the projects begin....

NEW HOUSE HAPPENINGS - THE PROJECTS BEGIN

1. The first project we wanted to take on was to get the bedrooms ready for us! So, the night of closing, my aunt Barb and I painted Norah's room and our room until midnight! It just felt more like home that way...especially for our little girl. We painted her room just like we had in the old room, to give her one sense of normalcy.

2. The next project was new carpet in the bedrooms. Because of the collapsed ceiling debacle, the seller had already put new carpet in the spare bedroom upstairs, and the had generously let me pick it out! So, we had a friend of mine over at Carpetime set us up to get the exact same carpet in Norah's room and our room. This made a huge difference in the place feeling fresh and clean and ours. This was also a huge motivator in getting the paint done that first night, considering carpet was going in bright and early the next morning.

3. The next small project of moving in week, was the electrical. The kitchen had two disgusting and nasty flourescent lights. So my almost electrician brother Brady ripped those out for us, and installed wonderful new recessed can lights that I love!! He also took down the outdated and soooo dirty ceiling fans in the family room and replaced them with new ones. We also got to work on replacing the lights in the spare room, Norah's room and our room. Our room isn't quite finished because the beautiful chandelier I found on Overstock.com (a $400 light that I snagged for $80) didn't work, it hung too low to go over our bed.....apparently I got so excited for the deal that I failed to consider the dimensions....oops. And the last electrical project (of the week) was replacing the outlets....which we are still in the process of doing. Somewhere in the 31 years of our homes existence, they decided to paint the outlets. Not just the plates (though that would be hideous enough) but the decided to paint the entire outlet. Yep right where the plug goes in, pinkish beige.....wow. So Brady and my dad are taking them all out and replacing with fresh clean white ones!

4. The final project of this post is the beginning of the kitchen remodel. We are completely gutting the kitchen, and this is the reason I was excited about getting this house. Ryan and I saw so much potential from the moment we saw this house. We love the kitchen/family room area....or at least we saw that we could love it. So, we are doing many things to this kitchen, but the first one was to rip our the 1979, view blocking, ugly massive upper cabinets.

Here is a pic of the ugly lights and the cabinets we were about to rip out on the left.

This is after that first one came down.....exciting, can already see how much better it's going to be!

And here is halfway through the tearing out....that nasty hood came down too!

And here is a pic of what it looks like now!

The complete kitchen remodel is getting underway TOMORROW! So excited, unfortunately (and fortunately for some aspects), we aren't going to be here for the first 1.5 wks of it. I'm not sure how long in total it will take. But a big chunk will be done when we get back. (We are heading out for a friends wedding in Denver, then to California to see our brother Jason, and then to Moab for two nights for a company trip for the radiostations. So, needless to say, we have a busy couple of weeks coming up...surprise surprise.

I will keep you posted with our kitchen (and our Norah of course!) Here are a couple of pics of her just for fun!