Extreme Makeover, Home Edition: Episode 3

The Living Room:

Here are several pictures to reference the "before"-- ugly gray berber carpet, gold transition to white tile, wood floor by front door, wood banisters. These are just random pictures of Brennan and Cade from a couple of years ago.

This picture shows the lovely color of grayish white that the whole house was, the dirty white front door, and the dark olive green of the living room accent walls. We painted all of the main color vanilla, lightened up the green to a shade that perfectly matched a painting that we hung on the wall, and painted the front door navy, and replaced the doorknobs with brushed nickel, and replaced every light switch and outlet in the house from the old style "almond" color with gold faceplates, to white ones. That was a huge project in and of itself.

We replaced the wood banisters with wrought iron ones, and replaced the carpet on the stairs in September 2009.

Oh I love it!! Plus, the wood banisters that were there before were too far apart, so the kids could get through them. We had plexiglass panels cable tied to them to prevent accidents. It was lovely. So glad to get the new ones!Then we did major demolition-- the boys loved it!

The tile floor before-- stark white with dark gray cracked grout and uneven lines.

Daddy gave the boys hammers and let them have at it! Notice the disgustingly ugly vinyl floor we uncovered?

What a mess! It took us about 6 weeks to get rid of all the garbage, the tile was so heavy!! Plus we took out the baseboards (which were really door frame wood, not baseboards at all), gray carpet, pad, about a million staples in the floor, and even uncovered some razor blades that had been left there by the builders 20 years ago.

We put in new high-end laminate floors (normally 7-10 dollars per square foot, we got it for $3 installed. Woohoo!), and then Michael put in new baseboards. Here is the finished product!!

I was so sad to leave this all behind when we moved... we just did this in October 2009, then moved in December.