The White House Before

Right now I am sitting in our new home watching four non-English speaking gentlemen run around with a blowtorch, some form of concrete, and a bag of sand....no I am not scared at all they seem to know what they are doing.  I just wish my Spanish was a tad bit better for situations like these. 

We have come a long way since purchasing our new house on August 30th.  The house had been foreclosed on and uninhabited for over a year when we bought it.  The neighbors have told us a few stories as to why the family before us lost the home and about the other family that built the home and lived here before them.  We have met our neighbors that live to the right of us and across the street.  Our neighbors beside us are a mom, daughter, and the mom's sister-in-law and all 3 are widows.  Our mail lady affectionately calls them the silver foxes, so far they have been very sweet.  The daughter comes over from time to time to see what kind of progress we are making.  We do know that our neighbor across the street is a fireman and he too was very nice when we met him.  I think we are going to really enjoy our new neighborhood.  There seems to be a good mix of young families and empty nesters.  We are currently finishing up our last few major things and should be moving in by the end of the month.  Thanks so much to all of our family members that have helped us with the remodel. Both mine and Matt's dads have both been huge helps and have spent hours at the house helping us with numerous projects. 

Here are some pictures of the house before and during our remodel:

View from the street before any changes were made.

We aren't changing much on the outside of the house right now.  We did get a new roof and we are getting a new garage door sometime in the next week.  We plan to change the color of the front door and get new shutters at some point when my handyman (dad) completes them. 

I think the hardest part of our whole remodel has been choosing paint colors.  Matt and I were originally going to paint all but the living room ourselves. We hired a painter for the living room and decided that he did a much better job than we did and he was very reasonable.  We ended up hiring him to do the whole house.  If you are in the market for a painter in NW LA we would highly recommend ours.  While we were scrubbing the walls before the painter came and trying to get the home somewhat sanitary we did figure out that the former family had a champion booger picker/flicker on their hands (I know gross, but I'm not kidding at all) and they liked to eat what I hope was spaghetti and sling it on the walls too.  The neighbors told us that the family also had a large black dog, but we could tell that just by looking at the carpet. 

Living Room Before

Dining Room Before

This is what the living room currently looks like.

Since the top 2 pictures of the living and dining rooms, we have painted and they are currently working on our new flooring in both of the rooms. 

Master bath tile before

Master bath tile after

I didn't get a before picture with it still installed, but this not so pretty green tile was in the master bathroom.  Matt, my dad, and cousin Kagan spent a weekend ripping it up and replacing it with something that looks much better. 

Kitchen before with our new dishwasher

The other side of the kitchen before

During remodel

Matt and I both love to cook, so we did the most work in the kitchen.  When we bought the house there was no fridge, the stovetop was cracked, and the dishwasher was broken.  We have replaced all of the appliances, gotten new countertops, a backsplash, new hardware, and painted the walls and cabinets.  Our house in Minden doesn't have a pantry, so we are excited about the pantry and all of the storage in our new kitchen.  I have quite a few new recipes lined up for that pretty new oven of ours. 

We painted, put new carpet, and a new fan in our master bedroom and Matt's mancave, but I don't have any good pictures of those rooms.  You will have to wait for all of the after pictures.  The fans in all of the rooms were pretty u-g-l-y!

Guest bedroom before

Guest bedroom during

The guest bedroom's carpet was so bad that it had to be pulled up before the home could be sold. 

Bonus room before (the fans are new)

Bonus room during

This is our bonus room which will serve as our TV area and my office/craft room.  We haven't quite figured out how it is going to serve all of these purposes, but it is big enough and we will find a way. 

Upstairs bathroom before

The only thing we have done in the upstairs bathroom is paint.  There are a few other projects we would like to tackle up there, but we are going to wait on those.

We can't wait to get everything done and move in this month.  Once we get settled I'll be sure to post all of our after pictures. 

Buddy is very excited about his new house and yard!