Some Renovating in our Home

When giving the tour of our house, we mentioned some of the changes we were going to make. Clearly, we fell off of the blogging bandwagon, and those changes we made were never shared. We like how things have turned out. There are still some areas that will be remodeled in the future (kitchen and bathrooms), but we've really settled in our home as it is so far.

We'll share the before, during, and after renovating pictures.

I also want to mention that Jared's dad, Larry, came out to help with the work. He was an incredible help. We were so grateful that he came out and for all of his hard work. The girls also really enjoyed having him here.

The Entry

Before

During

During

After

The Dining Room

Before

Before (3/4 wall between kitchen and dining room)

During

During

After, with new tile and no wall. We'll eventually

carry the tile into the kitchen.

In Front of the Sliding Glass Door in the Living Room

Before (carpet by door)

After (tile by door, and we usually have an ugly rug

that we inherited with the house there, too)

You might also notice the lack of a tree outside our door, as well as through the dining room window. Before moving in, there was a wind storm that split our tree. We had to cut the rest of it down. Now, we don't have any trees. We'll eventually plant some. We just need to decide what type we want and where we want to put them. I had pictures of the fallen tree, but I accidentally deleted it.

Our ward was really good about helping us out. We originally planned on moving in on a Saturday morning, but due to problems getting our U-boxes from U-Haul over the weekend, we had to reschedule for Monday. We notified the people from church that we didn't need help on Saturday anymore, but that we'd appreciate any help we could get on Monday. Then shortly after telling them that, the storm came through and blew our tree down. We then contacted the people again and said that we could use help on Saturday to cut up the tree, as well as Monday for moving. We had great help both days.

The tree pieces were moved from the back yard to the front by the curb. Since we tore out carpet and took out walls, we had already scheduled a "bulky item pick-up" with the city. Here they are getting the carpet. They could only take a specific amount, which I don't remember, and it included barely any of the tree. However, since the storm took out several trees in the city, the city opened up a dump site for us to take the remaining tree parts, too. Again, someone from church helped us out, for which we were very grateful.

Removing Doors

This door entered the master bath from the living room.

Another man from church helped with closing and texturing the wall.

No more door. We'll eventually put an entertainment center

and bookshelves on this wall. We just don't own them, yet.

There was another door between Allie's room and the guest bathroom that we removed. It looks a lot better with a wall. We'll eventually put built-in shelving and/or cabinets in for more storage.

We got new carpet, as you can see in some of the pictures. I haven't taken a picture of just the living room, and it is a mess right now, but I'm sure you get the idea. We haven't regretted any of our decisions. We love our home.

Oh, and one other thing we needed to do was add some fencing between the neighbors' fences and our home. Jared did most of the work, though the rest of us got to help him a little. Rachel enjoyed watching Daddy out the window.

She also enjoyed helping me clean out the cupboards.

Both girls enjoyed "helping" with landscaping. We actually didn't do anything with the existing landscaping for awhile, but the girls LOVE playing with the rocks that are there.