Before and Nows

For the past little while, I've(we've) been going through the house and doing a lot of junking and reorganizing. Well in this process, I came across an old memory card so I put it in my camera and found all these pictures of what our house looked like when we first bought it. It was pure excitement because a couple of years ago I was looking for these pictures and could not find them anywhere. I was super bummed because we have put quite a bit of work into making this house our own and I wanted to be able to see the differences. So hooray!!! now I can and of course I have to share so here are a few of the rooms in our house.

Our Living Room:

BEFORE

NOW

Although it is hard to tell, we repainted everything; walls, ceiling and trim. Then updated the ceiling fan. I didn't call this picture an after picture because I still have some things I want to do such as curtains/drapes for my bay windows, and that rectangular mirror I want to replace it with two circular mirrors (one big and one small) to fit with the design of my pillow. So these are what I call my now pictures!

Our Kitchen:

BEFORE

NOW

This has for sure been the biggest change. We took out the cabinets hanging above the bar and replaced it with the single one on the wall. Repainted everything. Replaced the hardware on the cabinets and the light fixture above the sink. Put in new appliances (including the microwave) and a new sink and faucet. Oh and we got new blinds! Like I said this was were we did the most updating but I just LOVE it because it just feels brighter and cleaner!!

Our Dining Room:

BEFORE

NOW

This room was probably the first to be painted because I really did not enjoy the mustard yellow color. It just wasn't for me. We also changed the light fixture and put in new face plates on all the outlets (we did this through the whole house because lots of them were covered in old paint) and changed the door knobs and hinges from gold to silver. And thanks to our flood, we got new tile which was another great improvement!

Our Bedroom:

BEFORE

NOW

It was really hard to get a good picture of our room because of the layout so I just took a couple pictures of my newly purchased early birthday presents from IKEA!! I just love my vase and twigs for some reason they just make me happy. We had an old night stand that used to be what held our fish tank...yes I hated it but it worked for awhile. Now I have these cute shelves on both sides of the bed. You can also see our gray walls and if you look in the mirror on the first picture you can see how the paint color changes at the top of the wall and our ceiling fan that is a must in the summer because the room gets so hot! All that I want to update in this room is the carpet but that probably won't ever happen.

That is all for now. Maybe one day I will show pictures of our basement but right not it is too dirty to take pictures of it!!

Hard Work

I am just going to show off a little of my super duper hard work. This is my flower bed.


It used to be a disaster zone. No joke. Weeds, rocks, chunks of cement, random kid toys, ant hills, huge piles of dirt, etc. When we moved in, it was covered in snow so I wasn't quite sure what to expect, although I knew it would be lots of work.

We raked all the dirt down level (with the help of family-thanks), took out buckets and buckets of rocks, cement, toys and sprayed weeds for a couple of years. Put in the fence and poured cement for the RV pad (just ignore the trailer it isn't ours and will be gone shortly!!!), put in the stepping stones, and then transplanted lots of flowers from my mom. Which I love because it just reminds me of home. Our recent addition was the bark chips which has really helped with the weeds. I still have a few more flowers I want to get but I just add a little at a time.



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You will find me often just sitting on the stairs of our deck and just staring and admiring its beauty.


It was definitely worth the sweat, strain and hours/years of work.

Just a quick update on what is happening at our house thus far. The adjuster came yesterday to survey all the damage which turned out to be quite extensive. I felt like we just came saying, "and then the water went here...and ruined this...and ruined that" pretty much I feel like anywhere that was touched with water was ruined.

(addy loved these blowers)
The great news is that even though it has been sort of a pain to be living in a construction site, we are getting so many things replaced that normally would've cost us a lot more money and time because we would've had to do it ourselves. For example: I have always hated the tile job in our kitchen/dining area because the previous owners did it themselves and did a VERY lousy job. It has been one of the things we were hoping to fix but just never had the money to actually do it. Now with the flood, we get them professionally replaced which is very happy news. Another blessing is that our furnace got ruined. I know crazy to think of living without a furnace in Rexburg for a few days but it actually hasn't been that bad. Anyways it turns out that the furnace we had was the original from when the house was built which was 14 years ago and the live of the furnace was suppose to be about 14-15 years so we would've been lucky to have it last another winter. Now we are getting a new furnace and the insurance is paying for it- major blessing.

