Before and After

We absolutely love our new house. It's so fun to have so much space and it was fun picking out colors for each of the rooms. Since this house was a foreclosure and it had been vacant for a long time, there was a lot of work that needed to be done. The first job, which fell upon me, was killing dozens of spiders all over the house. I got out my trusty vacuum and went around every edge sucking up spiders and all kinds of other bugs that got trapped in their webs. It was lovely. I was glad that was over and then moved on to mopping. After seeing how dirty the floor was (I mopped the entire floor and a friend then used her steam mop over the entire floor-it was still dirty), I was really glad that we had all tile and we didn't have to try to clean a dirty carpet.

Brant did some major projects like replacing the water heater, putting in new door knobs and locks, and fixing the garage door opener. Pam and Rich (Brant's parents) then came to stay with us for a week and helped us paint and do lots of other projects. It would have taken us months of weekends to get done what they helped us with. Here are a few pictures:

Living Room before. At least there was a cute little boy in there.
Living Room after.
Kitchen before.
Kitchen after. This is my favorite room. I love that it's so open and I love that it's yellow. :) Notice the amazing backsplash behind the stove. Rich put that in and I think it makes a really big difference. Looks very professional.
Dining Area before.

Dining Area after. Brant put in the awesome ceiling fan which keeps the room a lot cooler and keeps us from bumping our heads every time we get up from the table.
Boy's bathroom before. I'm really not sure what look they were going for with the walls, but we figured anything would be an improvement.
Boy's bathroom after. Nice and bright! This picture makes it look more yellow than it really is...you'll have to come visit and see it in person :)

Playroom before. This room hadn't been painted before so I guess we could have left it white. We figured since we were painting everything else, what's one more room? Playroom after.

In our last house the toys were spread over 3 floors, but putting them all in one room made me realize how many we have (this doesn't show what's hiding in the closet!)

We still have to take 'afters' of a couple more rooms and the outside. Still working on a few things...

Thanks for your help Grandma Pam and Grandpa Rich!