One year: Before and After

It has been exactly one year since I closed on the house. A lot has changed, both in the house and in my life, blah blah blah. Maybe if I weren't such a hack of a writer, this is where I'd present the case that the house is a metaphor for my ascent into responsible adulthood. Like the house, I was flooded and my walls were dirty, but after lots of hard work, tears, and paint jobs, now we both don't smell like cat pee nearly as much, or something. Maybe I'm bad at metaphors though. Luckily, for your blog-reading pleasure, my atrocious sense of humor remains the same. On that note, here are the before and after photos of all the work I’ve done on my little bachelorette fort.

Dec 25, 2010 (my first time seeing the house):

Jan 05, 2012 (just over one year later)

Now for the inside:

Basement before

Basement after

Kitchen before

Kitchen after

Living room/hallway before

hallway after

Living room before

Living room after

Master bedroom before

Master bedroom after

2nd bedroom before

2nd bedroom after

3rd bedroom before

3rd bedroom after (still a mess)

Bathroom before

Bathroom after

(it has a real light now, I just don’t have a more recent photo)

I still have a ton of work to do (the next project on my harebrained radar is to do something with that huge empty wall in my living room), but it’s getting there, if by "getting there," you mean starting to look like an actual living adult lives here. Cheers!

It has been a while

I know I let this blog fall by the wayside.  It’s not because I haven’t been working on the house, but some changes in my life since the last update in June made it too painful to come on here and talk about it. I am stronger for it, however, and this little casa makes me happier than ever.

Anyway, things that I have done in the past 6 or 7 months:

-installed a forced hot air heating system (propane) (aka $$$$$)

-got new exterior doors

-put in a wraparound driveway

-insulated the attic

-new back steps

Here I am all driving the tractor and grading the driveway and stuff:

Here are the doors:

(yes, house needs a paint job in the spring)

(for comparison, these are what the doors looked like before…)

You can see the old front door in this one, just awful!

I have completely lost track of expenses, but between the heating system and doors and other stuff, I’d say we’re well up to $16,000 or $17,000 at this point! NBD… I have to go cry now.