11/9/09

get ready to be amazed!

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

Since we had guests this weekend (my in-laws came to visit – Grandma and Grandpa!), I took advantage of the guest room being clean to take a picture! While the kitchen may have had the most work done to it, the guest room probably looks the most different.

First, the stairs to go to the top level of our split-level home (before, after):
Stairs to go up to the bedroomsThe stairs

The before picture for the guest room:
2nd bedroom

And now, how the guest room looks today… Are you ready? Here it is!
The guest room

What a difference a bit of paint made!!

The dark paneling made the room feel even smaller, so I picked a nice very light blueish color to cover the walls. It’s the same color that we painted our bedroom as well. We also pulled up the carpet, and of course the hardwood underneath was refinished at the same time as the rest of the house. It looks like a different room now!

We had the headboard already (it was mine from before we got married), so we bought a new mattress in anticipation of many wonderful guests.

Window, sewing machine

Closets in the guest room

In addition to a guest room, this will also be a craft/sewing room. You can see my sewing machine set up next to the bed. In the closet is a dresser filled with all my craft supplies. I am looking forward to having a bit more space to spread out than in my last apartment!

We still haven’t unpacked everything that will reside this room. Namely, the books that will go in that bookcase are still in boxes. Also, one of the closets is full of pictures that will be hung on the walls as soon as I get organized and figure out where exactly I want them. Once that closet is empty, we’ll fill it with miscellaneous boxes that need a home.

So now that you see what a nice guest room we have, you have no excuse not to come and visit us!

I have pictures of Savannah’s room which I’ll put in another post. Our room desperately needs to be cleaned and it still needs to be unpacked/organized so once that is done I will take a picture and post it. Our bathroom did not change much, but I’ll try to get a picture later. That’s it for the upstairs. Stay tuned. :-)

11/6/09

our living room

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

With the anticipation of guests, I finally got the living room cleaned up! So before it got messy again, I decided to take some pictures. First, the before pictures:

The front door and "foyer"

Living room

Please note the floors and how disgusting they were! We could see that they were just dirty, so we had them professionally cleaned. They are in really good shape for a 50 year old house, and they’ve never been sanded before! Here’s a picture of the floor in the living room now:

Floors redone

Now for the picture of the living room furnished!

Our foyer

Foyer/living room

Living room

Besides the floors, this room didn’t need a whole lot of work. We removed the borderprint (which didn’t match the wall color at all!) and painted all the walls a light yellow, and actually still need to put on a final coat. When we painted the walls before we moved in, it was during all that rain and flooding Atlanta was getting. The house was SO humid we couldn’t get the paint to dry and it wasn’t even sticking to the wall! So we had to wait until the rain stopped, and then we moved and now there’s furniture. Actually in person you can see what a bad paint job it really is! I’ll get around to it someday – and hopefully sooner than later, because I’m waiting on that to put up all the pictures!

The other two things we did to this room were take down the curtains in front of the bay window and replace the front door. The bay window has blinds, so curtains were a little unnecessary, and I think taking them down just opens up the room that much more. The original front door was a hollow wooden door without even a deadbolt so we replaced it with a steel door and new locks & a deadbolt. We also replaced the storm door. We thought the original storm door was really ugly, it didn’t close right, and it didn’t have a screen. Since the bay window doesn’t open, I wanted something to allow for cross-breezes in our house without letting the cats out. Hence, a new storm door with a screen.

Because the living room is the most used room in our house, we decided to go ahead and get a rug. I was checking Craigslist for a good rug when I found this new blue one at Home Depot for only $20! It’s not “perfect” but since I don’t have a good conception of the style I want for this room, I am totally cool with functional and not clashing.

Ideally, in the future, my goal is to put the TV and the computer downstairs in the family room/den. I’d like to get a piano to put up here, and make this a nice visiting room. Neither of us really care for the current setup, but there really is no other way to arrange it with the furniture we own. So, at a future time, we’ll figure it out. In the meantime, it’s functional and that’s the most important, right?

10/21/09

our kitchen: before and after

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

I finally took pictures of the kitchen! Here are the before pictures, what it looked like when we closed on the house:

Small kitchen

Other half of the kitchen

After spending a lot of time scraping wallpaper (two layers!) and painting, here is what it looks like today:

Our kitchen (after)

Our kitchen (after)

Our kitchen (after)

Our intention is to redo the kitchen when we get the money – new cabinets, new appliances, etc. Something that will make better use of the space without pricing ourselves out of our neighborhood. In the meantime, we wanted to make the kitchen a little pleasanter and less smelling like curry. What we did:

– Ripped down all the paneling and wallpaper which took FOREVER. They have special wallpaper removal stuff but we found that hot water worked better. There were two layers of wallpaper! We didn’t bother with the paper over the cabinets; we’ll get that whenever we redo the kitchen.
– Painted all the walls a sage green color.
– Replaced the curtains with new ones. The curtains that were there were stiff, stained, and greasy. They were probably pretty at one point, but not anymore. New curtains mad such a difference!
– The house didn’t come with a fridge so we hopped over to the Sears scratch & dent store in Tucker to buy a new one. I spent a long time debating about what color fridge to get, and I finally decided on white. (I wanted black, but I was afraid it would be too dark for the room.)
– Because of the height of the fridge, we had to take down the shelves and cabinet that were on that wall. We were going to reuse the shelves, but they fell apart in the process of taking them down. We moved the cabinet over near the sink. It looks a little funny, but it’s usable and that’s the important part.
– Added knobs to all the cabinets. Even after a heavy-duty cleaning, they were still sticky and made me want to wash my hands after touching them. So, we added knobs which not only make them look nicer but enable me to open them without getting my hands sticky. :-) I was going to replace all the drawer knobs too, but I decided against it because of our intentions to redo the kitchen.

So the kitchen is really functional now, and I think will be fine for the next few years. When we redo it, we’ll go ahead and get a new oven/stove and exhaust fan to match the fridge. We’ll also get a built-in dishwasher and extend the counter from the sink all the way to the wall. I’d also like to replace all the cabinets – my biggest complaint with these is that the shelves are rather low and so a lot of space is wasted due to not being able to stack things (like, for example, cups).

I put all the dishes out in the dining room so that we could use the cabinets for our small appliances. I think I’m happy with how it turned out, and until we have the money to redo it, I’m going to be brainstorming ideas for how to make better use of the space.