Master Bedroom Before and After

The room we choose for our master is on the second floor. We have two bedrooms on the second floor and one on the first. With plans to use the first floor one as an office, we went to work on the upstairs bedroom. The major problem with this room was that it seemed small and it was very dark. It measures 13 by 14 and fits our queen bed so we figured it would work until we had funds for adding on a garage with a master suite above it. This bedroom was painted baby blue with navy blue on the bottom and had a wallpaper boarder for the North Carolina Tarheels. Not quite our style. We pulled it down and spent hours filling pinholes in the wall. We choose a purple grey color from Sherwin Williams called Daydream, and accented with silver curtains and crisp white bedding. We also  lined a wall with espresso closetmaid modulars. Let me just say, I love these things. When we lived in a tiny apartment we gave up our bedroom set (which was a hand-me-down) and purchased a bunch of the closetmaid modulars so we could take advantage of the height without taking up much floor space. Through two moves these things have never been in the same configuration, but that's what I love about them. They are so versatile we use them in the office as bookshelves, in the living room as a media console and as end tables, even in the bathroom in place of a linen closet, and we also have them in closets. The espresso ones have a nice finish to them and we jazzed ours up with real hardware instead of the plastic ones that they come with. I also added some cute bins and baskets, and voila! Tons of storage that is flexible to your needs, easy to move and you only give up a foot of floor space along a wall. The major improvement to our bedroom makeover was the installation of a new huge window. This opened the room up immensely. It was probably our best money spent on this house so far.  Now I want to add windows everywhere.

Bathroom Before and After

Our second most important room after the kitchen, was a big priority prior to having company over to the house. We only have one bathroom (this was the biggest compromise aside from increasing our house shopping budget by $40,000) but we have plans to add another one or two in the future. This bathroom was victim to some inexperienced DIY-ers. The first thing you would've noticed was the color of the walls being a turd brown...ick! Then you probably would've noticed the outdated sink with a vanity that appeared to have been chewed on with a corner nearly missing. As you looked down, you would see the attempt of retiling the bathroom floor, with crooked tiles, cracked tiles, disintergrating grout lines and a stack of tiles to finish the floor stacked in a corner.  This bathroom is also home to the washer and dryer closet.

 We began by removing the sink and vanity, then we went after the floor. My dad helped us pull up the tiles, and we found a concrete board underneath it. We began replacing the floor with new tiles only to realize that the subfloor was a little too high and not even enough. So we had to rip up the floor again. This time we noticed that the concrete board was not the subfloor but an additional subfloor covering plywood that had tile adhesive all over it. To do it right, we ripped up both (backbreaking work for sure) and laid a new subfloor. This made the bathroom floor level with the tile floor in the hallway/kitchen area. It turned out nicely but was a lot of work. After choosing a vanity/sink combo and new light fixtures, we got to painting the walls. All the trim was painted a crisp with with the was being a bright blue. We painted the laundry closet a slate blue, and removed the cumbersome folding doors to make way for our fancy high-tech front load washer and dryer. My dad thinks you need a degree to wash laundry with these babies. While we didn't have funds to replace the tub or toilet, we freshened things up with a new curved double curtain rod, and a new faucet and shower head in the bathroom. The faucet wasn't planned, but when we went to repair the faucet that existed and it snapped off of the plumbing in the wall we had to open the wall and re-plumb the shower, which turned out to be a surprise $300 expenditure for parts. One of the joys of being a homeowner.  We added a new mirror and some shelving to make up for the fact that we do not have a linen closet, and overall it came out well. We aren't completely finished with the bathroom, we still need to add some lighting in the laundry closet and replace the toilet and tub, but it looks a lot better than it did.

More animal sightings

Driving home from a late night movie this past Wednesday, just yards from our driveway we spotted our first buck. A beautiful and large white-tail deer was quietly standing in the shadows along the side of the road. He was bothered by the sight of our car either. I couldn't snap a picture because it was a) very dark and b) unexpected, but he looked similar to this one:

Also this week, my husband who is an amphibian fanatic, found several specimen hopping/crawling along in the yard. He found a wood toad, a red newt, a spotted salamander, a green frog, and a bullfrog. This makes our property an unexpected delight for him because he has always loved catching and releasing these kinds of critters ever since he was a child. The bullfrog was actually screaming, but when we tried to take a video of it, it wouldn't make a peep.

