My Longest Post Ever

The long awaited house pictures are here. The rooms that went through the most changes are towards the end of the posting.

Here is the front and backyard of our house:





The Sun Porch

We're not exactly sure what the previous owners were going for when they added this room on. It doesn't have any heat or air conditioning nor does it have windows that open. We've kind of forgotten about it for the time being, so we'll see what we're able to do in there in the future. For now the spiders enjoy spinning webs in all of the corners.



The Main Bathroom

Don’t be jealous of our pink tub and sink. I know you all wish you had one too!!



The Laundry Room and half bathroom



The Guest Bedroom

All we did was add furniture to this room. We thought about painting it, but then realized that it might involve sanding the paneling so we left it alone. Anyone wanting to come visit Smithville, TN is welcomed to come stay in our guest room and the first one here is guaranteed to have clean sheets!!



Our Room

We just painted this room. We used to have three material panels hanging on the wall above our bed as a fake headboard. Since the window isn’t centered on the wall I can’t use them there(the lack of symmetry would drive me crazy), but I'm planning on taking the material off of the panels and making curtains when my mom comes to visit. Once they're done everything should come together nicely.

Before:

You can see why I want to make curtains rather than using the ones that came with the house



After:







I know seeing the clothes on the shelves might not appear to be attractive but this has been a huge help in keeping clothes off of the floor. I actually designed this (I know there isn't much to it, but I did come up with the idea) when I was in high school because I didn't like hanging clothes on hangers. My dad built it along with a small clothes rod on the side so I could still hang some clothes up. I kept it in my closet but unfortunately it doesn't fit in our closet here so it is hanging out in the room. It's funny because since we've been married we've used it for books, but now it is back serving its original purpose.

The Living Room

This room was one of the huge selling points on the house. It used to be the garage that the previous owners finished off into living space. It has lots of room that will finally allow us to have more than one couple over at a time.

To get this room to look the way it does we had to put two coats of green paint on, strip the two layers of wallpaper, prime and paint where the wallpaper had been, and remove a very tacky fake fireplace.

Before:



In Between:



After:







The Dining Room

Thanks for Ginger McKinion for the red paint. She used the same paint in her dining room and gave us the leftover can. It came out the way I had hoped and once we got the hardwoods refinished, the room really came together.

Before:



After:





The Kitchen



I'm not posting a before picture since it “appears” to look the same, just with our stuff on the counters. Let me assure you that that is far from the truth. I spent the most time cleaning this room.

WARNING: You may be grossed out by some of the facts below.

Some things I learned while cleaning the kitchen:

**If you are going to lay shelf paper, linoleum is probably not the best choice (especially patterns from the 70’s) and it is difficult for pregnant women to pull out the hundreds of nails and staples used to keep it in place.

**Just because cabinets look white, doesn’t mean they really are. After spraying some Greased Lightening on them, we found that there was a layer of grease on all of them. They looked much nicer once we got it all off, however we also learned that Greased Lightening isn’t supposed to be used on painted surfaces so I would suggest using other cleaners if you are concerned about grease being on your cabinets.

**We also found grease on the ceiling and are hoping that my loving sister will clean it for us when she comes to visit next month. She has to earn the right to hold baby doesn’t she?

**When cleaning a refrigerator you may need a screwdriver. I spent two days taking all of the shelves apart so I could wash all of the individual parts because just wiping down the shelves wasn’t getting them clean enough.

**If you are baking a blueberry pie and it spills in the oven, it’s a good idea to clean it up and not just leave it there for over a year. Apparently the owner didn’t agree with this statement and continued to bake in the oven despite the pie being there so it kept cooking to the bottom of the oven and to the racks. It took oven cleaner and a scalpel to scrape the char off (again a difficult task for someone that is pregnant). I also found remains of the crust and filling stuck to the bottom of the door and in the drawer. Again I used a scalpel to get it all out.

**Dirty drips pans can be a blessing. I was attempting to clean them after letting them soak for a day and the plumber happened to be down in the crawl space while I was doing this which allowed him to see that the sink was leaking. We would probably have never known had I not be using the sink while he was down there. It’s not a place that Anthony and I got to frequently!! In the end I did just buy new ones because I was sick of scrubbing things.

**This is obvious to most people, but it is safer to have the dishwasher plugged into the cabinet that it is placed in rather than putting a long cord on the back of it and plugging it into the outlet next to the sink.

Nursery

This picture was the inspiration for looking for animal themed bedding. I found this cat food advertisement years ago in a magazine and always said I wanted to hang it in a kid’s room someday. Hopefully the mixed animals won’t confuse the baby!!



I know many of you have been looking forward to seeing how this room turned out. I must say I really like it and I hope the baby does too. The yellow was a little brighter than we expected but we’ve gotten used to it and I think it all came together with the furniture in the room. The guys from church that painted the room for us accused me of getting it from the highway department since they thought it was the same color as the yellow lines on the road. I didn’t get it there and it’s not that bright.

Before:



After: