PROGRESS!!!

This has been a week of a LOT of progress on the new house.

The boy's room got painted this week. He wanted to keep the green shag carpet that was in the room (shudder), so when he chose bright red for a paint color, I made him pick a second color to kind of tone it down. He chose a really nice gold color to contrast, and it looks awesome. I don't have pics yet, because right around the time I finished painting, he got sick. My kids rarely get sick -they're the healthiest kids I know!- but he started coughing every night when he went to bed as soon as we moved in here, and after sleeping in the room for a week, he was really sick. We noticed a definite correlation between his cough and going in his room, so we decided that he probably is reacting to the dog, just like hubby and I are, since we're both allergic to dogs. We decided we needed to tear the carpet out.
This is what we found.

Yeah, those are all dog pee stains. And the last pic? That's the sub floor- it's soaked with dog pee,  and dogs haven't lived in this house in 3 weeks. Yuck. Yuck, yuck and double yuck!! Why we agreed to let the boy keep the carpet, I can't answer for you. We were trying to give him some say in the matter, I guess. But that's just disgusting.
Now that the gross carpet is gone, I will be mopping with a strong bleach solution, then painting the floor with Kilz, before we put new flooring in. We're thinking of going with sheet vinyl in this room. I'm currently working in a flooring store and can get a decent price on flooring, and really love the IVC Flexitec sheet vinyl, and I think since it's just temporary, I'll order in something decent looking and just loose - lay it for now. Anything is better than dog pee carpet!

Now on to the progress! I started working on the living room. This room was just dark and depressing before. The walls had poorly done chair rail separating a wine red from a beige color- just not my style. I had hubby remove the chair rail, and got to work patching, sanding, and painting. Removing the chair rail caused some damage, but nothing my handy dandy spackle and a putty knife couldn't handle!

 We have a lot of antique furniture. My husband's grandfather was a cabinet maker, so we have many pieces he made, plus other family pieces that were handed down to us over the years. Many of those pieces are oak. Normally I'm not a huge fan of oak, but when it comes to antique furniture, I NEVER say no!

So, what do you do with a room full of oak furniture? Paint it blue!! Blue contrasts beautifully with the orange tones in oak, really making them shine. If you're going to have antique oak furniture, you have to make it look as beautiful as possible. To me, that means playing up the natural color, not hiding it. I selected a Benjamin Moore color, Tranquil Aqua to accomplish this. Here is how the room looked after 1 coat.

SOOOOOO PRETTY!!!!! My next project is the dining room. Once that's done, all the walnut furniture will leave the living room, and I will take "completed" pictures. Still, things are moving along!

Busy and productive week in the new house!

We finally moved in to the new house! We've been here a week already, and it has been a BUSY one! When we moved in, we found quite a mess. The house was very dirty and required some serious scrubbing before I could even start to think about making any cosmetic changes. Step one, as it always is, was to clean the bathrooms and kitchen to make them usable. You'd think this would be fairly straight forward, but with a house this big, it turned out to be more work than I'd anticipated! There's still one bathroom I haven't even touched- it's in the basement, and while it's a nice big bathroom, I just haven't even bothered doing anything in there yet- the three on the main levels of the house are working out just fine for the time being.

The kitchen was a whole other ball of wax. Not only did it require a lot of cleaning (I'm a bit of a germ a phobe when it comes to other people's ick, but this place was dirty by anybody's standards!), but it's also TINY!! It didn't seem small when we looked at it, but I had more than twice as many cabinets in my old house, so finding homes for everything was a serious challenge. Only one of the kitchen cabinets has adjustable shelves! I still haven't figured out where I'm going to put my crock pots or my veggie steamer, blenders, mixers, etc.

Carpet cleaning was a big project, too. The house only has carpet in 2 of the bedrooms, and the living room, but the lady who owned this house before us had dogs, and my whole family is allergic to dogs. The carpet smelled like dog, as well, and that's a scent I simply can't tolerate. So, a couple of rounds of carpet cleaning (Thank goodness for my cleaner that my mom bought me as my last house warming gift, 7 years ago!), and the smell and allergens are gone from all but the master bedroom- we haven't gotten to that one yet.

Finally, after 3 days of doing nothing but scrubbing and cleaning and unpacking, I was able to do something a little more fun. As promised, we made the kids' bedrooms the first priority, and I got to work on those right away.

First up was the girl's room. We painted all of her bedroom furniture (with the exception of her dresser, which is a beautiful fruit wood piece we bought when I was pregnant with the boy) Sherwin Williams Fancy Pink. We had planned on a bright pink bedroom when we picked the furniture color, but she changed her mind once she saw the room, and chose a turquoise color instead.

Her first pick was Sherwin Williams Raindrop.

We loved it, but because of a bump out architectural detail in her room, I felt like she needed a second color to accent it. We stuck with the same color strip in the Sherwin paint deck and went one shade lighter, Meander Blue.

Her room turned out SO pretty!!
Here's the before shot- She actually has pretty decent looking laminate floors in her room, which will stay. She loves to do art, so it makes sense for her to have hard surface flooring that is easy to clean. This room was painted a salmony color- I'm not sure what to call it- I just know we didn't like it!

Here's a better representation of the true color.

Here is her room color now. I'll post pictures once we have the furniture moved to give a better idea of the entire vision of the room.

The turquoise colors are so pretty with the trim and the color of the flooring. I can't wait to see what it looks like once her room is unpacked and all of her things are in place!!

Packing for the move

Nothing new happening on the home renovations this week- we've been concentrating on getting packed up and ready to move, which is taking up a TON of time. We take possession in TWO DAYS!!! I can not wait to get started on painting rooms! So exciting!