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.

Porch rail!

We had some beautiful weather today, so we set out to put a porch rail up.  It didn't get finished today but we made good progress.  Mitch did the vast majority of the work.  So when I use "we"...

Here is what the house looks like sans rail:

Here are some photos of Mitch putting the rail together.

I did help wedge the rail in place:

Colin watched from his bumbo on the porch:

Adding supports underneath:

Here is the new view from the porch:

And this is what the house looks like now:

Next we will do the side rail, then it all needs to be painted.  This its time for summer porch sitting!

Mitchie takes on the tub scum

Mitchie + tub + pumice stone = nice, white tub. 

Here is a nice photo of the work in progress. To the left is what the tub looked like.  To the right is what it looks like post scrubbing.

Here it is now.  All clean and white and lovely!  Makes me want to take a bath.

The bathroom is so close to done!

Green bathroom!

Yay, the bathroom wall is painted!  We still have to get the broken window (that I broke...doh) fixed, and the trim painted.