Before and After

I'm excited to share with you some of the changes we have made to our home over the last couple of years. These changes have been a long time coming and we've been waiting so patiently to have the funds and the free time to make these changes. I feel like the house is finally coming together, even though we've lived here for more than 3 years. Sometimes, we went months between working on the projects in order to save money and/or find the free time to devote to the projects. With just a few more small projects and one HUGE project, I think we'll finally be finished.

This is a before picture of our basement.  Well, it's more like a 'mid' picture because when we moved in, the floors were concrete.  This photo was taken after we painted and got new carpet in 2010.  Notice how there are no doors?  That was our next major project. There were also no window treatments at this point so you could see right out the window while using the bathroom. I'm sure people could see right in the window just as easily as we could see out of it!  Needless to say, this bathroom was off limits for awhile.

Here are the after shots with our new doors.  I remember thinking, "How hard can it be to stain and hang doors?".  Well, let me tell you it is something I never want to do again!  Tom and I laboriously stained each door (5 in total) multiple times, making sure to leave several days of dry time between each coat.  Once the stain was the right color, we had to do two layers of polyurethane.  Our garage was full of doors for nearly a month!

Then we had to hang the doors.  Simple, right? Not so much.  Thankfully, my father-in-law had done this before and he came to our rescue.  Once the doors were up, we purchased and installed handles for all the doors.  Who would've guessed it would take an entire Saturday to install 5 door handles?!?

Once the doors were up, we were free to start working on the trim.  We borrowed Marty's saw for awhile and slowly got around to measuring and cutting the dozens of trim pieces.  After the measuring and cutting, it was back to the garage for a few coats of white paint. After the paint was dry, we took a weekend to install it all.  Most of the trim looked pretty good, but there were a few corners that looked questionable.  This resulted in Tom and I arguing over the proper way to calculate angles.  In the end, we blamed the imperfect corners on the "warped" wood...
The trim has been up for awhile, but we just got around to puttying the nail holes and the crappy corners and painting them to make them look less obvious.  A little bit of putty and some paint can go a long way in covering imperfections!  We're happy with how it turned out.

Next up on our improvement list was to get a new couch.  If you've ever wanted to see what your couch would look like naked, check out the picture above.  Tom spent an entire Friday evening with a saw and a utility knife, tearing our couch to pieces. Since it was in such bad shape, there was no point in trying to hand it off to someone.  It was time for the couch to go to the dumpster. This couch had been with me for a long time.  I purchased it at a garage sale in 2005 for $25.00. Though it was always a bit of an eye sore, it was a comfortable couch and served its purpose well. Many friends and family members have spent the night on this comfy couch.  My dad and brother hauled it lovingly all across the state from Marshall to my college apartment in Morris, then back to Marshall after I graduated, then to Eden Prairie to our first apartment when Tom and I got married, and finally to our first home. A couple of months ago, the arm rest started separating from the body of the couch and Tom nailed it back together.  Despite his best efforts, the arm wouldn't stay on.  Eventually, we moved the couch so the arm could rest against the wall to prevent it from falling off.  At this point, it was actually kind of dangerous because there were nails sticking out.

A couple weeks ago, we decided enough was enough.  The couch was dead and there was no reviving it.  We found some interesting things when Tom was taking apart the couch.  Most notably, a cell phone that was probably 10+ years old, some Easter candy,  three socks, and a diaper.  I know what you're thinking. Was it a used diaper? Yes.  Yes, it was.  And it wasn't used by us....so that makes it at least 7 years old.  That diaper was with us from Marshall, to Morris, to Eden Prairie, all the way to our first home.   G-R-O-S-S.  This discovery only further confirmed the fact that the couch needed to be sent to its final resting place.  After hours of meandering around Ashley Furniture and chasing Weston around the furniture maze, we finally decided on a lovely brown sectional with a matching ottoman.

Ta-da!  We really like our cozy new couch.

Our next project was an adventure in "upcycling".  This is a trendy term that is used when taking something old and refurbishing it into something new and useful.

I couldn't find a before picture of this dresser, but here's a photo of how our dresser remodel turned out.  I scored this dresser for FREE from my uncle around the time Tom and I were newlyweds.  We were looking for free furniture for our apartment and he was clearing out his basement so it was a win-win.  The dresser was functional but very ugly and dated.   My uncle got it for free from a local hotel that was remodeling so it had been through a lot.  The light brown stain was peeling off and there were numerous water stains on the top of the dresser.  The gold hardware was really dated and unappealing and the light stain did not match anything else we owned.  I always wanted to refinish it but Tom, knowing that my projects always end up being his projects, was reluctant to get started.  I finally convinced him over Memorial day weekend last May.  Tom sanded the dresser which was no small feat, considering all the ornate curves and intricate carvings.  Then we applied several coats of dark stain that we had left over from another project.  Next, we added a coating of polyurethane to add shine and seal the stain.  Finally, we bought some metallic spray paint (oil rubbed bronze-my new favorite color) and sprayed all the nasty gold hardware.  It was a lot more work than anticipated (as all of our projects tend to be), but we are so happy that we did it!  It looks great in our bedroom and cost us next to nothing to complete.

Next up on the list is new flooring for the main level and upstairs.  It may be awhile before we are able to start this due to the expense of replacing flooring.  We also plan on finishing the downstairs closet which needs to be taped/mudded, painted, and have shelving installed. Our most imminent project is to find some sort of TV stand for downstairs.  The one we have now was a free one that we picked out of the dumpster at our apartment complex when we were newlyweds (Yes, we were those people). It's small and black and does not work with the TV or the room.  We are on the hunt for a nice Craigslist steal. I'm ready to take on another sanding/staining project, though Tom may not share the same enthusiastic sentiment :)