The Big Before Post!

Hello! I know you've just been on pins and needles to see the before pictures of the house. Now you will know why I keep saying that it is a: disaster zone/work site/mess. So here is a jam packed tour of my little home sweet home. Lets start with the street view, these pictures were all taken at the beginning of December before we had snow. From the front we can see the dinning nook where the bay windows are, the door into the little front entry and a window on the far right in the living room.

Next stop is the kitchen. The door leads in from the side door and the basement stairs. Notice the nasty kitchen counter top the the floor that has never met a mop (and is gross press and stick tile anyway) also note the yucky off white stove and fridge.

Moving along we come to what I am calling the dinning nook, even though it is its own room it opens up to both the kitchen and living rooms and also acts as a walkway. Not seen is the sweet little built in cupboards opposite the random panelled wall.

You can enter the living room from both the front entry and the dinning area and it leads through to the bathroom, bedrooms and second floor stair.

This is the smallest of the bedrooms, that was being used as you can see has a storage space for window air conditioners. Fear not they have found a new home. Soon this room will have a fresh coat of pink paint and be transformed into my craft room/office (mostly craft room!).

The second downstairs bedroom is currently a very deep red and will be a blast to paint over! This room will become my guest bedroom.

Here we are coming off the stairs and heading into the second floor bedroom. The second floor is one open room with a few cubbies and a closet (without doors)

Standing in the second floor bedroom. This will be my bedroom I'm looking forward to pulling up the carpet to reveal the almost perfect wood floor.

My dad has promised to be the one to deep clean the bathroom and I will be holding him to it.

The last stop on our little tour will be the basement. As you can kinda see the basement was finished in the early 50s and needs a little help. The good news about this room is that it is almost empty at this point and ready to become the painting/redoing epicenter of the house until I get around to refinishing it.

Thanks for looking! Bye!

Taking Steps

I have never been one for sticking with the changes I promise myself I'll make every year. It just isn't my way. I think one of the problems I have is how many resolutions I make. This year I have goals, but only one set in stone must do promise to make. In 2010 I will get and stay and be forever organized!
I figure this will actually take me the better part of the year to accomplish, in part this is because I will be moving and expanding into twice the space! And because I want to do this right and in a way that will work and I'll be able to keep up with.
My January goal is to be organized at work. I've make a post-it note to do list and thinks it will be possible! Next month the home front.

Out with the old

Today is the end of the line for this bad boy. I am very happy to say that today the heating and cooling guys are over at the house replacing this with much more efficient and smaller furnace. it may not seem like much but after two weeks of working without heat it is going to make a big difference. Next week I hope to have the starts of some actual complete projects. Yea!

Sign on the dotted line

Well it is official! We closed on the house yesterday. Yesterday also brought the arrival of the dumpster and the first few hours of clean out. My mom, dad, sister and a few other family members joined me in a little bit of dejunking and a celebration dinner from The Chick-Inn!

Okay for a few before shots, these came from the home inspection and the listing agents site, but are almost exactly how the house looked at closing.

The top two shots are the kitchen and the bottom one a little corner of the basement. As you can see there is a multitude of objects in this home. I am very hopeful that I can get things cleared out by the end of next week and can be ready to have floors refinished, kitchen counter replaced, bathroom floor tiled and paint paint paint as soon as the furnace is replaced after the fist of the year.

Lighting up the night sky

Not a very good shot (it was taken with my dad's phone) but there are Christmas light up at the house and I have just the weekend before I get my grubby little hands on the thing and can really start getting work done. But getting the lights up does make it seem like someone cares about that little place.

Distraction action

I'm still without my computer, because I have been to busy doing nothing to get it fixed. So there will be no picture. I had even gone so far as to start to take images of the fantastic Brussels sprouts I made for Thanksgiving, until I was distracted by the cutest squirrel I've ever seen sitting outside my window as a cooked the last Thanksgiving sides (I always bring sides - its the job I like best and the part of the meal I like best) in the little crappy kitchen. I'm not sure I'll know what to do when I have four working burners and an oven the heats to a temp other than 500.
I've been visiting the little house like it will get up and fly away if I don't pay it attention, the big news of the weekend is that there is now light! And progress has been made in replacing the furnace and adding a/c it really isn't so bad, though to make the 2nd floor my bedroom it is going to cost a little more than I'd like. To bad I live in Michigan and can't really get away with an unheated bedroom. Anyway I will be getting everything up in running shortly and then you can get ready for crazy before shots of the house and then you will all know that I am nuts to be taking on this project.

