1959 Meets 2013

     Happy New Year! Yes, I'm late, I know. =) It seems this year has started off with me running to catch up with it, and I sincerely hope that's not an indication of how the rest of the year is going to go! I hope your holidays were all very relaxing and wonderful. Mine was, and now I am happy to be back in regular work mode. I thought I'd give you a rundown of how the house work is progressing. If you missed my earlier posts about it, the basics are we just bought a house built in the 50's that needs some major loving, a whole lot of paint, and a good bit of updating.
     Unfortunately, things have to get ugly before they get pretty with house renovating. Electrical work, AC work, pluming, gutting rooms, and that sort of thing all have got be done before any beatifying of the place happens. So here's whats gone on lately...
     This room here used to be a garage and was enclosed at some point after the house was built. It had lovely green and orange dusty (very, very dusty) carpet, ugly paneling on the walls, and an old heater on the wall.

     As lovely as all of the above were, we decided to gut the room entirely. That involved prying off the paneling.

     Unfortunately, I found a nice surprise that the former termite tenants had left for me. Thankfully I didn't find any live ones, and none of the damage seems to be on anything structural. Just as a side note, if you live in termite country, I'd HIGHLY recommend getting regular inspections and treatments! It will save you grief later, I promise!

       Next up was the carpet. This sucker had been glued down over some sort of tile stuff. I think it might have been a floor leveler of some kind, but who knows. At any rate, it took more scraping, hacking, and whacking to get that stuff up than I would have imagined! If you want a New Year's work out, go find a floor to scrape...your muscles will scream at you.

     It all paid off though, because now the room looks like this! I do believe this is about the only time I'd consider cinder block and cement to be beautiful! I have big plans for this room, it's going to be my future sewing studio! I get to be as creative as I want with the design of this room, and I plan to do some really fun stuff with it...but more on that later.

       While we were busy here, my trusty contractor was busy heading up the installation of our air conditioning system.

 
       Hurrah for heat! Of course, having all that put in caused even more mess....like dry wall dust EVERYWHERE, and large holes cut into my ceilings.

     Nothing that a few friendly dry wall guys couldn't fix though!

       They also patched up the rest of the top floor's ceilings too, since they were in pretty sad shape. That was totally fine with me, because now I could actually paint something! I completely and utterly enjoyed painting over those pink ceiling, I just have to say! This is a shot of the master bedroom ceiling in progress. It's paint color has just a tinge of mint green, but all the rest are just done in a nice clean white.

        One more bit of de-pink-ification (yes, that's a word!) took place on this rail that divides the living room and dining room.

      I spray painted it with Rustoleum's hammered black spray paint. Agghh, one less thing pink makes me so happy. You know, that parquet flooring is starting to grow on me a little...what do you think of it?? Paint it? Replace it? Leave it?

        Anyway, that about sums up how we rang in the new year. My great resolution is to make this mess livable, and move in already! =) This week should see the end of the major mess making operations, so then the really fun stuff of putting the beauty back into the house can start.
       I'm planing and pinning away on my Pinterest boards, so feel free to take a peak and see where this old house is headed! Have a wonderful week!

 Psalms 19:9   The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether