I am totally stressed out! My house is in a state of chaos, boxes half packed, rooms half empty, and nothing in it's place! Sure, it's temporary.... (I don't do well with temporary!) I want to be moved in already!! *Heavy Sigh* Our new house is almost ready for us. We have carpet upstairs (hooray!) and bathroom toilets are flushing! The downstairs is shaping up... Literally a change from one shape to another. Our time is running out though. We can't keep driving over to work on the new house a little here and then a little there. We need to finish what we can this week, and pray that the kids don't step on a stray nail once we're in, (yes, I realize that sounds awful! But it's pretty much going to remain a construction zone at this point)!! I need to stay motivated and positive! What better way, than to start sharing the story of how all this got started. In the hopes that it will remind me how exciting this all is and how 'happy' I am to be going surviving through it all...... here goes!
Right after Christmas, the stats for the Las Vegas housing market were all over the news. We were living in the city with the highest foreclosure rates, lowest home values, and a very sad unemployment rate. Soon after we received our annual home assessment notice.... yeah, it wasn't good news. We had talked about selling our home before, I had always resisted. I liked this house. I hated moving. Did I want to live here forever? Well, no, but what's that got to do with anything? Well, apparently staying in this home was going to be a very bad financial decision that would affect our family for more years than I was comfortable with. If we move and sell now, we can make a better purchase, and thus ensure financial stability for all! It really wasn't that fun of a conversation. Glad I can make light of it now though (*healing*). I was more comfortable with the idea of moving, if we could manage to move into our next home rather than a temporary one (rental/ apartment). So we looked. And we looked. And we looked some more. (Can you tell I spend a lot of time reading children's books?!) I'll spare you the boring details of un answered calls, and rejected offers. I felt very strongly about a certain neighborhood near us... it was beautiful, and green, and no two houses looked the same! So we focused our search in there and let the bidding begin! We didn't get the house that had a pool, or the one with fabulous upgrades, or even the one that opened up to the amazing community park! We picked the fixer-upper. Yep, all that HGTV was going to pay off!! We had a vision, a few months to make it happen, and our handy dandy friend *Stewart* on our team! (names have been changed to protect the innocent. )
Here are some fun 'Before' and 'Since Then' photos!
(The 'After' pics will come well..., AFTER we manage to finish!)
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| Cute, Right? Let's take a peek and see what's going on inside..... |
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| Notice kitchen is blocked by weird wall and weird soffet piece above.... |
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| Let's get rid of it! Open kitchen here we come! |
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| Timber! |
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| It was too heavy to lift out in one piece, and impossible to cut through... so this was their plan... |
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| Light shining through! |
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| Might as well redesign the whole kitchen while we're at it! Bye- Bye tiny little pantry closet! |
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| Patched up. |
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| I learned about gables. That's what that ceiling thingy is called.... |
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| With a coat of paint. |
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| and some New cabinets!! |
So... Opened up the kitchen, removed old cabinets, chipped tile countertops and gross appliances, cleaned up ceilings and added more room for cabinets. And that's just the kitchen.....
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| This was also in the living room, and not working for us. |
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| So it came out too. |
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| Wonder what we'll put in here... |
You guys were brave to take on the fixer upper but it looks great!!!! It'll all get done with hard work and good food in your bellies!!
I never saw the "before" pictures. Wow, it is a lot to deal with. It's probably the hardest now because I'm sure you had dreams of moving into a finished house not a construction zone. Just think... in a year you can look back and be happy for the changes. It does look so much more open now! I didn't know you made the pantry bigger too but we have a small pantry and it's really annoying.
Well, I can't wait to see the finished product. And Stewart... ha ha!