Before and After- Redoing our 1970's Ranch House

So I mentioned a few months ago that Ed and I bought our first house this summer. It's a 1971 ranch house and much of it was still dressed in the oh so lovely decor befitting a house from that era. Dark panelling, even darker wood kitchen cabinets, hideously stained and stinky carpet, you get the picture. While we still have a ways to go, we have accomplished a lot on our "to do" list already and I'm finally ready to show off our progress!
The day we closed, we took our parents and the boys over to check out the new place. These photos are actually the realtor's images from the online listing. I especially love the "tree paintings" the previous owner left for us. These are actually boarded up windows. They built a garage addition on the side of the house, so they couldn't keep the window there any more, but I guess they thought the window framing should stay put. The front window was once 3 smaller windows and they replaced it with one picture window and boarded up the left portion since the new picture window wasn't as large as the 3 former windows had been. Clever. For now one hides behind curtains and the other is just painted white to blend in... I think it will become a mosaic project.



Lovely, eh? The very first thing I did was knock out the gorgeous spindly things in that cutout window that looks into the kitchen. Then came paint. LOTS and LOTS of paint. 3 coats of primer and 4 coats of latex to be exact...


Next we replaced the 38 year old sliding glass door and the (very red, very poorly painted)front door. The old slider:
The new doors:

Finally we tore up the carpet, the vinyl kitchen floor (and the vile linoleum that was underneath it) and put down wood laminate flooring all the way through. Here are some pictures during the flooring process. The first two are the disgusting carpet the night before we started the floors. We thought the cats might enjoy a catnip party to say farewell to the nasty thing.



We still have some light fixtures to switch out, a new stove and microwave to purchase and a few other odds and ends, but all in all, the main living space is coming together fairly well and much like I imagined it would be. What do you think?

A light at the end of the tunnel

Well, tonight was the big clear out night in my basement. I got downstairs around 9pm and just went to it. I knew I'd been down there a while but had no idea exactly how long. When I finally came upstairs and looked at the clock it was 12:51am. I finished up what I was doing and am sitting down at the computer at 1:30am. The dungeon is looking remarkably more like a decent work space.

I don't know why I procrastinated this as long as I did. Even before I intended to use the space for crafts, I intended to have things neatly stored and organized just for the sake of keeping inventory of my shells and things for my stores. I think somehow I talked myself into believing I just had too much stuff down there and no place to put it all. Well TOTALLY not true. It is so bare in there compared to what it was you'd think I threw away 80% of my stock! There were so many cupboards, closets and built-ins that I wasn't taking advantage of and even one I didn't know was there!

Almost all of my inventory is now out of the cardboard boxes they've been sitting in since shipped to me and it is about 75% sorted by specimen into plastic storage totes. LOL, just in time for me to decide I don't want to sell half of it anymore! Well, at least selling it off will be easier!

For more photos of the progress I'm making on this project, check out my Flickr photoset Studio Remodel. (And I apologize for the terrible quality of some of the pictures, the flash and lighting were not cooperating at all tonight!)

-Tara