Our improvements thus far

Mike and I decided to make today a short work day since we haven't really rested all weekend.  Mike's mom and I made pancakes and bacon for breakfast before heading over to the house.  Once we got there, we were dismayed to find that the ceiling needed another coat of paint.  I set to work on that while Mike met up with Kevin and Marc to get the Uhaul and drag all of our stuff out of storage and into the garage.  They came back with the first load as I was finishing up with the ceiling.  I painted.  They hauled our crap around.  It worked out quite well for me. 

Mike's mom and her boyfriend Chris showed up and joined me in my painting party.  Chris worked on stripping the magnolia wallpaper border from the dining room and removed the chair rail so we can paint it later.  Laurie and I worked on taping, trimming and painting the living room.  One wall is painted Nautical Navy and the rest are a color called Tightrope.  I also got the rest of the trim going up the stairs sanded, primed and painted with one coat.  Bill and Joe showed up at some point and helped with the second and final load from storage.  Once all of our junk was unloaded, Mike asked me what to do with the Uhaul since we still had it rented for a few hours.  I suggested he take the guys for a ride in the back.  So the guys took off on their adventure while we were waiting for our pizza and wings to show up.

The guys got back and we chowed down, our Realtor stopped by to see how we were doing and dropped off a bottle of wine and some mugs and we wrapped up our painting for the evening.  Mike worked a little bit more on cleaning the basement and I picked up our tools and supplied around the house.  We closed up shop and headed over to Joe's for a bit of relaxation and played with the Xbox Kinect.  It was a nice way to wind down the weekend.  We'll be heading back after work this week to get more painting and cleaning done.  We're hoping to have quite a bit done so we can move in next weekend when my parents come out with Callie.  Much to Mike's dismay, we'll also be getting Tony, my cat, back next weekend as well.

Now that you've gotten a peek at what the house looked like before, here are some updated pictures of our work this weekend. 

What looks like burn marks in the carpet from the fat old lady's recliner.

 Living room.  Here you can kind of see evidence of how nasty the carpets were.

Wood stove

 Dining Room

The kitchen.  It's tiny and will need to be expanded in order to meet my needs.  We're not doing anything to it yet, we need to look at our budget and see if we can afford to flip it now.  If not, we're probably going to paint the cupboard in the meantime.

The pantry is so filthy, I wouldn't even put food in it at this point.  I removed the accordion door because it was nasty and because of the shear amount of cat hair permanently stuck in the crevices.

Master bedroom with the carpet rolled up.  Nice hardwood floors under all the carpets upstairs.  We plan on having them refinished in the near future.

 This room is going to be my crafting/sewing/whatever I decide to do with it room.  I got it in trade for Mike having control of the basement.  The nasty blob is the carpet we pulled up and the white powdery stuff is from the carpets degrading. 

This is the littlest bedroom and will be our spare room.  Why waste a nice sized room on guests.  :)  More powdery white stuff.

 Close up of one of the many cat pee stains in the hardwood floors.  I'm worried as to what it will take to get the stains out.  Hopefully the refinisher has magical powers.

This is where the changes really start!

Marc, Kevin and Joe destroying the wood stove.  This is after they dismantled the chimney.  Marc gave it a good tug and the wire mesh holding the fake bricks on gave way.  There was a ton of dust and concrete everywhere.

The guys again dismantling.  As you can see, it's a bit dusty in the house.

Marc and Mike taking the stove out the front door.  We're keeping the stove to install in the garage for heat.

The remains of the wood stove.  Its pretty nasty looking still at this point in the process.

The stairs and hallway upstairs are all hardwood.  We plan on leaving them natural but having a runner for Callie.  

The living room after we tore the carpeting out.

The stairs with the trim painted.

The bay window with the trim painted.  It looks so much bigger now compared to when the trim was brown.  There is a picture of it in the previous post.

Mike cleaning in the basement.  You can see the dust in this picture too.

Dining room without the wallpaper border and the chair rail.  The paint is peeling in here and the kitchen so we're going to wind up having to scrape the walls before we paint them.

Rolling the walls.

The wall with the window is painted.  We are waiting to paint the far wall until we patch the hole from the chimney.

Our blue accent wall.