(our furnace closet- without the furnace)

Bad news- my carpet in the basement has to be completely replaced and we just bought it a year ago and I really really liked what we had. So we have to go find something else that hopefully we will like just as much.



(goodbye nasty tile)



(this was such a cool machine that they use to dry out the sheetrock)

Where's Noah When You Need Him?

So I thought all of our plumbing problems were history but boy was I wrong. Early this morning, I woke up because I was hearing a strange noise but when I sat up in bed I couldn't hear anything so I layed back down. A while later, approximately 2:00am) Mitch woke up hearing the same thing so we got out of bed to investigate. As we walked down the stairs onto the tile of the main level we knew there was a HUGE problem because our feet were wet and there was literally about two inches of water on the floor.
We raced into the laundry room because that is where we heard the noise and we see water spraying everywhere. Mitch ran downstairs into the bathroom to shut the water off and noticed that it was also covered with water and that the water just kept coming. In the meantime I saw that the water was draining down the heating vents so I grabbed a few buckets and pots and ran downstairs to try and catch the rest that was still draining. Everywhere I looked it seemed I needed another bucket to catch another drip.
Eventually we got as much water mopped up with towels and the draining mostly stopped so I started taking pictures of the damage. The worst of it was in the bathroom and furnace room just below the laundry room so we shut the heat off in order to prevent further damage with a fire. The other two bedrooms had water coming out of the vent so the carpet was wet and I think our printer is ruined because it was right under one of the vents.
Then we went to bed but of course we couldn't sleep. Around 7:00 this morning we called a cleaning and restoration company who came and looked around and then started drying us out. It is amazing the kind of equipment they have to dry stuff out with. Obviously the drywall was soaked but they don't think they will have to replace it because they have a nifty tool to dry it out but they will have to re-tape and texture some areas in the ceiling that had pools of water. And they torn out the carpet pad in the two bedrooms because we got a nice pad last year when we bought the carpet that had a water guard or something like that and so they couldn't suck the water out of it. They still aren't sure about the furnace but they think we may be able to get a new kitchen and dining room floor which would be awesome because we hated the tile job that the previous owners had done but we won't really know until an adjuster comes out to examine the damage.

(these pictures aren't really in order but this is the laundry room once the washer and dryer moved- it is really hard to see the water on the floor but trust me it was there)


(our nice friends at Advanced Cleaning and Restoration trying to dry us out)


(the hose that cracked and water was spraying out of)


(this is the bathroom that got the most water but not necessarily the worst damage)


(one of the bedrooms that we had to use buckets to catch all the water)


(this just shows the seepage and bulging)


(one of the buckets I had under one small drip that I still had to dump a couple of times)


(you can sort of see the water dripping out of this vent but this picture was taken after most of the water had already drained out)


(all of the windows in our house looked like this)


(the kitchen after we had mopped up most of the water)

Overall I am just very grateful that we have home owners insurance and that we are getting a little more money back from our taxes than we originally thought so that will help pay for the deductible. More than anything I am just glad that Mitch and I are able to laugh at these sorts of things even though deep down you just want to cry. I just hope this isn't suppose to be a learning experience for something else in the future because I would hate to know what that is.

The joys of owning a house

It is crazy how much you can learn about something in just a short amount of time. At the beginning of the week our bathtub faucet started dripping and it slowly increased each day so on Wednesday, Mitch decided to replace it. In order to get the new one on, he had to cut a piece of the old pipe off because it was too long. Well in the process of doing this, he loosened the seal in the pipe that goes up to our shower so every time you turned the shower on, water would shoot out of the pipe and end up on our garage floor. Good news is that it was the garage floor and not inside the house, bad news is we didn't find it for a day or so because it was in the garage and so the puddle was more like the size of a small pond.