Winter warm up

Here I am the happy Aunt with my darling little niece: Evie, my computer has a little bug so I can't up load any new pictures so photos of this little lady are going to take over every post.

Anyway moving along. I have a few exciting little projects I'm working on some super secret Christmas projects along with some fun for myself projects once my computer has recovered from her little sickness I'll be happily posting pics.

I'm dreaming of a new winter coat. I tend to be hard on my coats, just ask my poor hooded black pea coat that went through a turnstile in the Roman underground, so I have a hard time spending real money on a coat. This little baby is from Old Navy it is cute enough and I think with a little vintage broach it can be total Libby style. Hummmm maybe I need to stop over to my local ON this week.

Baby Love

Today my new little niece was born, I even had a chance to slip up to visit for a few moments after work. I can't get over how sweet she was when I rocked her to sleep and she started to snore the cutest little snore!

Happy Little House

I am happy to announce that I am quickly on my way to complete home owner ship, should be closing on a sweet little house in a cute little neighborhood by Dec. 18th.
The house is (to me anyway) a real gem. Very little has been changed from its original 1940's build and I am over the moon with the prospect of making it exactly the home I'm looking for. Please stay tuned for many a Before and After, DIY, help how do you install a new sink-furnace-light-kitchen etc.

Birthday Cake

Yesterday was my mothers birthday. She didn't want to make anything of it - she is getting ready to head out on a five day hiking trip with a few friends and has put all her focus on that and getting my two youngest siblings ready for school.

I however don't think you should let someones birthday go by without a little cake and a lot of good cheer. I admit that I was planning on buying a store made cake and calling it a night when I remembered that I had a Trader Joe's box cake. I think TJ's has just about the best box mixes and with a little help from some frozen berries it turned tasting great (even if it was kinda ugly)!

Everything new can be old

Last weekend I was working on putting together a little grouping of family pictures for my office (or maybe I'll keep them at home I don't know yet). One of the chosen ones was of my fathers mother (who passed away long before my birth) and his fathers sister from there days as college roommates. It has this wonderful old photo look, I would guess it was taken some time in the late 30s. It has this great feeling of otherness to it. Then I found this wonderful little site and have found I can create my own snippets of otherness to leave behind. I stumbled across it a few days ago (I wish I could remember where as to give them credit) and I have been having great fun with it.

It take photos from this (pardon my puffy eyes this was taken late at night):

To This:

I think it looks so much more dreamy. I've been messing around with tons of photos and this program. Not every picture transfers well. I found that some come out far to dark to be usable.

Here is the link:

http://labs.wanokoto.jp/olds

You may need to set it to English in the upper right hand. Enjoy playing around with your own pics!

2nd Guessing

I got a counter offer back on the house last night, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. Well I am going to counter, but I'm not sure how much. But that isn't really what has me questioning this move. I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to fill up a house that big. While I feel like I am bursting out of my current place I don't think I'm ready to go into something three times the size. Ahhh, lets be honest here, I wouldn't be myself if I wasn't second guessing.

Offerings

It seems I'm not as good at this blogging thing as I once was. Oh well, we all have to relearn things from time to time. So I thought maybe to get myself going I could talk a little bit about this house hunting thing I've been doing. Over the weekend I looked at houses number 6 7 and 8 in my little quest to find the perfect place to feather my nest. I ended up putting in an offer on one last night. It is the most unexpected for me. It is about 15 years younger than the other houses I looked at (it is still a 50 year old house, but in my city that is a spring chicken) and not really my style. It is a 1950's tri-level with four bedrooms and has its own charm, I just have to adjust how I've been thinking about my soon to be home. I guess in someways I feel like, if I get the house great, and if I don't I'm not in love with it so fine.

The "Yellow" Board

I have been wanting a chalk or white board for my kitchen for a while now so when I saw this DYI over on design*sponge I knew it would be the perfect thing. I had this old print kicking around my apartment so all I had to do was pick up some fabric, paint the frame and volia a great message center.

The fabric fits in with my dishes perfectly and adds a nice pop of color on my white kitchen walls.