But as for me and my house.... Part 3

If you're not up to date,  you can catch up here with Part 1 and Part 2 of our home renovations this year.

Into the basement we go....

With the thunderstorms and tornado warning that we experienced yesterday, we had our first opportunity to use our basement for its intended purpose - a storm shelter.  As you can see, we were very prepared with a flashlight and dustpan, because you never know when you might need a dustpan....  

Although we have officially moved back into our own home, the renovations are not officially complete.  It will still be 2-3 weeks before the hardwood floors are installed in the new part of the house and then that will be followed by finalizing the trim work and paint.  We also gave away many of our hand-me-down furnishings and appliances before we moved out if we were planning on replacing them.  However, many will not be replaced until the house is complete and we have extra spending money once again, so many of the rooms still look bare and incomplete.  Most of my "before" pictures are from several years ago that I found highlighting different rooms of the house because I did not think to specifically take pictures before tearing out sheetrock.

The living room:

We only made minor changes to the living room. We replaced the windows and painted all of the trim white.  For those of you who had previously visited our home, you will notice that the door leading into the old playroom was removed and replaced with pine boards to match the rest of the room.  You can't even tell there used to be a door there!

Before, with door in living room that previously led to playroom

After, door is gone.

All of the doors in the house were old doors from the 1950s, in the brown stain as seen in the picture below, creating a very dark hallway and no contrast between the walls and doors.

Before - front door and closet door

After - front door and closet door

After - down the hallway to bedrooms



Downstairs bedrooms:

These are the three bedrooms that we had in the original house.  We replaced all of the windows that dated back to 1954 and no longer sealed completely, resulting in very drafty rooms.  We also removed all of the sheetrock in order to insulate the walls, which previously had no insulation and we divided the very long closets into 2 separate closets in 2 of the bedrooms.  We replaced all the bedroom and closet doors, which also dated back to the 1950s, many of them with holes knocked through them from the roughness of my father-in-law and his brothers when they were growing up.

Scraping sheetrock mud off hardwood floors in bedrooms

50 year old hardwood floors, vacuumed and moopped

50 year old hardwood floors vacuumed, mopped and waxed

Bedroom "before" with fake paneling, that has since been removed

"Before" - Notice the old windows and wood trim

After - new windows and trim

After - Boys' room

After - Maggie's green room 

Helping Daddy install closet shelves

New, much more "useable" closet space

Tomorrow we'll move to the kitchen and laundry room, two of my favorite rooms, as well as the two rooms that I spend the most time in throughout the day.