House updates so far

Lots of you have asked how the house renovations are coming along. I finally have things put back together for the most part and I'm ready to share what we have so far. Let me preface this by saying that we haven't completely finished any of our renovations except Kinsley's room. I still have a few tiny details like pictures to put in her room, but other than that, she's all set. Here's how things look at the moment. Please lower your expectations and remember that things are not finished.

Living room floor painted

Ok, so this is the living room floor as it is right now. The hideous pink carpet has been removed along with the tack strips which were not easy to get out of the concrete slab. I cleaned and painted the slab to help seal it and keep things cleaner until we install the laminate which we have but don't have time to install just yet. Some of you have asked "Don't you wish you'd done this sooner?" and the answer to that is no, we weren't ready for it until now. We hated the pink carpet yes, but it wasn't until recently that I in particular got so sick of it that I decided no flooring at all was better than the gross carpet. I had actually removed the carpet in the dining room once before because I hated it, but after looking at it for an hour, I decided that it wasn't really that bad. That was 1 baby and 1 puppy ago and I changed my mind. Some have asked why we don't install the laminate if we have it in the house, and the answer to that is because we have been trying to get lots of other projects done so we A: don't have time, and B: it's flooring and I don't want to ruin it while we are doing all this other stuff. I am so happy to just have it in the house and the pink carpet out that I don't care that it's not installed. It is not longer a pipe dream, it's really going to happen. So what if we can't use the bar for seating because the flooring is piled up under it, that's a minor technicality. How Henry feels about this: He's ok with it. I'm not sure he really embraced it at first when it was bare concrete, and he wasn't sure about the painted floor, but after it was all done he's ok. I of course didn't discuss any of this with him prior to doing it so he was surprised to say the least. He was with me when we bought the laminate and probably assumed that we'd wait to remove the carpet until we were ready to install it but he knows how I am so I can't say that he didn't at least sort of expect it. On a side note, the paint is 4 different buckets of wall paint that we had floating around in the closet. I freed up space and made the floor better. It was a win win!  :-P

Moving right along now, I'll show you Kinsley's room. I don't know where the before shots are, but it was the boys' room and had beige walls and a popcorn ceiling. We had never painted or done anything to it before now.

So here's a shot from the door. The walls are a very light purple. She has a new little bed. I'm going to put some pictures or a banner with her name or something in this area because it looks like it needs something. Poor kid, she just doesn't have any toys. :-P She 's kind of at that in between stage where she still plays with baby toys, but also toddler/ pre-school toys so I didn't pack anything up unless she was obviously too old for it. So I did give in and put Dora stickers on the wall. Yes it made me a little sad because I'm not a 100% supporter of Dora because she's loud and encourages my kid to yell, but other than that I can tolerate her she makes Kinsley happy so I bought the stickers. Yes that is chalk board paint on the closet, and yes I'm going to repaint the hall. It seemed like a good idea at the time and for about a month after, then I was sick of it but didn't want to go through the hassle of painting it again at the time. It will get repainted when we decide what color downstairs will be.

 On to the office and the boys' room

Yes those are bi-fold closet doors that we used to divide the room. Again, I don't have pics right here to show what it looked like before, but they are on the blog somewhere. Anyway, we temporarily divided things this was for several reasons. 1. There is no window on the other end of this space, so it would have been an even darker hole if we completely closed it off. 2. There is no air vent on the other side, so it would have been even hotter. 3. We intend to seriously gut this entire space maybe next year. It has framing, insulation and electrical issues. When we do gut the room, we will add a window and air vent for the boys and divide the electrical so that their room and the office are truly two 
separate spaces. Though the office is smaller, it is 
actually more functional this way and I don't mind. 
I was able to keep it on the ground floor with exterior access. True, to get to it from the inside of the house you have to go through the bathroom, but that's another minor technicality and not usually a problem. If you really need to get into the house and can't go through the bathroom, you can go outside and around. You will notice in photo 1 that there are 2 desks. You will also notice that most of the stuff on the wall in this photo is not mine. I tried really hard to keep Henry in here even though we lost some space. I feel kind of bad that he lost his man space, but that's what happens when you get married and have kids. I will also keep the office neutral when I eventually get to paint it, no floral girly stuff not that I would choose that anyway.

So the only room left is the boys' room.

 You will notice that there is a fan in there, and that's because of the whole circulation/ventilation issue that I mentioned before. The low spot in the "wall" also allows for more light. It's not an ideal situation, but that's what we have. It's a little dark in there, but they like it that way since they always kept their curtains closed when they had a window. I love that they are downstairs because they are away from sleeping babies and adults who like to pretend to sleep in on weekends. I'm not sure that an extra 30 minutes is sleeping in, but whatever. Since they are on the ground floor which is a concrete slab, and on the other side of an exterior wall, it is quieter in the
mornings. No running up and down the stairs and giggling in the bathroom. They also lost a little space by moving downstairs. I'm not sure exactly how much square footage, but they don't care because they have cable and video games in their room. It was pointed out that if they abuse this privilege, they will no longer have it. We still have to separate the existing utility closet which is huge and make them a closet that they can access. In theory this should be a fast and easy thing to do, but in reality I'm sure that it will take all day and we will all be mad by the time it's done. I think that the window will be somewhere in the area of those blue crates on the wall, but I'm not sure. We'll cross that road when we get there and the space is all gutted.  
All in all we are happy with the changes that we've made so far. The space and general ideas work so the fact that details aren't done is ok. I've learned to lower my expectations as to when things get done and accept that they will happen when and if they need to. Some people have suggested that we buy a new house instead of flipping this one all around, but we love the location, the neighborhood, the neighbors, and the house. We don't mind the near constant renovations and the fact that nothing has been  really "finished" the entire time we've lived here. It's been sort of nice to have temporary things because it has allowed us to see what we really want and need. We've revised plans lots and lots of times, but the internal layout of the house is pretty much like it will be for a long time. Then again, who knows... :-P 
-Kellie-