House Renovation Update #1

Here are some pictures from the process... some are blurry because my camera is dying, but we hope you enjoy! There is a full update at the end of all the pictures if you're interested :)

This gives you an idea of the mass amouts of wallpaper

...and border
This is to give you an idea of how atrocious it was,
and how hard it was to get off!

Since everything else in the house had a pink theme to it, why not have the walls be pepto-bismol pink too? I mean, thats what was under the border in this room! Oh my...

This is the room in all its glory with no more wallpaper,

and no more pink carpet!

tile-less kitchen

tile-less entry... wohoo! Good job honey!

New cherry hardwood laminate flooring

This is a better picture of the actual color of the hardwood.

So, the moment you have all been waiting for is finally here!!! Just kidding... I know you haven't all been waiting for it :) But here is the status of our house:

• Officially closed on May 14th (my good friend Lane's birthday). We got in and started working on Friday May 15th (my good friend Bridgey's birthday). We worked for a good solid 3 days on nothing but taking wall paper down. So much fun!! May I just advise anyone who looks at this blog to never put a shred of wall paper up in your home... don't ever do that to anyone else who might live there after you. It's just downright torture.
• Spent most of the following week painting and continuing to take down wallpaper.
• Thursday we had a few friends from church come and lend a hand... including our good friend Marj, who was our lifesaver and godsend when it came to getting the tile out of the front entryway. Nathan worked for a good 2 days on that tile and finally got it out thanks to Marj lending us some very helpful power tools. Thursday night, Nathan's dad came and ripped out all of our lovely mauve/pink/rose/ugly carpet and started on the padding underneath.
• By Friday, all of the carpeting was out, the tile in the kitchen was gone, the tile in the entry was working on being gone, our padding was all out, and we were preparing to lay down our new flooring on Saturday morning.
• Saturday we had a lot of helping hands thanks to our families. Some of Nathan's family came and helped out by painting, cleaning my gross blinds, and laying down flooring. All of my family came at some point on saturday, and they were put to work painting, taking down wall paper and various other tasks.
• Sunday--by sunday evening the flooring was completely installed in our hallway, kitchen, and large living space. Nathan worked on taking the linoleum out of the bathroom so flooring could be installed there too.
• Monday found us finishing up the rest of the flooring (it was completely finished on Monday!!!) as well as moving out of our apartment. We got everything moved into our house (all in the living/dining area) and my old college roommate emily helped me get our apartment all cleaned up. She was such a huge help!!!

So here we are in this week planning on doing some more work this week/weekend. Saturday morning we have carpet installed in our 3 bedrooms, along with the rest of the baseboards in the bedrooms. That will pretty much take care of it for our renovations. Then the fun begins trying to get everything unpacked and settled in. A few projects will remain, but over the summer should be completed. We need to get tile for the Master Bathroom, get quarter-round for all of our hardwood flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms, and relax and bask in a job well done :)... oh yeah and massages and pedicures and manicures to try and restore our bodies to a normal state.