Befores and Afters

I remember walking through our house for the first time and thinking, "This is it. This is the one." We had to look beyond the 35 years' worth of stuff that the previous owners had accumulated to see the home's potential (including a weirdly placed credenza that completely blocked the front door), but it was there--a great little mid-century ranch with spacious rooms and a floor plan that we liked. So here are some dramatic before and after pictures. I say "dramatic" because the befores show the house with all previous owners' belongings in it. We were so eager to get into the place and start cleaning/painting that we forgot to take pictures when it was bare. Oh well. Here it goes:

*Before pictures were taken the day we closed. After pictures were taken about four months later.

master bedroom before (with Roberto looking very serious):

master bedroom after:

master bathroom before:

master bathroom after:

guest bedroom before:

guest bedroom after:

office before:

office after:

And I don't have any before pictures of the living room/dining room but I think you get the "picture" (heh) by now. Here it is after:

And one from the other side with the Henry cat:

Between the day we closed and the day we moved in two weeks later (exactly two years ago this month), we cleaned, spackled, and painted pretty much every surface of the place--including all the ceilings, the interior doors, and inside every closet. Let me tell you, the spackling took forever. The previous owners loved to hang stuff on walls and had the nail holes to show for it. We also called in some people to do work we didn't feel comfortable doing ourselves, like replacing the two toilets, reglazing the guest tub (it went from salmon to white), and putting in a glass shower door in the master bathroom.

It was a lot of work. I remember being here Valentine's day night cleaning the master bathroom while Robert tried to take up the last of a shag carpet that had been glued to the terrazzo floor in our bedroom. Awwwww. But we also had a lot of help from family and friends, especially my mom and our friend Jonathan (who was here almost every day helping us out.)

A lot has even changed since those after pictures were taken, but I figured I'd show you guys more photos after we finished more projects this year. Soooo, the projects for 2011 are these:

1. kitchen remodel (that's the big one)
2. organize our master bedroom closet (goodness, it needs a little help)
3. organize and do a mini makeover to the office
4. spruce up some of the landscaping around the yard

So we'll see how it comes along. I might even convince Roberto that we should repaint the living room/dining room. It's feelin' too peachy to me...Wish me luck.

Let's Start

After searching for a house in the downtown Orlando area for a year-and-a-half, Robert (then boyfriend, now husband) and I found a place to call our own in December 2008. She was a beauty but needed a little, um, cosmetic help. We've been working hard over the past two years to spruce her up, and we still have a ways to go (and a lot more to learn). I decided to start this blog on the eve* of a major renovation--the kitchen--so y'all could follow us on our adventures and see what's going on over at our hacienda. First, here are the stats on our house:

year built: 1957

square feet: 1366

rooms: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

Next time I'll post some "before" and "after" pictures of our work around the house.

*"Eve" implies that we're starting this thing tomorrow. We're not. We're hoping it will be done by, eh, the end of the summer. That would be fabulous.