Before and After Carpet

Here's what it looked like before we did anything to the upstairs.

room at the top of the stairs

room at end of hallway across from bathroom

same bedroom as above.  the walls are in awful condition.
there are holes and lots of snot smeared everywhere...ewwwww.

stairwell showing the colors of the carpet and walls which
carried throughout the upstairs hallway.  note the naaaasty carpet.

These are the rooms with paint but no carpet.

room at the top of the stairs

upstairs hallway

bedroom at the end of the hallway
across from the bathroom

And here we are with paint and new carpet.  (must wait until tomorrow)

Almost ready for upstairs carpet

The walls are painted, except the largest bedroom. I just have one more baseboard to install in the room at the top of the stairs.

Bright and clean

What a world of difference a fresh coat of paint makes. Not to mention filling all of those holes. Our living room went from dark and dreary to bright and clean.

Red Kitchen

We opened the red paint can today. I really love the color! This paint started out as a very tomato red color. Way too bright for me. I took the can back to Home Depot and the paint guys did a really nice job of adding a little this and a little of that to change it to the color you see here. It was great! There was no charge to get the color changed and we didn't have to buy a whole new bucket of paint. The only drawback that I see is if we somehow run out of this gallon. It would be next to impossible to get another bucket of this exact color. Hopefully we have enough leftover for touch ups later.

Prepping for paint

There are a ridiculous amount of dents and holes that need filling. Here's a sample of the walls in the living room. Stella is obscuring about a dozen filled holes behind her.

Let there be light!

I added a light kit to the ceiling fan in the downstairs bedroom. What a difference to be able to flick a switch and get light! As an added bonus, the kit has an energy star rating and is eligible for a $10 rebate.

Hidden roof leak

I found a crumbly spot in the drywall when I was washing the ceiling in the kitchen to get it ready for paint. My thumb went right through it. There is now a 2 x 3 foot opening in the ceiling. I will have to get up on the roof to fix the flashing where the water is seeping through.

The kitchen

One thing we want to do is to change the look of the kitchen. It's a little bit bland, blah, boring, pasty. It currently has white corian-type countertops and milky white stained cabinets, white walls, a faded grayish colored wood floor and dark brown wood trim around the windows and doorway.

We plan to paint the countertops red, the walls a creamy tan and the floors a darker brown wood stain. Here's a little digital paint job we did to see how it might look:

We picked out paint from Home Depot and now we just have to start with getting the spider webs and grime off the walls and ceiling and then painting from the top down.  The ceiling comes first then the creamy colored walls then the red cabinets.  Although, I'm so excited about having red cabinets that I just want to start there first.  

So, we bought a house.

This is our "new" house.  It's actually pretty old.  The paperwork says that it was originally built in 1790.  And to put that in perspective, George Washington was the president of the United States when this was built.

This is the side view of the house.  The architectural style is considered Second Empire because of the Mansard roof and bay windows on each side.  It looks a little like a lunch box to me.

Certainly lots of work has been done on this house since then.  I'm very curious about what parts of the house have been there for over 200 years.  It's a little tough to get information, since this house was a foreclosure.  The previous owners would probably rather not be contacted.  It could be a touchy situation.

We have a lot of work that needs to be done on the house.  Our plan is to get the house into shape and then put it up for rent.  I thought it would be fun to keep track of what we do on the house.