So thats it...

That is the last of our remodelling for awhile.  Time to find some great tenants, enjoy life in Eugene, and see where life takes us.  We have a way better idea now of how to do things.  At some point we'd love to put a new bathroom in upstairs, redo the upstairs rooms entirely, and there's still some stuff we could do to make the kitchen better.  I'm proud of what we've done though.

The mess that is the upstairs rooms

So we did not have the time or money to give the upstairs bedrooms the complete overhaul they really need.  I mean, they need to be taken down to the studs, redrywalled, have new floors put down, etc.  Couldn't be done.  So we gave them a new coat of paint and some new laminate flooring.  It does make a huge difference. 

Here is Mitch putting down laminate flooring.  He did both rooms in 24 hours, which is really impressive.

Here is the disaster that was the "emo teenager" room:

And here it is now:

And here is the kitty bedroom before:

And here is now:

A coat of paint and new floors goes a long way, even if it doesn't solve ALL our problems...

Bathroom

So the bathroom was pretty much all done, we just had to get a broken window fixed, redo the window frames, and finish up the painting.  So I'll just leave you with some before and after photos.

Before photos:

And some after photos!

We hired a handyman

So we needed to have holes cut in the siding for the windows that had been covered.  We didn't feel confident doing that ourselves, so we hired someone to do it. 

There were two sets of windows, one in the living room:

And one set in  our bedroom:

The handyman reframed them, we painted and primed them, and voila, windows are back!

So here is the before of both sets:

And here are the after photos!

The moral of the story? Windows are always a good thing!  Don't panel over them, for godsake.

Oh, kitchen

The kitchen wound up being quicker and easier than we thought, and we're kicking ourselves that we didn't do it sooner so we could actually enjoy it! 

Our new kitchen cabinets arrived, unfinished and ready to go:

We started by doing demo of the old base cabinets and putting in some drywall with some new electrical outlets.  Here is Colin helping with the drywall:

Drywall in place:

Installing base cabinets!  They actually came together way more quickly than we thought.  We didn't replace the upper cabinets, so we got base cabinets that more or less matched and painted them the same color.

Then we added counter top.  Its a cheap laminate because we didn't have the money for granite, but it looks good, cleans easily, and will do the trick.  This is the counter top with a hole cut for the sink.

Sink in place:

Kitchen cabinets being painted:

 

We then painted the kitchen, and Mitch and his dad put in a new floor.  With some new hardware the cabinets looked great.  Before and after time!!!

Before:

And after!!!

I love it and I'm so sad I don't get to use it.

 

Goodbye house!

So, as I'm sure all of you know, we've moved to Eugene and are going to be renting out the  house.  :(  This means there will be no blog updates for quite some time.  We will probably wind up doing some remodelling here and there between tenants, but no big projects.  Its been fun, we've learned a lot, and now we're ready to take on house #2, when we can save up for another down payment.  I'm going to post a few posts here to finish up and show the folks following it where we're at, since we've done a bunch of work in the past month to get it ready to be rented.  I'll leave this post with a before and after of the front of the house. 

Before (this is the day we closed escrow!):

And after:

A new porch rail, new paint, and some landscaping have taken us a long way.  More posts to come with more fun remodelling. 

Painting the Porch Rail

Mitch picked a paint color, and we're off.  Here are some photos of the painted rail.

Mitchie painting the drain pipe to match:

Here is what the house looks like now.  Soon all the trim will be the same color.