The Long Awaited House Post

So, we bought a house and moved into it.

This was right after we closed on the house. It's a little bland in the front, but we have some time to work on that. We recently discovered that the bushes in the front have purple flowers from time to time, which is lovely.

The house was a mess when we took possession. Luckily, we were already planning to paint, so we had a few weeks before we had to move all our things. Here are some before shots.

The living room starting to be prepped for painting. You'll see a very beige theme in the  next few pictures.

The Kitchen. The cabinets are in great shape. The stove and dishwasher came with and are old, but work  pretty well.

The dining area. Here you can see the beige vinyl. It has since been covered with laminate.

The Pantry. This was a big selling point for us, since TX apparently doesn't believe in basements. This room is definitely not ready for its after picture, but I will proudly post it when it is. I just wanted to show how great the storage is!

So as we were cleaning and painting we discovered that, in addition to a bunch of household items, the previous owners had left us some fleas in the carpet. The carpet was in pretty rough shape anyway, especially on the lower floor. We were going to clean it and save our pennies to replace it. But the fleas moved up our timetable, as did a contribution to the cause from my parents (thanks Mom and Dad!). Here are some close up shots of the carpet.

They don't really do justice to how yucky it was. But this definitely does justice to my flea-bitten legs.

Here are pictures from when the carpet got ripped out.

I'm sure it was a long day for them, but the floors look great. it made such a huge difference in the house. You can also see a little preview of the new wall color in these pictures. 

So we packed up all our stuff, with help from our new ward.

And these are the after pictures.

The room still needs some color. In our last house we had color on the walls, so all of our stuff is pretty neutral. All the blinds in the house were busted, so we took them down and put up leftover curtains to cover. But they are navy blue so they add to the greyness of the room. We have some plans for brighter curtains and warmer accessories, but its current state is a lot better than the beige theme that was going on before. And aren't the floors amazing?

I have a lot more projects in mind. And as time and money permit, we'll do them. And those pictures will follow. But for now we are really enjoying spreading out in this place and taking a lot of pride in putting work into it.