Home Tour--Part 1--The Living room

After 4 years of hard work, I am ready to show "what we did with the place".

So I am having my very own home tour. It is still a work in progress.

First a word of caution. I did not take very many before shots but TONS of during shots. What we did should not be attempted by anyone who may get a little depressed from living in such conditions for months. I was depressed for a year, while I mourned the loss of our first house. A house that we built and missed deeply while trying to make this house a home.

We moved in on June 14th 2004. On June 15th the demolition began! There was one point in this process that we went at least a month (it seemed much longer and possibly could have been) that we had no running water, no toilet, and no electricity. We had to rewire and replumb the house. It was worth it, but with the pictures I'm sure you'll see why I was such a wreck!

The Living room---the longest room to complete!


The living room had pink wall to wall carpeting, brown paneling and popcorn ceiling. If you look closely you will see that the paneling ends not at the ceiling. They put the popcorn stuff on the wall to make up for the paneling only being 8 feet tall.

The first task was to remove the paneling. It was glued and nailed onto the walls, which means more work for us. Under the paneling was wallpaper and usually 2 or 3 layers. On this particular wall, under the paneling is a boarded up window. They simply paneled on top of it.

Here is the boarded up window and the lovey wallpaper we can to deal with. Notice, no moldings. There were no molding in our house.

Here is my brother-in-law scraping off the popcorn ceiling. At this point we were also scraping off wallpaper which happened to be my task!

Popcorn off and most of the wallpaper removed.

What a mess! Everything was covered in dust!

It got to a point that I was DESPERATE to have a place to live in. So once the house was somewhat livable, I officially moved my furniture in. Then we worked on the rooms a little at a time until there were "complete".

My living room while I was desperate. Notice no moldings and the floors are blue. The previous owners painted the sub floor blue. It match one of the layers of wallpaper perfect! The walls have been painted.

Another view of the desperate living room.

Then completion!

Living room looking over to the dining area. The kitchen is too small for it to be an eat-in.

The main part of the living room. Don't you just love the floors! I WISH they were real hardwood, but they are only laminate. Our floors cost us under $300!