Selecting the wall color.

I am painting the entire house the same color. Every room will have gray walls and ceilings and ALL trim/wood will be white. So, finding the right color is pretty critical. I stared and stared at paint chips, clipped samples from magazines, and searched pinterest for months before settling on 5 sample colors. I picked up 5 sample sizes and decided to paint a swatch in every room of the house to make sure I liked the color in all light.

Ben helped me and we painted 5 small squares in every room. Then we brought over gaga and brad and made them vote in every single room. I then tallied the total and #2 sample won with almost double the votes over the others.

It's called Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore and I think it's the truest gray of any of them. I think I'm gonna totally love it.

Bye bye green toilet

This beauty was in the master bathroom...




































You can imagine my elation when I walked in and saw it in the wheelbarrow on its way to the dumpster! Ew!

Hall and Master Bath

The Hall Bath:

The yucky old vanity is finally removed!

There is new mold-resistant sheetrock on the bathroom walls.

And the soffet is gone! Remember it was supporting those crazy globe light fixtures?


The Master Bath:

The soffet is gone here too! Hooray for getting rid of pointless wasted space!

And the yucky tub is gone!

More Progress!

These were taken the last week of July.

The Kitchen:

 Crown molding! Soffet! New can lights!

The Kids' Rooms:

 New doors! Crown molding! Primer! Sunshine streaming in the windows!

Boys' Room:

 Crown molding! Primer! Painted closet!!! Do you love the color?

Hallway:

Crown molding! Smoke detector! New doors!

Master:

 New doors! Primer! Crown Molding!

Dining Room:

 Crown molding! Primer! New can lights! Fixed pony walls! Sconces!

Living Room:

 New doors! Sanded fireplace! Sconces!

Pantry:

One-coat of paint!

Laundry Room:

New doors! New lighting!

So? Looks better doesn't it!!!!

After I took these, I got really excited about our progress. I was excited about how good everything looked. Then, I got home and started going over the 20 page to-do list. And I got really, really discouraged. There is still so much to do!!!

Our front yard

Sunset from our front yard...or "the football field" as the boys would say.
Not too shabby.

Tree Trimming!

You can see just by looking at the top picture of this blog how out of control our trees were. The house is flanked by two HUGE oak trees and they were in desperate need of a trim. The one on the right was completely surrounded by underbrush and had one huge branch that hung out over the driveway. The one on the left was even worse. It is bigger, bushier and had a wisteria that had grown up all the way into the top branches. It was causing major damage to the roof and was so dense that it created a wall of growth and you couldn't even tell if anyone was parked in the driveway!

There were two ads in the Seminole paper for tree trimmers. We called both and had them come out to make estimates. This was pretty comical. Something about rural tree trimmers...all it takes is a brave soul with a truck, you know?

The price was similar so we had to choose between Crew #1 led by a tattoo covered kid with a mo-hawk in a beaten up truck or Crew #2 led by a one-eyed man in overalls driving a mini-van. 

They arrived with a double-man bucket truck which was so cool to see...esp. for the boys! They started right away and were done in just a day! The improvements were so great. Well, for one thing, YOU COULD SEE THE HOUSE!

The guys working on the east oak:

The bucket truck:

The west tree before:

(See the screen? There is a car parked behind there and you can't even tell!
And the after:

Whoa. They took away SO MANY branches. And they took out that pesty wisteria. A part of me was sad to see it go, but it was poorly placed and we just need to start fresh.

I didn't get a good before of the east tree...but here is one taken back in January:

Here's the east tree after:

 They did a great job trimming it up and then Brad was able to clear out from under it. No more prickly hedges in front and the greatest difference is seen from inside. Those branches completely covered those two bedroom windows and it made the rooms really dark. Now, it looks completely different with sunlight reaching it!

chain link fence

I am beyond irritated that I don't have the proper before pic for this improvement. I seriously took so many "before" pics. Knowing this was the biggest before and after project of my entire life I walked around that house shooting from every conceivable angle...or so I thought.

To the north of the garage was a chain link fence. Like the ugliest chain link fence you've ever seen in your life. Everyone that visited the house somehow managed to smugly ask, "You keepin' the fence?" in desperate hope that we would bulldoze the heck out of it the first chance we got. It was UGLY.

The summer before my grandmother died she was feeling fiesty and went and got herself an Alaskan Huskie puppy. She was a dog lover and had always had an indoor dog that would sit in her lap, ride in her car, and pee on newspaper that she laid out for it. But she had either lost it, or was craving something different in her old age. So, Natasha, her new one blue/one green eyed beast was her new pet. She was planning on keeping her inside but that lasted all of one minute before she quickly called the fence guy and had this hideous pen put up. In ten years it had completely fallen apart and as we were taking it down, realized he had only put concrete in 1/2 of the post holes. Poor grandma got scammed. But at least it made it easier for us to get that piece outta there!

Hopefully you can see to the right in this pic the yucky fence:
























And here's the backyard sans falling over fence:

Now there are still tons of trees to trim...but those two new baby trees are Hazelnuts. We planted one in honor of my Uncle Brad who passed away on March 31st and one in honor of his granddaughter (the light of his life) Hazel.

And because you will probably ask...Yes, that is a bell down there. My great-grandmother Vernie Belle was a school teacher in a one room school house in Western Oklahoma. That was the bell in her school house and when it closed down, my Grandma gave it to my Papa in honor of his mother. It needs to be rehung but will totally remain on the farm!