Renovations at Joe's House

Many of you have been asking for a blog post on the renovations at Joe's house, so here it is.  Not long after Joe and I met we started discussing settling down and getting married (Love these talks).  Well, I knew if that was the case then some renovation projects were needed, including a wider bathroom, fixed up kitchen, and eventually updated living room and bedroom.  Joe's home was built in the 1940's so it's very outdated and with just Joe living there, let me say, it's been a true bachelor pad.  Most men don't always care about nice things, so Joe would have rather spent his money on dogs, hunting, and other things prior to fixing up a house.  So when a female comes in the picture who really wants a place to call "home" when she's married and is pretty neat, Joe caved him to make this woman happy.  Man, I have an amazing man, just saying!!!!

Over the past several months, Joe hired a contractor to come in and reface the cabinets, build additional cabinets, tear down walls, and make the bathroom larger.  The original cabinets in the kitchen as you will see in pictures below were just solid white, with solid white walls, and a tan countertop that was ripping to pieces.  We had no storage space and hardly any room to prep meals.  The refrigerator was very run down and falling apart and the sink would barely drain.  So, needless to say A LOT of issues.  The laundry room at this time was downstairs in the basement and with the dryer dying out on Joe he thought it would be a perfect time to move the washer and dryer upstairs.  Due to the amount of space we have in the laundry room, they did not fit.  His parents bought Joe a brand new front load washer and dryer.  We love them :)  They also bought a Joe a new refrigerator since the other one was giving out and about to "die."  We couldn't be more excited about the new appliances.  After all the construction and cabinets were in place, we were now able to come in and fix it so it felt like a home.

I knew Joe was going to be on a Bachelor trip with a high school friend and figured it would be the perfect time without him around for my mom and I to fix his pad up.  We took off work and headed to Joes for a weekend to paint, clean, and decorate.  The painting began early Friday morning at 9:30.  We started in the bathroom.  Mom began some of the trim work while I started rolling the paint on.  The bathroom took us about an hour and half to paint and then we started on trimming out the windows and painting the baseboards to make the color in the room just pop.  My mom's boyfriend, Greg, helped us hang mirrors, toilet paper holder, and towel holder.  We cleaned the bathroom up and got a new floor vent.  It's amazing how small changes can make a room better.  First let me just say, my mom is AMAZING and such a HANDY WOMAN.  She brought her own saw and started cutting tile so we could do the tile backsplash. She worked on the backsplash while I finished trimming and painting the laundry room and kitchen.  We were whooped Friday night and ended up finishing our day around 10 pm at night.  Saturday morning we woke up and was back at it again.  We touched up places that we may have missed with paint, made a trip to Lowes to get some ground electrical sockets (I should buy stock in Lowes), and came back to grout.  Joe's parents stopped by to check out the progress and they were amazing at how great the kitchen and bathroom were coming together.  After the grouting was finished we began to deep clean and decorate.  My mom and I like going to the architectural salvage store to see what we might can find and she was able one day to find some old barn wood that needed to be stripped.  After stripping off about 20 different colors she finally came to the natural wood color and it was gorgeous.  So we begun to hang shelves and decorate the house up.  I cleaned up the living room, got all the saw dust off of things and wiped down the baseboards.  We didn't end up leaving Joe's house until 9 pm. 

Joe and his parents were completely shocked when they saw all the work we had put into the house!

Check out below Before and After pictures