall, because there wasn't anything there.  It was a dark corner in the kitchen next to the stairs.  Replacing the back door with one that had a window was probably the best thing we ever did.  It not only lightened up the kitchen, but allowed a cross breeze since we don't have air conditioning.  I designed this "organizational wall" and Todd built the pieces for me.  It is definitely one of my favorite improvements.

Random happenings

Today is crazy hair day at school.  I had to run to the grocery store at 7:30 AM to get orange hairspray so Caleb could be a jack-o-lantern like Dillon (who had to be bribed to wear his jack-o-lantern hair).  Brayden was much too cool for crazy hair.

Caleb wore a spider in his orange hair

Last week I sent Brayden and Caleb to the store (alone) for the first time ever (we live a block and a half away).  Their assignment was to get a chocolate bar so we could make chocolate curls for the pie Brayden made.

They were gone for quite awhile and I was starting to get nervous when I finally saw them walking home.  It turns out that after their purchase, Brayden realized that the cashier had given them 6 cents too much change...so they turned around and went back to return the money. I was one proud mama!

Too cold for a popsicle?  No way.
Dillon just ate his otter-pop with gloves.
(I should have given him a bib)

I had a gallbladder attack last week, and I don't have a gallbladder.

When I took the kids to the clinic the next day for their flu shots, I asked the Dr. about it.  He said that sometimes there is a stone in the common bile duct between the gallbladder and liver.  He looked up my surgery info on the computer and said that the surgeon had tried to check the common bile duct, but the opening was too small and he couldn't get the instrument inside.

Lovely.

 If I continue to have problems, I'll have to have some kind of a scope done that will irritate my pancreas.  This is the first time anything like this has happened since my surgery, so I'm hoping it's just a weird fluke.

The sale of our house is final.  We made a whopping $3.28 on the deal, and I feel pretty darn lucky just to get out of it.  I told Todd we'd have to be sure to put the money in savings to go towards our next house, or we'll get heavily taxed on it  :o)

My friend suggested we go to the local restaurant and celebrate with baby ice cream cones.

I love a baby in new dinosaur jammies...

Justin is walking/running everywhere these days.  He took his first courageous walk across the living room on Conference Sunday, about 10 minutes before Todd left to go back to the trailer.  I can't even tell you how glad Todd was that he was here to see it.

Now, a couple weeks later, he's getting more brave and starting to climb to get wherever he "needs" to go.  He has four teeth and one more on the way and loves to eat off the floor. He'll throw his food down from his high chair and eat it off the floor as soon as we let him out.  Hopefully he's building immunity...


In other news, we found the perfect house and got all excited about it just in time for it to go into foreclosure and be sold on auction last Thursday.  Unfortunately, we can't compete with people who have cash to buy a house.

We made an offer on another one this weekend.  I don't care for the look of the outside (it was built in the 80's) but the inside meets our needs perfectly.  We will spend the next few days haggling over the price and I'll be sure to post pictures if it works out.