I think this custom designed tub by Stern McCafferty has a shot at the title. I’d never get my little boy out of the bath if we had a tub like this!
(Image by Eric Roth on Houzz)
Before and After
Building a custom modern home ain’t cheap, so a few years ago we moved in to the hood to save up money for the dream.
I thought I’d share some of the lovely before and after shots with you. Now keep in mind that almost all of our stuff has been in storage for nearly five years now, so the “After” shots aren’t really decorated… like at all. That being said here ya go:
Paint peeling, rotting wood, over grown brush, disintegrating shingles, oh what fun we had! You can’t tell with the screen door, but the front door had been kicked in.
The back door was also broken in and served as the main entrance for all of the drug addicts. Did I forget to mention this was a former crack house?
Notice the blue theme through out the house. The exterior siding and every room on the inside was painted a slightly different shade of blue. Yeah, it was sweet. The carpet pad had disintegrated into orange powder and the nasty red berber had lumps and didn’t extend all the way to the walls. Each room had a different elevation of one to two inches. The worst part, though, may have been the smell: rancid puke. Lasted for months. *GAG*
Everything had to be replaced: sheetrock, flooring, plumbing, electric, insulation, decks… everything!
The kitchen was the grossest room in the house. Major rot and big time roach infestation. Roach poop poured out of the cabinets and walls when we took them out. Look how disgusting that door is! And the cabinet doors! Eeww!!
Due to rot (and a poor configuration) the entire bathroom had to be cut out.
And now drum roll please…
Ta da!
I don’t have pics of the bedrooms before. This one was blue (of course) but with lovely elmo wallpaper.
The house didn’t have a laundry before, so we added an area in the bathroom.
These after shots are actually pretty old. Remember we sold all the Ikea furniture a while back? Oh, and I finally got around to putting new throw pillows together for the couch instead of those boring gray ones.
So, there you have it. It’s so nice to be moving on. We couldn’t be more ecstatic or relieved to be selling. We’ve been in a too small house for too long. It was intended to be temporary, but half way through the renovations I got knocked up with baby # 1 and slowed the whole remodel down. By the time we were done, the market collapsed. POOP. But we’re okay. It’s a miraculous answer to prayer to be selling in this market. Plus, we accomplished what we had hoped for which was saving the 25% down payment for the new house.
NXS
I like to think that we lean towards a minimalist lifestyle. Having too much ‘stuff’ bugs me and clutter drives me insane, so we purge on a regular basis and toss out, donate, or recycle what we no longer want or need. I thought we were doing pretty good with this habit until I saw this:
Our clothes!
This is only half of it; there are two more blue bins in storage at my parent’s house, another in our storage unit on the island, and a whole closet and chest of drawers full of clothes! This does not count the boys clothes or any of our shoes. What the what??
Now maybe to some people (Mariah Carey? Oprah? Kate Middleton?) this is nothing, but seeing as how I rotate through the same few outfits, this feels excessive and incredibly wasteful. We’re on a tight time table here as far as packing goes, so I wasn’t able to get really involved and try things on etc., but I did manage a quick once through and eliminated about 1/3 of everything (including our closet and dresser) for donation to Goodwill. *phew*
Semi-cathartic.
And good enough for now.
Let’s Go!
After we close on the house on Monday (yay!), we’ll be homeless (not so yay…). Rather than spend the money renting a tiny apartment for just a few months, we’ve decided to take advantage of our new mortgage-less freedom and spend the summer traveling.
If you’ve been following the blog for a while now, you know we haven’t started building yet. (And if you are new to the blog, welcome! You can read here and here to get yourself all caught up.) We’re hoping to start construction on the new house late summer / early fall. Over the next few months, we’ll be modifying our plans and engineering, applying for our variances and permits, finalizing bids, and closing on the construction loan. Should be an interesting experience doing all this on the road.
Print is from Katie Daisy’s Etsy shop The Wheatfield
Thank you, Walmart!
So, we have about a week before D-day (or should I say M-day for moving?) and it looks like this whole house selling thing is going to stick, which means we better get in gear and start packing!
Because free is awesome, we checked out craigslist to see if anyone had any moving boxes they’d like to donate to our cause. Uh… negatory. For every one listing for free boxes there were like 30 more people asking for boxes. Not to be deterred, I turned to my facebook peeps for advice and got more than one suggestion to hit up Walmart (either that or a liquor store which for us would just be awkward). So, after a midnight run to Walmart, Brad came home with about 15 ideally sized cereal/moving boxes. (BTW Kelloggs boxes are much better than Post. Grab those.) Since most of our stuff is already in storage, packing has been a breeze (sorta… I forgot how bad I hate packing); we’re already a quarter of the way through!
In other news, I got a new treadmill today and I’m ridiculously excited about it! I’ve been waiting to get one until we move since we have no room in this house. No more lugging my butt to the gym!