Home Renovations......

Our home built in 1966 is now under construction as I call it. There are so many things that need to be done, so we got a loan to take care of it!! We have first started getting bids for labor only to do some of this work, but the only thing we decided to pay someone to do was the bathroom remodel for the kids bath and the master bath!! They started the work on Wednesday 5/26/10 and completed both bathrooms last night 5/27/2010 around 9pm. They installed a shower line in the kids bathroom and installed the bathtub and then put ceramic tile on the walls!! It looks so much better in there now as we have had a torn up bathroom for over 4 years now!! The kids had their first bath this morning in the new bathtub and they were so excited!!

Here are some before and after pictures of the kids bathroom. We lived with only a working toilet for over 4 years in just this one bathroom!


After the guys were done with the install. I took this picture before I put anything back in the bathroom, but there is a cute kids shower curtain that goes with it too!!

The master bathroom just needed some new ceramic tile on the bathtub walls and we decided to put the ceramic tile on the floor as well. The floor had some nasty vinyl tiles on it and it looks much better now with the ceramic tile. Now I just have to put the bathroom's back together and clean up my bedroom and we will have this one project done!!

Here is the before of our master bathroom. I am embarrassed to even show this picture, it was gross!!

The vinyl sticky tiles that were on the floor before.
Here is one view after the job was done. Notice the shelves in the corner. He did that with the tile!!

And the new floors!! Much better!!

And another view of the shower!! I love the way it looks!!!

The next project will hopefully be completed Sunday if everything goes well. This is the garage siding project. We recently found out from one of the contractor's that we had termite damage so we had that treated on 5/20/10 and now Larry is just trying to fix a few boards that got damage almost to the top of the roof. Luckily for us this is a detached garage made out of solid wood so that is why we had damage, but to our knowledge there was no sign of termites on the actual house itself. All I can say is "What a mess"!!! Termites are not my friend and they better stay away from now on!!!! My wonderful father-in-law will be over Sunday to help Larry take on this project and my father-in-law has volunteered my mother-in-law to help get a patching of our living room ceiling completed... I thought it was funny when my husband said they were volunteering each other to come work at our house with us!!! Of course the kids may not let the grandparents do much work since they want to spend time with them too and have there attention!! We shall see how this goes though!!!

Here is a before shot of what the garage looks like now. It is wood siding now and that is why the termites loved it so much!!

Here is what it looks like with no wood siding!

In the next few weeks we will also be putting a new roof on the house. My husband has decided that we are not going to pay the contractor's there ridiculous amount for labor and that he was just going to feed some of his fireman buddies for there help, but I am not sure if they know this yet!! One of his fireman buddies had a construction business on the side from his fire dept. job, so he said he would help Larry with the roof, but he will need more than just one person to help so that we can get it done within a day or two at max!! We will see how this project goes. We have purchased all of our roofing material from a guy that posted his business on Craigslist and have saved about half the cost of what a contractor would have charged us for the material!! We also have to re-do all the fascia work around the house that meets up to the roof so that is also something that Larry will be working on the next few weeks before he does the roof!!

We also learned this week from AT&T that only our kitchen had grounded outlets and the rest of the house when tested by Larry is not grounded so we have an electrician coming out Saturday to look at what he needs and then should be able to fix it on Tuesday next week. So this is another cost that we were not expecting, but in my eyes we need to do it #1 for our safety, but it needs to be done so if we sale the house there won't be any issue's at closing or for someone else that buys this house!! I don't plan on staying at this home forever so it needs to be fixed up for the future!! Maybe in a few years we will sell, but only God knows our future, so we will see what happens!!

We have a few more small things to get done inside the house still, but those shouldn't take very long to get done. We (I) have to paint Kayla's room and decorate for our little princess!! She can't continue on in a beige color room in my eyes, so we are going to give her a little girls room!! We have been taking different pictures of flowers, butteries, dragonflies and so on to frame for her room and we are so excited to start frame shopping for those pictures we have printed for her room!! It will look so good once it is finally done!!

We do also need new windows for the house, but I have to research for the best price since we will need so many windows. I am not sure what the plans are right now for that, but it will be in the near future!!

So things are finally coming together on our house and once we are done, I hope it will be a long time before we have to do anything else to this house. We have actually outgrown this house and we need more space for everyone, so I am praying and hoping that in the next few years we can sell this house and buy a bigger one. For now we will just be thankful for what we have and enjoy our family!!

I will post the after pictures of the garage when it is completed and then I will also be doing before and after pictures of the roof as well!!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!!