Over the seven-plus years we have lived in this house, we have done major electrical and plumbing work, redone the kitchen and bathrooms, replaced a porch shade and a number of windows, and made an open balcony into a screened enclosure (the kitties love it!). Now we are starting on the first round of the final push to make this house marketable so we can leave Dodge. Finally.
Last week, people who knew what they were doing came in and painted the kitchen and dining room, fixing the kitchen ceiling in the process. The end result is amazing. If you had no idea that the original light fixture in the kitchen looked like this:
You'd never guess that was the starting point by looking at the kitchen ceiling as it now hangs:
After all this work was completed, the painters mentioned that they had a cancellation and if I wanted to have the rest of the public areas of the house painted now (rather than in the spring, which was our original plan), they would give me a discount on the work. So Sports Nut and I scrambled to clear rooms (the Wizard being out of town, as usual) and had the rest of the painting done last week. It looks fantastic, but new paint doesn't look all that interesting, so no pictures of fresh paint on the walls.
Next -- new floors in the living room, family room, and Future Vet's bedroom. All three rooms (along with a few others) had carpets that were badly stained and/or shredded. Not to mention poorly installed. Additionally, there were several places where the previous owner's pets had apparently made their mark (so to speak) and the owners had cut out pieces of carpet and patched with cleaner pieces:
In my defense, when I looked at the house before buying it, these patches were cleverly hidden by large pieces of furniture:
We invited all of our friends over (those who weren't busy with other things, at any rate) to pull up carpets in those three rooms. I did not document the process because it was dusty and dirty, as well as involving unpleasant odors, unidentifiable stains, and sharp knives. On second thought, I have no idea why I failed to take pictures. In the end, all three rooms were emptied out. Future Vet's room:
The living room (not entirely empty because the new flooring materials had to be brought in the house to acclimate before being installed):
And see in the background, how cleverly we managed to shove two large rocker/recliner chairs into the laundry room!
And the family room, from which the television set and DVR will be rolled to the kitchen early in the morning before the flooring people arrive:
You may note that the floor in the family room is not concrete like the other two rooms, but is covered with what is possibly the ugliest linoleum tile in the known universe:
The house was built in 1977, so perhaps the avocado tile is understandable, if not desirable. But the random splotches of blue and peach are a little confusing -- and they are random enough to make me wonder if some previous owner's children had a painting accident.
The careful observer may have noted that three rooms have been emptied of furniture and other STUFF and may be wondering where all of the STUFF disappeared to. Well.... Media Guy is away in LaLa Land, so we took full advantage of his unused bedroom:
That picture doesn't do it justice, so here's a peek around the corner:
And toward the other side of the door (more STUFF behind the door, of course):
All I can say is that it is amazing how much STUFF you can cram into one room when you have no intention of using the room for anything else. You have to be much more careful if you want to be able to access things in the room. Back behind the pile shown above are two beds stacked on top of each other. There's no way I could make it over there to take a picture. This room is going to have to be emptied pretty much in the order it was filled.
There is also a bunch of STUFF in the dining room, but not as much because we need to be able to eat somewhere:
And last, but far from least, we checked the weather reports and decided to store a lot of bookshelves out in front of the house:
We might have put these in the back, but I don't trust the dogs, who are having to spend most of their days out there until all the work is completed.
I'll post again tomorrow to report on the progress made.
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