Flashback Friday- Our "New" House

This week I decided to highlight our "NEW" house.  No we didn't move, but after living here five years we finally got around to painting the walls.  And it definitely feels like a different house.

We were so fortunate to have Ryan's mom here to help.  Without her we'd still have boring walls.

 

Living room wall

 

Ryan made the observation that the walls were the color of flesh.  And sure enough when I put my arm next to it they were practically the same color.

 

Our little helpers.  We tried to allow them to help as much as possible, but sometimes it just wasn't possible.

Ryan's mom was a monumental help.  She was originally going to come down for a week while Ryan was at Wood Badge and High Adventure.  But after I called her and told her I wanted to paint the kitchen while she was here, she decided she needed to stay longer.

We have these medallion things on the wall.  We painted them matte black and put them back up.

So she calls me back and tells me she will stay for two weeks.  I was like, "GREAT!  We're going to get so much done!"  A few hours later she calls again and says she's going to stay nearly FOUR weeks!  I was so excited because that meant we could paint and work on more than just the kitchen.

The walls are two colors.  A lighter green on top and a darker on the bottom half.

My mom took a bunch of pictures of the kids, Ryan and I the last couple of times we were together.  So she prettied them up and made them black and white.  We got a TON of picture frames and Ryan's mom and I hung them up.

I HATE the color of the brick in and outside of my house.  It's a 70's brownish orange color.  I just hate it.  So after seeing this on Pinterest and knew that it would become one of our projects.

Our fireplace is floor to ceiling and about 8-10 feet wide.  It's a gross color orange and I've wanted to paint it or SOMETHING since we bought the house.  

Fireplace cover.  It was originally a metallic bronzy color and it dated the whole room.

We taped up and covered anything and everything we could, bought some matte black Rustoleum for high heat areas and spray painted the fireplace cover.  Now it looks much more modern.

The finished fireplace.  I just LOVE it!

After a gem of a Pinterest find, we got some concrete stain, gave it three coats of stain and now it's a much nicer brown color.  I painted the mantel black (I also HATED the mantel).  I've wanted to paint it black forever and finally got to.  It looks GREAT!

Dining Area

When my parents were here over Memorial Day Weekend my parents helped us super clean the floors (thanks mom!) and replace: two toilets, two fans, five lights and a sink (thanks dad!).

Our make shift dining area.

While we were working on the kitchen, which took us about 3 total weeks to complete, we had to move the dining table to the living room.  I don't recommend it.  It was a pain to have the table in there.

Our new paint studio.  You can see that the kitchen walls got an update also.  The top is gray and the bottom is plum, official color "henna".

The dining area was turned into a painting room.

The kitchen before.

Funny story: I signed up to feed the missionaries without even thinking that we'd be smack dab in the middle of painting and such.  So when they came over the living room was still drying and we were about to start on the kitchen.

Ryan was "the man" and sanded every cabinet in the kitchen and laundry area.  And I will just say we have A LOT of cabinets.  He did it all in the two days before he left for two weeks.

After dinner we put them to work.  I took the kids into a bedroom to keep them from being underfoot and in the way and Ryan, his mom and the missionaries got to work emptying every cabinet and taking off all the cabinet doors.

All the doors are off, all the cabinets are sanded and ready for paint. Can you see inside the cabinets?  No, because they are dark from the wood stain and the backs are painted this horrendous color brown.  I've never seen a more ugly color of brown.

I came out of the room to check on the progress an hour or two later and saw one of the poor missionaries taking off the hinges with a manual screwdriver.  I looked at him and then at Ryan and asked, "Where's the drill?"  To which Ryan answered with an shrug.  Unfortunately for the missionary he was on the last door so the drill wouldn't have helped much.

The base coat on the cabinets.

Painting the cabinets was interesting.  I took one side and Ryan's mom took the other.  It was kind of funny to see us try to contort and twist to get the back of some of those lower cabinets.  They are deep.

Painting the cabinet doors.

Ryan's mom took a day and sanded ALL the cabinet doors.  She was a machine.  We then washed them off and painted them.  Everything that was sanded down sucked in the paint.  It took two coats of white and two coats of yellow.  We went through 5 gallons of white!!!

The finished product.  I just LOVE the yellow.  It makes the kitchen look so bright and cheerful.

We were both very excited when we were able to paint any color that wasn't white.  EVERYTHING seemed to need white.  We painted every baseboard, crown molding, chair rail and door frame in every room we painted.  The cabinets and doors needed white and the ceilings in the foyer, hallway and main kitchen area received a coat of white.  We were very sick of white.

The window over the sink.

Now you may be asking yourself, "Where were your FOUR children while you were doing all of this painting?"  That is a good question.  They were there with us.  Most of the time we kind of kicked them out to the back yard and let them loose with the water hose.

I replaced the light over the sink.  It looks so nice and much more modern looking than what was there before.

We were very lucky that the kids were so good.  They played outside or came in and mostly stayed out of the way.  The younger ones took great naps during the day and that helped immensely.

A close-up of the light.

When we could, we allowed the older girls to help us paint.  Sadly for them it wasn't much, but they were very excited when they could help us out.  In the afternoons we would all take a break, play, go out and have fun together.

The front door and foyer area.

We realized one day when we were trying to paint all the trim and doorways in the hallway that painting during the day just wouldn't work.  So after we painted all the trim and tried to keep little fingers and bodies from touching ANYTHING, we figured painting at night might be a better idea.

See how ugly the door color is up against the walls?  Yuck!

After we put the kids to bed for the night we donned our paint clothes and grabbed our paint rollers.  We spent nearly six hours painting the walls of the foyer and hallway.  We didn't get to bed until after 1am.  It was a very late night and my kids are early risers, so we were a bit tired the next day.

The completed entryway.

The front door got a face lift too.  I never really liked the door color (are you sensing a theme with my feelings about the original colors of the house???) and absolutely love the color it is now, especially against the greens of the walls.  I painted it the same color as we did in the kitchen and laundry area.

I replaced the thermostat in the hallway.  We had a really old looking one and with all the updates going on, I figured this would fit right in.

One of the more frustrating things for me was having the fridge, washer and drier sitting in the middle of the kitchen.  Every time we needed something from the pantry the fridge had to move.  Every time we needed to cook (yes, we did eat in the entire time.  Freezer meals were our salvation!) the washer and drier needed to move.  Every time we needed to do dishes, they needed to move again.  And since all the contents of our kitchen were on tables in the garage, every time we needed ANYTHING from the kitchen we had to search for it in the garage.

Our mailbox

Our laundry room is a cubby area just off the kitchen on the way to the hallway.  Since it's basically an extension of the kitchen it was painted the same colors.  The cabinets are yellow, the upper walls are gray and the lower walls are "henna".

Another angle

We didn't only work on the inside.  Some things outside got some updating. The mail box was in sore need of some TLC.

After...

It looks so nice now.  It's the same colors or close to the colors of the front door.  Our mailbox sits on the boundary line between our neighbor and our properties.  And since we painted the outside of the door, it's really easy for people to see that 1613 is the third house and not the second house from the corner.

New plants and fresh paint.

Also outside we planted some new plants along the walkway and painted the front door.  In the back yard Ryan's mom, with some help from a nice young man from our ward, dug up the garden area and put bricks down so the hose can sit on it.

We worked very hard and the hard work looks AMAZING.  

I want to send a special thank you for my mom and dad for coming and working so hard to help us out and replacing things to make our house look nice.  Thank you to Cindy, Ryan's mom, for spending 4 weeks slaving away on your vacation to help me paint and everything else.  And thank you David, Ryan's dad, for letting us borrow your wife for a month while you were back home.