Front Of House

We live on a circle and the neighbors are wonderful and the street is just clean and people take care of their yards and it's just a nice place to live. We are really enjoying it here.

We probably won't do anything much to the outside of this house or the yard. It's vinyl siding and roof are in great condition. Just regular maintenance stuff as needed, so we may never have "before and after" shots.

And the yard,...I know that Matthew normally does beautiful work on the yards we have, but this time we're so busy working on the business and this yard actually has grass that it's just not necessary to spend the time or money on changing anything.

We think we may end up keeping this house as a rental, so we want to keep things as low maintenance as possible.

Enough said, here's a picture of the house:

Living Room

BEFORE:

AFTER: We put in these beautiful new hardwood floors.

We used pre-finished, hand scraped, solid wood flooring. We bought it from Lumber Liquidators. They were the best price here in Idaho Falls.
We rented a nail gun for installing hardwood flooring and we have our air compressor. 

**Important - Buy your wood ahead of time and let it sit inside your house in the boxes. Wood expands and shrinks depending on humidity and temperature. So you need to let it sit in the environment for about a week prior to installing otherwise after you install it it can buckled if the wood swells or there can be gaps if the wood shrinks.

BEFORE:

AFTER: 

 The WORST PART!!! So yeah, we did this ourselves and when I say "we" I mean my husband while I feed him and keep the kids out of the way and hand him a tool once in a while. 

So this project should have been about 3-4 days but on day 2 Matthew was throwing up from the flu. And the sickie stayed sick for the next 3 days. Renting that nail gun cost $20 less than buying a new one for ourselves. Oh well, it was still cheaper than paying someone else.

We chose pre-finished wood this time. Our last two houses had hardwood that we refinished ourselves. (click here to see one of those projects)

Refinishing wood means you need to have about 7-12 days of not being able live in that space at all. So the first reason we used pre-finished is for convenience because the wood was going in the living room, kitchen, and hallway. There was no way to live in this house without stepping on the wood. 2nd reason is because Matthew wanted hand scraped, which you cannot refinish yourself. 3rd reason is because the sealant is extremely higher quality and longer lasting than you can do yourself.

The picture above is the tile we installed at all the entrances.

Kitchen

Before:
We will put in new flooring and counter tops. I don't know what materials we will use though, I guess we'll see.
So far, we just got new appliances, nothing else has been updated yet.

I love my pantry. And check out my buckets on the floor with their "gamma" lids, they are so great, they twist on and off. I use them for items I use all the time like flour and wheat.

AFTER: Oh My Gosh! I know, right? Its amazing.

 Haha, look at the little one's cheeks.

 Look at the amazing Back Splash. This is basket weave style. Got it for free from a family member who just had a few extra 12' tiles.

 My favorite part!

My counters are Granite Tile. See the beveled edge? That is just part of the tile. Its looks fantastic!
Purchased from Benissimo for a fraction of the cost of granite slab counter tops. You do have to find a dealer in your area.

We had to measure it ourselves and make a list of each piece we needed - like a corner piece, of a front strait piece, or a back piece with no bevel. The we laid it like tile with no spacers. We butted the tiles right up next to each other and used un-sanded grout in black to match the tiles. I am very happy with the outcome.

 Lastly, more tile at the entrance from the garage.

Bedroom 1 (Master)

Again, the upstairs is pretty much done, not much else to do in them. We may or may not paint this room some day, so there is no real Before or After for this room.

Bedroom 2 (Maya & Nikola's Room)

Before:
I will be getting another single bed for the girls' room. The queen bed will be used downstairs in out spare room. And of course this room needs to be painted, it's just too dark for my comfort.

Bedroom 3 (Our Nursery)

Sorry no before pictures, I forgot to take them, but there isn't much change to this room anyway, just the paint, which you see here. I've never really done stenciling before and I normally hate mural kind of things, but I felt like it this time. I really love that blanket, Matthew's cousins and aunts made it for us when Maya was born and I just love it. So I tried to match colors from the blanket.

Bathroom 1

Not much to do in this room either. The floor and shower surround are tile. The surround tile is nothing special, but it's tile so why spend the money on it? Some minor things need to be repaired or changed in here, but nothing really visible.

Heading Down the Basement

Stairway Before:Stairway After:
None Yet

Family Room:
This basement flooded over a year before we bought it. The owners had it professionally cleaned but never repaired anything else. The sheetrock had all been cut out 2-4 feet from the ground around the entire basement and all the carpet has been ripped out. We are left with exposed beams and cement floors. All the beams and electrical are fine so it's really not that much to finish this basement. Plus I had removed about two truck loads of garbage before these pictures were taken.

Before:


After:
no pictures yet

Storage Room:
This is off the family room and it's about the size of my kitchen upstairs, we don't plan on doing much to this room, just shelves for food storage.

Before:
After:
no pictures yet.

Basement Hallway Before:

Bathroom 2

Before:

After:
Haven't even started this project yet.

Bedroom 4 (Our Spare Room)

Before:
After:
Not yet

Bedroom 5 (Our Office)

Before:After:

What We Did: Put in new sheetrock on the bottom 1/3 of the room, textured, painted, & faux finish on walls, laid laminate flooring, new moulding, and furniture.

Back Yard

This house is on about 1/4 of an acre and being on a circle dead end street it makes the back yard a nice size. The is the view out the french doors from the kitchen. One of my favorite things about this yard is the covered patio. The patio is brick pavers and it's about 13X20 - plenty of room.
There's our garden.

This year we have from left to right - beets, carrots and onions, spinach and red and green leaf lettuces, Then green beans, zucchini in the back, and then egg plant, basil, and tomato plants. I love having a garden.