Basement finished

When we were looking for our new house there were a lot of things we needed to accommodate everyone.  Mike likes to call our house the compromise.  He would love to live out were the nearest store is a 30 minutes drive.  That wouldn't work for the rest of us.  We picked this house knowing that we would have to work on the basement.  Since our other house had an offer the first day we had to find something quick.  We did get lucky that the people that bought our house let us rent it back for 3 weeks to give us a little more time to move with all the end of school celebrations. 

kitchen and family room before

 kitchen after

 dining room before

 

The dining room did not look like this when we found this house. It was vacant and the above picture showing the pastel pink wall.  Besides removing the living room and family room curtains the pink wall was one of the first things to go. 

 dining after

living room before and after

family room

 The basement was a lemon yellow and the only finished room had a half wall.  We had to do a lot of demolition.  We added two more bedrooms, a family room, bathroom and a storage room.  It took a lot of work.  The whole family (brother in laws included) helped a lot.  By the end of it we were so exhausted and just wanted to be done. Here are some of the pictures of the work on progress.

 

 David's room

 bathroom

 library area (before bookshelves & complete finish)

basement family room

 

The basement looks great!  Some other finishing touches have been done even though we haven't hung any pictures yet.  So although it is a little late to do the bbq that we planned for our friends to come see it.  Give us a call and come by to see the house.  We are very excited that we don't live in a construction zone anymore.  The one finish that we didn't picture is the loft that was turned into Laura's room.  So each child has their own room and we have room for visitors.  Let us know when you're coming!

Before and After

We have a honey do list at our house. There has been so much painting and changing we've done to the house in the last two years. Although I haven't taken pictures of everything the last few weeks there have been some major changes that needed to get done.

This is a picture of our house in July, it's the picture I used to put it in the MLS. We wanted to see if we could get any bites before school started. Since we were heading out on vacation thought the house might stay "showable" and we'd give it a shot. We listed it at the highest comparable knowing there were things that needed to be done. So maybe we weren't as serious as we thought.

While we were gone there was a huge hail storm. It damaged the paint, screens and roof. If you drive down my street this week you'll see at least 15 houses that have either just had their roofs and paint done or have roofing materials at their house. For us it started with the paint, finally got the "pink" color off the house. Can you believe this is the only picture I have of the paint process. Below is a picture of the roofers finishing after a hard days work. They tore off and put everything on in one day. We couldn't believe that they got everything done in one day.

Here is the after picture of paint. We love the white trim and the clouds even look good. The best part about it is we now know the color of our house. So if we ever need to touch something up we can.This is our before of the kitchen taken in July too. Notice the lovely mint green tiles on the back splash and the matching counter tops. Well not only is it hard to decorate but the counters were so beat up. In April on one of our many trips to Lowes I was drooling in the kitchen section. We noticed that the granite was on sale. It was almost half off and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Mike even thought it was a great price and I was surprised when he agreed that we did need to change our counter tops. Our problem, the color we both agreed on wasn't in. They didn't know when they would have it again.

So after taking the house off the market and finally coming to peace with the fact that we would have a mint green kitchen for at least a couple more years,the call came in. The "majestic white" granite is in (almost 6 months later). It was the one color we both agreed on way back in April. I was almost afraid to tell Mike the call came in because we had just talked about ways to save money. But when I told him guess who called today? He was as excited as I was. So it was on, yes we were still interested. Woo hoo! I am absolutely in love with the kitchen now. It was a long process that started with having the green tile and bottom row of tile removed. Waiting for the counter tops to be measured cut and scheduled for install took almost the whole month of September. The night before the install Mike and David removed the old counter tops and sink. Even though we had dealt with the kitchen being a little torn up most of September the hardest part of that was 2 days without a kitchen sink. The best part of it is no cooking for a couple of days. This weekend Mike finished all the trim work and the last couple pieces of tile. It looks so great and exactly what I wanted. The color is a gray, white, black speckle. It looks exactly like the color of the Oakland Temple to me. But the best part of all is it is so easy to clean and if the kids drum on this one they won't break a piece off. If they drum on this one breaking a piece off won't be an issue but they'll have me to deal with!