What lies beneath...

So we got a little crazy this weekend and pulled up the carpet. For three years I have put up with this gross, disgusting, stanky, ol' carpet and I was more then a little happy to get it out. We have discovered that we have some pretty decent hardwood floors underneath.

Now we just need to have them sanded and sealed...money. money. and more money! Luckily Ryan's cousin knows a guy who can maybe do it for under a grand! {wouldn't that be grand???} I can't wait to get the rest of it out of the bedrooms!









It really wasn't as hard or as scary as we thought it would be. Now my brother did help us get started but after watching and getting the basic idea we really just jumped in pulling up carpet, nails, and millions of tiny poorly placed staples. Labor intensive but entirely free! Can't beat that kind of home improvement.





Tomorrow we are ripping out more carpet! Tonight we made sure to get masks and goggles as nails sometimes fly at your face. I am paranoid about getting something in my eyes. We also picked up some different kinds of cleaners for the floor, More information to follow as to what product we liked the most.

Mastering the art of staging... Challenge Day 11,12,13

So I am not a real estate professional but my parents have just sold their 8th house so I know a thing or two about buying and selling houses. De-cluttering and staging are almost second nature to me. When the covers go over the electrical outlets I know it's go time {growing up this was a clear sign that moving was inevitably close}

While for me it is easy it is not for everyone. It took Ryan a while before he really got in the grove of it. It's hard to wrap your mind around the fact that your house is no longer going to be functioning for you, it has to function for the potential buyers. If you have a weird space or wasted space in your house, the buyer may not be able to picture how he or she would use the space. That's why it is important to stage your house showing the function of every room to it maximum potential.

Sometimes it means making hard decisions or guessing what your potential buyers market will want. For us it has been hard deciding what to do with our third bedroom/ dining room. It is a room off the kitchen with two separate entrances and a large closet. It is VERY small and it has carpet {which is why we have never used it as a dining room}. We live just off a major university campus and so we live around a lot of students. So most likely it will be used as a bedroom and not a dining room. What we decided in the end was to make it an office and we have a china cabinet with all of my platters and a small table so that you could eat in there if your brought in extra chairs.

Was this the right staging decision? I don't know yet. What I do know is that if I was looking at a house and there was a dining room with carpet I would immediately say "next!"



The kitty pack has been immensely enjoying all of the furniture moving. Nothing brings life back into an old nap spot like moving it from one room to another. I don't know how but some how through all of the work on the house the kitties have been trained not to walk through paint. Yesterday while we painted all three watched the entire time never causing one problem {and believe me we have had problems in the past ending in little white paw prints all over my furniture-thank goodness we have microfiber and as boring as it is you can get ANYTHING out of micro fiber!}



Today I will be finishing up painting the living room and I have some pictures to share of our brand new guest room! So happy to have picture downloading capabilities again!

Bathroom Makeover Challenge Day 10...

Here are the before pictures:











It has been a couple of days since I last posted but I finally have a way to download all my pictures to my laptop again! Hurray for Best Buy! While Ryan was away last week I went hard to work. I wanted to completely finish the bathroom before he came home.

While the bathroom is not what you would call "completely finished"-it is pretty darn close. I primed and painted the walls a nice soft almond color. I used a semi-gloss and I will tell you why. Usually I like the look of flat or matte paint but what I have found is that those finishes are really hard to clean. So if you are painting in a room like a bathroom of a kitchen it works better to use a gloss, satin, or semi-gloss because it gives you a nice surface to clean and doesn't absorb stain.

I also cleaned out the ceiling fan and painted the ceiling. This alone did wonders for the room. I replaced our old black shower curtain and black tension rod with a sleek stainless steel rod and a white floral shower curtain from IKEA {that I got for $6.50!} The rug we had in another room {don't worry it has a rubber bottom so it is bathroom friendly}.

New curtains with little dark flex that bring in the black vanity and mirror complete the look. I was going to fill the picture frames with pictures from our honeymoon but I decided against this because I don't want to make the house too personal. We are trying to sell this place so our buyers have to see their pictures on the walls not ours. So instead I used a Christmas gift card to buy a circle cutter {for another project!} and some fun paper prints that I am going to put into the frames for added interest.

And the floors! They are my FAVORITE part. One because I laid that stinkin' floor all by myself and two because lets face it my old floor was nasty! When my brother saw the floor he asked me who did it! That was when I knew I had been successful. My brother is a carpenter and he thought the floor was so well done that my dad must have helped me! I used the laminate tiles that just adhere to the floor. It took some time but I was lucky that I could follow the grid on the old floor. Using primitive tools like a rolling pin and a utility knife I slowly but surely laid that sucker! And now I have the beautiful look of tile {I am sure it does not look like real tile but it so much better then the old floor that it doesn't even matter}

One of my favorite parts of the room are the little jars and candle on the back of the toilet. I used one jar for q-tips and I want to put cotton balls in the other one but I didn't have any for my photo shoot : (

Tonight we are moving furniture around and defining rooms. I am also going to be patching holes in the living room to prepare it for painting. I can't wait to paint again! {can you sense the sarcasm please tell me you can...}

Here are the after pictures!!!













Four days with no husband + one ratty old bathroom+ a little determination = one very happy girl!