(the old copper pipe that was shooting water out of it)

Once we found all the water in the garage, we quickly cut a hole in the wall of the bathroom so we could find the leak. It took us awhile because we couldn't see anything leaking but all the insulation and the floor under the tub was soaked so we new something was happening. We turned on the faucet in the tub and nothing happened so we turned the shower on and two seconds later Mitch yells at me to shut it off because water was spraying everywhere.

(the lovely hole in my wall)

Long story a little shorter, Mitch had to find a small blow torch to heat the pipe so we could pull the pieces apart and then put a new elbow something or other back on (you can tell that Mitch learned a lot and I just held the flashlight). I was really nervous about Mitch using the blow torch because he was feeling very powerful when he held it and I was certain that he was going to start the house on fire and then we wouldn't have anything to put it out with because all the water to the house was shut off. It was very stressfull!!



At the end of the day I used our food storage water to boil noodles for spaghetti and my wall is still torn apart and the tun faucet still leaks but hopefully all of that will be fixed by the end of the weekend!!!

I have been waiting for my new camera for weeks and it finally showed up yesterday at 5:10. So now I can post pictures of our almost completed nursery! I say almost because really it is as far as we are going to get since we are just trying to sell the house and Mitch doesn't want to buy more stuff that may not fit in our next place. But don't worry I am always dreaming of new things to add. For example last weekend we stopped by a live broadcast remote the radio station was putting on in Rexburg and one of the stores was a baby store so I went in and they had the cutest idea which I am going to copy once we officially decide on a baby name. They had taken the wooden craft letters and decorated them so cute with ribbon and buttons and such. I wish I'd had my camera because they were really cute.
Back to the nursery...

I was so excited when I got the email saying our crib had arrived and was ready for pick up. Right when Mitch walked through the door after work, I made him hurry and change and we went and got it.

It only took us an hour or so to put it together and I was not disappointed. Truthfully when you buy something online you just never really know how it is going to look and if you will really like it but this I love!

It was really hard to get a good shot of the finished crib with bedding because the room is so small and I couldn't stand back far enough. Didn't all my hard work turn out so great! hahaha Truthfully the measurements for the comforter were way off because it was way to big so we had to tuck it down around the mattress but at least it wasn't too small.


Just some more pictures of the room. It is really hard to see the curtain because the light is shining in through the window but they really help to tie the room together. Now I just need to finish the other side.

This is to help me try and stay organized. I've never had a baby before so I'm not really sure what to put where so we will see after she is born exactly where things end up. My guess is they will just get set around on the shelf that goes around the room but this at least makes me look like I am trying. Now we just need the baby!!

Getting ready to sell

So we've been doing projects all summer long trying to get the house ready just in case we had to sell which turned out to be true. We decided to rip out the pine tree in the front yard because it was just getting too big. My neighbor told me to call Lone Pine Nursery because they will buy pine trees so I did and they came and pulled it out and paid me 200 dollars. Great deal. We still had to fill the hole which I never got a picture of but it was huge. Ted came and helped Mitch take out the old cement landscaping and re-cut it to fit closer around the house. Then a few weeks ago we fianlly put in new sod and now we have a new front yard!








We also stained the back deck which I swear had not been done since it was first built because it took us three days and used so much stain.






In the spring we dug out a small area of sod so we could have a spot for a garden. We planted peas, corn, green peppers, banana peppers, and a tomato. Our peas came in really good and are now ready to be pulled out. All the rest of it is still growing but should be producing vegetables anytime.

Trying new things

So our latest home improvement was tiling our entry way. We've been saying we were going to do it for quite awhile but just never got around to it. Then home depot had a great bargain on some carpet that we liked and we just couldn't say no so we ended up ordering carpet for our basement and stairs which meant we had to tile before they could lay it. This was our first experience with tiling and everybody said it would only take us an hour or so but I guess we are just a little slow because it took us a lot longer. Here are just a couple of pictures of the process. The last picture is of the new carpet that we love!