Destruction

There's a lot of destruction involved in home renovation. Sometimes the thought of having to clean up all the bits of drywall everywhere scares me (though Ryan assures me that he will take care of it). Here's a glimpse into my nightmares:

Sammy got to help with some of the destruction, which of course he loved. He isn't allowed to "help" as much with the rebuilding.

Stuff piled up outside the house before going to the dump.

We borrowed the Mickelsons' trailer to haul stuff to the dump. It was getting expensive to go to the dump so frequently, but never fear! Laramie has a cleanup day that includes free trips to the dump! We goin to the dump all day err' day (not really--just August 29th).

Did you catch that? FREE DUMP DAY. August 29th. YOU'RE WELCOME.
See you there.

Painting

One of the things I have looked forward to the most with our new house is being able to paint it. One of the men in our ward is a professional painter, and we've received a lot of help and advice from him as we've started transforming our new home.
Here are the before photos of our bedrooms:

The master bedroom was a pale blue. We picked a color called "Kilim Beige" to go over it. All of the bedrooms are going to have wainscoting on the walls, so they'll be white and whatever other color.

Amelia's room was a nice sage green. I actually liked the color a lot, but I really wanted to paint my little girl's room a more feminine color. We are using a beautiful shade of purple called "Dahlia."

This is the boys' room. It's hard to tell from the photo, but their walls were an off white color--nice, but very boring. We picked a blue that I believe is called "Coastal Blue" with red (color is called "Stop") for the closet. Both boys are happy to have their favorite color in their room.

My friend Michelle, daughter to the professional painter, is also a professional painter in her own right. She gave me several painting lessons in preparation for our home makeover. Here she is teaching me how to cut in a room before rolling it. This is in our bedroom.

Our friend Jordan, who has worked for the painting company in the past, painted the first coat of yellow in Amelia's closet.

Michelle cut in and did the first coat of paint in Amelia's room.

The boys really wanted to do some painting of their own, so one morning I brought them over to the house and helped them paint a "secret" on the walls of their bedroom. 

Their names are now covered up with white paint in preparation for the wainscoting, but we know the names are still there!

I have found that I really enjoy painting. Ryan has let me do all of it (except what our friends did for us) and I know I will look upon these rooms with real pride for years to come.

Wood is Good

We got lucky--our home was built in a time where people still had real wood floors. Unluckily, it was decorated in a time when people lost all respect for wood floors and covered them with carpet. Our kitchen, hallway, and all three bedrooms have wood flooring, but only the kitchen's survived the Carpet Outbreak of the Last Millennium.

The hallway on the day we moved in.

And underneath! 

In our bedroom we saw the even more heinous sin of covering up the wood floors with STICK ON LINOLEUM. I just couldn't even. It was so bad I lost the ability to even.

We let Sam rip that crap out the first week.

The library room and its carpet used to be separated from the kitchen by this wall, but as you recall, we tore that thing down. We wanted to have less of an abrupt transition between the two rooms, so we took out the carpet in the library. By the way, we're super excited to have a room we can call our library.

The carpet looked okay on top, but when Ryan ripped it out he could see all the old stains from the previous decades on the bottom of the carpet. Apparently it was so bad he almost threw up. So we will also be replacing the carpet in the living room and TV room as soon as we have money for either more wood or nice carpet. Feel free to weigh in down below in the comments. Wood or carpet?

You have to put down special paper before laying the wood flooring. And the pieces just snap together! Amazing!

Our floors are red oak, according to Ryan. They don't look very red, but whatever.

That thing on the floor is a flooring nailer. Ryan borrowed it from our friend Kason, who is remodeling his house as well. He tried to explain how to use it by using a pen and a highlighter to represent the floor boards. You can watch a real video on YouTube if you are interested in learning how they work.

Ta da! The next step is to rent a floor sander to smooth all the floors (and get the GLUE from the LINOLEUM off the bedroom floor) and then stain and protect them.

...to the WALL!

All those walls Ryan knocked down have now been reframed. They look awesome! I knew my husband was skilled at destroying things, and it turns out he's a good builder, too.

The laundry room and "pellet stove room" have now been combined into a mudroom. You can see the washer and dryer (still in their boxes) are going to be on the opposite wall from where the original owners had them.

View from the kitchen

This is the pantry and the former half wall blocking off the bedrooms. It is now a complete wall.

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to have a proper pantry.