An unexpected animal sighting

This morning at 9:30am I noticed a few birds/crows sounding the alarm so to speak. I quickly looked out the window to see a wolf trot along our edge of our yard and into the woods. This was incredible for a few reasons a) it was believed until recently that NH no longer had a wolf population (there hadn't been wolf sightings in decades), b) we live just feet away from NH largest city (manchester is home to 3 public highschools each with about 2000 students, plus 2 private highschools), and c) we have a cat and a Chihuahua-mix who frequently play in the back yard. Needless to say it was impressive but a bit unnerving also. Now the pets are going to be on a short leash so they don't become a bite-sized snack.

Who Says Moths aren't as Pretty as Butterflies?

My husband spotted this on the side of our house on his way back from running errands.

It's a Luna moth. Yes! Like the Lunesta commercials. I was surprised by its size. It was seriously a good 3.5 to 4 inches across. In case anyone is wondering, an easy way to tell the difference between a butterfly and a moth is how their wings fold. Moths fold their wings behind them in a triangle. Butterflies fold their wings up above them.

Met Some Neighbors...Deer!

One of the pleasant surprises of our new property has been the amount of wildlife we have seen in our yard, despite being 20 feet from the town line of Manchester (NH's largest city) and only 1 mile from a major shopping area. The other day, I woke up the other day and was preparing breakfast, when I noticed we had some visitors in the back yard. A doe and two fawns were kindly "mowing" our lawn for us. I was surprised how close they were to the house. 

The two fawns heading back into the woods

The Kitchen: Before & After

When we bought our house, we had about $7000 that we could put into it and our first and longest project was the kitchen. To give a bit of background, both my husband and I work full-time as well as attend school part-time. Also, my husband really has never built anything that didn't come out of a box with instructions. That said, thank goodness for my father. My dad is an electrician by trade but is also a major diy-er. He built his first home and then his buddy's house and barn. He has done all the work around their house, so he swooped in to help us begin working on ours. Meanwhile, my sister and her husband bought their first home the same month as us, in the next town over, so my dad had his work cut out for him.

When we started our kitchen looked like this:

Trapped in the early 90's with country vibes. Not our contemporary, modern style at all. The layout was all wrong, a tiny sink, horrible lighting, no appliances, a worn dated countertop, and dirty cabinets in terrible condition. These cabinets were pulling apart and hanging from the walls, shelves were bowing, and the ones near the stove were heavily damaged by the heat, moisture and covered in 10 years of grease. Yuck! Not to mention the bright blue on the walls in a high gloss paint that drove my father-in-law (who happens to be a wallpapering/painting contractor) crazy. We had a budget of $4000 and off we went.

We began by pulling down the cabinets and bringing them to the basement. We repaired them, and reenforced them with extra pieces of wood. Then my mom and I scrubbed them down with so much Pinesol, I thought we were scrubbing off the stain. Then we painted them. If you ever get the idea of painting cabinets, no that it is time consuming and meticulous work. Five layers of paint later being very careful not to get specs of dust in the pain or to have any drips they were ready to be rehung and given modern hardware.

Meanwhile, we changed the kitchen from being a J-shape to an L-shape, tossed the sink and broken faucet as well as the old countertop and stove. We also began work on a soffit (aka. the Box) above the upper cabinets that would allow us to put in pot lights. The building of this box was crucial. It needed to be incredibly sturdy as it was supporting the upper cabinets and it had to look good. Luckily, between our two fathers, it turned out great. We picked out a glass tile backsplash at Home Depot which we used to pull from for our colors throughout the home.

We also found a laminate countertop that had hints of the green in it. We bought new hardware for the cabinets and drawers. We picked out a large stainless steel sink with a faucet, not realizing that if it were a half in larger in any direction, it would've been too big for our countertop. After repainting it a beautiful sea glass green, we rehung the cabinets,and installed our countertop, sink and our new stainless appliances (thanks to my in-laws). We also were able to patch the tile floor where the peninsula had stuck out with extra tiles that we found in the basement. My husband and I installed the backsplash ourselves using a new product called Simplemat, which eliminated using goop to adhere the tiles to the wall. We used the staggered glass tiles around most of the kitchen with a vertical stainless tile  behind the stove. We are not great at tiling, but we did pretty well considering we had no idea what we were doing.

Last week, we put on the finishing touches. My father built custom shelves in an empty space next to the pantry cabinet for cutting boards and cookie sheets. He also changed out our plugs and switches, and I added a trim piece at the top of the cabinets to give a more finished look. So here it is... the AFTER.