Pics

Here are some BEFORE pics of our new house. They were taken in March of 2007 before we decided to buy the house. Mister is a home inspector so he took a lot of pics and these are some of them. Please enjoy and be thankful that they are not scratch and sniff!

This is the guest room and the horrific wall paper.

This is the view of the lovely living room wallpaper and wainscoting and carpeting that was all ripped out.

Nastiest shower in America! Remember folks that there were people living here and using this!!! Eeek! This is in the Master Bath.

This is the bathroom in the guest suite on the main floor. Total gut job. Smells horrible and the shower, toilet and sink all have to go. Sad really as the house is not even 20 yrs old yet. Nasty, nasty people!

Cabinets in the laundry room smelled like cat and had to be gutted and put on the burn pile. The current laundry room is being demoed though and moved to a different area completely. We also want to add a 2nd laundry to the master bath.

Master Bathroom again, lovely wallpaper. Some water damage on the ceiling and my god, get that wallpaper book away from those people! I shudder to think what they have done to their new house! This room will be a complete demo and redo. It will be totally kick ass when we are done though as nothing will be spared on this room. It is 180 sq ft so there is a lot of room to work w/and two closets!

Hall bath on the main floor. This is right outside my office and it is in the hall so it will be the “Powder Room,” for everyone to wash their hands for dinner and use when they are over so I am going to go for a very arty and funky look with this bathroom. Why be blah? Bold and crazy everything in this one. It will be fun. I found the most kick ass marble for the floors and I have based everything off that!

This is all their crap but check out that wallpaper! OMG! This is the master bedroom and that is not what I call a restful retreat at all…and of course it came complete w/stinky carpet too. This master is 100 sq ft bigger than my last master which is ridiculous! It will be sooo nice when it is done. It has a nice little cove area but the closet is big but odd shaped so the cove may have to go to make way for an uber closet, we shall see.

This is just a pic to show you how every inch of this almost 7000 sq ft home was filled w/crap. I mean it has been hard for me to find pics to show you of the rooms and stuff b/c they all look like this! You can’t see the walls and floors b/c there is sooo much stuff in the way. But I thought this one illustrated nicely what pack rats they were. This is actually the huge kitchen in the in law suite…yes it is under there, I swear! Luckily Mister and I have lots of vision to see past all of the non sense and visualize the maser plan for this house. I swear I could hear the house thank us when the icky carpet was being carried out.

This is the horrible decore’ that they had on the huge wall that backs the formal living room down stairs and then up stairs family room/media room. We will be painting this room a neutral color and I will be hanging one giant art piece on this wall and that will be it.

This is the family room/media room upstairs and the door there is the inside entrance to the in law suite. Notice the stuff!!! Carpet is now gone! This will be carpeted w/a nice berber or frizze. The walls will be painted a dark color b/c the huge wall in the above pic is going to be neutral. Also the banister is going to be changed and made to be solid with the top part wood to the hard wood that we get downstairs. So the whole thing will be like a half wall and the railing will all be solid and it will all be the same and tie in with the new floors. I hate what it is now, it looks very lodgy. Not the look we are going for w/the finished product.

Here is the ugly kitchen cabinets and the porcelain sink in my new kitchen. Now let me ask you what kind of genius would get a porcelain sink when they have rusty well water? Just wondering? Anyway I spend much of my time scrubbing my sink just b/c I am persnickety like that. I mean I hate porcelain sinks to begin with but if you have to have one it better be white!!! Oh will I keep telling myself it is only a few months and it will all be over and I get my dream kitchen. And look at those handles, those were not cheap! Someone actually picked those out, on purpose…I guess to go with the wall paper

Half of back of the house

The other half of the back of the house…obviously there is a lot of land scaping to be done and that will not even be gotten to until next year. Maybe even the next refi…I have huge landscaping plans!!! Oh yeah and all that junk there, the previous owners were kind enough to leave it for us! Thanks!

This is the front, middle of the house. This is where we will be putting the front entrance to the house. A double door and bay windows on either side to balance out the house. The house does not look balanced now and it is totally lopsided w/3 windows in the living room and 4 in the dining room and the “Front” door is all the way at the end by the garage and it is just totally awkward. So we are having it redone and making it into a grand entrance that will balance everything and open up between the living room and dining room and allow us to build a mud room off of the garage by getting rid of the current front door.

Another front view of the house. This is the kitchen door. The kitchen is on the end.

Here is another view of the front and side from the other end by the garages, the end w/the in law suite.

This is the driveway. We are going to have this paved and we are also going to have a key hole drive put in the yard in front of the house by where the new front entrance is going to be so you can drive by and get dropped off and then just drive on out. This will be the last part of the renovations though as we do not want the new drive to get messed up by all the trucks.