The House: Before and After...

Last night we hosted our first large group in our home. The life group we meet with on Sunday nights from church came to our house for dinner, games, and a devotional lesson. It was a great evening. In preparation, Jack and I cleaned and cleaned so today, as promised, I have pictures of the inside of our house: before and after the renovations! (Please excuse the picture layout. Inserting this many pictures through blogger was more challenging and time consuming than I expected.)

Keep in mind, all of the before pictures were taken before the previous owner was completely moved out so the furniture was moved out when they left.

Let's start with the utility room:

Before:

Notice the green paint, green vinyl valances, and unpainted wood paneling....

After:

Now, it is a utility room so pardon the hangers and slight mess, but notice the beautiful tan and white paint, lovely new valance and new floor. There is also a new light fixture in here but you can't see that from this picture.

Now to the kitchen! Before:

There's that green paint again. And how about those saloon doors?

After:

So the changes in here include painted cabinets, new hardware, new light fixtures (again not pictured), new floors, new window treatments, new blinds, and new paint.

Some of the biggest changes occurred in the living room. So...here is the before:

The living room was originally two rooms: a den and formal living room. The formal living room was red with white carpet and a flowery border that was triple-glued (rrrrrgh)! The den was green (again) paneling and because of the fireplace the room was very narrow and offered few options for furniture set-up. So...we began to think about taking down the wall between the two rooms and creating one large living room for ourselves.

After:

Now we have a large living room and 18 people sat comfortably around last night during our life group meeting. As you can see, we also have new carpet, paint, window treatments, and light fixtures in this room too.

Guest bedroom and guest bathroom. Before:

The guest bathroom had gold lantern light fixtures that cast a yellow light all over the room, not to mention that they were hung low in mirror. Furthermore, there was no shower in the guest bathroom, just the (wonderful) jacuzzi tub. The guest bedroom was fine. The biggest problem with it was a ceiling fan that was improperly hung and no carpet. (Jack and I like carpet...don't judge us.)

After:

In the guest bathroom, we changed light fixtures, added a vent/light fixture, added the shower and marble around the jacuzzi tub, painted, and put in a new toilet. In the guest bedroom, we painted, added carpet, and changed the light fixture.

Finally, our bedroom and bathroom. Before:

Our bedroom had wall paper and no carpet. Our bathroom was green (again) and the shower tiles were falling off the walls. We ended up having to take the shower completely out and re-doing the entire thing. That was one of the largest projects we tackled.

After:

In our bedroom we added carpet, painted (after stripping wallpaper), changed the light fixture, and bought new bedroom furniture (which I love!). In the bathroom, we painted and completely gutted and changed out the shower. We put in marble instead of tile. Hopefully it will serve us well for years to come.

There are other rooms in the house not pictured here (the dining room, office, garage, and outside storage building) but these are the ones that are 1. clean and 2. the most changed. This project took up a large part of our summer and we are very thankful to our wonderful family who helped us with all the work and also friends and family who helped us move.

We feel truly blessed to be in our home. It is great for us and we have learned alot from the renovations (as you may have read if you keep up with this blog). Thanks for your prayers and support!