One year later...

Hard to believe it, but we've been in our house for a year now.  Thought I would share a few "before" and "after" pictures.  A kitchen remodel was our first project.  Very little workspace and an oven that was tiny simply didn't work for our family.

Before...

and after.  We still need to replace the dishwasher with a stainless steel one.  Hopefully we'll get that done next year.  

I forgot to get a picture of our dining room before, but it had wallpaper on the top half of the walls.  Here the kids are mudding the walls with Aaron before I painted it.

Still need a new light fixture, but we're mostly done.

Isn't this beautiful?

 My little helper is pretty good at taking down wallpaper.

 Next year we plan on replacing the sink and mirror and doing something with that corner.  Not sure what.

Master bedroom before

 and after.  Still need to get new blinds and something for the windows.

Before of the girls bathroom.  The wallpaper is down, but I haven't painted yet.

Before of the boys bathroom.  Gotta love the matching tile grout and sink countertop.  Again, wallpaper is off, but I still need to paint.  This picture is making me dizzy!

Another big project this year was staining the deck and fence.  We still have a lot more projects than time.  I guess we shouldn't be in a hurry or we'll end up having to move again.  We are making progress and I just have to remind myself of that when I get overwhelmed!

Summer Project

 

We're pretty sure our deck hadn't ever been refinished since our house was built.  It was in desperate need of some sprucing up.  We decided it would be a good summer project for the family.  All of the rain we received this summer made this project extra challenging.  Luckily, the wood soaked in the stain so there were many times I would work on it for an hour or two and an hour later it would rain, but it was totally dry.

 

Did I mention we wanted this to be a family project?  Bruce was okay with the idea because it meant using heavy equipment.

 

Having a two-story deck to stain wasn't easy.  I was okay with doing the inside of the deck that is easy to reach, but I left most of the outside work that required being 10 feet off the ground up to Aaron.

Here's the finished product.  Next project:  buy a nice patio set so we can actually sit out and enjoy it!

Biggest challenge of the project:  staining 200+ spindles!  Very time consuming!

Did I mention we didn't just stain the deck, but the fence around the pool as well?  The deck took almost 9 gallons of stain and by the time we are finished with the fence (we still have the inside of the fence to do), we will probably have used about 16 gallons on the fence.  Yes, that's a lot of stain!

New TV Stand

Every time we move we find that things don't always fit and in this house, we couldn't hang the tv over our big dresser.  Aaron was pretty proud of himself for coming up with this makeshift tv stand.  It definitely served it's purpose and made us feel like true rednecks.

In the meantime, we ordered this tv bureau to go with our other bedroom pieces.  What do you think, an improvement or do you like the 55-gallon water barrels?