Home – Before and After

So how about we talk about them there fixin’s we done did with this here house! Get ready for some before and after goodness, because I’m excited!

I was debating doing a photo gallery vs just placing the pics throughout the post. Photo gallery lost because I had to keep you engaged somehow 😊 Enjoy, and I look forward to hearing YOUR stories and seeing YOUR before and after pics! Hit me up on the tweeters to show me!

If you know me (in particular, from my podcast/community where it’s been ground zero for updates), then you would know what we’ve been up to with everything. When we purchased the house, it was extremely easy to see the potential that hid just below the extreme outdatedness. I mean, seriously. Look at these light fixtures! No lie, we saw the same exact fixtures on the second season of Stranger Things in all their brassy glory. And no, that’s not a good thing, seeing as how the show takes place in the 80’s.

There was a ton that we really wanted to do to make it perfect, but we knew there were only a few things that we needed to do to move in. Three main projects that demanded attention before a single box crossed the threshold:

1. Paint
2. Floors
3. Outlets/switches

We had about six weeks between signing the papers and moving in. Sounds like a lot of time to do 3 little projects, eh? Aye. If you have the money to throw around like that. We were always trying to save where we could, so that meant doing some work. Thanks to time and how relentless it is, the only thing we had to outsource were the floors. We decided to hire someone, and by someone, yes, I mean one dude. But I’ll get into that later.

First, the paint. My goodness, the mother#$%@ing paint. Before I start on it, keep in mind we had some help. The sister in-law came down from North Carolina with her bf and they gave the entire house (minus the bathrooms) a coat or two. They couldn’t complete everything because of time *shakes fist*, so I had to get in there and finish. Thought I had about a week’s worth of work to do… Nope. Fast forward 5 weeks later and there I was, making the final paint strokes, swearing I’ll never touch another paint brush for as long as I live. Though, it’s not my fault that it took so long. I was only able to work 3 hours a day because of the kid’s pre-k schedule. Plus, I didn’t work weekends so really, if you put it all together, it took me more or less the original week I said it would! Still though, it was very tiring, going back and forth and trying to get stuff done in those 3 hours only to have to break it down and close up shop when I started getting on a roll. Not only tiring, but stressful! Painting was taking up all my time and I knew there was plenty more that had to be done. Like the floors!

Now, this is where you would expect me to talk about the floors and all that mess. But no, I’m not done talking about the painting! See, terrible, isn’t it?! Thinking you’re done with paint talk and you’re disappointed you can’t move on to something else. Welcome to my hell! Soon, you will hate painting too, just like meeeeeeeee!

So the house was all one color for the most part. A nice, boring cross between eggshell and beige, save for the accent walls that were various shades of mud brown. And by mud, I mean something else that’s brown.

We had been living in an eggshell colored cave for two years and we were ready for a change. At one point in the color picking process I was totally fine recreating the inside of a papaya. I was just that ready for color. But we refrained and went with a grayer pallet. Like everything else, there was a lot of back and forth. The wife was ok with getting a few 5-gallon buckets and doing the entire house in one color. But I was ready, and willing to have a different color for every space WITH accent walls.

You can probably see with the layout that the house would benefit with a lot of colors. Nooks and crannies, big walls, open kitchen going into a dinette and living room. You need different colors, or it would’ve looked like weird fever dream. Wife didn’t want to go through all the trouble but luckily her sister was there, and she was on my side. After much debate, the wife said “FINE!” And looked at one of the 20 color sample books we had littered across the floor and picked each color for each room in a decisive fit of rage.

No lie, it worked! Because everything made sense, everything fit perfectly, and the colors were awesome. So, 11 cans of paint later we were ready to start the transformation process. What? 11 is a lot of paint? Try 17 because we had to get 6 more cans before all was said and done! What were the colors? Check it out. 

OK, now the floors. With the paint still dry, we had to get the floor dude working. Luckily my parents helped us out and paid for the floors and installation. We’ll be paying them back, but it was a necessity and the only way it was going to happen is if they paid and we paid them back. Time was not on our side and installing the floors was not going to be an easy task.

So, the dude came and was here a few days, removing carpet and tile and whatnot. He originally gave us a week timetable, saying he’ll be done by then. Days went by, some unworked, some barely worked. We hit the original day of completion and he was nowhere near being done. Another week was added on and by the time that rolled around it was still not finished.

At this point, it was only a few days before moving in and we couldn’t believe what was going on. We had to pull out the jerk card to get a fire going in him. The last few days he was working till 9 or 10pm so something must have clicked.

But despite the stress and deadline looming, once he was finished it was truly a sight to see. He took a lot longer than anticipated and made us push the schedule back a few times, but the man knew what he was doing and he did it amazingly. I think the floors together with the paint came out better than we could’ve ever imagined. We must have done something right because it feels like everywhere we look now we’re seeing our living room color. In magazine ads, commercials, you name it. It’s like our finger is on the pulse!

And the outlets. I look at that picture and I can’t help but see the outlet scared to death of being fed to the wire monster living in the wall. You can’t unsee it now, can you? You’re welcome.

After the paint and the floors, the next must-do was replacing all the outlets and light switches. It sounds lowly in the things-to-do category, but they were needed. The house was built in 2001 so a lot of the stuff in here was original. Outlets and switches were the easiest thing to change out, but it just took forever. And I’m glad I decided to double check every outlet before cutting into them because even though the breaker was off, some still had power! Yeah, I guess it didn’t matter that an outlet was in a specific room, for some reason, a few of them were on the breaker to the next room. So yeah, I almost died twice. Good times. Thanks, voltage checker!

So that’s the huge updates we did before moving in. We were extremely fortunate and lucky to grab this house when we did. Since it was bought, there has been nothing in this area in our price range and what we were looking for. So more than likely we would’ve been out of luck when the lease was up in the cave. We only purchased one other house before, and that was new construction in North Carolina. While it was an absolutely amazing house up there, and we picked everything from the color to where we wanted the outlets placed, it felt like it was TOO perfect. Yeah, there were things to improve and do, but there wasn’t a sense of urgency. We lived there 5 years and never did anything to it.

Buying an older house that needed work was something I never thought we’d enjoy as much as we did. We did more work on it before we moved in than we did in the 5 years we lived in our house in North Carolina. And we’re nowhere near done! We still have plenty of things we want to do and fix in here. Top of the list is the kitchen, where we’re planning on a complete gut and redo to add more cabinet space and an island. But that won’t be for a little while. We need to paint and fix up the bathrooms, add cabinets to the laundry room, and don’t even get me started on all the landscaping we have to do! Yes, there’ll be plenty of posts dedicated to house stuff in the future, trust me. But for now, we need to recuperate and relax for a bit, recharge the ol’ batteries, and enjoy this insanely awesome dream we’re living in. 

But till then, adios!