Finally, the house update

I know a lot of you have been asking and waiting for before and after pics of our new place. Sorry it has taken so long, but I have been super busy with getting the farm part of the new place set up. I have been working on fence the past couple weeks. Anyway, it is pretty crazy how much the inside of the house changed with the renovation. It went from super crappy to pretty nice in 3 weeks. And I learned a lot about house renovation while doing it. Overall I really enjoyed it all.

So, here are a bunch of before and after pics. I will try to tell you what all I did in each set of pictures. Some things we changed throughout the house. I hired a guy to hang new sheetrock throughout the house. There was wood paneling everywhere and then 1-2 layers of wallpaper on top of the paneling. There were 11 different ugly wallpapers throughout the house. We did not sheetrock the closets or laundry room so you can still see a sampling of them in there. We also had new carpet installed in most of the rooms. And we had new windows installed. The old windows were single pane and the new ones are energy efficient.

Before: This before pic actually does not look that bad. But that bar thing was huge. It took up a lot of space and made the kitchen seem really small. It made it impossible to have a refrigerator and use that doorway on the left because it took up that whole space.

After: No more huge bar which left space for the refrigerator, microwave stand, and china cabinet. I also installed beech laminate flooring over the ugly and ripped linoleum.

Before: Living room

After: New carpet, new A/C return vent, new paint on the new sheetrock. Also I put a nice new light fixture in. This house has low ceilings and I would hit my head on all the fan lights.

Before: Another view of living room, front door.

After: New front door, new light, beech laminate in entry space.

Before: Kitchen. What can I say. Oak cabinets with fake oak butcher block countertops and fake oak butcher block laminate between cabinets.

After: New countertops, new paint between cabinets, new beech laminate flooring, new sink faucet, new stove.

Before: Ugly kitchen close up

After: Kitchen close up

Before: Laundry room. There was a section of floor under the hot water heater that was rotten that I had to replace.

After: New maple laminate floor, new hot water heater. I left the ugly wallpaper since this room is closed and no one beside us goes in there.

Before: Master Bedroom. Awesome pink carpet

After: New paint, carpet, windows, light (light not yet installed in this picture)

Before: Spare bedroom

After: (Actually the other spare bedroom but the effect is the same.) New paint, new carpet, new light.

Before Bathroom: It was bad, plastic tile on wall with a hole that had a rat's nest.

After: New walls, paint, removed broken shower door and replaced with curtain, new window, new bathroom fixtures. New light with a fan.

Before Bathroom #2

After Bathroom #2: New toilet, new sink and faucet, new over sink light fixture, new medicine cabinet.

There is tons more that we did that is not shown in these pics. There was a half bath that was in a weird place that I totally did away with and turned it into a pantry for the kitchen which has been awesome. This involved widening a doorway from 24" to 32" so we could get our freezer in. I also had to fix several plumbing issues and electrical issues. I did new baseboards throughout the house because most of them broke when I was removing them for the new sheetrock. New floor vent covers and blinds throughout house.

I really appreciate all the people (everyone in our community group, my dad, other friends) who helped me with the renovation. There were lots of people who helped do all kinds of stuff. And a really big shout out to my friends Evan and Rick, they came out for several days and nights to help on the house. I also want to give a shout out to the Lowe's guys, especially the plumbing guys who really helped me a lot. I did not know what I was doing on the plumbing but they totally explained stuff to me when I asked them and they helped me a lot. At one point I found a leak under the house and I jiggled the pipe that I thought was leaking and a whole big piece of pipe with connectors and a P-trap and stuff just broke off. I took it to Lowes with me and the plumbing specialist got every piece of it that I needed to replace that section and set it up on the floor in Lowe's for me to show me how to set it all up.